The evening before, I had spent what I suppose was an incredible evening at the house of the Compound Manager. D’you think this is all right? Or should I take off the flower? — My mother came into my room in the convention of seeking reassurance about her appearance, as she had done a thousand times before. She wore a green crepe dress with a string of pearls and an artificial tea rose, the outfit that, with well-defined variations, would be worn by every other Mine woman there. She smelled, as she always had done, of lavender water. (As a child this weak sweet scent had been a means of social discrimination for me; once when my mother had been puzzled by the identity of a woman who had called in her absence and left no name, and my mother had asked me to describe her, I had answered: She smelled like a nice lady.)
When she had gone out of my room, repinning the velvet rose, I looked at myself in the dressing-table mirror. I looked very different from my mother, though we were both tall, and I had her red hair. The forehead which she would have “softened” with a few curls I kept bare and prominent, the back hair which she would have cut and permanently waved, I had as long as it would grow, and wound round thickly into a sort of tight little crown. Yellow shantung dress with a peasant-style skirt, bodice tight to show off my breasts. Belt and heavy earrings made of copper medallions (we had tired of native beadwork, and it was beginning to appear among the artificial pearls and American costume jewelry in department stores). Unrouged face, brilliantly painted lips. Short unpainted fingernails with the large heavy dark ring Paul had saved to have made for me by the German refugee. (But that’s a man’s ring, my mother had said, holding out a hand with fingernails of opaque mauvish-pink and her gold-and-diamond engagement ring which was always a little dimmed by the pastry dough that got stuck in the well at the back of the setting.)
The outfit, the face, that any one of the women I knew at Isa’s or the Marcuses’ might be wearing at this moment. I dragged the earrings down the lobes of my ears; unclasped the belt. But there was nothing else, in the old chocolate box full of jewelry which I took everywhere with me, that I could wear. Porcelain horses that were faultily made and wouldn’t stay on my ears, silver gypsy hoops Isa had once given me; the native beadwork; round pink cabbage roses made of glued seashells which my mother had bought me from some woman who made them because her husband had abandoned her and she had even less talent for making a living any other way.
I put the copper medallions and the belt on again and went to the Compound Manager’s.
There there were all the sweet things of my childhood that people like myself had lost taste for. — Usually we didn’t eat at all but were offered gin or beer or brandy the moment we walked in, and went on having our glasses filled up until, if it was a party, a big hot dish of curry or canelloni came in with bottles of wine or, if it wasn’t, coffee with confectioners’ biscuits. But here, on the little gazelle-legged tables that had awed me long ago, little flowered dishes of chocolates, toffees and peppermint buttons were put out. At a quarter-to-ten sharp we were led into the dining room and were sat down to the big table from which a shower of painted gauze the size of a bedspread was whipped, baring cake stands and silver lattice baskets filled with cakes and cream-topped scones and tarts, all made by the hostess, like the wide glass plate of sandwiches (for the men, I remembered; one of the axioms of the Mine was that men don’t care for sweet things), all precisely cut and decorated with streamers of lettuce and sprigs of parsley so well washed that here and there a drop of water still gleamed on the curly green. Most people drank two or three cups of tea from the thin, flowered cups which all matched (every Mine hostess had a “best” set that would enable her to serve a dozen or more without using odd cups) and it was not until eleven-fifteen and a quarter-of-an-hour before everyone would rise to go, countering the host’s “But it’s Sunday tomorrow …” with “We must have our beauty sleep …,” that a polished cabinet smelling of new green baize was opened and the men were offered whisky. They stood around sipping at cut-crystal glasses with a rose design, but the women were not offered anything. They drank only at sundowner time.
The discrimination was not obvious or awkward because the women had grouped themselves apart from the men all evening. I, of course, was with them, sitting on a small spindly chair: You’re a young light one, Helen, we old ones with a middle-age spread need something more solid — and laughing they lowered their flowered or lace bulk into the deep soft chairs and the sofa. One or two took out their knitting; the hostess had a decorated felt bag from which came the fourth of a set of tapestry chair covers she was working. The others exclaimed that they wished they’d brought their knitting, or the hem of a child’s dress that had to be done by hand. That reminded another of a new way of hemming she had read about in a magazine. Oh — someone else thought she’d read that — was it in the Ladies’ Home Journal? No, the other didn’t get the Ladies’ Home Journal, it must be in some English magazine. “Well, I get all my knitting patterns from Good Needlework” said another. And at once they were all talking about the magazines and papers that they “took”; I recognized the names of the neat stacks of thin threepenny women’s papers I had been given to amuse me on visits to their houses fifteen years ago. “I’ve been a subscriber ever since we’ve been on the Mine,” old Mrs. Guff was saying, her head nodding agreement with each word she spoke. “What was that?” someone asked. “Home Chat”—she turned smiling and nodding—”I’ve been getting it for many years.” “I remember,” I said from my chair. “It used to have Nurse Carrie’s page in it. Excerpts from people’s letters were printed in italics, and then Nurse Carrie answered underneath in ordinary print.” They laughed indulgently — but I had got my first inklings about sex from that genteel page, poring over it on the floor of Mrs. Cluff’s sitting room when I was eight or nine.
Sitting on the delicate chair, I heard again all the warm buzz of talk that had surrounded my childhood. It was as comfortable as the sound of bees; no clash of convictions, no passion, no asperity — unless this last was on a scale so domestically close-knit and contemporary that I could not catch it. Their talk flowed over me, flowed over me, all evening; one after the other, peppermint comfits dissolved in my mouth.
When at last we rose to leave, I spoke to the men for the first time, although through the evening I had heard snatches of their talk, drifting across the path of my wondering attention. Mine gossip, it had been; and the shares they had been tipped off to buy in the Group’s newly opened Free State gold fields; and — hotly argued — the selection of the team to represent the Mine at an inter-provincial bowling tournament in Natal.