Theodora is a fat woman, fat in every detail, from her chubby cheeks to her swelling ankles. Walking, she rocks from side to side, wheezing from the exertion. Indoors she wears slippers; when she takes the child to school in the mornings she squeezes her feet into tennis shoes, puts on a long black coat and knitted hat. She works six days of the week. On Sundays she goes to church, but otherwise spends her day of rest at home. She never uses the telephone; she appears to have no social circle. What she does when she is by herself he cannot guess. He does not venture into her room or the child’s, even when they are out of the flat: in return, he hopes, they will not poke around in his room.
Among the Merringtons’ books is a folio of pornographic pictures from imperial China. Men in oddly shaped hats part their robes and aim grossly distended penises at the genitals of tiny women who obligingly part and raise their legs. The women are pale and soft, like bee-grubs; their puny legs seem merely glued to their abdomens. Do Chinese women still look like that, he wonders, with their clothes off, or has re-education and labour in the fields given them proper bodies, proper legs? What chance is there he will ever find out?
Since he got free lodging by masquerading as a dependable professional man, he has to keep up the pretence of having a job. He gets up early, earlier than he is used to, in order to have breakfast before Theodora and the child begin to stir. Then he shuts himself up in his room. When Theodora returns from taking the child to school, he leaves the flat, ostensibly to go to work. At first he even dons his black suit, but soon relaxes that part of the deception. He comes home at five, sometimes at four.
It is lucky that it is summer, that he is not restricted to the British Museum and the bookshops and cinemas, but can stroll around the public parks. This must have been more or less how his father lived during the long spells when he was out of work: roaming the city in his office clothes or sitting in bars watching the hands of the clock, waiting for a decent hour to go home. Is he after all going to turn out to be his father’s son? How deep does it run in him, the strain of fecklessness? Will he turn out to be a drunkard too? Does one need a certain temperament to become a drunkard?
His father’s drink was brandy. He tried brandy once, but can recollect nothing save an unpleasant, metallic aftertaste. In England people drink beer, whose sourness he dislikes. If he doesn’t like liquor, is he safe, inoculated against becoming a drunkard? Are there other, as yet unguessed-at ways in which his father is going to manifest himself in his life?
The ex-husband does not take long to make an appearance. It is Sunday morning, he is dozing in the big, comfortable bed, when suddenly there is a ring at the doorbell and the scrape of a key. He springs out of bed cursing himself. ‘Hello, Fiona, Theodora!’ comes a voice. There is a scuffling sound, running feet. Then without so much as a knock the door of his room swings open and they are surveying him, the man with the child in his arms. He barely has his trousers on. ‘Hello!’ says the man, ‘what have we here?’
It is one of those expressions the English use — an English policeman, for instance, catching one in a guilty act. Fiona, who could explain what we have here, chooses not to. Instead, from her perch in her father’s arms, she looks upon him with undisguised coldness. Her father’s daughter: same cool eyes, same brow.
‘I’m looking after the flat in Mrs Merrington’s absence,’ he says.
‘Ah yes,’ says the man, ‘the South African. I had forgotten. Let me introduce myself. Richard Merrington. I used to be lord of the manor here. How are you finding things? Settling in well?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
‘Good.’
Theodora appears with the child’s coat and boots. The man lets his daughter slide from his arms. ‘And do a wee-wee too,’ he tells her, ‘before we get in the car.’
Theodora and the child go off. They are left together, he and this handsome, well-dressed man in whose bed he has been sleeping.
‘And how long do you plan to be here?’ says the man.
‘Just till the end of the month.’
‘No, I mean how long in this country?’
‘Oh, indefinitely. I’ve left South Africa.’
‘Things pretty bad there, are they?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even for whites?’
How does one respond to a question like that? One leaves in order not to perish of shame? One leaves in order to escape the impending cataclysm? Why do big words sound so out of place in this country?
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘At least I think so.’
‘That reminds me,’ says the man. He crosses the room to the rack of gramophone records, flips through them, extracting one, two, three.
This is exactly what he was warned against, exactly what he must not allow to happen. ‘Excuse me,’ he says, ‘Mrs Merrington asked me specifically …’
The man rises to his full height and faces him. ‘Diana asked you what specifically?’
‘Not to allow anything to leave the flat.’
‘Nonsense. These are my records, she has no use for them.’ Coolly he resumes his search, removing more records. ‘If you don’t believe me, give her a call.’
The child clumps into the room in her heavy boots. ‘Ready to go, are we, darling?’ says the man. ‘Goodbye. I hope all goes well. Goodbye, Theodora. Don’t worry, we’ll be back before bath time.’ And, bearing his daughter and the records, he is gone.
Sixteen
A letter arrives from his mother. His brother has bought a car, she writes, an MG that has been in a crash. Instead of studying, his brother is now spending all his time fixing the car, trying to get it to run. He has found new friends too, whom he does not introduce to her. One of them looks Chinese. They all sit around in the garage, smoking; she suspects the friends bring liquor. She is worried. His brother is on the downward path; how is she to save him?
For his part, he is intrigued. So his brother is at last beginning to free himself from their mother’s embrace! Yet what an odd way to choose: automotive mechanics! Does his brother really know how to fix cars? Where did he learn? He had always thought that, of the two, he was better with his hands, more blessed with mechanical sense. Was he wrong about that all the time? What else does his brother have up his sleeve?
There is further news in the letter. His cousin Ilse and a friend will shortly be arriving in England en route to a camping trip in Switzerland. Will he show them around London? She gives the address of the hostel in Earls Court where they will be staying.
He is astonished that, after all he has said to her, his mother can think that he wants contact with South Africans, and with his father’s family in particular. He has not laid eyes on Ilse since they were children. What can he possibly have in common with her, a girl who went to school in the back of nowhere and can think of nothing better to do with a holiday in Europe — a holiday no doubt paid for by her parents — than to tramp around gemütliche Switzerland, a country that in all its history has not given birth to one great artist?
Yet now that her name has been mentioned, he cannot put Ilse out of his mind. He remembers her as a rangy, swift-footed child with long blonde hair tied in a pigtail. By now she must be at least eighteen. What will she have turned into? What if all that outdoor living has made of her, for however brief a spell, a beauty? For he has seen the phenomenon many times among farm children: a springtime of physical perfection before the coarsening and thickening commences that will turn them into copies of their parents. Ought he really to turn down the chance of walking the streets of London with a tall Aryan huntress at his side?