None to Accompany Me

Under her fear, Mpha was taking the opportunity for regression, becoming a little girl again. — Daddy, you must get the police to guard us, you must.—

— My darling, you couldn’t be sure that’d be the best thing … But we’ll be careful.—

— But how can you be careful! You can’t stay inside all the time. Look what’s happened, if you go to the corner shop just to buy a newspaper, just down the road, they can drive past and shoot you as you come home, right at the gate. I’ll be like the other girl at her father’s funeral — I saw her on TV — seeing my mother put in the grave—

The phone rang again and she jumped up in reflex to answer it while Didymus called after her. — Don’t tell anything to your friend, whoever it is.—

There were no gods for them to turn to, either. No new state, not yet; no Security that was not at the same time part of the threat. The feel of the house, that was home at last, changed. The dimension of rooms stood back, fragile. The painted burglar bars that had come along with the house were toys to keep out petty thieves. The locks on the doors — nothing, to a force that had the keys to everything in everyone’s life, that had sent them into exile and let them in again. They carried on with routine lives during the day and at night sat on the furniture Sibongile had bought, as in a waiting-room.

Chapter 23

Adam’s and Vera’s approach to one another came about through faulty objects. She did not know how to make real contact with him, nor he with her (if he bothered to think about it at all); and it happened of itself. Fixing things. As if some side of him he wouldn’t have wished to admit to, hidden under the boldness of getting drunk and losing a licence, there was the guilty pleasure of tinkering, of making objects other than souped-up motorbikes work. It started with the washing machine, from which water wouldn’t drain after the rinsing cycle, and now it was the computer in Vera’s stoep-study. They were before it together, she on her swivel chair and he crouched beside her. She showed him how the machine either did not respond to or disagreed with her instructions, he watched and tried it for himself. It seemed as if the two of them, beginning to laugh at their own frustration, ganged up in argument with a third person of stubborn obduracy. — Let it cool off a bit. I think I’m getting the idea.—

— But what makes you think you can put it right!—

— Well I’m coming to something … we’ll start over again in a minute. — He went to the kitchen and fetched two cartons of the guava juice he had become addicted to in his father’s country. They sucked at it through straws.

If machines were the train of thought in which they best met it was easy for her to maintain it. — Wha’d’you think makes my car suddenly begin to stall instead of idling? It’s really annoying, yesterday every time I came to a traffic light: engine dead. I suppose I’ll have to go to the garage and they’ll expect me to leave it there for half a day, a whole palaver, I’ll have to arrange to borrow someone else’s at the Foundation … what a bore.—

— Sounds like something to do with the feed. — She saw how he liked to be consulted. — If you give me the keys I’ll take it out this afternoon and see what’s what. Could be just a small adjustment, you don’t need the garage charging you through the neck.—

Give him the keys; he was devious, this boy, taking advantage of the ease between them at this moment to suggest he should be allowed to drive again. She smiled on closed lips, in doubt: we understand each other — And if you bump into someone? Insurance won’t pay and you’ll be charged with a criminal offence. —

— Oh how could anyone know about the licence business, back in Britain!—

— Because you’d have to produce it. Wasn’t it confiscated? Or if you have it, isn’t there an endorsement?—

— I’ve got an international one they didn’t ask about. I’ve got that right here with me!—

Vera did not want to lose touch, be punitive, the lawyer too correct to be amused in recognition of shady initiative. — Compounding your culpability, man!—

— I wouldn’t fail the Breathalyzer, would I? You and Ben never offer me a drink, do you? I’m going to turn into a guava.—

Vera was still laughing. — No, Adam, no, whatever contingency plans you have … it’s not a good idea.—

He was looking at her openly, so young, beguiling, set aside as a nuisance by those other adults — his parents, her son; knowing how to make himself irresistible. — Vera, I want to take somebody you know and like very much to a jazz festival out of town, what’s the place called, Brotherstroom—

— Broederstroom?—

— Well whatever. I need a car to take Mpho there on Saturday, you don’t go to your office that day, Ben’s home and you could use his car?—

He was amazed at the change in her face and the disposition of her body in the chair.

— Where have you seen her?—

He laughed in deliberate misunderstanding, as if at her lapse of memory. — In your house. When she came with her parents.—

— I mean since then.—

— She came into the shop a couple of weeks ago. Turns out she’s keen on the same groups I like. — Adam had found a job for himself and left Promotional Luggage. The knowledge of all the variations of pop music he showed as a customer led to his being offered a place at the CeeDee Den. He believed, quite correctly, that Vera privately approved the move towards some sort of independence, a freeing from the authoritative chain father-grandfather, while Ben’s acceptance was an unexpressed sense of desertion.

Vera appeared to be struggling with some formulation, whatever it was she wanted to say. He watched with impatience. Who could understand people as they leave youth further and further out of sight. He and she were getting on so well, and now she had disappeared before his eyes into some domain he might reach in fifty years or so.

— You should keep away from her — Mpho. — After all that preparation what came out was blunt.

— But why? She’s a damn nice kid. We have a good time together, what’s wrong with that? Why keep away, all of a sudden?—

— Because I ask you.—

The lame reason lay between them.

There must be something more to it: his look interrogated her, without response. Suddenly, he was again amazed: —Because she’s black. Because she’s black!—

She lowered her head and looked up at him from under her brows.

Then what was it, what was it, Vera knew as well as he that she would not and he would not accept ‘Because I ask’.

— Because she’s trouble. Yes I’m very fond of her and she’s a particularly attractive girl, a charmer, but it’s better not to get mixed up — not to be involved there.—

— Better for her, for me? Who?—

— I don’t know how well you know her, how much she may have told you about herself—

— We’ve been out a few times, a disco and club, we don’t have any heavy sessions explaining things. — He had had enough of his own family problems; couldn’t older people understand there were other interests in life if you were young.