by Alan Judd
‘Massa.’
Sarah’s face was screwed up against the sun. She held one of his shirts by the collar, not pressed and folded as usual when she had finished them but limp and open. He glanced anxiously at it, expecting to be told that it was of such poor quality and so worn it would have to be thrown away.
‘Yes, Sarah?’
‘De shirt has come off de button.’
It was clear from her English that she was embarrassed. ‘Ah. Yes. Right, Sarah, I’ll get some more buttons.’
‘Yes, massa.’
She remained standing, holding the shirt. He had known for two days that the house was short of nearly everything and that a major shopping expedition was necessary. He had hoped that by doing nothing a solution would occur naturally. However, there was now the bakkie in which to take Sarah to the supermarket. This was another excuse to drive it. ‘We must go shopping together this morning.’
Her face brightened and she folded the shirt over her arm. ‘Yes, massa, we do big shopping.’
In a large and deliberate hand she wrote a list of food and household items and brought it to him to inspect. He felt he was expected to comment and pointed at the two unfamiliar items.
‘For me, massa, for my food,’ she said of the first.
‘But you can share mine.’
She smiled awkwardly. ‘I like to eat mealie-meal. It is better for me.’
He pointed at the other item.
‘For killing de noo-noos,’ she said.
‘Noo-noos?’
She pointed at the floor. ‘Noo-noos.’ She stamped her foot several times, laughing. ‘Noo-noos. What you call’ – she struggled for the word – ‘ants,’ she said, triumphantly.
They both laughed. ‘Noo-noos is a good word for ants.’
‘Swahi word, massa, from Swahiland. Also there are cockroaches.’
‘In Swahiland?’
‘No, here, but also in Swahiland, yes.’
‘I’ve never seen a cockroach.’
Her eyes were wide with surprise. ‘There are not cockroach in England?’
‘No – well, yes, there are but I’ve never seen one.’
‘When it rain there are many cockroach in the house.’
‘They don’t like the rain?’
‘No, they come in the house when it rain.’ She frowned. ‘My first madam when I first begin my work say to me it rain all time in England.’
‘It rain – rains – quite often, yes.’
‘But still there are no cockroach in the houses?’
Patrick thought for a moment. ‘There are but they hide so that it is hard to see them.’
She went into her quarters to put on a clean blue maid’s dress and white apron and cap. When she came back she stood in the kitchen tying the apron. ‘Are there black people like me in England?’
‘Yes, Sarah, there are many black people, just like you.’
She smiled a little shyly, looking down as she smoothed her apron. ‘Ready now, massa.’
It was a great pleasure to cruise in the bakkie through avenues of jacarandas but the journey was not long enough. He had hardly got into top gear when Sarah directed him to a large car-park in front of a low new building. He drove unnecessarily right round the car-park before choosing a place. As he was locking the vehicle two small black boys approached wearing trousers and shirts that were torn. One had a sore on the side of his head.
‘Guard car, massa, guard car,’ they said peremptorily, holding out their pink palms.
They looked very needy. He gave them some of the loose change that was in his pocket. ‘Guard it well and I’ll give you the other half when I come back.’
Sarah frowned across the high red bonnet of the bakkie. ‘Mr Patrick,’ she said firmly. ‘I am sorry. Please excuse me.’ She walked round to his side of the vehicle, dignified and offended. ‘Excuse me, please,’ she said again, then turned to the two boys and delivered herself of a torrent of debased Zulu. Her voice was shrill and her speech rapid. The two boys scampered away behind other cars. She turned rather formally to Patrick. ‘Massa, please, no money for them. They are bad boys. It is bad to give money to bad boys.’
‘I thought they would look after the car.’
‘No. They steal. But now they will not come back.’
The supermarket turned out to be an underground town on a scale beyond anything in Britain. Escalators led down through several levels, and opening off each of these were arcades and avenues of shops. They radiated like spokes from a central well about thirty yards across. At the bottom a great chess-board had been painted on the ground. The pieces were four or five feet high and the two players, young whites in jeans and T-shirts, moved them around by pushing or by lifting them with both arms. They walked around and between the pieces, gesticulating and talking. Captured pieces were laid on their sides off the board, like forsaken gods. A few other young men sat or straddled them, giving advice or laughing.
Everything in the underground town was clean. There was piped music and air-conditioning. Most of the staff were black and most of the customers white, and the majority of these were women. Uniformed guards sauntered about, the blacks armed with truncheons and the whites with revolvers. Some had Alsatian dogs.
Sarah led the way to the supermarket. There was a bewildering acreage of shelves. Patrick, unaccustomed to shopping, found it difficult to pick out particular items from amongst the whole. The profusion glazed his eyes. Sarah consulted her list whilst he tried to extract a trolley that was stuck inside three others.
Sarah was used to shopping with experienced, interested madams. She was reluctant to make decisions herself and treat Patrick as a porter. He therefore attempted to make up in system for what he lacked in knowledge and interest by ordering one of each where there was a choice of two brands and by choosing the largest or most colourful when there were more than two. He went for bold primary colours.
‘Is that it?’ he asked after about twenty minutes, when the trolley was nearly full.
‘Meat, massa. There is no meat. I don’t know what you like.’
‘I like all meat.’
‘All?’
‘I like all food.’
She put her hand to her mouth. ‘But you have to choose. I don’t know what you want.’
He chose steak, a pound of each kind. This principle worked equally well with fruit and vegetables. He bought eight toilet rolls, two for each toilet, and a couple of big sacks of mealie-meal for Sarah. He discovered that she usually had her own tea, sugar, milk and coffee.
‘Why not share mine?’
‘Because it is yours, massa.’
‘Then we’ll share it.’
Sarah never feigned reluctance. ‘Thank you, massa.’
Dog-food was all that remained and Patrick, determined to find something for himself, suggested they leave the trolley by the fruit shelf and each set off in search.
She was to look for meat, he for biscuits. He soon returned in triumph with two sacks, one of each kind. Having seen Sarah crossing the lanes near the check-out counter he took the trolley and set off after her between the gardening tools and the boots and shoes. She was gone by the time he reached the top but he thought he glimpsed her crossing lower down. Eyed by a dour white security guard, he went rapidly down between the household utensils and the soap powders. Near the bottom the lane was blocked by an attendant who was restacking and by three women talking. Patrick turned his trolley round and headed quickly back. At the corner he collided with another trolley, catching it broadside-on. It toppled over, quite slowly. Bread, meat, tin foil, washing-up liquid, Marmite, butter, potatoes and apples spilled on to the floor. Some of the apples rolled as far as the check-out counter. A bag of self-raising flour burst over the shiny black boots of the security guard.
‘Oh, Jesus bloody Christ!’ shouted the woman who had been pushing the trolley.
He recognised her as the woman he had met at the police headquarters. He started to apologise but she turned an
grily to the guard.
‘Did you see him do that? Did you see what he did? Downright bloody criminal stupidity!’ She stepped over the rubble so that she was closer to the guard and turned to face Patrick. ‘Coming straight at me as if I wasn’t there. Haven’t you got any consideration for other people? Are you blind or something?’
‘What are you doing speeding about like that?’ asked the guard. ‘You’ve no business speeding like that in here. This is a shop, not a race-track.’
Patrick held up his hand. ‘I’m sorry. It was entirely my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’
‘That’s no excuse,’ said the guard.
Patrick got down on his hands and knees and began picking up the woman’s shopping. His own trolley had remained upright and nothing had fallen from it. ‘I’ll pay for everything that’s broken.’
‘Me or the shop?’ asked the woman.
He looked up at her. ‘Whoever claims it.’
The guard stamped his feet to get the flour off his boots and then stepped back, crushing some biscuits. ‘You are responsible,’ he said as if the point were in dispute.
‘Yes, I am,’ said Patrick.
‘You should look where you’re bloody going in future,’ said the woman.
He ignored her. A few seconds later a pair of black hands joined his in rapidly picking up the goods. Sarah was on her knees beside him, gathering tins and packets with submissive haste. She did not glance at him but worked quickly, almost fearfully. After stacking tins in the trolley she put in a packet of Oxo cubes that was intact though battered. The woman stepped forward, took it out and flung it back to the floor by Sarah’s hand, causing it to break open.
‘That’s no use, that’s damaged.’
Sarah did not look up but humbly pushed the packet towards the pile of damaged goods.
‘Dumbo,’ added the woman, under her breath.
Patrick took the broken packet and stood. He saw his own anger reflected in a look of alarm on the woman’s face and a sudden watchfulness on the guard’s. ‘What did you say?’
The woman hesitated. ‘I said – I said it was damaged, it was already damaged.’
She was frightened but still hostile. The sight of Sarah’s bowed head fired his anger for a few seconds more. ‘It wasn’t but it is now. By you. You pay for it.’ He tossed the broken packet at her feet. She stepped back.
The guard put one hand on the belt of his holster. He pointed at the mess. ‘We want this cleared up.’
‘It will be.’ Patrick’s anger evaporated as he became more aware of the absurdity. It seemed he only ever got angry in ridiculous circumstances and. his anger never lasted because he was never more than fleetingly unaware of its uselessness. He and Sarah were joined by a cleaner with a broom and then by a supervisor who said that no one need pay for anything. The woman had simply to replace the goods she had lost and take them out in the normal way. She left without a word as soon as her trolley was loaded.
At the check-out Patrick paid for Sarah’s mealie-meal, for which she thanked him in a subdued voice. The bill was so large that he decided to abandon his system of buying at least two of everything in future even if it did mean they would have to shop more often. Sarah still looked chastened and so he attempted to cheer her by buying a women’s magazine like one he had seen in her quarters.
Her face brightened. She flicked through pictures of pretty white women in exquisite houses. ‘Is my favourite, massa.’
Two assistants loaded the shopping into bags and carried them through the town, up the several escalators and out into the car-park. Patrick paused to look down the well at the game of chess. He saw Black’s remaining bishop carried off and laid across two pawns so that one of the spectators could use him as a bench.
The assistants loaded the bags into the bakkie. Patrick did not tip them, recalling Sarah’s outrage. ‘Should I have given them money?’ he asked as they drove away.
She looked round at the departing assistants. ‘It depend on you, massa. If they are good boys and they do good job. They are not like this children. But I don’t know them boys. Zulu.’
‘Not Swahi, like you?’
She shook her head seriously. ‘No, massa, not like me. I don’t know many Zulu.’
At work that week Patrick drafted and redrafted, made and remade transport arrangements, read and reread files. It did not bother him because he could look forward to Thursday’s lunch with Joanna. There were no cancelling telephone calls and he grew more confident as the day approached. Several times he was called in by Sir Wilfrid to confirm that nothing more had been heard from the L and F man. He was instructed to check that his bank had sent the money the L and F man had asked for. By Wednesday the ambassador had begun to suspect that the Lower Africans had got him. He considered telling Patrick to ask for Jim Rissik’s help in finding the man but decided that so drastic a departure from present tactics should await discussion with the minister. After all, there was still a chance that the chap might turn up. Patrick was relieved. He particularly wanted not to see Jim before Thursday.
He wore his new lightweight suit to work that day with a new and sober tie. He was a little late because he nearly ran out of petrol and had to make a detour. By the time he arrived there was a palpable atmosphere of alarm and urgency. The ambassador was to be guest of honour at a luncheon given by the Progress Association, a group of leading local businessmen, with a few journalists and one or two of the more liberally-inclined politicians. The lunch was to be in the Gold Club, the bastion of wealthy English-speaking Lower Africans, and the ambassador was to read a paper prepared some time before by Philip, subsequently amended by Clifford and called, ‘Lower Africa: Gold and Good Intentions’. Philip was ill, though, and could not be contacted because he was at the doctor’s. Only an unamended copy of the paper could be found, and this would not do.
Clifford lost his temper with the registry clerks who were trying to help him find the final draft and later slammed the telephone down on Philip’s wife. He could not remember all the alterations he had made and could not possibly sit down and do them all again in time for the ambassador to have the final draft in his hands at least an hour before the lunch. Then, with an abruptness and an illogicality that gave grounds for the prevailing suspicion that he was actually unsure about his own drafting, he declared that Patrick should rework the paper and that he would look it over before it went to the ambassador. Sir Wilfrid, unaware of the drama, was said to be at the pipemaker’s.
When Patrick heard this he at first feared for his own lunch but, realising that his task, however rushed and confused, would have to be over by then, he relaxed. A minute or so after the paper arrived on his desk, though, he was interrupted by Daphne from the consular department. She looked worried and attempted an unconvincing smile.
‘There’s something rather urgent,’ she said.
‘Really urgent?’
‘Well, yes, but not McGrain.’ She explained that Mr Whelk, as consul, had as one of his responsibilities the duty to visit British subjects in Lower African gaols. The hard-won right of consular access was something that the authorities accepted fully but it was essential to maintain regular visits within the time-limits agreed because if they were allowed to lapse, if even one visit were missed, there might be difficulty in re-establishing the routine. The Lower Africans were punctilious and one had to keep up to the mark oneself. Unknown to her, Mr Whelk had some time ago arranged to visit a prison that morning, the last day in the present period when a visit could be made. The prison had telephoned just an hour previously to confirm. Knowing how important it was not to miss a visit, she had said that Patrick would come in Mr Whelk’s stead. She hoped that that would be all right. She knew he was busy but there was no alternative.
‘How long does it take to drive to the prison?’
‘About an hour, I believe. Mr Whelk usually spends an hour or so there, sometimes more. It’s a question of seeing that there are no complaints or problems, that�
��s all. There usually aren’t.’
Patrick calculated that he could get there and back by lunch-time provided he didn’t do the speech. He picked up the papers. ‘We’ll have to talk to Clifford.’
‘Would you like me to come with you?’
‘I think you’d better.’
Daphne smiled consolingly. ‘I know Mr Steggles can be awkward but he’s no McGrain. I’ll do the talking if it gets difficult.’
Clifford was in his office. ‘You can’t,’ he said before Patrick finished explaining.
‘Someone has to and it has to be this morning.’
‘It’s a question of priorities. You’re always gallivanting around. Daphne can go.’
‘It has to be someone of diplomatic rank,’ said Daphne mildly.
It looked for a moment as if Clifford might offer to go himself but he thought better of it. ‘Look, the ambassador’s paper has to be amended. There’s no question about that. You’re the only person available with the time to spare, so that’s that. I’m not going to go and tell him he’ll have to speak from a rough draft. For one thing, I’m going to be there with him and it must sound good.’
Daphne shrugged. ‘Oh, very well then, I’ll go and explain why we’ve jeopardised our consular access.’
He looked as if she had stung him. Her tone was gentle and there was no trace of hostility on her face. He turned bad-temperedly towards Patrick. ‘I wish someone would either bloody well find Whelk or get the office to send a proper replacement. Don’t think you’re getting away with anything, Stubbs. I want you back here by lunchtime. Someone will have to hold the fort while we’re away.’
Patrick handed over the draft. ‘You might find there’s not much to alter.’
Clifford glared for a moment before sitting down.
It was an exhilarating drive. The days were getting warmer but this was the first really hot one. The tar glistened, there was a heat haze on the road, the rolling veldt was brown and parched. The red bonnet of the bakkie was too hot to touch. Around the prison site, though, the land was green and well watered. There were playing-fields, a supermarket, workshops, newly planted trees and rows of new detached houses, each with rectangular lawn and garage. The perimeter of the prison itself was formed by a high wire fence, some fifty yards inside of which was a high wall. All the buildings were brisk, clean and new; none, save the watch-towers, was more than single-storey. Despite the impression of openness and space it was a maximum security prison for long-term prisoners. Because it was near Battenburg it also housed a number of men on remand.
