I said nothing. She was right.
‘I don’t know what you want,’ she said. ‘I’ve shown you what I want, I’ve slept with you, I’ve shown that all I want in the whole world is to love you for ever. But I saw you wanted something else. So I gave you the chance. I began to go away, and you stopped me and told me to come and live with you. And I came, but you still don’t know what you want.’
I said nothing.
‘You dream,’ she said sadly. ‘You’re a dreamer. You’re restless. You want out. You’re afraid of those flat brown horizons you’re always talking about and the three acres in Hillside. I don’t know.’
I kept quiet.
‘But I know what I want,’ she said, ‘I’m almost thirty and I’m good and ready but you’re not.’ I could not deny it.
She said to her glass: ‘I’ve seen you, Joey. Trying to write your book. Trying to find something good and useful to do, and you’re frustrated so you drink too much. And getting irritable with me because all I want is you. You somehow feel I’m not with you, not up to you. So we make it up by drinking.’
‘Balls.’
‘It’s true. And I don’t want to marry you if you feel like that. If the only time you feel companionable towards me is when we’re drinking. Or in bed. I don’t want you to feel trapped and restless.’
I got angry. Even then I could have made her marry me if I had asked her. But I said: ‘Well, that’s fine. You have me all figured out. So we can part without regrets.’
‘Don’t be bitter, Joe.’
‘Bitter? Me? Oh no! Me, I’m bursting out all over with bonhomie and godspeeds.’
‘We’ve had a good trial together, Joe. And a good time. Let’s remember each other like that.’
I got up. I said, ‘Is this the kind of corn you read in your women’s magazines? If you read anything better you wouldn’t be going away.’
And I left the room and got myself a beer.
We didn’t talk about it any more that night. I figured, anyway, that I still had a month to think about it.
The next evening she came home with her sea ticket.
‘Train to Beira, catch the boat. Then Dar-es-Salaam, Pemba, Zanzibar, Mombasa. Mombasa – Port Suez, then Port Said. Genoa. London.’
I was staring out the window. ‘Sounds okay.’
‘It’ll be fun,’ she said. ‘Then,’ she said, ‘I’ve also got a ticket Liverpool to New York.’
I turned round. ‘New York?’
She nodded. I stared at her.
‘Now listen Suzie. How long are you going away for?’
She looked at me steadily. She said slowly, ‘I don’t know, Joe. Until you’ve grown—’ She changed it. ‘Until you’re good and ready.’
‘I’m good and ready now,’ I shouted.
She looked at me, then she kissed my chin.
‘No, you’re not, Joey.’
She was right. I still had a month to think. Out with two beers. We sat in front of the heater.
‘You can have my rugs and lamps and things. I only want the little horses.’
‘I’ll pay for your things.
‘You can’t.’
‘I can and I will.’
‘I’ll sell the record player and records. You won’t want them.’
‘I’ll buy them too.’
‘Joe, I don’t want to take your money.’
‘You will,’ I said.
She twiddled her glass and looked at the heater. ‘This is awful, isn’t it. Dividing the household goods.’
‘Yes, it is,’ I said.
‘I’ll buy your fishing rod and gear too,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘I’ll take my rod and reel. It’ll be my souvenir of our happy days. It won’t take much room.’
‘No. The rod collapses.’
‘Yes.’
‘You can lay it at the bottom of your trunk.’
‘Yes.’
After a while I said: ‘Suzie, you’ll write to me, won’t you, and tell me where you are?’
‘Yes.’
My nose tingled and my eyes burned.
I had a month to get used to the idea. Or to try to get used to it. Or to decide. Or something. In the evenings I waited for her to come home and I walked around the flat restlessly. As soon as she came home, we went out for a drink to avoid the silent feeling of the flat. It was better in the bar. Mostly we were kind to each other. We went to shows and I took her out to dinner. We took a week’s holiday and we drove the five hundred miles to Inyanga and we took the thatched fishing cottage on the Pungwe River. The river ran clear and clean and ice cold over the rocks right outside our cottage door, and the sky was ice blue and in the early mornings there was mist like smoke on the water and in the gorge and there was frost like snow on the grass in the mornings, and on the window panes. We lay in bed in the early mornings, feeling each other warm and safe under the blankets watching the sun seep down into the gorge and melt the frost, and listened to the safe cheerful sounds of Samson building the fire in the lounge and then making tea and then the sizzling of the bacon over the wood fire stove, and we wondered why Suzie was going away.
‘It’s a holiday!’ Suzie said, and swept her long gold hair off her face as she sat up in bed all huddled up with her breasts pressed against her knees. ‘Don’t let’s even think about it—’
The sun came down into the gorge and melted the frost and chased away the mist and left the little valley brisk and clean and clear and the water bubbling and we put on our warm gear and we put some beers in my knapsack and a bottle of wine and some chops and we explored the rolling Inyanga downs, tramped over the cold pink heather and through the pine and wattle forests, over the hills and we found trout streams and followed them and at midday we built a fire beside a stream in the clear cold sun and cooked our chops and drank our beer and drank our wine round the fire on the rocks beside the streams. And in the afternoons, when we were good and tired from the tramping and our cheeks were red and burned from the cold, we tramped back over the hills and through the forests to the thatched cottage at the Pungwe: sometimes I ran down the heather downs, loping over the little pink bushes and I looked back and there was Suzie skipping down the slope, skipping skippity-skippity with her hair flying and her breasts bouncing and her wide smile all over her face, as the evening mist came rolling over the hills, and there were fine cold stinging water drops in the mist and they stung our cheeks and wet our hair and we laughed, good and brisk and warm and cold and tired. And when we got down into the gorge, there was our thatched cottage beside the darkening river and the smoke was coming out of the chimney stack, and we flung open the wooden door and there was the fire roaring in the grate, big red glowing logs and the two armchairs pulled up in front of the fire and the table laid, and the smell of cooking, and Samson beaming all over his big fat black face.
‘Welcome, Nkosi!’
And a hot steamy bath, the water gushing out of the woodfire cistern with Suzie’s soft womany soaps and smells all around, and then sitting stretched out in the armchairs with our feet on the grate and the thatch above our heads and the fire flickering deep and warm. And the warm knowledge of the deep double bed next door.
On the last night we came home from the hills and we had our hot baths and we climbed into the old box Chev.
‘Samson!’
‘Nkosi?’
‘Here is ten shillings. Go to the village over the hills and drink beer.’
‘Yebo Nkosi!’
Samson grinning all over his face.
‘But do not try to steal the Manyika women. Remember you are a Matabele and a horse does not mate with a donkey.’
Samson’s belly laugh ringing out over the Pungwe Gorge.
‘The Nkosikazi and I are going to eat at the hotel tonight. Do not wake us too early.’ And we drove the fifteen twisty turning miles over the dirt roads through the heather downs and the forests and the mists to the old Rhodes-Inyanga Hotel, stuck up there in the forests, the grand old
house that Rhodes himself once lived in, and we drank brandy in front of the great fire at the old wooden bar counter with the stuffed trout on the walls and then we went through to the big old dining-room, and as Suzie walked ahead of me in her swinging tweed skirt I looked at her and I thought: ‘What a lovely girl. What lovely legs.
And we sat near the big log grate with logs as big as a man, glowing and leaping and crackling and sparkling and flickering gold on Suzie’s hair and the shiny black waiter in his white starched uniform poured the wine very correctly for me to taste and then I said: ‘Well, here’s to us, Suzie,’ and she said: ‘Yes.’
And we both realised it was the last night of the holiday. We drove back to our cottage through the hills and when we passed the African village we heard drums and singing. I ran the old Chev down the steep hill to the cottage and rolled to a stop on the grass and I switched off the lights. The moon shone on the smoky swirly mist and we could see the glow of the dying fire through the cottage windows.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ She sat still and looked at the river.
‘Yes.’
‘And sad.’
My heart was breaking and I turned to her. ‘Suzie!’
She turned slowly and looked at me with her big heavy eyes. ‘Suzie, don’t go away!’
She looked deep into my eyes looking for something. But I could not say it. Then she patted my knee.
‘But I must, darling dreamer.’ Then she patted my knee again.
‘And now to bed, my love.’
In the morning we packed up quietly. The mist was still on the Pungwe but the sun was up. The cottage was empty and closed and it looked very lonely. Suzie stood at the car door and looked back at it for a moment, then she climbed in and her eyes were wet. I put the Chev into gear and we began the lonely climb out of the gorge into the morning sun. When we got to the top of the gorge we stopped and looked down. Far below was the twisting tumbling river and the cottage in the mist.
‘Oh,’ Suzie said.
Then we got back into the car and we drove through the downs and the forests, past the Rhodes Hotel, and then we were on the road to Rusape, through the craggy rock country, and we didn’t talk. We were both thinking: only another ten days.
We got to Rusape Village at ten o’clock. I gave Samson sixpence for a Coca-Cola, and Suzie and I went and sat on the verandah of the old hotel and had tea, very quietly. I thought of the mornings ahead, getting up in the mornings with the warm Suzie smell in the room, Suzie brushing her long honey hair in front of the mirror. And each morning would leave one less, and then it would be the last morning, and we would carry her bags from the flat to the station, and the next morning I would wake up alone and the flat would be empty.
‘Suzie,’ I said.
She put down her cup and looked at me steadily. ‘Suzie – don’t go away!’
She looked at me sadly. And then she shook her head. ‘Suzie?’
‘Yes, darling?’
‘Let’s get married then.’
She blinked. ‘What?’
I was excited. ‘Let’s get married.’
She blinked again. ‘When?’ she said faintly.
‘Right now! Here in Rusape.’
She looked bewildered.
‘At the Magistrate’s Court. Special Licence,’ I said.
‘But—’ she stopped.
‘But?’
‘But – what about my hair?’ she giggled faintly.
‘To hell with your hair,’ I said.
She looked shocked and laughed again.
‘To hell with my hair. I mean: do you really want to?’
‘Yes.’ I felt weak and was shaking a little.
‘All right, then.’
We stood up and walked off the verandah into the dirt road. The waiter came running after us with the bill and I gave him five shillings dazedly. Samson saw us and put down his bottle. I waved to him to wait. We walked down the gravel sidewalk, through the natives, towards the old Magistrate’s Court. I looked straight ahead of me and I felt dazed and excited and frightened. I looked sideways at Suzie and she was looking straight ahead too. She stretched her hand sideways without looking, and took my hand and I felt it was damp.
We stopped outside the old Courthouse.
‘Well—’ I said ‘here we are.’
She put her hand to her hair mechanically, and her hand was shaking.
I wanted to run. ‘In we go,’ I said soberly.
She hesitated, then she walked beside me up the steps, holding herself very straight. We walked into the Clerk of Court’s office and it seemed unreal.
‘Yes sir?’ His voice seemed to ring.
‘We want to get married,’ I said.
‘Yes sir. Special licence?’
‘Yes. Now, please.’
‘Yes sir.’
He pulled out a form and pushed it across the counter. I completed it and my hand was shaking too. ‘Five pounds, sir.’ I handed him a crumpled fiver.
‘I’ll see if the Magistrate can do this right away, sir. Five minutes please.’
He disappeared with the form.
We stood at the counter. I looked at Suzie and she was staring straight ahead.
‘A flower,’ she said blankly, ‘I want a flower to hold.’
I looked around stupidly. ‘No flowers,’ I said.
‘Can’t I have a flower?’
‘A flower—’ I said.
I walked to the doorway. There was Samson standing by the car, a hundred yards away. I beckoned to him and he came running.
‘Flower,’ I said, ‘go and get some flowers.’
‘Flowers, Nkosi?’
‘Steal one. Quick. Any kind.’
He looked at me strangely and then set off down the road at a run. I went back inside.
Samson came back a minute later. He had one yellow winter daisy plucked from the roadside. I gave it to Suzie. She took it and looked at it dazedly.
The clerk came back. ‘This way, sir.’ He beckoned through the door.
I looked at Suzie. She was white. I motioned her forward. She looked at me shakily.
‘No.’
‘What?’ I said.
‘No.’
I was in a daze. ‘Why not?’
‘No, Joe.’ She was shaking.
‘All right. But why?’
‘Because. Because of the look in your eyes.’
I looked at her.
‘Because we quarrel. Because you’re clever and I’m not.’
The daze was turning to laughter.
‘Oh.’
She looked at me and then she laughed too.
‘No, Joe. It’ll keep. Not now, like this.’
‘Okay.’
I laughed nervously. She laughed. We both laughed in the Clerk of Court’s office. The clerk looked at us. Samson was a blur. We laughed into each other’s faces.
‘Look at my hands,’ she laughed. ‘Look how they’re trembling.’
‘Mine too.’
‘Let’s go and have a drink.’
‘Two drinks.’
‘Six drinks.’
We turned and left the clerk. We didn’t even thank him. We stepped out into the cold bright sunshine. We walked diagonally across the street towards the hotel. Suzie held out her hands again. She burst out laughing afresh.
‘Weet jy wat!’ she laughed in Afrikaans.
‘What?’
‘We didn’t even have a ring!’
I threw back my head in the middle of the road and laughed. Samson thought we were nuts.
The ten days went heavily. We met after work and had a few drinks quietly in the bar. We did not talk much.
‘I’ve asked some people around for a farewell drink on Saturday.’
‘Who?’
‘The usual crowd.’
‘Okay.’
When we went home we wondered what to do until she came to my bed.
In the last week she took out all my clothes and sewed on buttons and mended te
ars and darned my socks and she made a list of all the clothes I owned and pinned it up inside the cupboard door. She took my two suits to the cleaners, one at a time.
‘You’ll need another suit.’
‘Why?’
‘You’ve only got two. A man in your position should have several.’
‘Two are enough.’
‘No, they’re not. I’ll go down to Meikle’s tomorrow and bring some home on approval, so I can help you choose one. Otherwise you’ll buy something awful.’
‘What’s it to you how I look from now on?’
‘I like you to look nice. You’re handsome when you’re well turned out,’ she said.
She laid in a large stock of canned vegetables and fruit.
‘The best place to buy meat and so forth is that little butcher on Fourth Avenue.’
‘Okay. Tell Samson.’
‘You can buy good cheap vegetables at that Greek next door, but I know you won’t so I’ve laid in some tinned stuff.’
‘Okay.’
When she had jacked me up, she set about her packing. We dragged out her trunk and pulled her suitcases out from under the bed. Drawer by drawer, hanger by hanger, she laid her clothes out on the bed, and then dispatched them to the suitcases and the trunk.
‘This I won’t need till I get to England, so into the trunk. This I won’t need. I’ll wear this on the boat. I’ll need that—’
Into the trunk and suitcases they went, laid neatly, flat, sensibly, economically, things tucked in here and squeezed in there, a proper place for everything as only a woman can pack, even though it’s impossible, because I’ve tried it. I sat on a chair and watched her, her long body bending and stooping gracefully. A lock of hair fell across her face and she blew it aside. It fell back and she scooped it behind her ear, and after a little while it fell back across her face again. In the centre of the floor grew a pile of things she was discarding.
‘Samson can have those for his girlfriends.’
Outside it was still cold and it still got dark early, but the dry bite was going out of the night. I thought of the summer coming, the long hot summer, the Sundays and the big trout in the Inyanga streams, and the sun setting over the Zambezi, but no Suzie, and I wanted to sob out loud.
She picked up her fishing rod and pulled it apart at the connection. She looked at the pieces sadly.
‘Oh well, into the trunk.’
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