Tired out, one Sunday afternoon, he folds his jacket into a pillow, stretches out on the greensward, and sinks into a sleep or half-sleep in which consciousness does not vanish but continues to hover. It is a state he has not known before: in his very blood he seems to feel the steady wheeling of the earth. The faraway cries of children, the birdsong, the whirr of insects gather force and come together in a paean of joy. His heart swells. At last! he thinks. At last it has come, the moment of ecstatic unity with the All! Fearful that the moment will slip away, he tries to put a halt to the clatter of thought, tries simply to be a conduit for the great universal force that has no name.
It lasts no more than seconds in clock time, this signal event. But when he gets up and dusts off his jacket, he is refreshed, renewed. He journeyed to the great dark city to be tested and transformed, and here, on this patch of green under the mild spring sun, word of progress has, surprisingly, come. If he has not utterly been transfigured, then at least he has been blessed with a hint that he belongs on this earth.
Fifteen
He must find ways to save money. Lodging is his single biggest expense. He advertises in the classified section of the Hampstead local paper: ‘House-sitter available, responsible professional man, long or short term.’ To the two callers who respond he gives IBM as his work address and hopes they will not check up. The impression he tries to create is of rigid propriety. The act works well enough for him to be engaged to look after a flat in Swiss Cottage for the month of June.
He will not, alas, have the flat to himself. The flat belongs to a divorced woman with a small daughter. While she is away in Greece, the child and the child’s nanny will be in his care. His duties will be simple: to attend to the mail, pay the bills, be at hand in case of emergencies. He will have one room as his own, and access to the kitchen.
There is also an ex-husband in the picture. The ex-husband will appear on Sundays to take his daughter out. He is, as his employer or patroness puts it, ‘a bit hot-tempered’, and should not be allowed to ‘get away with anything’. What exactly might the husband want to get away with, he inquires? Keeping the child overnight, he is told. Sniffing through the flat. Taking things. On no account, no matter what story he spins — she gives him a meaningful look — should he be allowed to take things.
So he begins to understand why he is needed. The nanny, who comes from Malawi, no great distance from South Africa, is perfectly capable of cleaning the flat, doing the shopping, feeding the child, walking her to and from kindergarten. She is perhaps even capable of paying the bills. What she is not capable of is standing up to the man who until recently was her employer and whom she still refers to as the master. The job he has let himself in for is in fact that of a guard, guarding the flat and its contents from the man who until recently used to live here.
On the first day of June he hires a taxi and moves, with his trunk and suitcase, from the seedy surroundings of Archway Road to the discreet elegance of Hampstead.
The flat is large and airy; sunlight streams in through the windows; there are soft white carpets, bookcases full of promising-looking books. It is quite unlike what he has seen thus far in London. He cannot believe his luck.
While he unpacks, the little girl, his new charge, stands at the door of his room watching his every movement. He has never had to look after a child before. Does he, because he is in a sense young, have a natural bond with children? Slowly, gently, wearing his most reassuring smile, he closes the door on her. After a moment she pushes it open and gravely continues to inspect him. My house, she seems to be saying. What are you doing in my house?
Her name is Fiona. She is five years old. Later in the day he makes an effort to befriend her. In the living room, where she is playing, he gets down on his knees and strokes the cat, a huge, sluggish, neutered male. The cat tolerates the stroking as, it would appear, it tolerates all attentions.
‘Does the kitty want his milk?’ he asks. ‘Shall we get the kitty some milk?’
The child does not stir, does not appear to hear him.
He goes to the fridge, pours milk into the cat’s bowl, brings the bowl back, and sets it before the cat. The cat sniffs at the cold milk but does not drink.
The child is winding cord around her dolls, stuffing them into a laundry bag, pulling them out again. If it is a game, it is a game whose meaning he cannot fathom.
‘What are your dolls’ names?’ he asks.
She does not reply.
‘What is the golliwog’s name? Is it Golly?’
‘He’s not a golliwog,’ says the child.
He gives up. ‘I have work to do now,’ he says, and retires.
He has been told to call the nanny Theodora. Theodora has yet to reveal her name for him: certainly not the master. She occupies a room at the end of the corridor, next to the child’s. It is understood that these two rooms and the laundry room are her province. The living room is neutral territory.
Theodora is, he would guess, in her forties. She has been in the Merringtons’ service since their last spell in Malawi. The hot-tempered ex-husband is an anthropologist; the Merringtons were in Theodora’s country on a field trip, making recordings of tribal music and collecting instruments. Theodora soon became, in Mrs Merrington’s words, ‘not just a house-help but a friend’. She was brought back to London because of the bond she had forged with the child. Each month she sends home the wages that keep her own children fed and clothed and in school.
And now, all of a sudden, a stranger half this treasure’s age has been put in charge of her domain. By her bearing, by her silences, Theodora gives him to understand that she resents his presence.
He does not blame her. The question is, is there more underlying her resentment than just hurt pride? She must know he is not an Englishman. Does she resent him in his person as a South African, a white, an Afrikaner? She must know what Afrikaners are. There are Afrikaners — big-bellied, red-nosed men in short pants and hats, rolypoly women in shapeless dresses — all over Africa: in Rhodesia, in Angola, in Kenya, certainly in Malawi. Is there anything he can do to make her understand that he is not one of them, that he has quit South Africa, is resolved to put South Africa behind him for ever? Africa belongs to you, it is yours to do with as you wish: if he were to say that to her, out of the blue, across the kitchen table, would she change her mind about him?
Africa is yours. What had seemed perfectly natural while he still called that continent his home seems more and more preposterous from the perspective of Europe: that a handful of Hollanders should have waded ashore on Woodstock beach and claimed ownership of foreign territory they had never laid eyes on before; that their descendants should now regard that territory as theirs by birthright. Doubly absurd, given that the first landing-party misunderstood its orders, or chose to misunderstand them. Its orders were to dig a garden and grow spinach and onions for the East India fleet. Two acres, three acres, five acres at most: that was all that was needed. It was never intended that they should steal the best part of Africa. If they had only obeyed their orders, he would not be here, nor would Theodora. Theodora would happily be pounding millet under Malawian skies and he would be — what? He would be sitting at a desk in an office in rainy Rotterdam, adding up figures in a ledger.