Once they were again in the bed it was as if what had happened down in that cavern had never been. Close to the earth; Sonny was back to earth, human and struggling, able to touch and feel and scent the wonderful upheaval of life.
— He slept here. I used to come in and see him snoring there on your bed. — He shook his head, and she smiled and kissed his neck. — But why did you give him that password, Hannah? Why couldn't you have thought of something else?—
— What else could I have sent that would make you absolutely sure? What else is there that belongs only to us?—
— Well now there's a third person.—
— Oh never. To him it's like anything else that's used. Once the purpose is served, it's over. You know. He's forgotten already. It's only to us. for him, there are other things on his mind. He's quite extraordinary. what he's brought off. in and out, here, several times.—
— Don't tell me. And forget whatever that is, yourself. I don't know how successful he was. Whether he was ever followed, whether they played the old game of letting him lead them to his contacts, including this cottage. How do I know? I couldn't watch the place all the time. and he was so cocky and relaxed, didn't give a damn, never said anything. And that telephone was frustrating. I couldn't tell you, ask you anything about the fellow. He could have been picked up and I along with him, and you wouldn't have known.—
She was considering, a moment, whether this was a reproach. But between them, that wasn't possible; you don't live for each other, the loving is contained within the cause, and there would be no love if you were to refuse, because of personal risk, something expected of you by the struggle. She didn't know how to phrase this; did not have to because he was speaking again. — I hope you investigated him thoroughly before you let him use us. You know that, with me, it's not only myself— there's always the risk of the movement being infiltrated through me; any one of us.—
— My dear love, don't you trust me?—
— I've told you before what you are for me.—
She hid her face against him, muffling her voice. — 'You are the only friend I've ever had.'—
He pulled her head away, distorting between his long hands her soft pastel cheeks in pressure against the brilliant blue chips of her eyes, and kissed eyes, nose, mouth as if to efface her. They made love again, the kind of love-making that brings the dependent fear that one could never live, again, without it.
When they were lying quiet, she made her usual principled acknowledgement of the limit of her claim. — How are things at home? Is Aila back yet?—
— She arrived a few days ago. Will behaved quite reasonably with me. even cooked some meals.—
She squeezed his hand. — Of course, he's a good boy, he's just like you, underneath. You'll see how he'll turn out.—
She might have been a wife, reassuring him about his children. What games are played, between lovers! — My daughter's married, you may be surprised to hear. I was.—
Hannah laughed. — No, not surprised at all. She's a very attractive girl. Not as beautiful as her mother, but still lovely. Who's she married? Someone in Lusaka, of course?—
— But like the rest of us, originally from the ghettos. I've never met him. Aila likes him. So I hope it's not a big mistake.—
— Why should it be a mistake?—
— Marriage, these days. In their circumstances, the instability, exile, no home — what for? Marriage implies certain social structures, and we're busy breaking up the existing ones, we have to, it's the task of our time, our children's time. I don't know why she wants it; she's got a head on her, young as she is. At least I thought she had.—
— You think they should just live together?—
They look at each other: like Baby's father and his lover.
— Yes, while they can. There'll be long separations, each will have to go where they're sent. Marriage is for one place, one way of life. It's a mistake for them. Live together while you can, as long as it's possible, and then, well—
— Aila surely wouldn't want that. Isn't she pleased?—
He put his hands up over his face a moment and breathed out through his fingers. — She's pleased.—
He did not continue with what he was about to say; he did not tell Hannah his daughter was going to have a child.
I wonder how she feels making love with a grandfather. That didn't stop him either. I wonder how he could go on doing it knowing he was so old — what's it? Over fifty — and some other man was also doing the same thing to his darling daughter.
Fucking his pudding-faced blonde (pink blancmange like my mother used to make for us out of a packet when we were kids) while he ought to be dandling his grandchild on his knee. It's disgusting to think like this about him, I know, but he's the one who's brought it about. That's the educational opportunity the progressive schoolteacher arranged for me.
I should have thought — I did think, when my mother told me about my sister's baby — that, at last, would have been the end of it, for him. Even if he hadn't stopped when my sister tried to kill herself because of him, his old obsession with self-respect might have stopped him now. A grandfather, the great lover! My father, who has never looked ridiculous in his whole life. If not his famous self-respect, then self-esteem, vanity, I should have thought — I notice in the bathroom in the mornings he has quite a paunch, there's grey in his chest-hair. When he yawns, his breath is bad. He must have some dignity left, after all.
But no. Everything goes on as it has for — how long is it already? I keep thinking of it as an interlude, something that will be over; but it's our life. When I'm his age and I look back on my youth, that's what it will be.
Of course he's never seen the baby boy. Only the photographs my mother brings back. She tells him the infant looks like him, just as I did when I was born, she says. It already has quite marked eyebrows. But he says babies look like other babies. The lover wants to acknowledge no paternity, neither for me nor his grandchild; unfortunate about the eyebrows. and my mother so innocently proud of the proof of succession, something no other woman of his can take away from her. Maybe it's not so much innocence: perhaps women really want men only to supply them with children; when that biological function has been fulfilled down to the second generation, and they themselves can't bear children any more (my mother must be close to that stage now? Like Baby, I always think of her as young) they don't need us. I realize I don't know enough about women. It's not a subject of instruction he's keen to pass on.