‘The Nkosi never buy pint bottle. Cheaper if Nkosikazi buy big bottle.’
Suzanna smiled. ‘All right. Six quarts of Lion, please,’ she said to the man.
Samson plucked her sleeve again. ‘How much, Nkosikazi?’
‘I don’t know. All the same price. How much for a quart?’ She turned to the man again.
The little man beamed sourly. ‘Three and a penny, madam.’
Samson shook his head. ‘Only three bob,’ he said. ‘Where I always get beer for the Nkosi, only cost three bob.’
The little man looked peeved, and tapped his fingers. ‘Save sixpence,’ Samson said.
Suzanna grinned. ‘All right. Will you get it?’
Samson beamed. ‘Always.’
‘So how much must I give you. Six threes are eighteen.’
Samson shook his head. ‘The Nkosi got account for that shop.’
‘Ah,’ Suzanna said wisely. ‘All right, off you go and then take the skoff home.’
‘Okay, Nkosikazi,’ and Samson left with the basket, looking relieved.
She went to the Men’s Department. She went along the counters studying the shirts. Drip-dries, that’s what he needs, cotton, not nylon, nylon’s too hot. Might as well get two. Might as well get three, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. She picked up three shirts.
‘Yes madam?’
‘I want—’ she turned around to the voice and stopped. Jake Jefferson was looking down at her. ‘Hullo, Suzie.’
Her eyes widened.
‘Good God, Jake! What are you doing in Bulawayo?’
‘I’m just down for a few days for a conference.’
He was fatter. And whiter and older, more lined. His good looks were sort of blurred. Suzanna looked at him. She felt nothing, only compassion. He was beginning to get old and he was still unhappy.
‘You’re looking lovely,’ he said. ‘You’ve put on some weight again.’
‘You’re looking fine too, Jake.’
‘When did you get back?’
‘Two days ago.’ She spoke measuredly, carefully.
‘Did you get my letters?’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
‘You didn’t answer them.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
They looked at each other. ‘Did you get your promotion?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Jake, I really am.’
He nodded.
He looked at her steadily.
‘What are you doing in the O.K. Bargain Basement?’
‘This is the only place I can afford to shop,’ he said.
‘Oh.’
‘And you?’
‘I’m buying some shirts.’
‘For Joseph Mahoney?’
‘Yes.’
He nodded. ‘Where are you staying?’
‘With him for the time being.’
He closed his eyes a moment and nodded. ‘Are you going to marry him?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘Just as soon as we’ve got used to being back together.’
‘Are you sure you’re going to marry him?’
‘Yes.’
He looked at her and shook his head, ‘I’m not,’ he said slowly. ‘And if you do it won’t work.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Great Mahoney’s bitten the dust – Another good man goes west – Two minutes silence, chaps, to mourn the passing of one of the boys – What’ll the pubs do now – Well what do you know, what do you know! – Can you see old Joe pushing a pram – Well for Chrissake. Imagine him pushing a pram.
The usual. The usual crap and banter, the usual bull-shooting and buying of beers. It was supposed to be a secret, they would sneak off to Balla Balla or Essexvale or Gwanda or somewhere and get the District Commissioner to jack them up with a Special Licence. But as Max put it, if you’re anybody who’s anybody in Bulawayo you can’t fart without everybody from North End to Kumalo sniffing the breeze and laying odds who done it.
Mahoney walked out of the Courthouse in the afternoon sun, on to the hot dry pavement and tarmac of Seventh. Out of the Courthouse behind him, alongside him, ahead of him, hurried the other civil servants, disgorging on to the pavements, hurrying over to their cars: out of the Post Office block across the road emerged the civil servants, hurrying to their cars: out of Charter House came the business men, the bright young execs and the trainee execs and the typists and the private secs and the buyers and the salesmen, into their cars going home to the clubs and the pubs. Thank God it’s Friday. Cars going home, north up Fife to the nicer blocks of flats between the little old red-roofed houses with their red concrete stoeps and their red dust backyards, and beyond to the new flat third-acre modern houses of Sauerstown and North End, where the lawns struggle and the neat hedges are still trying to grow up. Where you can see the nappies hanging on the washing lines strung across the backyards between the kitchen door and the servants’ kia, where the black nannies push their masters’ babies in the hire-purchase prams down the flat gravel roads so that the Nkosikazis can also go to work to pay for the nice new furniture and the new car and the new house and all the other nice trinkets, cars going south and east to the old flats in Thirteenth and Fourteenth and Fifteenth, the pre-war jobs built among the red-roofed red-bricked houses with the red stoeps and maybe a row of ferns on the verandah in paraffin tins painted green and the rickety chicken coops and the battered kid’s tricycle and the packing cases and the motorcar shell and the broom with no bristles left and the servants’ kia with its cracked window patched with cardboard, and beyond to the new modern little houses back to back and cheek to cheek on the quarter-acre stands of Sunnyside, and beyond to the old mature three-acre gardens of Hillside and the modern mansions of Kumalo with the swimming pools and billiard tables and sundowners on the lawn, to the parties at the Club and golf in the mornings and gin-slings at noon and a drive to the Matopos on Sunday and four weeks at Margate every year. Mahoney looked at them queuing at the intersection in their hire-purchase motorcars to go home to their hire-purchase houses and he realised he was almost one of them. Almost a suburbanite, a Bulawayo suburbanite at that, the flat horizon brigade, a Club man. He felt a moment’s twinge of fear, of horror almost, then it was gone. He looked at the feeling in his breast and turned it over. It was relief. Relief that the straggle was all over, relief that there would be no more struggle, that now he was going to let life wash over him instead of trying to divert the flood into other channels.
He turned into Fort. It was thick with bicycles, blacks riding home to the locations, to the flat straight-laned dirty brick and dust oceans of Mzilikazi and Mpopoma and Iminyela and Tshabalala. A girl was walking ahead of Mahoney, an office typist, maybe, or a shop girl going home to one of the flats. She had good legs, a little plump maybe but good in high heels, and her skirt fitted tight across her buttocks. She took short steps because her skirt was tight and with each step her buttocks jerked from side to side against the material, the skirt curved inwards over the mound of her buttocks and clung down the back of her legs so you could make out the line of her panties and the clip of her garter tight and slack tight and slack went the skirt over her buttocks and the back of her legs, with each short step there was a faint dent where the cheeks of her bottom moved. She glanced backwards at Mahoney and met his eye and she tossed her seventeen-year-old head and walked on. And Mahoney looked at her legs again and he looked away and tried to think of something else. He thought of something else but he knew there was a feeling inside him that squirmed. All that was over too, along with the struggle. And he wanted to hurry back to the flat to Suzie to reassure himself that it did not matter about the girl.
Suzie was there, in shorts, a lock of hair hanging limp over her face. In her hand was a saw, on the floor bricks and planks. There were curtains in the window. His books were off the sill, no longer heaped in the corners. There was a book case made of bricks and planks. There were two big grass mats. There were flowers in two vases.
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br /> ‘What do you think?’
Mahoney smiled. He forced a smile. Why should he not be pleased? God knew it was an improvement. ‘Very very good.’
Suzie breathed with relief. It was good. The room looked comfortable. It was transformed.
‘I’ve only just started,’ she said excitedly.
He nodded. But there was that feeling inside again. The room was gone. Life was changing suddenly. It was merging with the rest of Bulawayo.
‘Let’s have a drink,’ he said, and he felt better, and she said, ‘All right.’
‘Come here,’ he said. She came to him and he put his arm round her and down over her buttocks and squeezed the back of her long smooth legs.
‘Everything’s going to be fine,’ he said and he kissed her: ‘Now bring me a beer and then we’ll go out somewhere.’
They went to the green Sheridan and then to the pink Flamingo and then to the red Carousel and then to the purple Vic. And in the pinks and greens and air-conditioned inbetweens the claustrophobia of the redecorated flat and the brown horizons and the office girl with the legs were flushed out and as he looked at her long tanned legs as she walked to the Ladies’ he felt only unqualified relief, relief that those legs were his for ever, relief that never again would he have a choice. And they talked about what they were going to do and what it was going to be like and they laughed and joked and afterwards they went on to the Wamborough and danced to Antonio and they met Max and the boys and their girls and they had a wonderful party like everybody else was having all over Bulawayo and everybody made jokes and wished them luck and Antonio got to hear about it and he made a little announcement – that well-known public prosecutor and hees beyoutifool bride-to-be – and he played For They Are Jolly Good Feh-hel-lows and they went home very late and very happy.
The next day was Saturday, and when they woke up the bedroom was already hot and the sky sat upon the dry red-roofed town like a hot blue belljar.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
October was bad. The whole of the earth was hot and dry and the bush crackled brown and hard and brittle and hot and the cattle were dusty and thin and the river-beds were hot and sandy and dry and the fish died in the dams. The Government officers rode out into the Native Reserves in their Landrovers and the District Commissioners called all the headmen of the kraals together for indabas and the Government Land Officers warned the headmen that it was going to be a bad year for rain in Matebeleland, that the rains would come late and they would not last a long time. The earth was dry, they said, and the grass was gone and the cattle were chewing the dust. The people must thin out their herds, the District Commissioner and the Government Land Officers said, each man must examine his herd and see which beasts he favoured the least and he must sell them to the Government for money so that the Government could slaughter them while there was still flesh on them for men to eat. And the people must sell their goats which trample the land and strip the earth of the little which the cattle could eat, for goats are useless creatures. And the people should take the money which the Government was offering for the beasts and buy food for their families for the crops would be bad and the people would be hungry this year. And when the rains did come and the grass grew again it would be better for the men who had sold some of their cattle and their goats for there would be more for those they kept to eat and next year they would be fatter and they would be better able to survive the winter. The headman sat in their circles on the hot dry ground and listened politely to the Government officers and they agreed that it would be a good thing to sell some of their cattle for money while there was still flesh upon them and they promised to drive the beasts they favoured least to the meeting place next week when the Government would come and buy them. But the headmen did not like to sell their cattle because a man counted his wealth in the number of cattle and goats that he owned and in the number of daughters he had which he sold for cattle as brides. And the tribesmen consulted the witch-doctors who make the rain to come and the witch-doctors told them that the white men did not know what they were talking about because the white men did not understand how to make rain, and they told them that they should not sell any cattle or goats. And then there came some black men to the Native Reserves, strange black men in city clothes who drove up in motorcars and they held indabas too and they told the tribesmen about the Freedom that they were going to bring to the country, how all men would own many cattle and goats and motorcars too, like the white men did, and that they should not sell any cattle or goats to the Government because it was all the white man’s trick to cheat the people out of their wealth so that they could keep them poor and powerless for ever. And the men in the city clothes told them about the Party, which was a new thing never heard of before, and they told the people to form committees and they said that each man should pay one shilling towards the Party to show that he belonged to the Party, and when the Party brought Freedom to the country those who had cards would be the first to get many fat cattle and motorcars like the white men had. And on the appointed day when the Government man came to the appointed place to buy, no man came with any cattle. And October grew longer and hotter and the earth became harder and drier and many of the old water holes began to dry up and many of the cattle and the goats died. The tribesmen hoed the hot dry soil and watched the skies but no clouds came, and many men put their clothes and their trinkets in an old sack or in a bag and they walked the long hot roads to Bulawayo to look for work to make some money to buy some food for their families because the rain did not come and the mealies did not grow.
The tarmac streets were hot in Bulawayo and the tar melted and when you climbed into your car you put a newspaper on the seat so that you did not burn yourself and even the steering wheel was hot. And you opened all the windows and started the engine and loosened your tie and took off your jacket and you drove down the street in the queue and the sun shimmered off the hood of the car in front of you and it beat up off the tarmac and it shone white off the white walls of the new office blocks and red off the low Victorian shop fronts of Main Street. And you looked at the typists and the telephone girls and the shop girls and the secretaries skipping across the road to the shelter of the shade of the shop verandahs and to their hot cars and you knew that they were wet under their armpits and they smelt of sweat there despite the Mum and Odo-ro-no, and that their thighs were moist and salty no matter what they put on there to kid themselves and their men that they were all sweet and fresh and fragrant there all the time like the magazines say that women are or at least can be, if only. And you look down Seventh, down the wide brown yellow avenue of jacarandas separated by the hot black shimmering tar and its crocodile of metal hoods of motorcars heading out to the suburbs and to the flats and you see the sun beating down on the red tiled and corrugated-iron roof-tops and the red dirt of the backyards and the diapers which dry in half an hour, and you come home to the hot house with its browning lawns and its hot red stoeps, home to the flat with its all-glass main wall of the sitting-room overlooking a hot quiet strip of tar and gravel and dry jacarandas and the hot metal hoods of the cars parked outside and the hot red roofs of the houses and you say to yourself: A drink, what I want is a drink, ice cold. Or you go to the soft plush air-conditioned Sheridan or the Vic or the Carousel or the Wamborough where Matabeleland and its hot white red-brown town is shut off by the pinks and greens and inbetweens and the cool canned music, or the Club. And there is only one thing to do in the hot wide flat world and that is to go home to sleep off the cold beer and the gin-slings and to screw your gin-slung sweaty-thighed woman. And in the end, in fact pretty soon, that is all you think about, that and your salary and the hire-purchase instalments and tonight’s party and next week’s party and that is all there is to think about anyway, because not even the kaffirs were really a problem in those days.
That October was more like that than other Octobers. It was the beginning of bad times.
That last Friday of that bad October Mahoney drove to
the Courthouse early. He had been awake since dawn, even though he had been to bed late. He had been wide awake with the first light, staring at the ceiling and at the blue belljar sky and he knew that it would always be like this, waking in the morning and seeing the sky and going to the Courthouse and coming home and drinking beer and going to the Club and coming home and copulating: And you can never get away from it, never except maybe down to Margate for four weeks a year and it takes you three days to drive there and three days to drive back because you’ve got to consider your wife and kids and when you get to Margate you sit on the beach in the sun just like you do here and you go back to the hotel early so the kids can go to the Kiddies Lunch and you sit on the hotel verandah and have a few beers and then you and your wife go into lunch at one-fifteen at the latest because otherwise the management and the waiters get cheesed off because after all the hotel is only costing forty bob a day per adult and quarter price for the kids and what can you expect for forty bob, but that is all you can afford. And then after lunch you go to your hotel bedroom and have a snooze and maybe you screw your wife if the kids are away with the nanny, if you can afford to bring your nanny with you, and then you go down to the beach again or maybe for a drive and have some tea at one of those beach-side cafes with Coca-Cola signs and the chromium Gaggia Espresso coffee and milk-shake mixer jobs with a juke box in the corner and the teenagers sitting on the Formica chairs at the Formica tables drinking Coke, man, and Choco shakes and chewing gum and saying ‘Jeez-like las’ night woz a ball, hey?’ and ‘Jeez-like man but ou’ Cynthia’s a doll hey, I jus’ somma’ wanna screw her, man.’ Or maybe you go and have your tea on the verandah of one of the other nice hotels along the beach front and you see the dear old souls down from Rhodesia or Jo’burg having their annual holiday, also drinking tea, and the youngsters with their strong tanned bodies and the girls from up country having their holiday and you think, I suppose you think: Jeez, I’d love to screw that one. But of course it’s out of the question and anyway you wouldn’t because after all you’ve got kids and responsibilities and so forth. Or maybe you take your wife and kid for a drive in the country and you stop for tea, and you think how nice it would be to live down here with the seaside only a few miles away and you could go and spend your Sundays down on the beach with a picnic lunch in the picnic basket you bought at the O.K. Sale, that’s the only reason why you could afford it: but of course living down here is out of the question, too, because you’re all settled in Matabeleland which after all has the highest standard of living of them all and you’ve got your house there and your servants and your job and you’re doing okay up in Rhodesia and your kids are at school and anyway how could you afford to chuck up everything and move and start at the bottom again, you wouldn’t get another good job like you’ve got in Rhodesia. How can you take a chance now you’ve got the kids? And after your four weeks you drive back across the Limpopo back to Matabeleland and for another year you wake up under the blue belljar sky and you go for sundowners at the Club and the Sheridan and the Flamingo and the Carousel and the Vic and you talk about the same things you talked about last year and you look at your best friend’s wife and you think: I’d love to shag Connie; and you know that Connie’s thinking the same thing. And after a few years you even think this life is just fine and you cease to notice the brown horizons and you forget you’re only a big fish because it’s a bloody small pond. You don’t even think it’s a small pond.
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