At the cottage, after a few days' absence, he arrived for an hour; at one in the morning Hannah woke instantly to hear the car stop in the lane and flew stumbling to the door. He was in a state of high tension from talk and exhaustion, and the touch of her sleep-hot skin made him start and shudder. His eye-sockets were purple as if from a blow. Don't talk, don't talk any more, Hannah said, although she was the one he talked to, she was the one with whom he shared what there was to live for outside self, she was the one friend he ever had. They quickly made love — no, he fucked her, it was all he had left in him to expend. And then he had to get dressed and go; to put in an appearance for his son, at breakfast, to prepare himself with some rest for the decisions of another day. If he could get to sleep; But then begins a journey in my head, to work my mind. The old consolation of fine words become a taunt. Why was he approached that night?
How could he ever have imagined anyone could construe something significant out of that unexpected and insulting visit?
But it actually was remarked to him: Why you?
Said lightly. He could not believe the obvious implication, unsaid: what is there about you that made you seem a possibility? There must have been something, why else…? The irreproachable comrade, the popular Sonny… not such clean hands, after all? Nobody — sometimes not even those who repeated these things, murmur to murmur — knew where they came from; whether from buried malice within themselves, churned up in the mud of uncertainty and suspicion fear of disaffection created, or whether discreetly dropped by the enemy — which was no longer definitively only the government, the police, the army, but also the disaffected; and maybe these last were allied?
Why him?
How was it possible those people should have had the presumption to come to him? What made them think they could? Now it was no longer a simple matter of showing them the door. The idea that he had ever opened it to them filled him with dismayed revulsion. The idea that his comrade prisoners of conscience could expect him to ask himself such a question prised at the wound in his side.
— There are some whose trust I'd have laid my life on, but who don't dismiss these things, raise no objections… can you credit it? — He had to find time to talk to Hannah, needed to talk to Hannah.
— The bastards. — Blood showed patchy in her cheeks, bright blue tears stood in her eyes, she was blowzy with anger.
He shook his head at the uselessness. — I'd have put my head on a block for them, they'd never. they're the best.—
— No, I mean those others — don't you see—they want to set you at each other's throats. They want you to discredit each other, make trouble among yourselves. You've got to put a stop to it.—
—'Not such clean hands, after all'—You must have it out. Sonny?—
— I suppose so. But to me. to have to admit that such things are possible among us—
She wondered whether her touch would humiliate him; whether he needed to close off all his resources to feel intact, unreachable by tenderness as well as assault. But she took his hand and felt the bones, one by one. — No-one who really matters can doubt your integrity for a moment. You know that.—
He had it out with the top leadership; they discussed how best it should be dealt with and chose a method that showed their unquestioned confidence in and value placed on him. For a time they kept him at their side in the most important of discussions and displayed him as privy to critical decisions, even if these had been made without him. He ignored his wound in fervent devotion to see unity restored, purpose made whole again.
I have a little girl of my own. 'Little' not because she's physically small — although she is, she's about the same build as my mother — but in the sense the adjective is often used. She's not important — I don't go in for great loves. She's a nice enough little thing, very fond of me and I'm quite fond of her. I sleep with her at her place, on the couch in the sitting-room when her parents are out, or sometimes in the room a friend of hers lends her.
Just like Dad. My sex life has no home.
It's a sweet and easy experience she takes very seriously. She's intelligent (don't worry, I wouldn't take up with an uneducated girl…) and we go to the movies and the progressive theatre I've been brought up to have a taste for, when we can afford to. Her salary as a computer operator would be adequate to support us in a small flat, although I'm still a student and earn only from part-time work, and she keeps suggesting this. Then we can sleep the whole night together, she says, innocently awed. But I can't leave my mother alone, and because rny mother counts on me to be there with him when she's away, I can't leave him.
The little girl is proud of being the girl-friend of someone in our family. I know she tells everybody I'm the famous Sonny's son; her parents 'trust me' with her because they are impressed by the high moral standards of a family who live for others; frightened to death to participate in liberation politics themselves, they belong to the people who see 'Sonny' as a kind of hero and I suppose always will; although I notice lately that among his peers he seems to count for less than he used to. The big shots in the movement don't come round for private talks so often. I have the impression he's being eased aside; don't know why, and he wouldn't talk to me about it anyway. He's selective; it's not the sort of secret it suits him to share with me. I suppose in politics as with everything else: you have your day, and then it's over, someone else's turn. And that, again, isn't something he's good at accepting.
I can see my mother's pleased about the little girl. I wouldn't sleep with her in our house even when there's the opportunity, my mother in Lusaka and he in bed on the floor in that love-nest, but I've brought her home for tea. I knew my mother would like that; it's the way things used to be, ought to be, for her. And she was quite like she used to be, before; she had put on stockings and high-heeled shoes. — Oh your mum's beautiful— My girl was enchanted.
— Was. When she still had her long hair.—
The two females at once reached some unspoken accord. The little girl instinctively knows my mother would like to see me — at least one of her children—'settled' with a conventional domestic life, nearby. And hang liberation, eh. Live in the interstices that were once good enough for her and her husband, when they were young; and these are wider, more comfortable, now, no more Benoni-son-of-sorrow ghetto, but illegal occupation of a house in a white area, cinemas open to all. Good enough for me, the stay-at-home, the disappointment (to him) and the mama's boy (to her). She, too, has a role for me: tame Will keeps the home fires burning while noble Sonny and Baby defend the freedom of the people.
I said to her when I brought the results of my first-year studies — distinctions all the way — What am I doing this for? Who's going to employ a business-school graduate in a revolution? — And I laughed. So she took it as a joke. — It's wonderful you've done so well, Will.—
— Oh yes, my father will be proud of me.—
She was looking at me, unguarded for a second, her eyes then quickly lowered, a faint twitch in the left lid. I shouldn't have said it; it was the nearest we've ever come — to what? Betraying him? I don't know what sense there is in this compact, but I see she still wants it observed although the consolation of the grandchild, the visits to Baby — a kind of life of her own— have somehow brought her to terms with what she must feel about her husband.