In the week that followed — she had not yet bothered to call the garage again — when she got out of her father’s car there was the mechanic, in the street, turned looking at it.
That’s a car … Excuse me. As if he had accosted someone he did not know.
It’s not mine! She claimed her identity: I’d like to have my own old one back! And laughed.
He seemed to recall who this was among clients under whose vehicles’ bellies he lay. Oh yes—. Ready by Thursday. They have to get a distributor from the agent.
He was looking at the Rover from another angle. How old? What is the model?
I’ve really no idea. It’s borrowed, I don’t own it, that’s for sure.
I never saw one before — only in a photo.
They used to be made in England ages ago, before either of us was born. You love cars? Even though you work with their insides all day?
‘Love’—I don’t say. That is something different. It’s just it’s beautiful (his long hand rose towards his face and opened, to the car). Many things can be beautiful.
And mine certainly isn’t. What else’s wrong apart from the whatever-it-is you have to get from the agent? Sounds as if it’s going to be a major overhaul.
Why do you keep it. You should buy a new car.
He was turned from her, again looking at the Rover: the evidence gathered that she could afford to.
She lobbed the accusation back to him. Why should I when you can get it going again for me?
He screwed his eyes, very liquid-black in the sun, authoritative. Because it can be a danger for you to drive. Something can fail that can kill you. I can’t see (he seemed to reject a word, probably that came to him from another language — he paused uncertainly) — know to stop that, in my work.
And if I were driving a new car, someone else on the road could fail in some way, and that could kill me — so?
That would be your fate, but you would not have — what do I say — looked for it.
Fate.
She was amused: Is there such a thing? Do I believe in it. You do, then.
To be open to encounters — that was what she and her friends believed, anyway, as part of making the worth of their lives. Why don’t we have coffee — if you’re free?
I’m on lunch. He pulled down the corners of his mouth undecidedly, then smiled for the first time. It was the glimpse of something attractive withheld in the man, escaped now in the image of good teeth set off by clearly delineated lips under a moustache black as his eyes. Most likely of Indian or Cape Malay background; like her, a local of this country in which they were born descendant of immigrants in one era or another — in her case from Suffolk and County Cork, as in his from Gujerat or the East Indies.
EL-AY Café.
The friends probably at their usual table inside. She didn’t look, and made for a corner of the terrace.
In casual encounters people — men and women, yes, avoiding any other subject that may be misunderstood, compromising— tell each other what they do: which means what work is theirs, not how they engage their being in other ways. A big word had been brought up from what was withheld in this man—‘fate’— but it was simple to evade its intimate implications of belief, after all, steer these to the public subject: the occupations by which she, driver of the Rover (even if, as she insisted, it was borrowed), just as he, his place the underbelly of other people’s vehicles, gained her bread. Whatever his ancestry, as a local of the same generation they’d share the understanding of ‘bread’ as money rather than a loaf. Nevertheless she found herself speaking rather shyly, respectful of the obvious differences in ‘fate’ between them: she in her father’s (having lied by omission about this) Rover, he trapped beneath her small jalopy.
What I do, what you do. That’s about the only subject available.
I don’t know how exactly these things work out. I wanted to be a lawyer, really, I had these great ambitions when I was at school — there was a lawyer aunt in the family, I once went to hear her cross-examine in that wonderful black pleated gown and white bib. But with various other things on the way … I quit law after only two years. Then it was languages … and somehow I’ve landed up working as a PRO and fundraiser, benefit dinners, celebrity concerts, visiting pop groups. Everyone says oh great, you must meet such famous people— but you also meet some awful people and you have to be nice to them. Sycophantic. I won’t stick to it for long. She stopped short of: I don’t know what I want to do, if that means what I want to be. That was a lead into the confessional, even if the ethic were to be open with strangers.
It’s good money, isn’t it?
Commission. Depends what I bring in.
He drank the coffee evenly in swallows and pauses, as if this were a measured process. Perhaps he wasn’t going to speak again: it was patronizing, after all, this making free encounters out of other people’s lives, a show of your conviction of their equal worth, interest, catching the garage mechanic in the net, EL-AY Café. When he had taken a last swallow and put down the cup he’d get up and say thank you and go — so she had to think of something to say, quickly, to mend, justify, the pickup.
What about you?
It was the wrong thing — there! She’d done it, it came out god-awful as Showing Interest, and she thought she heard him take a breath in order to deal with it, with her; but he only put out his hand for the sugar-bowl, she hastened to hand it to him, he helped himself to another spoonful for the dregs in his cup. He would keep silent if he wanted to, he could speak if he wished, it wasn’t up to her.
Many things, different countries.
Perhaps that’s the way.
It is if they don’t want you, say it’s not your country. You have no country.
Isn’t this our country. That’s a statement, from her.
For you.
Oh I thought you were — like me — this’s home, but it’s good to get out of it. I was in America for a year — some other country would have been a better idea, for me.
I go where they’ll let me in.
And from … She was tentative. It couldn’t be avoided now.
He named a country she had barely heard of. One of those partitioned by colonial powers on their departure, or seceded from federations cobbled together to fill vacuums of powerlessness against the regrouping of those old colonial powers under acronyms that still brand-name the world for themselves. One of those countries where you can’t tell religion apart from politics, their forms of persecution from the persecution of poverty, as the reason for getting out and going wherever they’ll let you in.
Things were bad there. Not really knowing what she was talking about.
Were, are.
But you’re all right, here? Are you?
Now he neatly replaced cup in saucer, placed spoon, and did get up to leave.