She shook her head. “No, Ma, I just want Andile to support my dream the way I supported him when he quit Ackerman & Patel to start MAPAMO. I will only go back home when he is ready to do that.”
“And this woman you are staying with. Could you not find anywhere else to stay?” her mother asked. “I saw her at your party doing shameful things in front of everybody with that little boy. A grown woman!”
Tjhoo! Nobantu thought, what would her mother say when she found out that the “little boy” was one of the cornerstones of her business?
“Ma. Tsholo is my friend,” Nobantu said. “She has supported me through all of this. She even allowed the children to come and stay with me at her house. Can you please stop judging her? She loves who she loves and they are very happy together.”
“Happy? Happy? What does his mother say about it? Is his mother happy that her little boy is being taken advantage of by an old woman like her?”
“Ma, I don’t know what his mother says,” Nobantu said, tiring of the discussion. “I don’t understand why you are so worried about their relationship and yet you say nothing about Tsholo’s ex-husband marrying a girl almost his daughter’s age.”
Her mother clapped her hands to a mirthless laugh. “Because, my child, he is a man, and men are allowed to do that.”
“By whose rules, Mama? Men’s rules? Why is it okay for a man to love a younger woman, but wrong for a woman to love a younger man?”
Her mother shook her head. “Is it this Johannesburg that has done this to you?” she asked. “The girl I raised had manners and morals. Now, here you are with some women who say they are lesbians, other men who say they are gay, and now old women running after young boys. Did she find a young boy for you too, maybe? Is that why you are defending her?”
Nobantu shook her head, wanting to laugh. She really did seem to have a shortage of “normal” people in her life, but then what is normal? Maybe her mother was right. Maybe there was no normal in Joburg!
“No, Ma, there is no younger man for me. I am married to Andile and I am not planning to get divorced, remember?” She showed her mother her ring finger. “See,” she said, “I am still wearing my wedding ring.”
Her mother shook her head. “I don’t know what it is with you children of today,” she said. “Now, will you go and see your husband and sort out this mess?”
“But, Ma, he is the one who called you. He is the one who refused to compromise. Why can’t he come and sort out ‘this mess’ as you call it?” Nobantu said, arguing her point.
“Because, my baby, men are like children. They are stubborn and proud. Every now and again you need to make them think they have won. Now, you drop me with him. Come tomorrow with the children. I will take them back home with me for the last week of their holidays while you try to mend fences with Andile. And, believe me, when you make a success of this business thing of yours, he will be telling all those other men at the golf course how HE suggested that you should do it. Didn’t Aunt Thembi and I tell you all this the night before you got married?”
Nobantu smiled, recalling the conversation. “You sure did, Ma,” she said, getting up and kissing her mother on the lips.
“Hhayi, man, get away from me. You have become too white with all this hugging and kissing. Now, call your husband, and tell him he is taking me for dinner as we discussed last night.”
Chapter 19
19
The weekend had done much to mend bridges. Saturday had been spent with her mother and the children. On Sunday, he had dropped the kids and her mother off at the airport and, in spite of his misgivings about Tsholo and her young man, Andile made a concerted effort to spend the rest of the day with them and get to know them. After all, he needed the young man to hold the fort while he delivered what he hoped would be the coup de grâce that would bring his wife home.
“Sounds good, man, sounds good . . .” was all he and Mxolisi allowed the women to hear of their plan as they came out to join them on the veranda where they were braaiing.
The plan was put into action the very next day. For Andile, it was simple enough. The children were on holiday and the maids and the gardeners had been given their last instructions. All he had to do was call her and ask her to meet him for a late lunch at the office. All he had to do was to pick up the phone, but he was nervous like a schoolboy on his first date.
He hoped she would like the idea of a surprise date, but more importantly, he hoped she wouldn’t make too much of a fuss about leaving her employees for a whole week. This was important to him, and he hoped, to her.
* * *
She arrived twenty minutes late, looking breathtaking, as she seemed to do every time he saw her these days.
“What took you so long?” he asked jovially.
Instead of answering him, she started a running commentary on Joburg as he got ready to leave the office. He had forgotten just how funny she could be.
“Everyone knows that in Joburg the further north you travel the warmer it gets. Funny thing is, it isn’t true where personalities are concerned,” she said as they made their way to the lifts. “People in Sandton are colder, they keep their distance – very European. Maybe that’s what money does to people. Do you know, I just went into one of the shops here and greeted the people there as I would anyone else. And you know what? They just stared at me with this blank look on their faces? As if they were too important to greet me.”
“Maybe they thought you wanted something,” Andile chimed in. “You know moneyed people hate beggars.”
“Oh, please!” she said, with mock horror. “The thing is, I tried to figure out whether I treated people like that when I lived here and I couldn’t for the life of me remember.”
As they arrived in the lobby, the receptionist bade them farewell with unexpected enthusiasm.
“She’s chirpy. I wonder what that’s all about?” Andile said, looking at Nobantu.
Nobantu laughed. “Oh, we had a little run-in earlier. She’s the reason I was late.”
Andile looked at his wife uncomprehendingly.
“Well, she’s a new receptionist,” Nobantu explained, “so she didn’t know me.”
Andile looked back at the receptionist as they left the building. “So what happened?” he asked.
“Well, I get to the reception and she asks me whether she can help. I tell her that I am here to see you. She raises her eyebrows that appear to have been drawn on with a koki pen and tells me that you are very busy and that I will have to call to make an appointment. To which I respond that I already have an appointment. So she tells me to sit down while she calls your office to see whether you are ready to see me. Then she spends the next fifteen minutes chatting on the phone and filing her nails. That is until Penny walks in on a cloud of Chanel No. 5 and asks me what the hell I think I am doing sitting in reception. You can imagine how embarrassed the poor girl was . . .”
“What?” Andile said, unable to believe how his wife had been treated. “I’m calling human resources to have her fired right now.”
“Look, Andile, I think she has learnt her lesson,” Nobantu said quickly. “I didn’t tell you the story to get her fired. I’m sure she won’t be so unprofessional again.”
He relented. He was, after all, supposed to be treating her.
“So, do you want me to follow you in my car?” she asked as they walked out into the parking lot.
“Nope. Get in mine,” he said, walking towards the passenger door of his car and opening it for her.
“I really would rather go in my car, Andile, if that’s alright with you,” she replied.
“Humour me,” he said, dramatically getting down on his knees in the middle of the parking lot. “Puhleeze?”
She laughed. She remembered this guy from their early courtship. “Fine, fine, just get up. I think the security guards are wondering what the hell’s going on with you,” she said, getting into the car.
“So, where are we going?” she asked as he climbed in
beside her.
He laughed nervously. “Um, well, sweetie, we’re going on a trip.”
“A trip? But, Andile, you should have warned me. There is so much to be taken care of this end. I haven’t . . .”
She still had so much work to do on her label and here Andile was trying to waste her time on some unnecessary escapade. Her business was her baby and she wasn’t willing to fail. Then again, they had spent the weekend together and he had seemed genuinely supportive of her ambitions. Maybe she should try and trust him for once.
“All taken care of,” he said, interrupting her train of thought. “I took the liberty of having a chat with Mxolisi yesterday and he said he would take care of everything. I’ve arranged with Ntsiki to come in every now and then to check on the girls. And you don’t need to pack.”
“I don’t?” she queried.
“No, my heart, you don’t. There are shops where we are going, although I’m not sure you’ll need much in the way of clothes.” He grinned wickedly. “Now, we have to go. Time is running out and we have to check in for our flight.”
“Flight?” she asked unnecessarily. “Are we going out of Gauteng?”
“Nobantu, you ask too many questions . . .” And then, turning on the charm of the Andile she had known in the early days of their relationship, he expertly moved the topic of conversation from their destination to a running commentary on how the children, MAPAMO, Nazli and Anant, and Oupa and Plastic Penny were doing.
“I always wonder what it is Plastic Penny and Oupa talk about late at night when they are alone,” she said, trying to get into the spirit of things.
“That’s easy,” Andile said with confidence. “She probably says, ‘Do you know, the shops are still open right now in Brazil, and if I was there I could be shopping?’ ”
“And,” Nobantu said, jumping in, “he probably replies, ‘Yes, you could buy yourself one of those sexy bikinis and walk on the beach. Everyone would be ogling you, but you and I know you are mine. And all those young studs would be wondering how I managed to get a hot chick like you with handfuls of luscious breasts.’ ”
Andile laughed. “To which she will probably answer, ‘They just don’t realise how charming you are, baby!’ ”
They both laughed. Full-hearted laughter from Andile and a tentative response from Nobantu. She was still not sure where Andile was taking her and she couldn’t help wondering whether the team at the office would be able to handle an emergency without her.
“How long do you think Oupa and Penny will last?” she asked him as they approached the long-term parking lot at Oliver Tambo Airport.
“Till Oupa is either bankrupt or dead, whichever comes first,” he answered with a smile on his face.
Nobantu looked at him with mirth. “You think? You don’t think she’ll try to get a divorce and take him for half of what he owns?”
Andile shook his head. “After the huge settlement with Tsholo, he made sure Penny signed a prenuptial agreement. If Penny decides to back out, she won’t be getting anything apart from child support, the plastic she is already carrying and the Lamborghini he bought her when they found out she was pregnant.”
That was a surprise to Nobantu. She was none too sure that Penny was in it for the long haul, but maybe she would be forced to stick it out.
Andile pulled up in a parking space. “Okay, let’s go, sweetie,” he said.
As Andile climbed out of the car, she wondered where they were going. London? New York, perhaps? Oh, heavens! She put her hand to her mouth.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked, seeing the look on her face as he opened her door for her.
“I was just thinking, I haven’t brought my passport,” she answered.
He looked at her and shook his head. “A little ambitious, are we not, Mrs Makana? You don’t need your passport. All you need is your ID. I hope you’ve brought it.”
She nodded her head, a little disappointed.
“Chin up,” he said, reading her expression as he helped her out of the car. “This will be a very different kind of holiday.”
* * *
The trip to Cape Town was uneventful. At the airport, he went to pick up a hired car, and as they drove past the CBD towards Green Point, she wondered where they were going to stay.
He surprised her.
A little distance from Checkers in Sea Point, he stopped the car and buzzed a gate.
“Andile, what are we doing here?” she asked, gawping at the seedy-looking place.
He ignored her as he spoke into the buzzer.
Wasn’t Sea Point a popular drug tourism destination? Nobantu asked herself. As she looked around her, she spotted a number of fast food outlets. Nobantu and Ntsiki had always argued that the mark of an area is the number of fast food places it has. The more fast food places, the greater the chance that it has a low per capita income, something about the poor will inherit the fat . . .
She was thinking like a snob, she thought, catching herself.
* * *
Even as the caretaker led them to their lodgings he gave them a running commentary on the do’s and don’ts of the premises. Nobantu hadn’t been to boarding school, but she had a feeling that this man’s commentary, the rules and regulations he seemed so familiar with, was exactly what one would have had to endure at boarding school.
The place, when they finally arrived, was similar to the studio apartment Dave had stayed in during their university days in Braamfontein – it was a bedroom cum kitchen cum living room. There was a musty smell in the place and when the caretaker walked out Nobantu felt like following him. Instead, she said, “This! Andile! This! This is one of the reasons why I left home. You whisk me from my business to bring me to this dump . . .”
His plan had been working so well that Andile hadn’t reckoned on her anger. “I am doing it for us,” he said, hurriedly putting himself between Nobantu and the door.
She looked at him in disbelief. “You are doing what for us, Andile? You make presumptions. You have no respect for me or my business. You think that you can just whisk me away to bring me to, of all places, this. Just who the hell do you think you are?”
He looked at her aghast. What was wrong with her? “Calm down, Nobantu, sit down and I’ll explain all to you,” he said.
“Don’t tell me to calm down, Andile. I have a fledgling business that needs my full attention and you take it upon yourself to whisk me away from it without the decency of consulting me. What makes you so sure that I would rather be in this crappy place than back in Johannesburg running my business? Or is this all to ensure that I’m not there to oversee things, to ensure that I fail, so that I come crawling back to you? You chauvinistic bastard!”
He shook his head vehemently. This was not going as he had planned. He had to do something fast and latched on to the first thing he could think of. “Chauvinistic?” he said, raising his voice slightly to get her attention. “I’m not chauvinistic. Nobantu, this is ridiculous. I work with a lot of women, you know that, and I treat all of them as equals . . .”
“Let me break it down for you,” Nobantu seethed. “You forced me to stay at home and be a housewife because you couldn’t stand the idea that I might challenge you in a professional sense. Then you had the audacity to publicly call me ‘just a housewife’ at a party you allegedly threw for me. Then, when I suggested for the zillionth time that I really wanted to pursue my dreams, you threatened me with divorce. Now you are trying to sabotage my business by bringing me here. Who the hell do you think you are trying to fool?”
Andile shook his head. He hadn’t realised that she was carrying so much anger. He didn’t remember calling her “just a housewife”. He knew he had thought it many a time, but had he actually said it?
“Okay, maybe I am guilty of some of that stuff, but calling me a chauvinist is a bit harsh,” he said defensively. “I would like to think that I am just a culturalist. I want to take care of my wife and children. I want to be the breadwinner like the man
is supposed to be.”
“Culture? Culture? I am tired of South African men using culture as an excuse. My employee’s ex probably beat her up because it’s his cultural role to discipline her. Tsholo probably stayed married to Oupa because she was told: ‘It’s culture!’ Now I am going to take a walk and decide whether I want to go home or listen to what you have to say when I return,” she concluded, pushing past him and opening the door.
“Wait, Nobantu. I’m not sure it’s safe . . .” he said with concern in his voice. This really was not going according to plan.
“Well, you should have thought about that before you booked us into this place,” she said, closing the door on him.
He couldn’t let her go out like that. She was an easy target with her expensive handbag that screamed, “Here, rob me!”
He rushed out after her. “Nobantu, please, just listen to me for a moment,” he said, taking her arm just as she was about to reach the stairs.
She shook his hand off. “Fine, what do you have to say?” she asked.
He had to show her that he had changed. “Look, Nobantu, I am sorry about all that, but the thing is, I thought bringing you here would be romantic.”
She looked at him with her eyebrows raised.
“Let me finish,” he said, raising his hand to shut her up. “Sabotaging your business is the last thing I want to do. You are obviously good at what you are doing and I was wrong to ever try to discourage that. But this is not about business. This is about us. I was thinking of how we had such a great time together back in the day. There was no television. I wasn’t rushing to go to this or that meeting. It was just you and me and our . . . well, okay, mostly my dreams, but I thought that getting back to the basics might be a way to try and recapture those golden days. I thought that it might also be a way for me to learn your dreams and, for a change, support you as you have always supported me. A sort of retreat for the two of us that would help us relearn each other . . . So, what do you think . . .?”
Behind Every Successful Man Page 12