And now she did talk. As bluntly as he did.
She went to the Henderson house on some ordinary pretext and she and Flora chatted pleasantly, desultorily for a while as usual among people with a way of life in common. Then she stopped; as if someone took her by the shoulders, brought her to herself.
—He said he’s going to marry me.—
No need to name the lover to this woman friend.
—He’s asked you to marry him? Roberta! So it’s become really serious? Roberta!—
—Not exactly asked. Said he was going to.—
—Oh well it’s just another way of asking, in an affair … What’d you say?—
—I would never be the cause of a divorce. Never. But he had no intention …—In order to phrase it at a formal distance: —It is to take another wife.—
Flora was smiling, moved by a proposal recognising the qualities of a surrogate marriageable daughter.—You.—
She was conscious of being studied; Flora might never have seen her before. If a love affair changes a woman, as Alan Henderson had privately noticed, the idea of marriage, for a bachelor woman like this one, also brings about a change in the perceptions of a beholder.
—I can’t believe it.—Her own voice, empty of expression.
Flora was excitedly intrigued.—But why not. The Minister of Environment and Tourism has two wives and families, I mean it’s less common nowadays, they just get divorced instead when they fancy someone else, but it’s still accepted. Even part of national pride, for some. There’s even talk the President would be happy to do likewise you know—but it wouldn’t do to have a meeting with the Queen or the American President with two of them in tow! Why shouldn’t the Director of Land Affairs want another wife—a different one. Not necessarily you … Why can’t you believe it!—
—Not him.—
—You think he’s too sophisticated? Our way. But it’s obviously because he’s serious about you, however you take it, it’s a recognition of status, you’re not just …—
Flora was flattered: for her. At least she had the tact not to ask what the Agency Assistant, bachelor woman, proposed to do next. Was that to be the latest dinner-party story.
Alan, her Administrator, closed the door in his office and he, too, looked at her from yet another perspective than that he had already noted.—Flora’s told me about Gladwell. I hope you don’t mind.—
—I was going to do so myself, anyway. But we’ve been so busy since …—The Agency was preparing to co-host with the Ministry of Health an international conference on malaria.
—I don’t mind admitting to you that Flora and I have talked a lot. She has the idea you are somehow offended by Gladwell. —
It was easier to speak to him than to his wife, there was the trust of their working relationship together.
—No, no, how could I be offended by the idea of being his wife—black man’s wife, is that how Flora thinks of it, that’s how people would think of it?—when we’ve been lovers all these months.—
—But Roberta you are offended at the idea of being taken as second wife, you see it as entering some kind of old harem … ? So he’s offended you, there, no?—
—I can’t believe he would ever think of it. That the … situation … could be a normal part of his life. Now.—
—I’m going to be frank with you. I’m sure he’s become very attached to you, but there’s another aspect to this—proposal—his wife is a simple woman who takes care of the kids, there’s a boy of about ten as well as the grown ones making their way around the world—she shops for the official residence she’s so proud of, watches TV; and has nothing to say to him, he obviously can’t discuss his work, inside politics and problems of Government, not with her. And you notice she doesn’t appear with him at official dinners of the kind when a wife’s expected to be along to entertain the wives of visiting bigwigs. You think his idea’s a kind of regression, isn’t that so. But it’s because he needs a companion on his own wave-length at his stage of life and clearly that’s what he’s found these past months in you. He’s seen how astutely you hold your own at meetings, how you can have an—informed—exchange with all kinds of people! That’s how he thinks of a second wife. Not a handy bedmate.—
—Alan, you speak as if he’s told you all this. But you don’t know him that well …—
—I don’t need to, to know what I’ve said about his needs—I’ve my stored profile (touched at his forehead) of men in high public office in developing countries, where women may be beautiful and desirable but social disadvantages, pressures of all kinds—you know them—have deprived them of education, worldliness, if you like. Even now, there aren’t enough women here on the level of the Minister of Welfare, that great gal, one of the liveliest MPs, never mind the males … And there’s something else—strict confidence!—could relate to Gladwell’s decision. He’s strongly tipped to be made a Minister in the President’s cabinet reshuffle. So—just that you understand motives. See him from right kind of background perspective we use, you and I—all of us in Agency work. A respect for the others’ mores—traditions. Doesn’t imply you—we—have to adopt them, of course.—
What Alan Henderson didn’t tell her was that in the conclusion of discussion of the startling proposition with his wife, Flora had brought up another perspective on the future cabinet minister’s proposal to take Roberta Blayne as number two wife. —She’s not the type to go out to attract a man for herself, is she; this’s a chance with a man who’s somebody, plenty to offer for a woman like her, she’d have a high position, she loves this country, that farm of his, she’d be able to continue her commitment to development with his influence right up top … Not many chances likely to come her way, New York, Geneva … Not so young anymore.—
So her colleague the Administrator tacitly understood the rejection she was having to formulate for her lover. She rehearsed to herself in many different, useless ways, how she would have to tell him she couldn’t believe he, so completely in charge of himself, a man of the present, free, could want to dredge up into his life some remnant from the past—how could he not have seen that it was offensive, surely to him as to her; how disguise the aversion.
What was the protocol for this.
Then there came to her—Buffalo Mine. How he had received her shame: her taking from him the release of orgasm, blurting the dinner-party story, as if the pleasure were not what her blood-line disqualified her to share, illicit, an orgasm stolen from past betrayal of all that makes up human feeling between people. Every Monday on foot to I. Saretsky every Friday back on foot with the case of whisky head hard as a log. Grandfather’s ‘my man’; her man, making love to her. He had shown no shock; no revulsion as she blubbered out the shame. He calmed her matter-of-factly, how was it—‘It was their tradition’. And now she was primly struggling to conceal how she disdained him for expecting her to accept something he chose from his past; an honour; her ugly past was not his. He absolved her from her burden of ancestry—it’s got nothing to do with you: she was indicting him for his. It’s accepted, Flora said. Their tradition.
Her Administrator had shut the door of his office, once again. —How’s it going?—
—I haven’t found a way yet.—
—Look, I can arrange for you to go back ahead of me, reports—some such—I want headquarters to evaluate with you before I’m debriefed, you can prepare for me, answering their questions and so on, expanding … You could leave right away. Wouldn’t that help?—
Of course it would.
The official car arrived. He came to make love with her and it seemed to her the right ending for both of them. He had withdrawn into his old silent self-composure, awaiting her answer without any mention. When they lay together, afterwards, it was the time, coming out of the consolation offered that she still desired and received him.—I am going back to New York the day after tomorrow.—
Out of his silence.—You will resign there.—
—No. I have a new posti
ng somewhere.—
She had not found the right words to explain that love affairs are a cul-de-sac on the marriage map. The shining official car concealed in the yard, the royal coach, had turned into a pumpkin. She was again a member of an aid agency’s changing personnel, walking away barefoot.
VISITING GEORGE
You remember; we were coming from a conference in that city and I had just noticed we were near the street, the block where the old friends lived. I was thinking—about to say to you—we should drop in, it’s been such a long time, we’ll be a real surprise, back here again. There were so many people from so many ages; so many periods, approaching us on that London street; in these ancient European cities they are all there in the gait, the shapes of noses and eyes and jowls, the elegant boots and plodding sandals, Shakespeare’s audiences, Waterloo’s veterans, comportment of the bowler-hatted past, slippered advance of the Oriental counter-immigration from the colonial era, heads of punk-purple-and-green striped hair in recall of 60s Flower Children, androgynous young shuffling in drug daze, icons of the present; black faces that could be the indelible after-image left behind, on the return to Africa by our political exiles. All these, recognisable but not known; coming at us, coming at us. And then he was singled out, for me, they shouldered around him on the pavement but he was directed straight towards us. His paper carrier with the name of a speciality shop, his white curls like suds over thick earlobes—just the way he always was, returning from his pilgrimage to buy mangoes or a bottle of wine from the right slope of a small French vineyard. I saw him.
Wasn’t it lovely? Because it was not that everything changes. His image was him: the same.
We did go back to that Kensington flat with him? Didn’t we? Its watercolours of Tuscan landscapes, engravings of early Cape Town, bold impasto oils by South African black painters he used to discover, music cassettes spilled about, the journals and books to be cleared off the sofa so you could sit. Christ! he said, this old unbeliever, where the hell have you been? People don’t write letters any more. We might all have been dead for all we’ve heard of each other. He railed against whatever conservative government it was (maybe still Thatcher). He, who had left the Party after a visit to the old Soviet Union in the Fifties when he was taken round collective pig farms. But I was thinking—perhaps only thinking now—we all have our point of no return in political loyalty, and the stink of pigs is as good as, say, the disillusion of corruption. He was once detained, back home in the old South Africa, he had paid his dues, earned his entitlement to defect, I suppose, however we might have viewed the pretext.
You don’t remember what we talked about? Neither do I. Not really. There he still is, walking out of the weave of people; for us. The apartment: well, as we knew it. But she didn’t appear. No. After so long, can one ask … ? Maybe asleep, she often said she was an owl, not a lark, liked to lie late. If she’s gone—died—or divorced? They’ve had their contingent loves, that’s known. And not only the young have sexual freedom, people find new sexual partners at any age at all. We must wait for him to say something.
But no, he didn’t. There are no flowers in the room; she always had majestic vases of blooms and leaves.
So we didn’t need any other evidence.
Not there.
But perhaps she was just too busy to buy any flowers that day and he had forgotten her request and gone his usual route to pursue the fresh halibut or the mangoes or the restricted cultivar of a wine?
Will we ever know the significance of apparent trivial forgetfulness, what’s ignored, in anyone’s life—keys to stages a relationship is passing through. You’ll have to invent them. I can’t help you. Because I couldn’t ask him. Her name didn’t come up at all, did it? That close couple, politically involved, risking themselves, never a policy disagreement between them, a stance in total solidarity, together, over the years. Admirable, d’you remember! One commitment, one mind—he always said: we are convinced, we declare ourselves—it was—enviable. Yes.
She didn’t have to confirm. No? Ever. Did she?
He forgot the flowers, followed the quest for fish and wine. She’s not here, or if she is—
So that’s how it always really was. He made the opinions, created the ‘we’, set the itinerary of the political quests. So it didn’t—doesn’t matter whether she’s mentioned or not, does it. You are, I am, because we have each our opinions. We exist. Great thought comes to me, eh.
Oh but you do at least remember that we did decide to drop by, having seen him come, known, old friend out of the procession of all the unknown from everywhere who have lived in exile in London. Simply polite to stop by, one forgets old friends too easily. It’s a building unaffected by the decline of the borough in this section. Mirrors in the entrance and the old lift behind its screen of wrought-iron scrolls. Number 23, it was on the second floor with the dove-grey door and brass knocker in the form of a graceful hand. It struck the wood discreetly. Their souvenirs from France were more decorative than effective, and as nobody responded, we pressed the bell. Ringing, ringing, questioning through the rooms we knew. It was a woman who opened the door; some woman; not her. The woman heard his name. She said, Mr S———died four years ago, my husband bought the flat then.
If I dreamt this, while walking, walking in the London streets, the subconscious of each and every other life, past and present, brushing me in passing, what makes it real?
Writing it down.
THE GENERATION GAP
He was the one told: James, the youngest of them. The father to the son—and it was Jamie, with whom he’d never got on since Jamie was a kid; Jamie who ran away when he was adolescent, was brought back resentful, nothing between them but a turned-aside head (the boy’s) and the tight tolerant jaw of suppressed disapproval (the father’s). Jamie who is doing—what was it now? Running a cybersurfers’ restaurant with a friend, that’s the latest, he’s done so many things but the consensus in the family is that he’s the one who’s done nothing with his life. His brother and sisters love him but see it as a waste: of charm and some kind of ill-defined talent, sensed but not directed in any of the ways they recognise.
So it was from Jamie that they received the announcement. The father had it conveyed by Jamie to them—Virginia, Barbara, and Matthew called at some unearthly hour in Australia. The father has left the mother.
A husband leaves his wife. It is one of the most unexceptional of events. The father has left the mother: that is a completely different version, their version.
A husband leaves his wife for another woman. Of course. Their father, their affectionate, loyal, considerate father, announces, just like that: he has left their mother for another woman. Inconceivable.
And to have chosen, of all of them, the younger brother as confidant, confessor, messenger—whatever the reasoning was?
They talked to each other on the telephone, calls those first few days frustratingly blocked while numbers were being dialled simultaneously and the occupied whine sounded on and on. Matthew in Brisbane sent an e-mail. They got together in Barbara’s house—his Ba, his favourite. Even Jamie appeared, summoned—for an explanation he could not give.
Why should I ask why, how?
Or would not give. He must have said something beyond this announcement; but no. And Jamie had to get back to the bar nook and the espresso machine, leave them to it with his archaic smile of irresponsible comfort in any situation.
And suddenly, from the door—We’re all grown up now. Even he.
It was established that no-one had heard from the mother. Ginnie had called her and waited to see if she would say anything, but she chatted about the grandchildren and the progress of a friend she had been visiting in hospital. Not a word. Perhaps she doesn’t know. But even if he kept the affair somehow secret from her until now, he would hardly ‘inform’ his children before telling his wife of a decision to abandon her.
Perhaps she thinks we don’t know.
No, can’t you see—she doe
sn’t want us to know because she thinks he’ll come back, and we don’t need ever to know. A private thing. As Jamie said.
That’s ridiculous, she’s embarrassed, ashamed, I don’t know what—humiliated at the idea of us …
Ginnie had to intervene as chairperson to restore clarity out of the spurting criss-cross of sibling voices. Now what do we do? What are we talking about: are we going to try and change his mind? Talk some sense into him. Are we going to go to her?
We must. First of all.
Then Ba should go.
One would have thought Ba was the child he would have turned to. She said nothing, stirred in her chair and took a gulp of gin-and-tonic with a pull of lip muscles at its kick. There was no need to ask, why me, because she’s her Daddy’s favourite, she’s closest to him, the one best to understand if anyone can, what has led him to do what he has done—to himself, to their mother.
And the woman? The voices rise as a temperature of the room, what about the woman? Anybody have any idea of who she might be. None of those wives in their circle of friends—it’s Alister, Ginnie’s husband, considering—Just look at them. Your poor dad.
But where did he and she ever go that he’d meet anyone new?
Well, she’ll know who it is. Ba will be told.
Nothing sure about that.
As the youngest of them said, they’re all grown up, there are two among the three present (and that’s not counting sports commentator Matthew in Brisbane) who know how affairs may be and are concealed; it’s only if they take the place of the marriage that they have to be revealed.
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