She had made the bed and placed the walking-stick on the cover. Mpho had ear-rings and trinkets from her mother’s part in delegations to a number of countries; he had this. It’s to walk with. A present for a retired man, who should be content to pass time pleasantly taking exercise.
Sally Maqoma chose the restaurant and is known to the waiters. She orders sole. — You know how I like it, grilled, not swimming in butter or oil, and plenty of lemon, bring a whole lemon. — She and her old friend Vera Stark have tried many times to get together (as they term it) and for once Sally has a free hour to squeeze between morning appointments and a meeting in Pretoria at two-thirty for which a driver will pick her up. They talk politics on a level of shared references — Vera through her work and connections is privy to most of the negotiations which go on while the political rhetoric suggests that there can be no contact — but Sally rarely lets slip any political confidences. Vera is aware of this and knows how to respect evasions while yet interpreting them. As they eat, and drink mineral water Sally has been advised by her doctor to take copiously, Vera is both listening to her friend and piecing together rumours to fill lacunae in the spontaneity of the discourse. What Sally doesn’t say suggests or is meant to suggest that the delegation to Pretoria (Sally has spoken of ‘the three of us’ having hastily to go there) is to meet some Government minister on the education crisis, but it might well be that the meeting was one of those of the Movement rumoured to be taking place with right-wing groups at those groups’ request. Vera tried to superimpose the bearded and side-whiskered outline of a figure in commando outfit over the lively, sceptical black face so voluble opposite her. She could try a general question. — Is there anything in the newspaper speculation that the AWB and their kind want to talk?—
Sally raised eyebrows and poked her head forward comically. — Sounds unlikely. — She took a long draught and, as she put the glass down close to Vera Stark’s hand, let her touch nudge it. — Everything unlikely has become likely. That’s our politics these days.—
In their laughter the side-current of family lives surfaced, the intimacy of the times in one another’s four walls when they had pooled their children, danced to Didy’s records; the weeks when, on return from exile, the Maqomas had moved in with the Starks. — Did I tell you, some changes. Ivan’s divorced, and Ben’s father’s living with us now.—
— Oh naughty Ivan. Young people are not like us, no staying power. But I remember, she wasn’t much of a personality, you said …? It mustn’t be too good for you, having the old man in the house.—
— I’ve always got on all right with him but he needs time, from others. Us.—
— Get someone in to look after him, Vera, you can’t do it, you mustn’t. You’ve got more important things … I’m sure I can find someone for you, there’re always people coming round my office, out-of-work nurses, nice elderly mamas, long-lost cousins, God knows what — I’ll find someone who can live in, that’s what you need.—
— I don’t know. D’you know it’s going to be awful to be really old, no one wants to touch you any more, no one likes the smell of your skin, no one ever kisses you … And Ben’s never loved his father, it seems. Some sort of resentment from childhood, you know those mysteries no one but the one who was himself the child can understand.—
— Ben? Really? Ben’s such a darling, such an affectionate man.—
The limits of confidences between two people constantly shift, opening here, there closing off one from the other. Vera Stark could not speak what she was saying to herself, Bennet loved, Ben loves, only me; loves in Ivan only me, and what shall I do with that love— The thought rising like a wave of anxiety trapped in voices at a restaurant full of people; no place to deal with it. — I hear Didy’s commissioned to do a book. A history of the exile period, is it?—
— He’s supposed to be researching. Don’t ask me … Let’s order coffee— Sally had the alert shifting glance of a bird on a tree-top, surveying the comings and goings of waiters. When the coffee came she arranged the cups and poured, measuring out words with the flow. — Half the time he doesn’t even get up in the mornings. I go to work, I don’t know what time he gets round to shaving and so on. Always some pain or ache. When I say in the evening, how did it go today — I mean, Vera, I’m showing interest, I’m talking about whether he’s written letters to people who can give him material, whether he’s organizing his notes— then he’ll say something like, How did what go? To put me down. To imply I’m humouring him … Because of where I’ve been all day, at headquarters. Is what happened my fault? Can I help it? He’s got to stop this wallowing in self-pity. I can tell you (her eyes shifted focus, round the neighbouring tables, where other people’s talk and self-absorption made a wall of protection) I’m beginning to find it disgusting. He doesn’t realize that; it disgusts me.—
This confidence almost alarms; to meet it means it should be matched, and Vera does not know, does not yet understand, what it is exactly that she needs to confide, or if that impulse is any longer something to be heeded. Who can give answers? A bearded man in a preacher’s dog-collar stood in the doorway, How mean of you Vera. — He’s become history rather than a living man. How can anyone be expected to accept that about himself.—
Sally made a fist above her cup, she was shaking her head vehemently. — That’s just the problem. He does think he’s history. He’s copping out because he’s not centre stage any more, he sees himself as history and history stops with him. He won’t accept that it goes on being made and we all have to make it, my part has changed, his part has changed. He’s still a living man who has work to do even though it can’t be what he’d choose.—
— Writing a history? That’s the past.—
Sally leant on the table in silence but did not let it widen between them. — I came back from a trip — a mission — you’d think I’d never been away. He doesn’t bring me home.—
They are not two young women, after all, exchanging bedroom secrets. Vera may take the odd phrase as some locution for welcome slipped in from an African language. And she’s white, she has never known what exiles have, the return of your man from god knows where doing god knows what he had to do (Didymus’s name as someone connected with one of those camps luckily hasn’t become public). She may or may not have understood what Sally is saying. Didymus doesn’t bring her home by making love to her, as she used to, for him.
When Didymus did make the approaches of love-making Sibongile felt no response. Mpho had appeared from her room one evening charmed — in the sense of talented, gifted — with youth. The clarity of the lines of her body in a scrap of a dress, of her lips and long shining eyes with their fold of laughter at the outer corners, the cheap, wooden-toy ear-rings in the shape of parrots hanging from the delicate hieroglyph of her ears— she was the embodiment of happiness. Waiting to be called for; where was she going? A party, there were so many parties parents couldn’t keep up with the names of all the friends with whom she was apparently so popular. A girl-friend bustled in to fetch her, they chattered their way out. A thin chain looped through a pendant lay curled on the table where she had dropped it after lifting it from her neck over her carefully arranged hair when the friend pulled a face: the pendant clashed with the ear-rings. Didymus poured the chain from hand to hand, smiling. He came into the kitchen where Sibongile stood stirring a stew and, with the pretext of looking to see what was in the pot, leant his chin on her shoulder. His hand came round over her belly that was swelled forward as she moved the meat about with a fork, circled the navel in a half-humorous caress in anticipation of a meal, and then moved down over her pelvis a moment.