In the kitchen there was no talk. The cocoa rose to top of the pot, made ready. All the sources of the warmth that her palms had extended to, everywhere in the house, as a domestic animal senses the warmth of a fire to approach, were in this body against hers, in the current of arms, the contact of chest, belly muscles, the deep strange heat from between his thighs. But he took care of her. Gently loosened her while she was discovering that a man has breasts, too, even if made of muscle, and that to press her own against them was an urgent exchange, walking on the wet sands with the fisherman.
The next weekend-leave — but the next weekend-leave is cancelled. Instead there’s a call from the public phone at the canteen bar. The mother happened to answer and there were expressions of bright and encouraging regret that the daughter tried to piece into what they were responding to. The family was at supper. The father’s mouth bunched stoically — Marching orders. Embarkation.
The mother nodded round the table, confirming.
She — the one I call Tilla — stood up appalled at the strength to strike the receiver from her mother and the inability of a good girl to do so. Then her mother was saying, But of course we’ll take a drive out on Sunday, say goodbye and Godspeed. Grandma’d never forgive me if she thought … now can you tell me how to get there, beyond Pretoria, I know … I didn’t catch it, what mine? And after the turn-off at the main road? Oh don’t bother, I suppose we can ask at a petrol station if we get lost, everyone must know where that camp is, is there something we can bring you, anything you’ll need …
It seems there’s to be an outing made of it. Out of her stun: that essence, ironed khaki and soap, has been swept from the house, from the kitchen, by something that’s got nothing to do with a fisherman except that he is a man, and as her father has stated — Embarkation — men go to war. Her mother makes picnic preparations: do you think a chicken or pickled ox-tongue, hard-boiled eggs, don’t know where one can sit to eat in a military camp, there must be somewhere for visitors. Her father selects from his stack of travel brochures a map of the local area to place on the shelf below the windscreen. Petrol is rationed but he has been frugal with coupons, there are enough to provide a full tank. Because of this, plans for the picnic are abandoned, no picnic, her mother thinks wouldn’t it be a nice gesture to take the soldier out for a restaurant lunch in the nearest city? There won’t be many such luxuries for the young man on his way to war in the North African desert.
They have never shown her the mine, the diamond mine, although since she was a small child they have taken their daughter to places of interest as part of her education. They must have talked about it — her father is a mining company official himself, but the exploitation is gold, not precious stones — or more likely it has been cited in a general knowledge text at schooclass="underline" some famous diamond was dug there.
The camp is on part of the vast mine property, commandeered by the Defence Force, over the veld there are tents to the horizon, roped and staked, dun as the scuffed and dried grass and the earth scoured by boots — boots tramping everywhere khaki everywhere, the wearers replicating one another, him; where shall they find him? He did give a tent number. The numbers don’t seem to be consecutive. Her father is called to a halt by a replica with a gun, slow-spoken and polite. The car follows given directions retained each differently by the mother and father, the car turns, backs up, take it slowly for heaven’s sake.
She is the one — There. There he is.
Of course, when you find him you see there is no-one like him, no bewilderment. They are all laughing in the conventions of greeting but his eyes have their concentrated attention for her. It is his greeting of the intervals between streetlights, and of the kitchen. This weekend which ends weekends seems also to be the first of winter; it’s suddenly cold, wind bellies and whips at that tent where he must have slept, remote, between weekends. It’s the weather for hot food, shelter. At the restaurant he chooses curry and rice for this last meal. He sprinkles grated coconut and she catches his eye and he smiles for her as he adds dollops of chutney. The smile is that of a greedy boy caught out and is also as if it were a hand squeezed under the table. No wine — the father has to drive, and young men oughtn’t to be encouraged to drink, enough of that in the army — but there is icecream with canned peaches, coffee served, and peppermints with the compliments of the management.
It was too warm in the restaurant. Outside, high-altitude winds carry the breath of what must be early snow on the mountains far-away, unseen, as this drive in return to the camp carries the breath of war, far-away, unseen, where all the replicas in khaki are going to be shipped. No heating in the family car of those days, the soldier has only his thin, well-pressed khaki and the daughter, of course, like all young girls has taken no precaution against a change in the weather, she is wearing the skimpy flounced cotton dress (secretly chosen although he, being older, and a disciple of the sea’s mysteries, probably won’t even notice) that she was wearing the first time they walked to the cinema. The mother, concealing — she believes — irritation at the fecklessness of the young, next thing she’ll have bronchitis and miss school — fortunately keeps a rug handy and insists that the passengers in the back seat put it over their knees.
It was easy to chat in the preoccupations of food along with the budgerigar chitter of other patrons in the restaurant. In the car, headed back for that final place, the camp, the outing is over. The father feels an obligation: at least, he can tell something about the diamond mine, that’s of interest, and soon they’ll actually be passing again the site of operations though you can’t see much from the road.
The rug is like the pelt of some dusty pet animal settled over them. The warmth of the meal inside them is bringing it to life; a life they share, one body. It’s pleasant to put your hand beneath it; the hands, his right, her left, find one another.
you know what a diamond is, of course, although you look at it as something pretty a woman wears on her finger mmh? well actually it consists of pure carbon crystallized
He doesn’t like to be interrupted, there’s no need to make any response, even if you still hear him. The right hand and left hand become so tightly clasped that the pad of muscle at the base of each thumb is flattened against the bone and the interlaced fingers are jammed down between the joints. It isn’t a clasp against imminent parting, it’s got nothing to do with any future, it belongs in the urgent purity of this present.
the crystallization in regular octahedrons that’s to say eight-sided and in allied forms and the cut and polished ones you see in jewellery more or less follow
The hands lay together, simply happened, on the skirt over her left thigh, because that is where she had slipped her hand beneath the woolly comfort of the rug. Now he slowly released, first fingers, then palms — at once awareness signals between them that the rug is their tender accomplice, it must not be seen to be stirred by something — he released himself from her and for one bereft moment she thought he had left her behind, his eight-year advantage prevailed against such fusion of palms as it had done, so gently (oh but why) when they were in the dark between trees, when they were in the kitchen.
colourless or they may be tinted occasionally yellow pink even black
The hand had not emerged from the rug. She followed as if her eyes were closed or she was in the dark, it went as if it were playing, looking for a place to tickle as children do to make one another wriggle and laugh, where her skirt ended at her knee, going under her knee without displacing the skirt and touching the tendons and the hollow there. She didn’t want to laugh (what would her father make of such a response to his knowledgeable commentary) so she glided her hand to his and put it back with hers where it had been before.