None to Accompany Me

Annie and Vera sat in the sun on the verandah. Tea and scones under the valance of white wooden lacework. Annie with Ben’s beautiful face, the black eyes lowered, the fine nostrils white with concentration, fed the baby from a bottle, but it kept nuzzling towards her breast, pushing up the cushiony flesh above the open neck of her shirt. There were clean cloths handy in case the baby should regurgitate and one of the cats, adjusted to banishment from the lovers’ retreat, lay bubbling a purr, a kettle coming to the boil, in appreciation of having a household where now there was always someone at home. Vera watched Annie listening to the other rhythm, the infant sucking, Annie’s breathing becoming adjusted to it, as if she would fall asleep; it had been easy to fall asleep while giving the breast, yes. The baby might have been Mpho’s if the old gogo in Alex had had her way and it hadn’t ended in a bucket at the abortionist fortunately procured. So often Vera had felt like this, far removed from what was steering her daughter’s life, further and further, unable to check the remove.

Grandmother and daughter and baby; appearing so natural to anyone passing in the street. A squirrel gibbered in one of the old oak trees carefully tended in the garden and Annie looked up — the closed circuit of infant, Annie, Lou, broken by Lou’s absence at work — realizing her mother’s presence, Vera’s presence, having time for it for the first time. — Dad wrote a few weeks ago. I’d written about our acquisition … Perhaps we should give him a call, while you’re here? He seems quite happy with my rich brother. But what about you? Couldn’t that kid Adam at least have stayed until papa comes home? Are you safe in that house alone?—

— I’ve sold the house.—

Annie was instantly, frighteningly indignant: home, the old home, it must be kept intact even if one never sees it again, doesn’t want to. — You’ve what? For God’s sake! When? And what about Ben, when he comes back? Where’ll you live?—

Vera let her lift the baby against her shoulder, patting it in the ritual of aiding digestion, before she spoke.

— Ben won’t come back.—

Annie did not look at her mother. — And when was that decision taken.—

— There’s no decision, but he won’t come back.—

— Don’t tell me you and he are getting divorced at your age.—

— No, not divorced. No. I’ll go and see him and Ivan when I’m overseas.—

She was amazed to see Annie’s face reddening as it did when as a child she was about to lose her temper. The black eyes hostile behind a thick distortion of tears.

— How nice of you. What has he done?—

— Done. Nothing.—

So now she — Vera, the mother — who came home to him fucked out from another man, was abandoning that home, nothing for her father to come back to. Shut out.

— For Christ’s sake, why do you do this?—

Vera was looking with incomprehension at something else before her, the baby back at the breast of a woman who wouldn’t have a man. — Because I cannot live with someone who can’t live without me.—

— That’s right. Answer in riddles.—

— When someone gives you so much power over himself he makes you a tyrant.—

A few tears fell on the baby’s spongy filaments, glistening there, Annie brushed off the contamination fiercely. — Like the penis business. You and the penis, I couldn’t understand that, either, could I.—

Vera wanted to bow her head, walk indoors hangdog, and despised herself for it. Always she had had a masochistic need to be chastised by Annie in expiation of the times when, loving her, she had neglected her by having her out of mind, that most callous form of neglect; while caring for nothing but making love in One-Twenty-One Delville Wood. She resisted the need by coldness. — By now we ought to have accepted there are things about each other neither of us understands.—

Above the head of the baby Annie screwed up the left side of her face as if to focus better, ward off. — And what are you going to do?—

— When the Committee’s finished, I’ll be back at the Foundation of course.—

— You know I don’t mean that. Where’re you intending to live? You’re not going to buy another house, are you? A flat? I can’t see you in one of those buildings where you have to sign in and out every time with some security thug in the foyer.—

— I’m moving to the annexe of Zeph’s house.—

No recognition of the name.

— Zeph Rapulana. You know him. He was at the party we gave when you and Lou were staying with us.—

— When my grandfather died. — A reproof asserting the order of events in better proportion to their significance.

— I think you and Lou talked to him for a while, in the garden that night.—

— The man who sits on boards and is a director of banks and whatnot, you told us? The smooth-talking representative of the new middle class?—

— The squatter camp leader I’ve known for a long time. A good friend.—

Annie was looking at her in sour derisory disbelief. — You’ve always dominated in your own house. You’re going to share with someone, now? Why?—

— It’s an annexe. Quite separate, own entrance and so on. There’s no question of any intrusion, either way. We respect each other.—

— But how did this decision come about? Not out of thin air! Not because you answered an offer of accommodation in the newspaper!—

— We talked about it together.—

— So you’re such great friends. — No reaction: something else Annie sees she is not expected to understand. — And how will you get on with his family. The wife? D’you at least know her? All very well your professional friendships, Vera—

— She lives in the house he built in an area the Foundation fought a successful action over. She doesn’t like the city; the children are all away, grown-up — like mine.—

Annie’s body began to rock gently back and forth, soothing the baby to sleep, and, as if with the movement, her sense of her mother changed, she felt that her mother needed protection from herself — her headstrong naivety. — Ma, so you’re virtually moving in with a man. What will people think?—

From Annie! Vera laughed. What a consideration, from a lesbian, a lesbian parent — Annie! — D’you mean a black man, then?—

— I mean just what I said: my father’s gone to live in London, you move in with another man.—

— I don’t think anyone could think anything about someone my age, and a man.—

Vera had her palms raised in a steeple against her mouth in her familiar attitude of obduracy. Annie seemed to have to capture her attention against the fascination with which she was following the darting ballet of the squirrel approaching and retreating near the verandah.

— Ma, you’re wrong. They’ll think. — She continued to rock, in embarrassment at what she was about to deliver. — And they’ll laugh at you.—

Vera was deeply curious rather than hurt in some residual sexual vanity. — Do you think so? That’s interesting.—

And this roused Annie’s curiosity, or wonder. — What are you experimenting with?—