Hold My Hand I'm Dying

by John Gordon Davis

  What were we going to do today?

  ‘It was a pretty boring party, wasn’t it?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Same old crowd. Everybody the same.’ She lay still and looked up at me standing at the window.

  ‘Jane Philson has taken a great fancy to you.’ I grunted. ‘And her husband’s got a great fancy for you,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not interested in somebody else’s husband.’

  I looked down at her. ‘It’s the same every party,’ I said, ‘everybody getting off with everybody else’s spouse.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Listen, Suzie. I wasn’t messing around with her. She just makes a bit of a fuss of me.’

  ‘I know you weren’t.’

  ‘Are you jealous?’

  ‘Of course I’m jealous.’

  I bent down and stroked her head and then she smiled.

  I went into the lounge and sat down in an armchair. Samson came through. ‘Good morning, Nkosi.’

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘Coffee, Nkosi?’ I considered.

  ‘What the hell,’ I decided, ‘it’s ten-thirty. Bring me a beer, make coffee for the Nkosikazi.’

  Samson brought the beer and poured it carefully so as not to get too much head. He grinned at me.

  ‘Babbelaazi!’

  It was Zulu-Dutch slang he had learned on the mines. It meant ‘hungover’.

  ‘A little,’ I said.

  I took a long pull of the beer. It was cold and good and it felt as if it corroded all the muck out of my mouth. I lit a cigarette and started to cough, deep chesty spasms. Too much bloody smoking. Suzie came through in her shorts and blouse. She had good legs.

  ‘So early?’

  ‘It’s Sunday,’ I said.

  She sat in an armchair and stared through the windows over the red roof-tops at the flat brown horizon.

  ‘What are we going to do today?’ I wondered too.

  ‘We’re supposed to be going to the Melks’ for drinks before lunch,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want to go?’

  I shrugged. The same old faces, I’m easy.’ She didn’t say anything so I said: ‘Do you?’

  ‘Not really; the same old thing.’

  ‘Yes. Good old Rhodesian custom.’

  After a while she said dully: ‘Let’s go out into the country. We used to go a lot.’

  ‘There’s nowhere much to go in one day. You need a week-end to get to the good places.’

  She sighed.

  So we went to the Melks’ house in the gracious Kumalo area, and we sat around the swimming pool in bathing costumes in the sun and drank beer and we talked and laughed a great deal about very little. There was very little to discuss, life was going very well. And the beer in the sun made me feel very good and sensuous and I looked happily at the women glistening in their bikinis under their suntan oil and Suzie was the best of them all.

  We got back to the flat at two o’clock. I told Samson to put the chicken in the oven and to go home for the rest of the day. The bottle of wine was good and cold. Suzie had pulled her shorts and blouse on over her bikini and the wet showed through the seat of her shorts. My skin felt drugged and happy from the sun. Suzie went out on to the verandah into the sun and stood looking out over the roof-tops.

  ‘I’ve got some new wine. Will you have some now?’

  She looked out over the verandah.

  ‘Might as well. That’s all we do on Sundays, try a new wine.’

  I looked at her profile. I decided to let it go. I uncorked the wine and put it in an ice-bucket and we sat in the sun on the verandah. I was feeling pretty good.

  ‘Take off your blouse and shorts and sit in your bikini, Suzie.’ She shook her head imperceptibly and took a sip of wine. I looked at her then I said: ‘What’s been eating you lately?’

  She turned her head and looked at me a moment.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Then say something!’

  ‘What is there to say? We’ve talked about everything already.’

  I began to get sore.

  ‘Now what are you implying?’

  ‘Well, what is there to talk about?’ she said.

  ‘There should be plenty for two lovers to talk about. We should stimulate each other.’

  ‘What stimulation can you steam up in cocktail bars?’

  ‘Cocktail bars? You speak as though that’s all we ever do.’

  ‘It is.’

  Aw Christ.

  ‘Aw Christ, Suzie. That’s not true. Well, all right, we’ve been giving it a bit of a tonk lately. So what. I’ve only been in from the bush for two years and the first year I spent in hard labour over those exams.’

  She nodded and the silence hung. She took a long sip of wine.

  ‘Well, have you read any good books lately?’ I said nastily.

  ‘Not that you would consider good, no.’

  ‘Well, why the hell don’t you, then you wouldn’t be complaining that we have nothing to talk about. Dickens, Shaw, Shakespeare, to name a few – what do you know about any of them?’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘Well, when you do,’ I said, ‘and we still have nothing to talk about, then you can complain.’

  I got up out of my chair and stumped through to the kitchen and got another beer out of the fridge. I snapped the cap off and stumped back to the verandah and sat down heavily. When I had nearly finished it the glow of the beer and the sun came back.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  She stretched out her hand and touched my knee, it’s all right. Of course you’re entitled to your fling. You’ve worked very hard.’ I reached for the wine bottle and filled her glass. ‘Like it?’

  ‘It’s good.’

  I looked at her and she looked at me and then she grinned. She had begun to get along with the wine. She leaned over and kissed me and then slipped her hands behind her to her blouse buttons and began to undo them.

  ‘Take everything off, Suzie.’

  ‘You sensuous beast, you too, then.’

  She sat in the chair naked, and leaned back with her eyes closed and took a long sip of wine. Her breasts lolled white on her red-gold skin.

  ‘Suntan oil?’

  ‘Only the olive oil for cooking,’ I said. ‘That’ll do.’

  I fetched it from the kitchen. ‘You,’ she said.

  I poured some into my palm. I put it at the top of her chest just under her neck and then I smeared my hand slowly down over her belly and down her thighs. She lay back while I smeared her and her eyes followed mine and when I looked at her they were very deep.

  ‘I love you, Joseph,’ she said.

  So we drank wine in the sun, glistening with the sun and the olive oil and the beer and the wine and we talked happily of nothing with long silences and we touched each other and we finished the bottle of wine and I said: ‘There’s another bottle, your turn to fetch it,’ and she walked naked to the kitchen to fetch it and came back and I was lying flat on my back in the sun and I looked up at her standing there smiling glistening down at me, holding the wine, I looked at her glistening red-gold shanks and her pink belly and her pink breasts standing above me, and I said: ‘Suzie, you are very beautiful.’

  And she knelt down beside me and bent forward and her long straight honey hair tickled my neck and she kissed me and her nipples brushed my chest lightly and she slid them to and fro over me as she kissed me. And at three-thirty we went naked to the kitchen and she put the little frilly apron on and took the golden chicken out of the oven and the roast potatoes and I opened a can of peas and we carried it back to the sunny verandah and she arranged it on the cement floor with paper napkins and flowers and fresh wine glasses and I broke the chicken with my hands and we sat cross-legged opposite each other in the sun and we ate with our hands and pulled at the soft meat with our teeth and we drank the chill wine and we grinned at each other. And when we had finished the chicken I looked her in the eye and I
lifted my hand slowly and aimed it at her nose and crooked my finger and said: ‘Come.’

  And she made to bite my finger and then she took my hand, we got to our feet and I picked up the rest of the bottle of wine and we left the chicken bones and the plates and the crumpled napkins and walked through the lounge into the hot bedroom and I sat down on the bed and lifted the bottle of wine to my lips and she stood with her belly next to me and then I passed her the bottle and she took a swig and then she moved on to the bed joyously and I pulled her on top of me and she flanked herself on top of me, and under me, and to the side of me and I held her pink and gold oily body: but best of all she liked it under me, flat on her back.

  Afterwards I lay still and sweating on top of her, drugged with her and the wine and the sun but my mind was very clear. Then I slid off her and lay beside her with my eyes closed.

  She lay still beside me for a long time and she thought I was asleep. Then she kissed my face very gently.

  ‘A baby,’ she whispered, ‘I want your baby. Your baby in my belly.’

  That was the first time it came into focus. Life was not wine in the sun on Sundays. It was the lawns and hedges of suburbia there outside my window, and the parties every week-end, Jane Philson making passes at me and George Philson making passes at Suzie, and the new mortgaged three bedroomed houses of Sauerstown and the Club and the pub, and the flat brown horizons.

  I lay there with my mind very clear and I pretended to be asleep.

  That was the second summer.

  Unhappiness came in the winter.

  All the warmth had gone out of the earth and the earth was dusty brown and the trees were bare and out there the horizon was very brown. We stayed mostly at Suzie’s flat that winter because it was warm and she had carpets on the floor. In the mornings the sun rose joyless bright in a blue sky but there was no warmth in it and in the evenings we had our sundowners inside with the curtain drawn and the heater on. And in the evenings, the long silences between the two armchairs. Sometimes I tried to write my book but it didn’t work. And there was no wine in the sun on Sundays. And another year gone.

  ‘What do you want, Joseph?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wish I did.’

  ‘Do you want to go into private practice?’

  Private practice. Work like a nigger, decent money if you succeed. Almost bound to succeed, the attorneys know me and I’m nobody’s fool in a trial and the country’s booming. But work like a nigger. And for what?

  For three acres out in Hillside and a swimming pool and a Rover, driving to Chambers every day, those hot-in-summer cold-in-winter Advocates’ Chambers in Eighth Avenue and getting all steamed up about Potts versus Potts and Regina versus Tickey. And drive home to the three acres at the end of the day. And always those flat brown horizons. Not out there in those horizons working in the African jungle with the African people, working towards something or conserving something, not working with your hands and your sweat and your compassion and your ideals, where lions roar and buffalo snort and jumbo steamroller through the bush and black men trust you and call you Elder Father: but here, here in this little city in your hot and cold dry chambers and going home every night to your three acres in Hillside and your skin white under your white-collared shirt because there is no more wine in the sun on Sundays now you’ve got kids: neither fish nor fowl, neither a high-powered counsel nor a man who works with his heart and his hands: just a small-town lawyer making five, six thousand a year.

  ‘No, not private practice,’ I said.

  ‘Do you want to stay in Government Service in the Attorney General’s office?’

  ‘God no, that’s worse.’

  ‘It’s secure,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Suzie,’ I said, ‘it’s secure.’

  She looked at me studiously with those steady blue sphinx eyes.

  ‘Do you want to write?’

  ‘I’m no writer,’ I said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve read what I’ve written, you haven’t.’

  ‘I’ve read some.’

  ‘Maybe fifty pages. Then you get bored.’

  ‘Oh Joe, what do you want to do!’

  I got up and went to the window and opened the curtains a little. I looked down on to the lights of the cold flat town.

  ‘I want,’ I said, ‘to be in the Zambezi Valley.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ she said softly.

  ‘Yes, that’s impossible.’

  She was silent. Then: ‘What are you afraid of, Joe?’

  I could see the lights of Hillside twinkling. I was afraid of a lot of things. I was afraid of Hillside. ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  Rhodesia was booming. To get any kind of flat you had to sign a lease for a year. Suzie’s lease had expired and there was a clause which provided that renewals had to be for a minimum period of six months.

  ‘Joe, I don’t want to renew the lease for another six months.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She didn’t answer for a moment.

  ‘I’m tired of that flat.’ She looked at her fingernails, ‘I don’t want to commit myself to it for another six months.’

  ‘But what are you going to do?’

  She looked at her fingernails, ‘I don’t know. I may decide to go away for a while.’

  That was the first time I was afraid. ‘Go away! But – where to?’ She looked at me, her long hair hanging straight, her eyes sad.

  ‘I don’t know. Oh, I don’t know anything. I haven’t—haven’t decided anything except that I’m not renewing the lease.’

  I was relieved. ‘When must you quit the flat?’

  ‘End of the month.’

  ‘But that’s the end of this week!’

  She nodded.

  ‘But … when did you give notice that you weren’t going to renew the lease?’

  ‘End of last month.’ She said it guiltily and looked away.

  ‘Three weeks ago! Why didn’t you discuss it with me?’

  She looked guiltily at her fingernails. ‘What’s there to discuss?’

  ‘What’s there to discuss? Don’t be a damn fool. Where’ll you stay?’ She shrugged.

  ‘Private hotel, I suppose,’ a little defiantly.

  ‘For how long?’ She shrugged again.

  ‘Until I decide what I’m going to do with myself.’

  I leaned out and put my fingers on her chin and pulled her face round to me. ‘Suzie have you given notice at your job too?’

  She stared at me a moment, and then shook her head once. I breathed out.

  ‘Now listen,’ I said. ‘Okay, so you’ve given up this flat. You’re not going to any crummy boarding-house. You’re coming to stay at my place. Nobody need know and so what if they do.’

  She looked at me then she turned her head away.

  ‘Until?’ she said.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘until we decide what to do—’

  But I never did decide.

  Suzie’s gear in my flat. Her flower bowls on my window-sills and her rugs on my floors and her reading lamps and her sewing machine and occasional tables and her ashtrays, all the things women collect to make their nests. It was very comfortable. And in our bedroom there were her perfumes and powders and eye shadow and her hair-clips and ribbons, all smelling of Suzie, and in the cupboard were her dresses and her panties and her bras and her stockings and her shoes and her hats. And in the bathroom her face cream and her cap so she wouldn’t get her hair wet in the shower and her pink sponges and her back brush and her negligée hanging behind the door. And it was all very warm and it felt good. And in the morning Suzie getting up and sitting in front of the dressing-table in her negligée and brushing her long gold hair and sitting beside me on the bed sipping the tea and then stepping around the room in her panties and bra as she got ready for work. And coming home with Suzie in the evening and having a drink and sitting in front of the heater, or maybe goi
ng out for a drink to the Club or a pub and coming home, and then the ritual of preparing for bed. It was very good and it seemed it could go on forever. And so the winter nearly all passed and then it began to breathe of spring.

  Spring is a funny time in Matabeleland. The bush is brown and the dust is dry, and the dogs’ urine patches are just as black. There are no new buds in the spring, no blushing of the earth, there is no change in the red roof-tops and the lawns and hedges are as lacklustre as before. Spring is in the bowels and you begin to think: soon it will be warm and we will have wine in the sun again.

  She said: ‘I gave my notice in today.’

  I put my glass down. ‘You what?’

  ‘I said I gave my notice at my job today.’

  I stared at her. She looked guiltily at her glass.

  ‘Where’re you going to work?’

  She shrugged. ‘England. Or Europe maybe. Or maybe the States.’

  I sat back. ‘Jesus,’ I said.

  She didn’t look at me. ‘What?’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you discuss it with me first?’

  ‘What’s there to discuss?’

  ‘What’s there to discuss? Jesus, Suzie you’re only living with me. You’re my lover, my …’

  ‘Your mistress,’ she said quietly.

  I looked at her.

  She nodded and looked at me.

  ‘I don’t want to be your mistress, Joey.’

  I nibbled the skin inside my lip. I was afraid.

  ‘What do you want to be?’ I said slowly.

  She looked away. I had done it. She shrugged.

  ‘My wife?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, not if you don’t want me.’

  ‘How do you know I don’t want you?’

  She shrugged again. She said sadly: ‘You’d have asked me if you had.’

  ‘Well, I do want you,’ I said.

  She just looked at her glass and ran her fingers up and down the stem. Then she shook her head again.

  ‘No, you don’t, not really and truly. Maybe some time, you’ll want me one day, but not now. You showed it a moment ago. You asked me what I wanted to be, you didn’t ask me to marry you.’