They passed a night in comfortable spirits at her parents’ house, sleep understandably delayed by the singing and rising scales of ululating joy, background static of the radio commentary until some uncounted hour. The children were distributed where they elected to be among collaterals their own age who were delighted to make place for them, Gary Elias of course sharing a bed he occupies on his regular visits.
She didn’t have to ask if he would come with family led by the Elder to church for the service on Christmas Day.
— Am I all right? — He wore a jacket despite the heat, and the tie he’d thrown into his duffle bag, remembering decencies observed in the Anglican church attended with his father.
He would pass; she had brought her formal Pan-African outfit and although this elaborately distinguished her from the simple traditional dress of the other up-to-date women and the tight tailored skirts, flowered hats hung over from the colonial period of decorum worn by a few old women, her beauty as a tribute to worship of the Christ Child, coming from their continent of Africa, was admiringly received. Their headmaster. Their Elder, in the line of his family’s distinguished leadership in this, their church, had educated his daughter for the world but she had not forgotten to come back, bring something, symbol of her achievements, to them.
Enjoyed himself. Really. He felt — at home. In her home. In place. Is it because the personal life can become, is — central over the faith — political faith? (That’s heresy…)
He’s got over (unthinkingly there) his rejection of, no wasn’t that — his detachment from the Reeds, Jonathan. A reconciliation brought about by Jabu, by life with her? Yes, a comrade; but she has never given allegiance to their faith — Struggle — as a religion, substitute for religious faith. She’s free? What an easy way out. But she doesn’t take easy ways.
It’s killingly difficult to accept a priority between choice of existences in the meanly allotted human span. Oh, stuff the philosophy. There is her heritage KwaZulu Africa as exemplified in her father with whom she is bonded although parted from by the poster she came upon on the fence.
Tonight he sees her reading and making notes on the information supplied by the Australian consultancy on the jurisprudence and legal system Over There. He’s addressing her to himself by her full name: has Jabulile Gumede accepted, decided for Australia. They discuss the move practically, they’ve talked about schools, about whether it would be more to a lifestyle perhaps envisaged, to be in a city rather than well, some suburban outback, a suburb, not the Suburb?
That’s not a decision, an acceptance within the self, herself.
It is expected that some time after the return to the Suburb, as promised, in Sindi’s concern to be back for her schoolfriends’ New Year’s Eve party, there’ll be an afternoon or evening with his mother — perhaps the last before she moves to Cape Town — and whoever among the Reeds may be around her.
Jabu has made the arrangement, it’s an evening. Jonathan and Brenda are there, the Jonathan-Brenda daughter Chantal who with her mother’s ebullience hugs cousin Sindiswa whom she has seen only a few times in the childhood almost outgrown. And Ryan the son who is studying engineering in England for a degree which will favour him to take up a post there or anywhere. He hasn’t waited to graduate, he’s married, his Welsh-English wife Fiona is with him, Sindi won’t be a bridesmaid after all. Ryan’s speaking confidently of life in London, acclimatised in every way — even his South African English has somehow naturally lost its old inflections which come from the way the language is used by the Babel of citizens, isiZulu, Setswana, Sepedi, isiXhosa, Afrikaans — all notes sounding up and down the linguistic tune.
His wife works in an art gallery in Cork Street and her brother is first violinist in a chamber orchestra that performs all over the world. — Not just the stress and strain of engineering structures I’m wise to, we never miss an exhibition of developments in art, trends, the different conceptions, what art is, I mean, taking in new technology as means the way paint brushes used to be and then of course the music — Fiona’s brother the open door to concerts, everything new that’s happening in music, fantastic, post-Stockhausen to post-Jackson. — As if suddenly remembering the concerns of Steve and the beautiful — yes, she is — black wife. — And we don’t have to feel why am I having all this while people here are living in shacks still kicked around — Wrinkles his nose, and then tosses the situation, as it should be for the evening, away with jerk of his head.
— What about the Muslims in England? — Jabu’s gentle witness-interrogation voice.
— Well there are, there’ve been nasty incidents, of course you’ll always get thugs who’ll take out their own frustrations on people who don’t look like themselves. — He arches his eyebrows to make known he’s not among them.
Australia wiped out its aboriginals. Almost. So you don’t have to feel guilty of privileges, there. The few who’re left, the descendants, are mostly specimens, they have no real part in national life?
He isn’t hearing the exchange continuing between Ryan and Jabu.
Neither is Jonathan, who’s telling him, — I’m looking for the way to finance buying a house for the young couple in London or wherever he gets a post, most likely one of the big construction companies — maybe even a municipality or what do you call them, county. My lawyer’s busy with control hassles, how to get permission to send the money from here, there’s the provision you can own one property abroad, you know…oh, conditions apply. Officials go nosing into every nook and cranny of your finances. However. I’ve got some friends who know their way around.—
So the son’s not coming back. Home.
As was clear when Jonathan came to ask for advice about the best university faculty of engineering for his son. Home is transferable. It always has been. Long before tribes coming down from the equatorial North, the Dutch following the reconnaissance of the Dutch East India Company, the French and their viniculture, the English colonial governors, the indentured Indians for the whites’ sugar plantations, the Scottish mining engineers, the Jews from Czarist Russian racism and later Nazi Germany’s persecution, the Italians who took a liking to the country during their spell as prisoners of war here, the Greeks whose odyssey launched by poverty brought them — all these and others of distant origins made home, this South Africa. It hasn’t managed to wipe out completely the San and Khoi Africans whose homeland of origin was taken from them.
You can make of somebody else’s your home anywhere. It’s human history. But it’s less complex if the indigenous population has been more or less disposed of.
Has Jonathan heard of connections with the Australian consultancy maybe through a friend who has noted who else was there at a seminar; or has Jonathan beside him read his mind. — Ever think of England? You have such good connections haven’t you, that conference you went to? You could surely get a pretty good appointment in a university. But I suppose you have your ties here…no reason to…Brenda and I — the awful violence growing — we talk about it don’t we all, but when you come down to nitty-gritty I say…everywhere. God knows what country’s safe, and I just have the idea that once the world recession’s over, investment, business is going to boom here; well, stick it out. The metal industry, we’re not doing too badly even now, my outfit, we’ve managed to redeploy — not so many worker lay-offs in our show. But that doesn’t solve the question of getting money out for Ryan’s house.—