In the foyer after the session ends he is jostled by further questions, is hearing comparisons with the state of nature in this one’s group of islands, and that, interjections of the capability or not, of climate to alleviate conditions, Lindsay Wilson has looked in, her duty to the institute to monitor activity, and finding herself near him half-turns to confirm casually —You’ll be ready round two on Saturday afternoon?—
She’s right.
He hasn’t called the friends of the other stay in London.
That gesture of the turned head caught peripherally in the foyer gathering: the parents keep open house, she and her little contingent. If it was spring in the Northern Hemisphere it was cold (in his experience, of African seasons) as he was delivered out of the hotel by the revolving doors. He hunched in the corduroy jacket that was his all-season protection at home. Her car was drawn up, she waved him to it with the bright bobbles of her woollen cap beckoning. The car was empty. No one else from the hotel followed or was waited for, apparently. She didn’t pause. Snapped her seatbelt.
—Domanski’s cried off. I think he’s found some long-lost love he thought had left for Peru or somewhere years ago. So many among you—the delegates, belong to some country other than the one they live or have done their work in.—
—Yes, that’s been the benefit of wars and revolutions, at least for those countries.—
She laughs at the off-beat idea, in a country that won all its wars. Since how many centuries? Invasions? The Vikings? No one had to flee to somewhere else. Except to establish England far and wide.
There is an attitude in walking when the body knows the direction, the muscles and nerves tuned towards it. Same thing with driving, there’s a delicate known objective in the handling of the vehicle. Is she headed for the right street where she’s to pick up the Beard. But the impulses that subconsciously control the handling of the car are directed out of the lefts and rights of neighbouring streets, she’s turning to a highway. The Beard is not waiting at some host’s house. Nothing said but that’s evident.
She gossips playfully about the delegates in the way natural between people who are of the same generation—well he’s a bit older than she is but they’re of the same era, in the same relation to the ageing, some really old academics at the conference. This one wants an exercise bicycle in his room although, poor old dear, he stumps along on a stick, that one wants an appointment at a special audio clinic for tests on his hearing aid he’s told are unique. —I’m a bit like an up-grade air hostess, nurse, attendant, if I don’t serve the food I take instructions about it. And not only from the old ones—Adrian Bates must have only a soy-based diet—imagine the chef’s face when I arrange that.—
It would be tempting to confirm it makes him an exceptional dancer, doesn’t it.
The countryside is coming to life, the magnificent trees shivering new leaves and some pools of rain have the stillness of melted ice. —At our place it’s what we call mild in England. No longer spring runny-nose.— She takes a detour through a cathedral city to make the journey cultural. Its stone grey is a statement of splendid authority disguising itself as beauty. —No wonder you Brits conquered half the world.—
—Are you religious?—
—Religions cause too much conflict.—
The subject doesn’t have to be heavy. —I’m a divorced Catholic, lapsed. Think that’s all right, with God.—
She’s someone who doesn’t find questions intrusive; free of ever having had anything threatening, to hide from—what an easy pleasure to be with. What’s called: relaxed. Cool.
—Have you always, I mean only, done this sort of public relations work, conferences, academic stuff?—
—I’ve tried a few—what, occupations. After university.—
—What’s your degree? Let me guess. Social studies. Languages. I heard you in Italian, French.—
—Wrong. BSc. I’m one of you, but as I’ve said, it was the wrong choice, I’m interested in us—people. Yet it looks good on my CV for the head of the faculty to have as public relations woman someone who’s an initiate, at least. It won’t be my lifelong career, that’s for sure.—
—What d’you plan will be.— Wrong verb, her head lifts back briefly as she drives, she’s not one who plans or has forces incumbent. —I’ve run a resort club for deep-sea diving in the Bahamas.—
—How would you have learnt to bring that off!—
—With someone else, it was a sweat in more ways than one, the heat, the catering and the risk that a careless client mightn’t surface on occasion, but it was fun. Until the cash . . . and other things ran out. I’ve had a year with the British Council in France . . .— And as if he had given an expected response —Oh and now, there’s a chance I could go with a trade commission to China.—
—So you’re taking a Chinese phrase book home for the weekend.—
—You’ve hit upon a good idea, I should have one. All I’ve done is eat more often in Chinese restaurants and tried out on the waiters my stabs at pronouncing the names of the dishes. They don’t laugh, they seriously instruct me.—
There was no sense of obligation to keep a conversation going, and short silences interspersed while he followed the fields, the villages no longer the children’s toys expected but the supermarket beside the pub, and she was at ease in some aspect of her present, which happens to be that of driving her car, activity as unthinking as breathing.
—You’ve always taught? In a university. You were sure of what you wanted.—
—I was in a paint factory. An industrial chemist, safe place for me at the time.—
She, beside him, will take this to mean earn his bread, any one way or another, while young, free, undecided. Don’t spoil this pleasant ride with a somehow compatible stranger, the whole spiel. She doesn’t couldn’t suspect; she knows him as a conference delegate who went to the same kind of school, English formula, to shed naturally—for adulthood, as she had. That what?—abstraction, Nazism, Fascism, apartheid, history she maybe once demonstrated against in Trafalgar Square, she had the choice; and now she has no choice but to accept without fuss there is some danger she might be blown up banally in that other Underground, the tube train, by an unknown from al-Qaeda. An unknown among the immigrants she surely meets in her present career as go-between for the democratic institute and society. Don’t open the car to all that. There’s just the fresh nostril-widening of breath coming in by the driver’s window lowered.
She’s telling him that she really wants a cottage, some little place she can fix up, of her own, although she loves the family-free-for-all she can always take friends to. A cottage nearer the city so she could even come down during the week for a night. But it doesn’t make sense, she supposes, while she’s going to be away, sometimes a post for several years—
When a flash sears across the road a leaping dark thing hare or dog and her voice become the mad swerve of her left hand over the steering wheel the speeding car heaves he grabs the arc of her arm to correct violent imbalance and she rights in a skid—whatever the creature was it’s escaped, her left palm falls rigid spread-fingered on his thigh as the speed shudders madly and her sane right hand gains control of the wheel. Drawing back his arm, his hand rests a moment on the hand on his thigh as on flesh that has taken a blow. Then she’s in charge, she doesn’t stifle the engine, stop the car, she drives them slowly out of the zigzag the tyres have ploughed.
—You didn’t touch it. It’s unhurt. I saw.— The assurance. Neither suggested they should have got out to make certain. It was true he saw it disappear into a thicket of bushes. —I don’t think it was a squirrel— was all she said. Are squirrels special, to her, among wild creatures.
As her car came to itself again, she cried out and turned to him with a twitching grimace —I apologise. I think you need a coffee, shall we stop at a village. Get ourselves together? We’re near now, about half an hour to go.—
—You handled it well, I’m the one to apologise for grabbing
your arm like that, it must be bruised.—
—I’ll tell you after I’m in the bath, too much sleeve to roll up now. We were both pretty cool.—
They had coffee anyway at a rural stall, served by what the stranger would appreciate in the English countryside, a bright-faced old man with an accent of some region he hadn’t heard before; that one other time in England. There was a parrot in a cage, nibbling his bars at them. She spoke to it, Hi there Polly two cappuccinos please, and it cursed back in a hoarse invective learnt from some drunk —Shut yer fucking trap fucker FUCK-EER LOS LOS GET LOS— curses certainly lost in their buoyant laughter. All part of the incident on their way. It passed with the early dusk.
In light from the windows an old farmhouse appeared leaned against by two great bent trees he thought must be old oaks—Not so old—she discarded sentiment—my great-grandfather decided to try farming when he came back from that First World War with lungs messed up in a gas attack. My grandfather preferred the stock exchange and that was a good thing for the rest of us. It’s never been farmed since. Most of the land was sold off, of course.—
Seen for the first time as if come upon an unfurled painting, an orchard of some kind, a line of trees curving beyond a field where two horses switched tails in the company of (by comparison) an awkward donkey, the tree-line imagined as probably covering a stream; the house not thatched but with rural solidity enlivened by some obvious additions. There were three cars and a station wagon at homely angles on the grass, where shadow children in the light from the house darted between them after a ball.
—Ah, full house tonight.— She, recognising vehicles and children. Apparently it was customary no one, including herself, was expected to call that they were going to be there for the weekend. But he felt rather intrusive, just turning up with her, open house full house. —Is it all right?— She gave a call of mock surprise —Of course!—
His tote bag and her stack of whatever her kit was for the country were left in the car. Everyone was already around food and drink in a wide echoing room with a fire being fed rough logs in fooling competition by two teenage boys and a girl in sheepskin boots. He was taken by the hand to have it presented to a heavy man, evidently her brother, blond as the strands so restless this way and that over her forehead and cheeks due to what happened on the road; so the water-blondness was shared, not chemical. The brother Jeremy took the hand and then grasped its forearm male-welcomely (not the black double-shake, eish), although he didn’t seem to give much attention to registering the name of the one changing weekend cast she brought to open house. —The parents aren’t down— she asked.
The brother was the host, then. —Help yourself before everything’s gone—this family’s a ravenous lot. Wine’s there, beer if you’d rather. My sister’s always for Guinness, she knows where to find it.— Women came over from the long table of food. I’m Tracy . . . Ivy, Isabel. I’m this girl Lindsay’s Ugly Sister (a beauty); a small girl with her mother’s lipstick a purple scar on her mouth insisted, Who’re you . . . Steve, thanks . . . Steve Steve Steve, repeated in the parrot’s cadence.
It could be heard from his South African accent that although he wasn’t one of her foreigner friends (Domanski’s cried off, yes) he was some variety of colonial. —You here from Australia, mate?— Oh . . . this one or that among the men had a son or a cousin in South Africa, communications or was it automation, Cape Town. A young one dismissed the Square connection: his brother was down there with the Liverpool rugby team. A grey-locks woman with the presence of some other kind of achievement found herself beside him as he topped up his wine glass, there must have been something about him suggesting her supposition: Does he know the work of the artist from his country, Karel Nel, who recently had an exhibition in London, Cork Street, an extraordinary talent, astrophysics in art. He’d never met the painter but Jake had taken Jabu and him to an exhibition of the work at home. Among the jet and fall of voices, the mood stir of people enjoying food together, there was the momentary link of particular experience, an artist’s vision, between strangers.
He was free of any ‘taking care’ of him by the one who’d brought him along with her, made at ease by another family accustomed, as in the Suburb, to additions of passing company. She was keeping up with this one’s news and that one’s questions about what she was up to; he caught snatches of her description of the array of conference delegates between gleeful interjections this encouraged. But once she came over—as she would drop in according to her duty to check all going well with the needs at conference sessions—and saw that he was helping himself to ham, pickles, roast beef, store-boxed quiche, and engaged with Jeremy’s account of a weird burglary at his London house where only sports equipment, his golf clubs, tennis racquets, son’s sailing gear had been taken. —Thieves rather specialised according to the pawn shop demand, these days. Tracy suspects an inside job facilitated by the man who comes to clean the windows, the nice chap she makes coffee for as soon as he arrives . . .— Someone’s son with a single earring and a tattoo like a secondary venous system on the back of his hand (familiar insignia of white students at home, earrings are not discriminatory, but tattoos don’t show up well on black skin) wants to know if there is good deep-sea diving there, South Africa.
South Africa.
He takes the chance to slip out of the company to find quiet where he can use his mobile. A passage past clamorous timpani of utensils and voices in a kitchen and farther on avoiding an open bedroom where a woman was admonishing a child in the special goodnight register, came upon another open door, a small room evidently the nook of someone who had to keep in touch with principals in the city—there were computers, calendars with circled dates under logos of insurance brokers, industrial companies. The call to the Suburb: summoning as if inside him. Jabu’s voice, no distance. —Jabu, hi you can’t imagine where I’m speaking from, darling, an old English farmhouse used as a weekend place, everybody, family African-style almost—but of course no one actually lives here.— —Oh lovely. How’d you come to get there— —The conference has a break Saturday Sunday, there are excursions, invitations, this’s the family of the director’s Girl Friday, public relations, she has to make arrangements for us all. She invited a couple of us but the other one didn’t show up. For once it isn’t raining in England, but of course I haven’t had a chance to walk around yet, there’re horses, I could go riding if I knew how . . . tell Gary I’m told the children have a donkey to ride, wouldn’t he love that— —I won’t tell him, he’ll be cross because he’s not there with you! Anyway he’s got his pal to sleep over . . . but Stevie did you see . . . a farmer’s shot a man he saw on his mealie field, he says he thought it was a baboon— She doesn’t have to say white farmer (who else). —Justice Centre’s taking up proceedings for the man’s family, he was a worker on another farm coming to see a friend.— —Oh my God (though since the days of being taken to church dutifully by his father he hasn’t believed there is One) I see only English papers, they wouldn’t be reporting that, too many big horror stories, Congo, Sudan, Iraq. I’ll go to the Embassy next week, must read our papers.—
She’s to be on the Centre’s team?—but as he begins to ask there’s a scuffle on the line and Gary Elias’s boasting —Dad, I came first in the Junior Marathon, we swam we biked we ran three kilometres— then Jabu called Sindiswa to take her turn.
—Weren’t you supposed to be back?— Of course Sindi’s so absorbed in her adolescent life it doesn’t much matter when it was he went away and when he was due home; it’s the beginning of a healthy independency Jabu didn’t remember—not with Baba. She doesn’t get the mobile back, it’s understood they’ll talk again without these interruptions of claims on him. —Love to you all.— and under contesting voices, for Jabu. —Home soon.—
And back in the present, the lively company, two old men in Fair Isle sweaters are arguing about the failure of some investment pending on the stock exchange (there’s nothing rural about that stock) while Jeremy
has turned—his wife Tracy’s remarks affectionately, derisively ‘fantasising’—to talk about restocking what’s left of the old farm with a few cattle. —Stick to your horses.— Everyone helps to clear dishes and wine bottles, including the guest brought by the young woman they call Lyn. As goodnights are being noisily exchanged she waylays her brother. —What’s available?— His eyes swerve left to right as he hunches. —It’ll have to be the mill, everyone’s kids are so grown-up these days, they can’t bed down with mama and papa. Rooms chockablock.— —Are there blankets and so on?— —Well of course. Always. Beds made up. As far as I know.—
The mill. What mill. The purpose of a mill, the idea of a mill as a room for a night. She embraced all round here and there delayed to hear something shielded by the swung blind of her hair, and animated with private intimacies, she called, Come! The summons was to her car, they were to get in and drive to this mill. Only the headlights a monster’s eyes in the dark away from the lit farmhouse, a path crackling across stubble and then the monster’s sight discovering a shelter, small beside a shining—path? Stream. Must be a continuation of what he thought must be hung over by the curve of trees he’d made out in the dusk on arrival. He has no responsibility for anything; pleasurably tired, fed and wined. She’s in charge. The car’s eyes guide to a door, she shoves, it opens and her fingers find the switch, a room comes to life but there isn’t a moment for impression of what’s there, they are bent into the car to retrieve their bundles, she kills the car’s gaze, they bang its door shut and she enters the room for him, with him. She had expected his surprise, his questioning pause, pleasing to them both.
—It’s really a mill? Watermill?—
The bundles are dumped.
—It was; once. Like everything else around this place. No one knows when it was last working. Tomorrow you’ll see the wheel. Pity it’s not yet summer, too bloody cold to skinny-dip. The stream’s so clean, I love to sleep here, good thing there’s no room at the inn.—
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