Refuge

by Andrew Brown

  The clicking sound of billiard balls and the muffled protestations of men playing pool drifted out from a bar. The interior was poorly lit and a green Heineken sign hung at an angle on the wall. Impulsively, Richard crossed the small street and walked through the open door. The pool game stopped for the briefest of moments as one man said something in a foreign language, then laughed and bent down to take his shot. Richard was aware that he was the only white person in the dank space. The air was heavy with the smells of smoke and aftershave, and a number of men were already sitting at the bar drinking. The barman, a bald-headed man with thick rolls of skin around his neck and jowls, nodded to him. One of the drinkers removed his wallet and cellphone from a spare stool and Richard sat down, mumbling his thanks.

  ‘What can I get you?’ the barman asked, drying a large beer glass with a threadbare dishcloth.

  ‘Beer,’ Richard said, looking up at the bottles stacked behind the glass of the refrigerator. ‘Something that doesn’t come from here,’ he added.

  The barman nodded, as if the request was quite ordinary, and pulled out a squat brown bottle with a dignified red-and-yellow label. Laurentino Lager, the label stated.

  ‘Made in Mozambique,’ the barman told him, placing a cool beer glass on a coaster in front of him. Richard poured the beer out in a thick stream, watching the amber liquid curl into a foamy head. The beer was crisp and light, with a slightly bitter aftertaste.

  The man sitting next to Richard turned to face him. ‘You like it?’ He was wearing a bulky leather jacket, even though the air was stifling. ‘It comes from my country,’ he explained. ‘Mozambique,’ he added.

  ‘It’s excellent,’ Richard replied truthfully. The beer was clean and satisfying and he felt ashamed of his surprise. He would buy a case from the liquor store on his way home, he thought. Drinking South African Breweries’ beer, or imported beer from Europe, now seemed banal. He brought the tips of his fingers to his eyelid, remembering the butterfly-touch of her foreign lips on his skin. It was not the sex that he needed to fear; it was something far more dangerous: the gesture of affection, the intimacy.

  He took another long draw on the beer before turning to his companion. ‘If you are from Mozambique, what are you doing here in South Africa?’ The question sounded more suspicious than he had intended and the man looked at Richard sceptically for a moment before answering.

  ‘I come from Beira. My family is there. I have left my wife and two children behind. I used to work for a shipping company but they closed down. So I work here and in Johannesburg, and I send money home to them. There is little work there.’

  ‘That must be hard,’ Richard replied. Did he sound insincere, he worried.

  ‘It is hard.’ The man nodded his head and did not seem to take anything amiss. He looked down into his glass of beer. ‘It is hard. I miss my wife. I do not see my children. They want me to come home to them. And that is what I want too. We are not welcome here. Sometimes we are chased away. Some of us have had our homes destroyed. But we rebuild and start again. What else can we do? It is not so easy to survive in your country.’

  The barman grunted knowingly and one of the players shouted something in Portuguese to Richard’s companion.

  ‘They say I must cry outside, because I make everyone sad. But it is true: we are all sad. But we cannot cry.’

  SEVEN

  THE ROWS OF cutlery gleamed beside the delicate soup bowls, brimming with gazpacho. The deep-red soup was bright against the white rims and diced spring-onion topping. Amanda had, as always, prepared every last detail of the evening. The food would be attractively presented, well cooked and tasty. She had filled several wicker baskets with warmed French baguettes and thickly cut farmer’s bread. She had discreetly placed two slices of wheat-free bread on the side plate of Cynthia Garver, who had developed a troubling wheat and lactose intolerance. The lighting had been dimmed, and a row of turquoise ball-candles gave off a flickering glow. They had been cleverly positioned below the line of eyesight so as not to intrude upon conversation across the table. The napkins were folded and the snow-white tablecloth fitted neatly across the corners of the table, folded back underneath the lip and clipped into place. The air was scented by a small burner that emitted wafts of jasmine and rose, eliminating all but the subtlest hints of garlic that drifted into the dining room from the kitchen. The windows were all opened wide, letting in the balmy summer breezes from the cropped lawns and brick-paved walkways of the estate. In the distance, the last orange glow of the sun shone above the outline of the mountain, the sky turning an ever-more luxurious shade of blue. Mercifully, the two dogs had been put outside, but they still whimpered and made little scratching sounds on the French-paned door when they saw Amanda pass. The open-plan lounge and dining room was a celebration of shades of white, from the stressed calico curtains to the limewashed table and chairs. The bleached beach-cottage shells were framed in painted wood and simple cane lamp shades were dotted around the room. It was intensely cooling, but also inescapably sterile and obvious.

  Richard approached Amanda’s dinner parties with ambivalence: he enjoyed the sumptuous display and drew pleasure from entertaining in such a sophisticated manner. He enjoyed journeying through the various courses and small rituals of the evening, knowing that each would take place with practised aplomb. From the moment the first guest arrived to the final farewell drunkenly mumbled on the front steps of their home, the evening would be effortless in its execution. But the regularity of these occasions came with a mounting cost, although it was not so much the expense that bothered Richard, but that he should have so little say in the mix of guests that met at his table. The decision was Amanda’s and was driven by her need to be expansive in their socialising. A request by Richard that they spend an evening with an old friend was met with sighed derision.

  ‘But we saw them last month, darling. For heaven’s sake, if it was left to you, we’d never see more than the same two people. You have to get about more.’

  The result was that Richard was often left trying to maintain faltering conversations with strangers, while his wife chattered away to their wives at the other end of the table.

  On this occasion, Amanda had included David Keefer and his wife Charmaine in the group of guests for the evening. His friend’s presence would usually have pleased Richard, but knowing of David’s embroilment with the Slavic dancer complicated matters. He felt that his knowledge, and his afternoon with the masseuse, had left an indelible stain on him. As he greeted Charmaine, he dropped his eyes and pulled away a little too quickly. If she noticed his discomfort, she didn’t show it, turning gaily to Amanda and offering to help with preparation in the kitchen. David, for his part, looked glum and distracted, shaking Richard’s hand with a long, meaningful hold.

  Richard sat at the head of the table, listening to the early-evening banter as the guests settled into their rhythm. He tried to locate the source of his moodiness. Nothing seemed able to please him. The soup looked glutinous and the smell of tomato cloyed at the back of his throat. The bread was bland, the wine fruitless and acidic in his mouth. He was irritated by the way the table had been perfectly laid out, each diner faced with their compartment of utensils, waiting obediently for their food to be presented to them. They might as well have been applying themselves to an examination. The bowl of cracked pepper and salt struck him as pretentious; an ordinary salt and pepper cellar would have sufficed. And the smell of rose was overpowering and made his nose itch. He shifted in his seat, unable to sit still.

  David sat on his right, but their conversation was corrupted by the presence of two other men, both practical strangers to them. On David’s right was an older man, Rale Garver, whose allergic and anxious wife, Cynthia, Amanda had befriended at the gym. Richard had met Garver once before at a cocktail function, but had said almost nothing to the man. Garver was an accountant with a large financial investment firm – a reserved man who volunteered little.

  On Richard’s left Cynt
hia picked distractedly at her rye bread. Next to her was Ryno Coetzee, a confident young businessman, who started the evening by declaring that he was in ‘import-export’ and that he had recently returned from a trip to China and Taiwan. Richard had not met Coetzee before and was put off by his cocky hairstyle and bravado. His wife Kristi was a young slip of a thing who giggled at everything anyone said, tossing her dyed-blonde hair about. She was wearing very tight leggings and a blue halter-neck top that stretched over each breast before crossing over and plunging downwards, leaving much of her cleavage exposed. Earlier, Richard had caught David staring blithely at her chest and had tapped him on the arm to break the spell.

  Coetzee reminded Richard of an Italian porn star he’d seen in one of the blue movies he kept hidden away. While the man’s confidence bordered on arrogance, he remained charming, particularly when addressing the women at the table. He enjoyed being the centre of attention, winking openly at Kristi from time to time, sending her off into renewed fits of girlish mirth. If Richard recalled correctly, the porn star had been hugely well endowed, a thought that annoyed him even more as he watched Coetzee tell Amanda some amusing story from his travels. She and Charmaine were clearly taken with him, laughing at his jokes and looking at Kristi with envy. To the men, Coetzee talked about cars, golf, his investments and, in more hushed tones, the tight bodies of the women who frequented the hotel rooms in Shanghai. Cynthia sat trapped between them, looking increasingly disconsolate.

  David also seemed impressed by Coetzee, but Richard was quickly bored. He tried not to think about his experience on the massage table, but the moment he disengaged from the conversation his mind wandered, puppy-like, back to her pushing hands. He was desperate to talk to David about the experience, and yet he was cowed by the knowledge that the second the disclosure was made he would become someone different. In David’s eyes and in his own. He would become one of them, the men at the strip club, men who, like David, gave in to their base desires.

  As Coetzee turned to press a point on the luckless accountant, Richard took the opportunity to try to engage his friend to the exclusion of the others.

  ‘Do you ever wonder,’ he started, leaning closer to David, ‘if the … epiphany that you thought your whole life must be out there waiting for you, if that single blissful enlightening revelation will in fact not happen … will never happen?’

  David looked at him blankly, so Richard tried again: ‘You know … the horrible realisation that you’ll always be on the brink, always have that feeling, that it is imminent, but in fact it might never arrive?’

  Despite the hushed manner in which Richard had spoken, the table was suddenly quiet.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ David asked him, his eyes flicking away to the others in embarrassment.

  ‘He’s talking about waiting for his religious moment … that it never comes,’ Coetzee said, already tipsy. ‘Like waiting for an orgasm, you know, but never reaching it. Very frustrating, I’m sure,’ he added, leering slightly.

  ‘Well, we can’t all be satisfied all the time,’ Amanda said jokingly, touching Kristi on the arm. Charmaine laughed – a little too raucously, Richard thought. Despite the jocular retort, Amanda was bristling, staring at him. His question had been inappropriately serious and had threatened the predetermined flow of the evening.

  ‘Ouch,’ said David, nudging him in jest.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Richard, feeling the heat rising up his back and prickling his scalp. ‘Just something that occurred to me. Wait till I’ve had some more wine, then you’ll really hear the difficult ones,’ he added, trying to sound light. Only Cynthia looked at him with compassion, staring at him for a while before returning to her soup. In desperation Richard turned back to Coetzee: ‘So, do you do any business in Africa?’

  ‘Africa?!’ Coetzee put down his spoon and wiped his mouth with his napkin, as if he were about to start an important speech. ‘You know, in the East, these little guys understand the meaning of work, you know what I’m saying?’ He raised his voice to engage the rest of the table. ‘Those little buggers don’t stop, my man. They just move it, all the time. And take a guy out of the East and put him anywhere in the world, he still works like a dynamo – just turn the switch and away you go. It’s amazing, but it’s just part of their culture. But Africa … listen, you have to be careful how you put things these days, but let’s just say that one doesn’t necessarily find the same work ethic, if you know what I’m saying.’ Coetzee picked up his spoon again before adding as an afterthought: ‘I mean, nice people and all that, don’t get me wrong, but my experience is that you can’t move them around. You take him out of his environment and he just can’t perform.’

  Coetzee looked about the table, trying to measure the political undertow of his audience. Cynthia opened her mouth to say something, but then dropped her eyes and decided to take a sip of sparkling water instead. Rale Garver was nodding in agreement and Kristi was still giggling. Encouraged, Coetzee continued: ‘You know, when I was in Australia, I was invited by the Chamber of Commerce in Melbourne to see how the business operations were conducted there, you know, give them some advice from my side and all that. They put me up in this amazing hotel, five stars, Jacuzzi in every room, beautiful food … but, anyway, there I saw the immigrant population from Vietnam and Thailand. They are the backbone of the economy; they have positioned themselves right there in the middle of small business. Worked, like, day and night. Outworked those lazy Aussies by far.’ He had the attention of the full table now and paused to take a long, smacking drink of wine. Richard clenched his teeth with irritation.

  ‘But then, I was invited to a business conference in Paris – I stayed just a few hundred metres from the Eiffel Tower. Oh, you must see that tower when it is all lit up at night and the French are out on the streets and the music is playing … ladies, it’ll make you fall in love all over again. Anyway, there you have a massive Nigerian and West African population, just like we have here. And … look I’m not making this up, hey, this comes from the French themselves, they told me this, okay? The African immigrant community just doesn’t contribute a thing to the city. You see them hanging around on street corners, standing around smoking weed, playing dice on the pavements. They’re just looking for the easy options, you know, sell some drugs here, sell their lady there.’ Coetzee couldn’t tell whether Amanda’s disapproving face was directed at him or his story, so he covered himself again: ‘This is from them, the French. They tell me this. So I mean, I accept what they tell me.’

  ‘Well, it’s no different here, is it?’ Garver said, carefully scooping the last of the gazpacho onto his spoon. Richard looked up at David, but his friend’s eyes were lowered, concentrating on buttering a piece of crusty bread. Cynthia seemed on the brink of protest again; Richard heard her sigh quietly to herself as she hunched over her plate.

  ‘Where do you think all our problems are coming from?’ Garver went on. ‘As if it’s not hard enough to deal with all our own people.’

  Coetzee took a deep breath for effect: ‘Exactly, it’s the same here,’ he said. ‘The Nigerians and the Rwandans and … okay, the Zimbabweans you have to feel sorry for … but, I mean, these guys are like all illegal aliens; they get in here and they just suck out what they can. Do you know that I had an incident with one guy just a few days ago?’

  Charmaine gasped: ‘What happened, Ryno? My God, you must be careful, man.’

  Coetzee let his fringe fall endearingly in front of his face before plastering it back with an expert hand. ‘No, no worries, he was the one who ended up in trouble. Bit off more than he could chew, you know? But, you see, you just can’t be too careful with these guys.’

  Charmaine started telling Amanda and Kristi a story of a robbery that had happened in their road. Kristi had her hand up to her mouth in alarm. Coetzee reached across and helped himself to more wine. The condensation on the cold bottle had run down onto the tablecloth, leaving a damp circle.

  ‘Shit, this
sauvignon blanc is good, hey?’ he said, his gaze turned only on the men as he slurped a mouthful. ‘I know the owner of the estate, you know? Nice guy. British. Made his money in IT in the UK, then came over here, bought the farm. Sacked everyone … everyone, hey? Not a single mannetjie there left standing. Chucked them all off the farm: dogs, children, the lot. Started again. New workers, mainly casuals so he doesn’t have to worry about labour problems, you know? Lekker chicky as the winemaker.’ His voice lowered to a whisper to exclude Cynthia sitting next to him. ‘Bonus points, hey – good wine and a bit extra on the side, you know? What you call a fucking good wine,’ he chortled.

  Richard stood up abruptly and escaped to the kitchen in search of another bottle. His daughter Raine was lurking in the lounge, flicking between channels on the satellite decoder, the volume muted. Amanda had refused to let her go out, insisting that she join them for the dinner party so that she could meet Coetzee’s wife. Before supper Raine had been lured by Kristi’s sexiness and youth and she had sat cross-legged on the couch talking to her about make-up and dieting programmes. But now that all the adults were seated, she had lost interest and was sulking. Amanda had surreptitiously removed her place setting before the other guests had reached the table and now ignored her daughter completely.

  Richard’s relationship with Raine had always felt unbalanced. She treated him with benevolent disdain, as if he were too frail to enter her world. She regarded him as a necessary and sometimes quaint outsider, but never allowed him close. Even as a small child she had scolded him, calling him silly and hopeless. Her precociousness had been endearing, but it had also set the tone of their relationship as she grew up. Now, as a teenager, her dismissiveness was less playful. Richard’s paternal function was exercised exclusively by controlling her access to money. It was mercenary and unfulfilling, but it retained some role for him in her life. Raine’s attitude towards her mother was quite different: she connected with Amanda at certain levels, but they also fought wildly. Personal conversations were hushed and intense, sometimes held behind closed bedroom doors. Occasionally, Richard would stumble upon them, only to be furiously waved away as an unwelcome intruder. But Raine was highly reactive to her mother, irritated by a tone of voice, a simple statement, a seemingly inappropriate question. Doors were slammed and screaming encounters often ended with both of them in tears, while Richard hawked around the house, trying to find a sanctuary. By contrast, his aseptic relationship with Raine was unchallenging and easy. But he did envy the sparking passion she displayed towards Amanda. It was as if she simply could not take him seriously and for that reason had no cause to be triggered by his presence.