The Pillow Fight

by Nicholas Monsarrat

  Now he was overwhelmed by love. But he was the pilot still. He seemed able to channel and control my heart and body; I could caress and adore him towards our goal, but when he said: ‘Now!’ it was I who obeyed, I who gasped and drowned. He had, after all, never stopped being a man, and with me, near me, on me, in me, he proved it in steady mastery, beyond any doubt in the world.

  There was one special afternoon, in the warm sunshine, on the screened balcony, when I wore (or rather, discarded) a white robe which was a favourite of mine. We made love then with such shared tenderness, such unique eloquence, that I remembered it always. We slept for three hours afterwards, and woke to hear each other murmur: ‘I adore you.’

  ‘Oh Steele,’ I said, in the middle of the night. ‘Steele, Steele.’

  ‘The name in bed is Jonathan.’

  ‘But the feel is Steele.’ I looked past his bare shoulder at the luminous clock. ‘I can’t still be drunk, at five?’

  ‘No. Steele it is, Steele forever.’

  ‘How many babies was that?’

  ‘About eleven millions, they say.’

  ‘Darling, so lavish.’

  ‘The last of the big spenders.’

  What a good word, suddenly, was ‘man’.

  Chapter Seven

  I never went near my office, during that whole week. Ordinarily I would have been shocked at such indiscipline – indeed, it would have been inconceivable; but now, wandering as if drugged and dreaming, in a private world, hand-in-hand with Jonathan Steele, I found it impossible to care. When I woke up, that would be time enough to feel ashamed … Mrs Patch, my secretary, rang up two or three times, more to check on my sanity than to relay any vital problems. She could not have been reassured by any of my answers.

  Mostly we did nothing, and yet, as with a Chinese box-within-a-box, we did everything at the same time. We slept, made love, ate and drank, listened to our sentimental music, became aware of successive dawns piercing the curtains, watched Cape Town harbour far below beyond our private drawbridge, heard by day the street-sellers’ cries and the strange ‘fish-horns’ that announced the morning’s catch, and by night the dogs and the drunks and the church bells counting our loving hours.

  We talked and listened to each other with longing attention. We laughed, and stared at each other in enraptured silence. We kissed in tenderness, and then inwild excitement. We learned all of each other’s bodies, and much of each other’s hearts and minds.

  We only went out three times in seven days, and that grudgingly. We drove along the coast to Hout Bay, a fishing village haunted by artistic human flotsam reputed to be homosexuals, lesbians, half-and-halfers; our own preoccupation was with lobsters. Once, on Julia’s night out, we dined at Cape Town’s most monolithic hotel, where the resident clientele was very old indeed, and (it was rumoured) the waiters conducted a running sweepstake on who among the customers would die next, and watched their own candidates greedily for signs of dragging feet, failing appetite, a bad colour at nightfall … And once we went racing, and made a little money, and had a little quarrel.

  On the racecourse, I had the feeling that everyone was staring at us, and I had never felt more glad of it. I borrowed some money from one bookmaker, got a side-of-the-mouth tip from another, and, thus armed, took a third one for a ride with a walk-away winner at eight-to-one. I talked to an old flame of mine, who, searching my face, said: ‘My God, you never looked like this for me!’ and perhaps some of my intense happiness overflowed into my manner, because Jonathan, watching us with shadowed eyes from the Pay Out queue, grew quite livid with anger and would scarcely utter a word when he returned. We made it up ad interim in the Stewards’ private bar, when he said: ‘Jealousy will be very dull later on. But now it’s desperately important, an essential part of loving each other. I want you to keep all of yourself for me … Can we go home now?’

  We went home, practically running the last few yards, and falling into each other’s arms behind the slammed front door of my flat. And then, with no hurry at all, it was Sunday morning, and we drove out, as promised, to Maraisgezicht, my home.

  I had hoped all along that he would love the place, since Maraisgezicht to me was irresistible; it was my one piece of family snobbery that everyone should instantly feel the same way about it. Jonathan did … Maraisgezicht means, in the old Dutch tongue now bastardised into Afrikaans, ‘Marais’ View’; and Marais’ view was obviously that he should live in the utmost elegance and comfort, and his children’s children after him. To this end he had bought, two hundred years earlier, a whole slope of a mountain in the Constantia district, spent a fortune on building and landscaping, and produced one of the world’s most beautiful houses.

  Andries Marais had settled at the Cape in 1750, when people came to stay and built to last; much of the stone of the house, every stick of timber, and all the furniture had been brought from Holland or the Dutch East Indies, and there assembled on a pattern in which good taste, home-sickness, and a frank burgher-like self-esteem all played a part.

  There were not now remaining more than half a dozen such great houses, in the classical Cape-Dutch mode; for us, their builders – Van Riebeeck, Van der Stel, Serrurier, Cloete – were part of the fabric of South Africa, and their very names were like jewels – Vergelegen, Stellenberg, Steenberg, Groot Constantia, Morgenster, Alphen. But no jewel shone brighter than Maraisgezicht, on that or any other morning.

  We approached it slowly by a mile-long oak avenue, past the low-lying vineyards, with the sun through the interlaced branches dappling our pathway; and I heard Jonathan catch his breath as the house came into view, unfolding in a fantastic backdrop of gleaming white walls, great curving gables, massive window shutters of polished teak, and a flagged courtyard with the twin whitewashed columns of a slave bell at its farther margin. When the perspective was completed, all was noble and peaceful, as far as the eye could reach.

  ‘But it’s wonderful, Kate,’ said Jonathan, rather breathless, as we came to a stop. ‘And the view …’ His eyes turned from the house to the Constantia valley below us, twenty hazy miles of trees, vineyards and sunny pastures. ‘I can’t understand why you don’t live here for ever.’

  ‘Nor can I, sometimes.’

  Simeon, the major-domo, came down the wide steps to greet us, splendid in his white frock coat, scarlet tasselled sash and buckled shoes; above this display of consequence, his austere Cape Malay face was unbending, like proud mahogany. As with many of the Cape families, he bore our name; he was Simeon Marais, the eighth of the line, as my father was the eighth of his. Slave forbears meant nothing to either side now, and perhaps they had never done so.

  ‘Well, Simeon.’

  ‘Miss Kate is a day late,’ he said, with a slight relenting smile. As he spoke, his hands moved, like a conductor’s, motioning other servants to unload the luggage. Various dogs bounded up, plastering my white linen slacks with yellow dust; at the edge of the terrace, one of the bad-tempered peacocks screeched and spread his tail like a rainbow fan.

  ‘We went racing, Simeon.’

  ‘With good fortune?’

  ‘Yes, for a change … This is Mr Steele.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Simeon. His face grew austere again; like Julia, he exhibited a long-term jealousy where I was concerned; he had been warding off unworthy suitors for twenty-six years, and there was a clear assumption that he would continue to do so. ‘You are staying tonight, Miss Kate?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I led Jonathan indoors, slowly, happily; across the screened stoep, one of the world’s nicest drinking places, and then into the vorhuis with its frieze of blue Batavian tiles. Here, as in the other rooms, and all over the house, the polished elegance of the past still reigned; the sun fell benignly on satinwood and ebony, imbuia and burr walnut; on the brass locks of a huge linen press, on kists of yellow-wood and oiled teaks; on Delftware brought out from H
olland by Andries Marais himself, and blue-and-white Nankin china commanded from the other side of the world, when the Dutch East India Company was young.

  Our feet fell softly upon silk carpets, exquisitely patterned, but worn thin by generations of dancing slippers, riding boots, veldskoen, the high button shoes of my great-grandmother, my father’s shooting boots, and now by our own twentieth-century rope-soled espadrilles. A trio of Famille Rose wine-servers caught the sun afresh on their ancient glaze as we passed the dining room door.

  Of course, so much of all this was going to waste … My long-dead and adored mother had graced this house like an angel; when she died, and my brother was killed there also, the heart went out of it for my father, and he was now a rare visitor to a place which, though uniquely lovely, held too many poisonous memories for him. As I had told Jonathan, an agent ran the winery, another administered the estate as a whole; for the rest, it was a focal point for Cape sightseers, and a weekend dormitory for me.

  We returned to this matter of desertion later, after a walk round the estate, a hand-in-hand tourist’s view of the main vineyards, the slopes with the young vines, the 2,000-gallon vats in the vast cool cellars, the ‘slave quarters’ which now housed a hundred happy families. At lunch in the high-panelled dining-room, our view through the top half of the ‘stable door’ was a lovely square of sunlight, a vista of red and yellow leaves, jacaranda, proteas, chincherinchees, framing a pathway leading off into towering oak trees; a view occasionally notched by the two pointed ears, no more, of one of the inquisitive ridge-back hounds.

  Everything, as usual, was just right, and I could feel the magic working inside Jonathan, see its reflection in his alert, watchful, surrendering face. At the end he sat back in his high-backed chair of Sumatran wood, eating our Hanepoot grapes, drinking our own vin rosé, loving me, utterly content.

  But, being Jonathan Steele, he had a sociological problem to discuss.

  ‘It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life, Kate,’ he said. ‘But a tremendous responsibility … Why don’t you live here, really?’

  ‘I’m the urban type,’ I told him, ‘and I prefer the urban effort. I like the sort of work I’m doing now, and I don’t want to do anything different.’

  ‘But don’t you feel you ought to stay here, and help to run the place? Or contribute in some way?’

  ‘No.’ I overcame a slight guilty touchiness at the word ‘contribute’. He had strayed into another area which didn’t concern him at all; but for anyone who was seeing Maraisgezicht for the first time, it was still a fair question. ‘It’s being very efficiently run as it is. I couldn’t do better, and even to do as well I’d virtually have to go back to school, learn estate management, learn the wine trade. Why should I?’

  His voice was tender, but quite firm. ‘Because it’s yours.’

  ‘It’s my father’s.’

  ‘And after him?’

  ‘It will be mine, of course. But on the same basis. I will enjoy it, other people will make it work.’ I smiled at him. ‘That’s what we call the Kate Marais division of labour.’

  ‘But in Johannesburg you said they were “your people”.’

  ‘They are, and they will be. Always, I’ll see to that, at least.’ On an impulse I got up (the servants had left the room), came up behind his chair, and kissed the back of his neck, where what we called his ‘writer’s hair’ grew in literary profusion. ‘Oh Johnny, don’t probe too deep today, don’t make us think, or go into mourning. Maraisgezicht is tremendously sad in spite of everything, and we both know it.’

  ‘How can it be sad?’

  ‘Because there’s no one to take it over after my father dies. It would all be different if Theunis were alive.’

  ‘Theunis?’ He stumbled over the unfamiliar name.

  ‘My brother.’

  I kissed him once more, briefly, and sat down on the nearest chair, still holding his warm hand.

  ‘What happened to him, Kate?’

  ‘He was killed, quite close to the house, about two years ago. It was a useless, senseless thing. He was caught under a tractor.’

  ‘How horrible.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’ I wanted to tell him the story, in spite of us, in spite of our deep content. ‘There was no need for it. One of the boys got the tractor stuck in a big irrigation ditch, and Theunis tried to get it out. It was the sort of thing he loved doing. It rolled back on him.’

  ‘Were you here?’

  ‘Yes. It was a Saturday, a happy Saturday.’ The terrible afternoon came back to me; for the first time, I wanted to share it with another person. ‘When they carried him in, my father was asleep on the stoep; he woke up, and saw all their faces, and he shut his eyes again, trying to make it a dream … Ever since I can remember, whenever father told him not to drive too fast, not to ride like a lunatic, not to swim too far out, Theunis always said: “You should have had more sons” … Would you like to see his room?’

  ‘If you would.’

  ‘I always go.’

  Theunis’ room was as we had agreed to leave it, without even mentioning the fact, for the past two years; untouched, unchanged, a monument to handsome, hopeful, bright-painted youth, a requiem for the last of the male line. It was an undergraduate room, somewhat spare in furniture – he had never cared for our show pieces. There was a rack of guns; rods piled in one corner; eighteen pairs of boots and shoes, all worn, some muddy; a rowing machine that he was too lazy to use; girls’ photographs.

  ‘He had lots of girls, bless him,’ I said. ‘He drove them all crazy. He didn’t give a finger-snap for any of them.’

  ‘How old was he, Kate?’

  ‘Twenty-six. Two years older than me. He used to look after me. He used to make me think that incest wouldn’t be such a disgusting sin, after all … Is it awful to say that?’

  ‘Yes.’ But Jonathan was smiling gently, his arm round my waist. ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘He was terribly good-looking, and kind, and clever. He got a cricket blue at Oxford, much to our disgust.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Afrikaners think cricket is just a little too English to be bearable … Actually we were quite speechless with pride. My father and I flew to England for the match.’ Suddenly I had to complete the story. ‘The boy who put the tractor into the ditch starved himself to death.’

  Jonathan stared, as I had known he would. ‘Why, Kate?’

  ‘For African reasons.’

  Suddenly the foreboding scent of death was heavy around us, and Jonathan caught it. He turned me round until I was facing him, close-pressed, enfolded.

  ‘But we are alive, Kate.’

  ‘Yes, thank God.’

  ‘And I love you.’

  ‘Yes, thank God.’

  ‘Forever.’

  ‘Forever is a very long word, Johnny.’

  ‘Not too long for us.’

  We slept that night in the bed in which I had been born; a huge bed, canopied, with the Marais arms on the carved satinwood headboard. (Said Jonathan at one point: ‘These are the only Marais arms I’m interested in.’) There were no question marks in our lovemaking now, no area of hesitation or shyness; we frankly adored one another, and we did our candid best to prove it.

  It should perhaps have shamed me to sleep with Jonathan in my own home – my mother, indeed, had once mentioned this as the ultimate in misconduct; as it was, it seemed the most natural thing in the world, and when at a certain moment a leap of flame from the dying fire briefly picked out the crimson canopy over my head, I only thought: lucky girl, to be twice sheltered.

  Then, much too soon, it was Monday morning, and after breakfasting enormously off fish kedgeree and sugar-cured ham, we were driving back into Cape Town again. We had no plans, except to be in love, but the world was falling into ste
p once more.

  When we were near the city limits: ‘What are you doing today, darling?’ I asked Jonathan. ‘Are you going to work?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Are you?’

  ‘Yes. I have to.’

  ‘Don’t, Kate,’ he said, to my surprise.

  ‘But I have to,’ I repeated. ‘I’ve taken a whole week off already. I really must start up again.’

  ‘All day?’

  ‘All day and every day.’

  ‘But I’ll be lonely without you.’

  ‘Me too. But if I don’t work, things will only start dropping to pieces. I wish it weren’t so.’ I realised that this wasn’t quite true, and I added: ‘It’s my work, Jonathan. It’s the way I spend my time. I like it.’

  There was an edge of sulkiness in his voice as he said: ‘What about us, then?’

  I laid my free hand over his. ‘Darling, don’t be a baby. You’re writing a book, I’m running an office. Neither of those things even begins to come between us. Why should they?’

  ‘But it means we can’t be together.’

  I realised at that moment that one could be swamped with love, and yet disappointed at the same time. Jonathan’s attitude seemed curiously frivolous; moreover it appeared to contradict his expressed ‘admiration’ for what I had done with my life so far, which would have amounted to nothing at all without persistent concentration. As we inched our way city-wards along De Waal Drive, thick with the morning traffic, I thought that this was a point worth making.

  ‘Darling, if I were the sort of girl who played truant from the office whenever she felt like it, I wouldn’t have any kind of career, and you wouldn’t think much of me, would you?’

  ‘It depends.’ But he was relaxing again, aware perhaps of a thread of discord which was his own responsibility. ‘Look, I know I’m being selfish. I just want you to myself, for as long as I’m here.’