The young man slept in the big bed close to the earth. He did not wake, when being observed. His socks hung on the radiator where her intimate garments had. Sonny left food for him in her kitchen each time and went away for another two days. When he got back home he would call out, Will? But he always knew whether or not the boy was there; like his mother's, his presence could be sensed.
All dogs love me, no problem, the young man had told him when he asked about the dogs raising the alarm when a stranger came and went through the garden. But the people in the main house must nevertheless notice there was someone coming to and fro at the cottage. Someone other than himself, the man they must think of as her man. Perhaps, unlike himself, they expected a woman like her, free-living, alone, doing some kind of leftish good works, content to hire converted servants' quarters, to have men coming and going. Perhaps they had known of some other man before himself.
One afternoon the young man was gone. When Hannah phoned, on time, he couldn't tell her that, either, but the spirit in his voice and the caressing chatter that came from him must have told her for him. He felt strongly sure she would soon be back. He had never cleaned house before — in his kind of family women cooked and cleaned, only his son, wanting to differentiate himself in every way, helped out in the kitchen — but he stripped the bed, swept the room, found the product with which to wash the bath. The man had left behind, shed, his hitchhiker's outfit. Must have changed persona for the next stage of his mission. In the bathroom was an open bottle of hair bleach with a picture of a grinning blonde combing flying tresses. But Sonny's Hannah needed no bleach or paint. He threw out the bottle with the bundle of clothes, it was the day of the week the dustmen came to take away the white suburb's trash and he saw, in the lane as he left the cottage by the hidden gate, one of the black men rummage the bundle out of the mess of newspapers and kitchen debris and consider the usefulness of the garments as other than a disguise. Sonny smiled, felt that it was right. A conclusion that restored balance to something he found distasteful and distorted, a means he did not want for his ends. Sermons in stones, and good in everything; that was not to be used as a password, in the mouth of a third person.
She's cut off her hair.
I had come back from classes to the empty house and parked my motorcycle on the stoep as I always did for safety, and when I opened the door someone was standing there. She'd heard me thumping the bike up the steps and she was waiting, presenting the surprise of her return. I recognized her as you do someone in a photograph taken at a time and in a place when you didn't yet know them, or after they were as you had known them. The shape of her face was changed by the short curls brushed around it, the small flat ears with, always, some little decoration dangling from the lobe, had disappeared, the polished curve of the forehead was hidden by a fluffed-up fringe. She flung her arms round my neck and hugged me. A line drew between her beautiful eyes with the joyful intensity with which she looked at me, took me in. My mother was never demonstrative like that. But they were her eyes.
— What happened?—
She was laughing with pleasure. — Oh everything's fine. Baby is blooming. You wouldn't know her, so grownup, completely in charge.—
— What have you done? Why did you do it?—
— You mean this? — she poked her fingers through the curls. — Oh this. All those years. It was enough. Don't you like it? Don't you think it's nice, Will?—
I could only smile and move my shoulders; I'm not her husband, she doesn't have to try to please me.
We went into the kitchen, our old place to talk. She took my mother's chair at the table, she made tea. She was telling me about where Baby lived, what good friends Baby had, responsible people who looked after her, not at all what one thought it would be, considering some of the people she'd mixed with here. — They made me so welcome. She shares the house, of course, but can you imagine, she's planted herbs in the garden — Baby!—
— She didn't leave to go gardening, though. What does she do — or couldn't she say.—
— Well, you don't ask questions, of course, but she was quite open, she seems to be busy with the reception of refu-gees — not exactly refugees, people like herself, who come out. They have to be investigated. You know. — The big eyes moved over me.
So my mother understands the ambiguities of liberation, now, the screening and interrogation carried out not by the Security Police but by her daughter. Baby has instructed her.
— Was it Baby's idea? — She knows I mean the hair.
— Will! You'd be so pleased to see how she is. She was watching me brushing it one day and she said, how old are you now, Ma? She never remembers! She always thinks I'm younger than I am. So I reminded her. She said, and how much of your life have you spent doing that — so next day we went to the hairdresser and I had it off.—
She turned her profile to me as if to let me acknowledge the full effect.
I said nothing.
— I feel so much lighter. — She was looking at me shyly to see if I would not be glad of that. — And has everything been all right?—
We don't mention him by name, not yet. She's thinking of police raids, no doubt; of his safety. Could I tell her something else, that he's been home a lot, even playing chess with me? But I can't because that would be a comment on what we're both not supposed to know, the reality I protect her from. — Oh as usual. Except the yard's a bit of a mess. I did get round to cutting the grass once, but my work-load's quite tough, I've had a lot of reading to do.—
— Did you eat?—
And now we both smile. — I cooked. It seemed to be okay.—
She knows I fed him, she could count on me, now she wants me to like what Baby has done to her, her hair.
— There's more to tell but we'll wait until your father comes in.—
So he's there, spoken out loud between us. — What's it all about? Why not now?—
— Because I'd only have to tell it over again.—
This woman with dull permed curls. She's never put us in the same category before, him and me; since when are our unspoken confidences the same as the sort of silences between them?
She never came back. Cut loose. She was gone for good: my mother.
Aila's mission was the kind to be expected of her; she has brought women's tidings, a mother's news. Baby is married. But for security reasons not even that domestic intelligence could have been transmitted over the telephone or by letter; not to this house. Baby hadn't told her father herself. Couldn't. Sonny was informed along with his son, by his wife. A family matter. There should have been kisses, handclasps, a Saturday tea-party with beer for the uncles, Aila with her shining coil of hair, wearing a new dress home-made for the occasion.