None to Accompany Me

— Her parents have been my friends for a long time and I was drawn into some trouble they had with her. Over a man. — No point in treating him like a child; he’s also a man. — It was a painful business for everyone. The young man was a close friend of mine, too. He’s dead.—

Dead.

A death, the idea, so distant from any sense of it at seventeen, drew him level with Vera’s interpretation of the significance of his going about with Mpho, even if he did not understand this. — She hasn’t said anything. I mean she’s such a great girl, happy and all that.—

— It’s just that her parents had a bad time as much as she did, and they’re people with all sorts of special responsibilities, any more personal trouble is something they shouldn’t have on top of everything else. You know that her mother’s on the hitlist. There are people who want to kill her.—

— Is that really true? My God, I can’t imagine knowing anyone at home in London who was being shadowed by hit-men. It’s something out of a movie.—

— It’s not a movie, here.—

— I see. — A confusion of dissatisfaction came over his face; perhaps he was wondering what he was doing there. Why he was sent by the collusion of adults.

— If you were to start something with her, Adam. If you were to sleep with her. I have to tell you, Sibongile and Didymus would hold me responsible — for having put her at risk again, emotionally — and in every way. I know you’re grown up, you have to live … but this would be a drama you shouldn’t get into. And if you have — if you’re sleeping with her—

The frankness drew some sort of clandestine confidence between them. To him she was not so old, after all; to her, he was not so young.

— Not yet, but I can see she’ll go along with it, I mean she’s ready for anything. She rather likes me … of course I’m keen on her. Who wouldn’t be.—

He began touching the keys of the computer again as one might run a hand over a piano.

His apparent submission affected her, she began further explanations. — You know I’d never have done this if it had been any other girl you want to sleep with. It’s not that I’d be blamed, it’s not that which matters. It’s the Maqomas.—

— What complicated lives you people lead. — The curiosity and superiority of distance, youth.

Vera was watching the screen with him. — And in London?—

— Oh in London there’s only my mother and the Hungarian to worry about — for Dad.—

— Look, it’s doing that same thing again …!—

Their eyes moved in duet across acid-green signals glowing and disappearing on the screen. Meanwhile he began to chat. — D’you know, I’ve been meaning to ask and I always forget, did Dad ever remember to tell you? He bumped into the man you were married to before. He was in Sydney at one of those business conferences where everyone wears dog-tags with their name, a man came up in the bar and said, you’re Vera’s son, aren’t you. It was crazy — he said like he was introducing himself, I’m her husband.—

Vera’s eyes did not leave the screen but he felt her attention there cut out, a current suddenly switched off.

— Well he was.—

And then the boy began to see with fascination something he didn’t think could still oecur in — ever be needed by — older people, real adults, who had no need to fear the power of authority: an instant alert wariness quickly dissembled into indifference. Without that recognition of a route of escape he knew too well, he never would have had the nerve to press her. — Must be ancient history.—

Her shoulders lifted and fell.

— How old were you when you married him?—

— Your age.—

— God, how awful.—

— Well, it was the war. It’s a hothouse for that sort of thing. Falling in love or rather thinking that’s what it is. People are getting killed so nature advances the mating age to replace the dead with children — something like that. Same sort of thing among young blacks in the violence of the townships now; life’s cheap, sex tricks you into breeding.—

— When you were young sex meant getting married.—

— Generally, yes. Certainly for girls. If you wanted the sex you thought you wanted the marriage.—

They contemplated, a comfortable pause between them.

— I can’t imagine it. We’ve got the sex, now. And we’ve got AIDS … so?—

— Looks like there’s no such thing as sexual freedom. Well, perhaps one generation, at least, had it — Ivan and Annie. Between the end of the necessity to marry and the arrival of the disease.—

— Doesn’t seem to have helped much. Dad got divorced, same as you. When I’m with him, and when I’m with my mother, I wonder why on earth either of them married the other. And what about Annie?—

— How d’you mean? — So Ivan must have related as a disaster Annie’s choice of alliance.

— You know what I mean.—

— That Annie’s a lesbian.—

There was a slight waver of embarrassment on his face before he pursued. — So that’s part of freedom.—

— I suppose so, Adam. Yes.—

— But when d’you think it happened? When she was my age? What about boys?—

— Of course — she’s beautiful. Like Ben; people fall for that kind of beauty. There were boys, men, but they somehow couldn’t strike the right response in her.—

— But another woman could. Why d’you think it was — that she went that way?—

Their attention met and turned aside like the flick of a page, several times. For his part, he was giving her space to reflect, to offer him something he could learn from. She almost said it, shed on this unlikely confidant, Fear of men because her mother was ‘taken away’, the nest of home broken into by a man. But she answered with an assumption of careless self-deprecation. — Sometimes I think I know, but of course it’s nonsense. Maybe the ‘cause’—can you call it that, gays themselves are furious if you suggest it’s an abnormality — maybe it’s physical. Maybe psychological. There are many theories. But Annie would say: choice. Free choice.—

Then he said what Ben had once said, perhaps the question all heterosexual men ask of a woman when considering the rejection of their gender. — Could you sleep with a woman? I don’t mean now (she smiled as he respectfully absolved her of any survival of sexuality, as if it would have been a disgrace), when you were young.—

And she turned Annie’s accusation to advantage. — I’ve loved only men.—

— Some people say to try it … I don’t know. Doing it— or something like it — with my own sex, the idea turns me off. I mean, once you’ve done it with a girl, how can you think of any better way. I love girls.—

— You don’t have to apologize for that!—

— The idea of the war, your getting married to that chap. But you didn’t have any children, did you?—

— No.—

— Before Ivan.—

— Before Ivan, no.—

— Did Dad really not mention that he’s met him?—

— You know how his letters have been preoccupied with you.—

The gentle reproach had him deflected, smiling in a different direction. But he fingered along his jaw a small lump where a shaven hair had burrowed into the skin. — Not just the meeting at the conference. The man took him snorkeling with him, he flew him to the Barrier Reef.—

There was the waiting silence that comes between two people when one is confronting thoughts the other does not know of, but an instinctive inkling, a kind of prickling of the nerves, is being conveyed.

— They seem to have had a great time together. — His curiosity grew; it secluded Vera and him closely.

— I’ve heard the Barrier Reef’s wonderful.—