In love with Norma. She was evidence against himself and taking her for his own absolved him from however, whatever he had failed.
Arthur was good-looking, no inbetween so far as male beauty is concerned, and that may well have been the magnetism by which Norma was drawn, in love with him. Beauty has an innocence, it can’t be aimed or plotted or struggled for as justice; it’s a kind of assurance for someone who has lived with the deviousness, the machinations of survival, spied upon, hunted under bans.
Arthur was there for her, when it was all over — the bans, the head-hunters of the old regime disarmed of power. With his knowledge of the practical ways, the signals of a normal life of private ambitions and satisfactions she had not known, now legitimately open to those who had sacrificed for it, they could create a new normal life in the conditions of freedom. She had dossed down with comrades in places sleazy or disguised behind a facade of respectability; he had lived past twenty with his parents and then, by the time he met her, in a bachelor flat whose window was an inescapable observation post for the blare and turmoil of a street of bars, minicabs hooting for custom, laughter and anger of pimps and prostitutes of three sexes. A job had been found for her — the comrades kept one another in touch about opportunities — with some non-governmental organisation taking care of the children and youths whose fathers had died in action in the liberation forces or whose parents had disappeared in exile. He, of course, was secure in insurance, a necessity of the old normal life that, as his parents’ wisdom had predicted, remained a necessity in the new. Weekends and after work almost every day they went looking at houses. A house of your own; that always was and always will be the beginning of the normal life they were set upon: she deserved. Estate agents lied to them; they quickly became wise to the basic questions with which to counter: was the highly-praised house on offer not too near a freeway, was the nearby green space one where homeless people put up shacks, was there a creche in the suburb (Norma was expecting their first child), what was the crime rate in the area?
Finally, they found the house for themselves. They were driving around a neighbourhood they had heard about from black friends of Norma who were moving, now, out of the black townships become ancestral homes to flee. Norma saw the Cape Dutch gable. A house with character! He was privately surprised at her enthusiasm for an architectural embellishment that was the style, brought from Holland, by the forefathers of the people who had spied upon, pursued and banned her from her rights, imprisoned and tortured her kind. But it is true that a gable is graceful; it makes a house unique among others in what was the kind of street they visualise starting out on. Jacaranda trees all along both sides. And there was a For Sale notice on the gate. They raised a bond on the evidence of his position advancing at the insurance company, and bought the Cape Dutch gable and all that was behind it, wonderful, more rooms than they’d need, but they were going to have a family, he’d earned his promotion from dreary bachelordom and she hers from anonymous hideouts.
Arthur lies in bed on weekend mornings at leisure and his mind wanders visually through the house and garden. He is not thinking, there are no words. There is the livingroom ceiling, generations of thick hard paint removed to reveal gold-brown lengths of wood panelling, hooded angle lights shining down from it softly. (Real style; the architect who was a colleague on the urban planning commission with Norma discovered for them the original fine pine under the paint.) The mounting pink profusion of Bauhinia he’d planted, rambled over by purple-blue Morning Glory at the boundary where the old trees were too dark a conclusion to the north end of the garden. The semicircle of blond cane with clean glasses on its table-top, striped in terrace sunlight — his hospitality bar. Green of the lawn well-kept by the black weekly gardener and green of the mini billiard table in what’s come to be called the TV room since the two kids like to watch programmes adults can’t sit through. That passing vision, with Norma and a glass of wine, after the day, watching the news on the other set in the livingroom. And transparencies of what isn’t there yet. Still to come. One of those garden statues, cement but look like real stone, to glance at you from the centre of the lawn when you stand at the glass sliding doors he had installed in the livingroom soon as they could afford it, not long after they had moved in. One of the first to go through the doors: the baby just born, there in his pram. A swimming pool — where in the garden, imagined? — most people in the street have one but Norma won’t agree because the child of friends drowned in theirs.
Norma bought him the mini billiard table as a surprise. Some connection through a firm that had tendered to the Commission for Sanitation in informal settlements (Norma had moved to Public Works, then) also owned a factory that made what they called entertainment equipment. It arrived on his birthday — But it must have cost a packet, Norma!—
— So what? Why shouldn’t you have some fun, I’ve seen how you enjoyed yourself on the table at Edward’s place. Anyway, I got a big discount.—
He taught their first-born, then seven years old, to play and as their arms grew longer it was used more and more by Danny and his schoolfriends. Danny was proud of it: if the school soccer game was washed out — Come to my house, we’ve got a real billiard table in our TV room.—
When they had lived almost nine years behind the Cape Dutch gable (you can’t miss our place just look out for that when you come to the street) it was occupied in the patterns of their presence, their personal routes, invisible internal maps of existence from room to room, Norma and Arthur, Danny and his brother Brett. Almost completely occupied, but not quite. Still some to come: things to be achieved. The statue, a woman moulded with draping over one shoulder, was in place, and an electronic call system linked to the house was installed at the gates — Norma left Public Works to go into what was officially termed the Private Sector: individuals whose economic status put them at particular risk of thieving intruders and other invaders of privacy in their homes.
The Private Sector she joined was in fact the construction company one of whose directors she had come to know when the company tendered for a sanitation project in informal settlements. She became at once assistant to the director. Her salary and benefits were beyond anything she and Arthur could have imagined reaching, at first; but it is much easier to become accustomed to having money than it is to do without it. Norma had a natural aptitude that was perhaps already evident when first she saw the Cape Dutch gable and claimed its flourish for herself. There was a holiday in Europe, she saw some suppliers in an English industrial city and then she and Arthur took a Mediterranean cruise. Norma was orderly; kept every taxi receipt and credit card restaurant bill, don’t bother about anything, it’s routine entertainment allowance. The director’s secretary at the company arranged air tickets for other, frequent travels where, if Arthur could absent himself from his insurance office, he was consort of the director’s assistant. Through Norma’s connections their elder son found a place at the most selective and expensive private school. The black maid who cleaned the house and did the family washing was placed under the supervision of a cook-housekeeper, also black; one of the directors had died and Norma, appointed to take his place, was too occupied with the demands of her position to have time or mind for shopping or cooking.