Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “When can we tell people?” her mother asked. “I hope we don’t have to wait.”

  Now she spoke. “Any time. You can tell them any time now.”

  “That’s good.”

  Neither said anything for the moment. Outside, they heard the sound of the diesel generator in the night. Her mother got up from her chair and went across to the window. There was nothing to see outside but the blackness of the night and the square of light from the window.

  “It’s so hot,” she said. “There are times I wish we lived in the Cape or in the Eastern Highlands. Anywhere but Matabeleland.”

  “We’d like to get married in about six months’ time,” she said, to her mother’s back.

  “That would be fine. That would give you plenty of time to get things organised. There’s always so much to do.”

  “We thought that the cathedral in Bulawayo …”

  “Would be just right. Of course it would. There shouldn’t be any problems. We can phone them in the morning.”

  Her mother turned round.

  “My dear, I don’t know how one puts these things these days, with everything being so different. People have different views nowadays …”

  She paused. The daughter looked at her mother, and noticed that the hem of the faded dress has come down at one side.

  “You see, in my day we really were expected to wait … you know, one didn’t really allow men … But then, things were different when you became engaged. More was allowed then.”

  The daughter said nothing, silently willing her mother to stop speaking, but the older woman continued.

  “Engaged couples have a certain leeway. But please, my dear, be careful. That’s all I want to say. Remember that sometimes things can go wrong and then … Well, then, things may have gone further than you’d want and you may regret later …”

  “Not being able to wear white after all, next time round?”

  The mother smiled, the tension broken.

  “Precisely,” she said. “Precisely.”

  When he was eleven, his mother had left. He knew his parents argued; he had heard the raised voices and seen the tension on their faces when they were together, but he had assumed that this was how people lived. He knew that there were fights in other people’s houses, that other parents were at each other’s throats, and he knew that there was something called divorce, which happened to other families and which led to complications of two houses and two cars and split weekends. But when she left, suddenly, driving away after no more than a tense, silent good-night kiss, he was unprepared.

  His father had come into his room to wake him one morning, and stood there, uneasily, his dressing gown draped around his shoulders.

  “I’ve got sad news for you, Michael,” he had begun. “Your mother’s left us.”

  He had lain quite still, staring at the ceiling, unsure whether to pretend to be asleep, to shut the information out. But his father had stood there, staring at him, and he had had to answer.

  “When will she come back?” he had asked.

  “She isn’t coming back, I’m afraid. She’s gone to live with somebody else. They’ve gone to live up north, in Nairobi. I’m sorry.”

  And that had been all that had been said. They never talked about it again; he, sensing his father’s pain, had kept off the subject; his father, feeling embarrassed and incapable of confronting his son’s emotions, had simply pretended that nothing untoward had happened.

  The running of the household presented no problems. The African housekeeper did the shopping and supervised the two maids. Everything worked. Clothes were washed and neatly ironed, shoes cleaned, and beds made. He never questioned it; it just happened.

  His father, an attorney, spent all day in his office, but was always back at suppertime and never went out at night. At weekends, he took his son swimming, or into the hills to the south of the town, where they made breakfast fires and fried up sausages and bacon. When school holidays came round, he took him fishing on the Zambesi, an adventure which they both looked forward to for months before the event.

  And so he grew up in a home which others, who knew of the adultery and the departure of his mother, described as “sad” or “pathetic”, but which was secure enough for him.

  Then, at seventeen, he returned one afternoon from a rugby match and found a blue and white police car parked in the drive. A neighbour was standing in front of the house; he stared at him, and then came walking briskly across the lawn to meet him.

  His father, he was told, had been in an accident. He was seriously hurt, no it was worse; he was sorry, but he had to tell him this, there was nothing they could do for him. In fact, he had been killed. They were very sorry.

  The other driver had been drunk. He was a railwayman, who had been drinking all morning at the railway social club and had careered down Rhodes Street, skipping the lights. He had knocked a street pedlar off his bicycle and had then met his father head-on at an intersection. The drunk was unhurt.

  He heard nothing more. The following days were spent in numbness; he sat in the church, on the hard pew, and kept his eyes down, as if by sheer will power he might transport himself elsewhere, away from this. His father’s partner sat next to him, and touched him gently on the sleeve when it was time to stand up. He did not look at the coffin, which he simply did not see, but he smelled the flowers, the sickly odour of the arum lilies, and he heard the words:

  “This man, who was our brother in Christ, was a good man, a just man, who had disappointments in his life but who took them bravely. Some of you here, myself included, served alongside him in the Western Desert, and we remember the comradeship of those days. Each of us has his memories of an honourable man, who never stinted with his help. That is how a life should be led; with truth to friends, and loyalty to country, and kindness to the weak. Let us look to his example.”

  His father had been the adviser of a mission on the southern edge of the town, and the priests had urged that he should be buried there. So they drove out, in melancholy convoy, past the tennis courts of the country club, past the first huts of the farm servants, to the mission and its rickety-walled burial ground. It was midday, and hot, and a wind had arisen, making small clouds of red dust from the hard earth. He closed his eyes, but he had been there before, when his father had taken him to see the graves of the early missionaries.

  There was one grave, with a stone which now listed badly, but which still stood to proclaim its message: CHARLES HELM, MISSIONARY, A FRIEND OF THE MATABELE. Now he opened his eyes again and stared at this stone, while to his side, across a gulf of empty painfulness, they buried his father.

  The echoing resonances of the phrases seemed to reach up to the empty white sky above them. Man that is born of woman has but a short time to live … In the sure and certain hope of resurrection and in the life of the world to come. Then silence, and the choir from the mission church, who had robed in white for the occasion, sang “God bless Africa”.

  He had been on the point of leaving school, so his father’s partner, who had been appointed his trustee, decided that it was best for him to stay with them until his examinations were over. There was no shortage of funds; he could go to the university of his choice, and study what he wished. His father had been at Cambridge, and it was thought that this was the best place for him. He could go to his father’s old college, which is what his father would have wanted; and it was a good place for mathematics, which is the subject he shone in.

  “I’m not sure how I’ll find England,” he had said to the trustee. “I’ve never been there.”

  “You’ll be as happy as a sandboy. Think of it! Living in a place like Cambridge. All the cricket and rugby you want. Wonderful buildings, friends, stimulation for the mind. Those wonderful English pubs. My God, if I were in your shoes!”

  At first, Cambridge seemed cold to him, alien and unfriendly, and he pined, sick at heart, for Africa. The skies were low, unlike the skies at home, as if there was not enough
air, enough space. There were people all around him, but he was lonelier than he had ever been before. There were cousins of his father’s, who lived in Norfolk, and they invited him for weekends, but he found them distant, though probably unintentionally so, and he was uncomfortable in their presence.

  He had nobody to write to, except his trustee. He had told his mother of his departure, and there had been a telephone call, but her voice had been strained. He imagined that she felt guilty, and he, in turn, felt little for her.

  He fell in with others who were in a position similar to his. There were a couple of Australians and a girl from New Zealand. They went to pubs together on Friday evenings, and made the occasional journey into London, to wander around the West End. Then slowly, they branched out and made other friends.

  He found that he was popular. Women liked him for his looks – he turned heads, and knew it, but this seemed to mean nothing to him. He was invited to college dances, and went, but rarely returned the invitations he received.

  “I can’t make you out, Michael,” commented one of his neighbours in college. “You don’t seem to care about others very much, do you?”

  He looked surprised. Of course he cared, as everybody did.

  “You ignore all these girls who are throwing themselves – yes, throwing themselves – at your feet. You could have any number of them, you know. A different girl every week. Every night, if you really set to it.”

  He smiled. “That wouldn’t leave much time, would it? For other things.”

  His friend stared at him. “You like girls, I take it?”

  He was surprised. “Yes. I like them.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded.

  “Not all of them, of course. Some I like rather more than others.”

  “Naturally enough.”

  In his final year, he fell in with a group from his college who had a reputation for riotous living. He had heard of their parties, but had never been invited. Now, unexpectedly, a card was put under his door, inviting him for drinks.

  The other guests were formally dressed, and he felt embarrassed at his ordinary suit and brown shoes, but his host engaged him in earnest conversation, and drinks were poured. Everybody present was polished, elegant; there were signs of the generous allowance, too; an ornate decanter with a silver top; heavy crystal glasses; a silver cigarette box, engraved.

  “Tell me, what’s it like in Africa?”

  “It?”

  “The whole deal, the whole place. Do you live in one of those white Highland type places, you know, bungalows, servants and the rest?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Somebody to polish your shoes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you go in to breakfast in the morning and it’s all laid out under silver trays? Kedgeree, eggs, all the trimmings?”

  “Some people live like that. Most people don’t.”

  Another joined in.

  “It’s all pretty unjust though, isn’t it? Servants aren’t paid very much, are they?”

  “No. They aren’t. And it is unjust.”

  There was disappointment.

  “I thought you might try and justify it. Surely there’s something you can say in its favour. The White Man’s Burden?”

  Their host interjected. “Excuse them, Michael. They don’t realise it’s terribly rude to tell people that they come from an unjust society. Heavens! Who doesn’t, I ask you? Look at us!”

  He was invited back two weeks later, and again after that. There were different people present on each occasion, but all of the same sort. The faces changed, and the names, but the conversation followed much the same lines. He realised that he was favoured in some way, and that he was the only one who was always asked back.

  His host said to him: “You amuse me so much, Michael. You’re unlike the rest of these perfectly poisonous people who populate this place. You’re so … so straight. And I mean that in the best of senses. You’re straightforward. You’re not a snob, or a poseur, or anything like that. You’re just pure goodness, do you realise that? Pure goodness!”

  They were alone, with a half-finished bottle of hock on the table.

  “Would there be room for somebody like me in a place like Bulawayo? What could I do there? Don’t answer! Don’t answer! Just drink up!”

  He reached across and filled his guest’s glass.

  “I’ve drunk enough already. This is our second bottle.”

  “But it’s good for you, this German stuff! It’s terribly mild, you know. They make it like that so that you can drink two, three bottles without ill effects.”

  He emptied his glass, and leaned against the back of the sofa.

  Then: “Don’t go home tonight. Stay here.”

  He looked at his host, who was on his feet, bottle in hand. The other held his stare, and smiled. He could not mean what he thought he meant.

  He shook his head. “No. I must get going.”

  “Why? Stay. What does it matter? Look, what does it matter what you’ve had drummed into you. It doesn’t matter in the slightest. It’s not an important thing. Stay.”

  He stood up, slightly unsteady on his feet.

  “I don’t want to,” he said. “I just don’t want to stay.”

  He walked towards the door. His host had now put down the bottle and had taken a cigarette from the silver cigarette box.

  “Southern Rhodesia,” he laughed. “Southern Rhodesia!”

  He stopped. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Quite. You haven’t kicked over the traces of that backwater, that’s what I mean.”

  He said nothing. He stared at the face of the other, bemused.

  “Do you want to know something, Michael? Rhodes was queer, didn’t you know. Rhodes himself! Funny, isn’t it? They should have put that on his monument. I can just see it, can’t you?”

  The invitations stopped. He still saw the others, of course, and his would-be seducer too; Cambridge was too small a place to allow avoidance. There were smiles, waves – as if nothing had happened, but for Michael the single encounter had changed everything. Nothing was as it seemed any more; the dons, the undergraduates, the whole edifice of a civilised, clever society concealed within it a petty heart. It was hypocrisy. These people were no different from the small town drinkers and adulterers of Bulawayo.

  “You’ve dropped your new friends. What went wrong? Couldn’t pour enough wine down your throat?”

  “They’ve dropped me. Not that I care.”

  There was a silence. “Good.”

  “You didn’t like them?”

  “Who does? Anyway, what do you think they saw in you?”

  He looked at his friend. Had he known all along; had it been that obvious to others?

  “I don’t know. Perhaps they misjudged me.”

  His friend laughed.

  “That’s one way of putting it. They were barking up the wrong tree. It’s really rather funny. I can just hear them. ‘He’s not one of the players after all! My dear, can you believe it!’”

  Without the social distraction, he redoubled his efforts with his work. His tutors were encouraging, and hints were dropped that he might like to stay on for research. There were applied mathematics projects which needed people; he could find something in one of these, they were sure of it.

  He was tempted. It would have been simple to accept the offer and spend the next three years safely ensconced in a well-funded project in Cambridge. He almost accepted, but one afternoon, in a small village outside Cambridge, where he had been invited to lunch with friends at a pub, he saw a sky which reminded him of Africa. For a moment he was still, and then he caught that unique, evocative smell – the smell of rain on dust. For a moment, some fluke of air and water brought Africa to that flat, quiet part of England, and his heart lurched.

  The offer of the research grant was turned down, which astonished his tutors.

  “You really can’t expect anything like this to come up ag
ain,” one said to him. “If you’re serious about mathematics, then this is the point at which you must decide.”

  “I’ve already decided.”

  “You’re making a mistake. There ’s nothing for you there. There can’t be!”

  He bit his lip. How could this man, with his rarefied, academic manner, know anything about Africa? He wanted to say that; to tell him that the tug of the heart could not be denied, but he did not, and mumbled something about having obligations to the place. The tutor, silenced, turned his attention to something else, and Michael knew that this was the writing-off. He had been offered his pass to a world which the tutor, and those like him, saw as being the best possible world to which anybody might aspire, and he had ungratefully turned it down.

  A few weeks later, he received a letter from the headmaster of a boys’ private school outside Bulawayo. He had heard that he was about to graduate, and wondered if he could possibly induce him to accept a post. It was a shame that so many of the country’s promising young men never came back; would he prove this not to be true?

  He wrote back, accepting the offer. He posted the letter in a letterbox outside the college porter’s box, and as he slipped it into the box, he felt a further distance opening up between himself and Cambridge. There was nothing more for him here; it had been interesting, but no more. This cold, small country meant nothing to him.

  He was relaxed. “It’s been a marvellous day, Michael. Well done.”

  “Thankyou.” He took her father’s outstretched hand. “I mean it. Thankyou.”

  “You’re family now. You don’t have to thank me.”

  He inclined his head slightly, acknowledging the embarrassing compliment. “But I’m still grateful. And I know that Anne …”

  The other smiled. “You should give your children a good send-off. Anyway, I know that she’s in safe hands with you.”

  “Of course.”

  He glanced surreptitiously at his watch. The train was due to leave in half an hour and they would have to find the number of their coach, pay the porters and sort everything else out.

  “Yes. It’s time.” He turned away and signalled to one of the waiters. “I’ll tell him to let the driver know. It won’t take you longer than ten minutes.”