She looked about the room sadly and then she said: ‘What about your book?’
‘I’m taking it with me,’ he said, ‘in the small suitcase. It’ll fit in exactly.’
‘Are you going to finish it?’
‘Of course.’
‘On the ship?’
‘I’ll find a quiet place on the ship, I’m sure.’
She nodded and then she was silent for a long moment and then she sobbed once and dropped her head into her hand.
‘Oh your book! Your book, your bloody book, your beautiful book! If only there wasn’t your book.’
He put a hand on her slender shoulder.
She held her head in her hand. ‘Another woman, I could compete with that. But your book? Oh, I want it to be good and I want you to be a success at writing because you want that so much and it’ll make you happy and if you’re happy then I’ll be happy. I’ll put up with all your irritability about your book and all that. But your book isn’t a bond between us, it’s a barrier, a barrier, it’s a barrier because I can’t share that with you, I don’t really feel for it, not like you do. So what can I do, I’m an outsider looking in and even that would be okay by me if you were to accept me as just somebody looking in who loves you. But you don’t, Joe, you resent me for not being like you. You want somebody like you. Me, I’m not like you. I’m just a nurse, a farmer’s daughter, who loves you and you don’t accept that, you want me to be like you.’
She broke off and she was still looking into her naked lap and playing with his hand upon her thigh.
‘Suzie.’
He sat, not knowing what to say except to say over and over again that he loved her and wanted her and that he did not want to go away.
‘Suzie …’ She turned slowly and looked at him.
‘Suzie – I’m going to explore the Amazon. Then I’ll start work somewhere and when I do I’ll send for you and if we still love each other then we’ll just get married, that’s all.’
She looked at him, she nodded but her nod was sad and not convincing. Mahoney clutched at a straw.
‘Suzie, maybe you’re pregnant.’
She nodded.
‘Then we’ll have to get married,’ he said. She nodded again and then very slightly she shook her head and sighed. ‘That’s no reason,’ she said.
‘Suzie! Don’t be an idiot! Of course you would.’ She looked at him steadily. ‘Suzie! I’m going to make love to you now. It’s early in the morning and we’re both fresh and it’s the right time, I want to bind you to me. You can’t shake your head at me.’
She looked up at him and she did not resist his strength but she shook her head.
‘Oh yes!’ She did not flinch and then he rolled on top of her fiercely and then he was inside her. And afterwards she lay quietly underneath him, holding him close and she was quiet and she patted his back, and there had been no passion between them, only bond. Then before they could speak of it, they heard the noise of Samson’s key in the back door.
Samson and Mahoney carried the suitcase and the haversack down the red cement steps of Fortwell Mansions with Suzie’s high heels clicking behind them. They said nothing. They threw the gear into the back seat of her old Volkswagen and Samson climbed quietly into the back seat and Mahoney climbed beside Suzie. They drove off down Fort Street matter-of-factly. It was not yet six o’clock and Fort Street was quiet. The dogs’ urine patches were outside Hassim’s, and the stunted jacaranda trees and the rubber hedges outside the poor little old Victorian houses were dusty. Mahoney said: ‘I never thought I would be sad to see the back of this street, but I am.’ And Suzie changed gear and said nothing and Samson sort of coughed.
She took him out on to the Great North Road which led north to Kenya and south to Johannesburg. They drove through the dusty quiet surburban streets, then they were heading for the brown horizons. They drove in silence out past the Drive-in cinema, well out of Bulawayo, and then Mahoney said: ‘I suppose this is as good as anywhere’ and Suzie pulled up on the dry gravel verge.
The bush was brown and dry in the sunrise but it pulled at Mahoney’s guts. Samson unloaded the haversack and the small suitcase on to the gravel and Mahoney and Suzie leaned against the little car with the first rays of the sun glinting off it. Samson Ndhlovu gangled his feet and his arms for a moment then he walked twenty yards off down the road and he sat down on a milestone and he faced the rising sun and he lit a cigarette.
‘Well – good-bye, Suzie.’
‘Good-bye Joseph.’
He had tears in his eyes and his chin quivered. ‘God bless.’
She closed her eyes and nodded and then looked again. ‘God bless you too.’
She turned quickly and threw open the door and climbed in.
‘Samson!’ she called while she looked at the dashboard, but he did not move. She put the car into gear, and she took one look at Mahoney, then she let out the clutch and crunched away. She did a turn on the gravel and she did not look up at him again but he could see the tears running down her face. Then she was gone.
Samson stood up slowly and came back to Mahoney.
‘This is not a good place for those who wish to beg to ride in motorcars,’ he said, ‘it is better if we carry your bags to the top of the hill.’
Mahoney nodded.
They carried the bag and case to the top of the hill and then Mahoney said, ‘This is a good place.’
He turned to the black man. ‘You should have gone with the Nkosikazi to save yourself a long walk.’
Samson shrugged, ‘I have plenty time, Nkosi. I go home now, I do not seek new work.’
Mahoney nodded. He held out his hand.
‘Good-bye, my friend.’
‘Good-bye, Nkosi. You will seek me out when you return?’
‘I will seek you out, induna.’ Samson nodded.
He turned and headed back along the tar, through the hot dry bush to the hot dry town.
Part Six
Chapter Thirty-Two
I had a couple of fifty cent beers at Los Angeles airport between planes. I was not excited about returning to Africa. Africa was very far away, now, after three years. America was my home now, I was an American now. I wasn’t even excited yet about seeing Suzie again. It was nearly a year since she had left me in New York, and I had gotten used to living without her again. At times I said to myself: You are foolish to go all the way back to Africa to see her, why are you going? You left her in Bulawayo, then you met her again in England but you still could not bring yourselves to marry each other, neither in London nor America nor Paris nor Rusape nor Bulawayo, so what the hell are you going to open it all for? Because you woke up one American morning and found it was spring again and the snow was melting and you thought of the lakes and the fishing and the water skiing and no Suzie, and you found your heart was still breaking, I said. And then you thought of Suzie, warm and golden in the springtime, and snug and soft in the winter, and you realised you had to go back to Africa to see Suzie. But it still did not feel as if I was going back to Africa. It was not until I was on the plane and saw the lights of Los Angeles end abruptly at the black shoreline that it came home to me that I was really leaving America and going home. You’re nuts, I said to myself as the boys in the office had said. Why don’t you rather send for Suzie? What do you want to go back to Africa for? To get your throat cut? Africa has had it, the Federation has had it, Partnership is a failure, the blacks are whooping it up, there’s no future for the white man there any more. No, I’m only going for a visit, I said, and then I’ll come back. I looked at the diminishing night light shorelines of Los Angeles and I said: Yes, I’ll be back. I’m not going to stay in Africa to get my throat cut, I’m not that crazy.
In Honolulu the Company’s man took me on the town. We drank Maitais at two bucks a throw at the Halekelani and ate crayfish Thermidor and drank French wine on the Company. We went down to Sailor Town and we found a couple of Polynesian maidens with waterlilies behind their ears and undulating hi
ps, perched on barstools with their skirts hitched up to their groins and we bought them Maitais too.
‘No no no, I’ll put it down to entertaining visiting executive from Head Office,’ he said when I tried to make a token payment of one round. ‘You’re coming back to the Company, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m coming back all right.’
And I was. I was coming back to this land of milk and honey all right.
The Company man said to me: ‘’Scuse me for talking shop, but I’ve got this Prospect. Worth about a million and a half alive, and one and three-quarters dead. His death tax would be a lot, right? Got a couple of companies and a wife and a few kids. Now I tried to sell him a policy to cover his death tax so his widow would pick up his estate intact. But he doesn’t want to know, because his lawyer says he’ll only increase his death tax. Now I’ve got to find a plan so he can cover his death tax without increasing his taxable estate.’
I figured out his Prospect’s taxable estate over another Maitai and I produced a stereotype trust and corporate plan whereby this Prospect would kick the bucket extremely liquid, without increasing his taxable estate. The Company man was overjoyed, and prevailed upon me to call round at the office tomorrow and dictate it to his typist. Certainly, I agreed. Whereupon he called for four more Maitais and we turned back to the two Polynesian girls who still had their dresses up to their loins.
‘Christ, I think I’ll sell this prospect tomorrow.’
I squeezed my girl’s thigh and thought how good it was to be a blue-eyed boy of a great American corporation.
In Japan and Hong Kong and Manila and Saigon and Bangkok and Singapore the Company’s men looked after me very well and it felt very good to belong to a great American corporation, and I assured myself I was going back.
At times when I sat with an Oriental barstool under my bum I wondered why I was spending all this time and money going back to Africa to see Suzie. I said to myself: if you never see her again it wouldn’t be the end of your world, you are used to going it alone again, you have garnered a new life about you, a good life, you would quite easily get over her completely now if you were to learn that she is married.
Then I thought of the flat we had had together in New York, the waking up in the morning in the warm double bed together, and seeing the icicles as long as your arm hanging outside the window, the trees in the avenue glistening like glass, and the street thick and crisp white, I thought of the warm rustling woman sounds of Suzie getting dressed and the good warm sounds of her cooking breakfast. I thought of the frozen lakes and us skating across them, her long blonde hair flying and her nose and cheeks pink and her eyes and mouth sparkling with joy, of the log cabins and drinking wine by the firelight, snug and happy with each other and then going off to bed while the world was white and frozen and beautiful outside in the moonlight: and I thought of the spring and the new joy in the air, and the new green on the earth and the lakes cracking up, and the hungry fish starting to bite, and the soft paddle of the canoe, and the plop of the bait in the early morning mist on the water and her ‘Joey – Joey – Joey—’ as her rod bent, and afterwards the love on a hot rock and in the evening the camp fire. And I thought of the summer too, the long hot summer, fishing and sailing and water skiing, the water glistening on her golden full body, and the autumn too, when the forests turn blood red and the sky begins to grey and you see the squirrels begin to scurry across the lawns with their swag in furry mouths and you know that winter is coming – but without Suzie, now, without Suzie to be warm with. And I knew that spring and summer and winter would never be the same again without Suzie, and I was glad I was going back to Africa to find her. And I thought of us in London when I quit the Amazon, and Paris too, and Madrid, and I knew that they would never be the same again without Suzie, that whenever I walked through London or Paris or Madrid or New York, I would always be looking for Suzie, I would always be waiting for her to fall into step beside me and slip her arm through mine and tug it and say: Look at that Joey – isn’t it funny? Or: Oh look Joey, isn’t it beautiful! A steamy lovely noisy London pub would never be the same without Suzie, wrapped up in her duffle beside me, sipping her flat bitter and telling me about the nut case she saw on the tube today, a Paris sidewalk café would never be the same without Suzie sitting crisp and summery and sleek and elegant, London and Paris and Madrid and New York would never be the same because I would always be looking for Suzie. And I thought of her pulling me aside and pointing into a shop window at a pair of brief panties and saying: Aren’t they gorgeous! – how would you like me in those? And I longed for her, even though I knew every inch of her I had never got tired of her saying those things to me. Sometimes I thought of the lounge of the flat and the long long silences between the two armchairs and the boredom sitting brittle upon us and the sense of futility of trying to stir ourselves out of it alone, but only sometimes I thought of this, and not for very long, because so many places would never be the same. And I was glad I was going back to Africa to find Suzie before it was too late.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The night before my ship docked in Durban, South Africa, was Christmas Eve. The ship was very gay. I had been knocking off this Johannesburg bird called Dina, amidst the lifeboats, since our second day out of Perth. You know how it is with birds at sea, and I think Johannesburg birds are more so. They grow up very young in Johannesburg, with all that gold underground. Dina was very good. She was tall and poised and slick, except for the scab on the twentieth vertebra of her back. Every night she rubbed the same spot against the deck or against the lifeboat davit, every morning there was a new little scab, and then every night it was rubbed off again. I think she will always have a little scar there on her twentieth vertebra, about the middle of her back. Some Dina. She said she was coming to visit me in America. She said she would buy me a shack up in the mountains where I could write all day long, or a cottage down on the beach on some Caribbean island, and we would have a boat and we could go fishing for weeks at a time, and the boat would have a special cabin fitted for me with a desk and a tape recorder and a typewriter, and all the books I’ve always wanted, and I could write. And every year we would fly over to Europe for skiing in the winter, and to Africa to hunt. Dina was something, svelte, soft and full and blonde and silky to touch, and very on the ball, all the answers, Dina. She had been looking for her soulmate, she said. I sat with Dina on a sundeck in my swimsuit drinking good booze and looking at her long blonde gold body with the tiny soft hairs glinting gold on her arms and legs and I thought: she is beautiful, Mahoney, and she has a soul and she wants you and she is rich and she could give you everything you want, you need never work again, you could spend the rest of your life writing and thinking and becoming wise, like George Bernard Shaw was mollycoddled by his millionairess and, actually, you could love her, indeed you could be absolutely smitten if you would let yourself, if you stopped playing it cool and hard-arsed, and let yourself go. If you forgot about Suzie. You wouldn’t even have to forget about Suzie, you’d only have to surrender to the fact that Suzie is gone, that she left you a year ago, and admit that you have gotten over her, admit it to yourself, that’s all, accept that Suzie and you are no good for each other, otherwise you would never have let her go. Often I thought: you should not see Suzie in Durban to re-open all the old scars, it is not fair to her either, she has garnered a new life about her too now, she has almost gotten over you too, it’s not fair to upset her all over again, she is over thirty now, you must give her a chance to find somebody else to love. But on Christmas Eve there was drink and song and dance in the bar and I was gay and laughing because tomorrow I was going to see Suzie, tomorrow I would hold my soft Suzie in my arms again. And then Christmas Day dawned, red, and there was South Africa, silent and vast, Durban rising big and rich and sleepy out of the sea, and I thought: somewhere up there Suzie is lying fast asleep in her bed, warm and smooth and smelling of Suzie, and in her room are her things I would recognise,
her dresses and nightgowns, and her hairbrushes and her slippers and her shoes, and I was very excited and very happy. I was very impatient with the delays of docking and clearing customs and immigration. I said good-bye to Dina with a chaste kiss on her cheek and a promise to write and I climbed into my taxi with a laugh in my breast for the joy of Suzie.
It was two o’clock by the time the taxi dropped me off at the back of the house she shared up on the Berea. I left my suitcase behind the back hedge. My hands were shaking. I ran my fingers through my hair and looked at my fingernails. My mouth was dry from licking my lips and smoking since dawn. I walked round the side of the house to the front door. There was laughter and talking coming from within, and a background of music. Oh Christ, a crowd, a crowd of Suzie’s housemates and their boyfriends, her new life gathered about her. This wasn’t the way I wanted to meet Suzie again after a year, thrust into a jolly party. But maybe it was best. I knocked loudly on the front door. The laughter and the talking continued and nobody came. I knocked again and a male voice shouted: ‘Come in if you’re good-looking’ and through the frosted door I saw a figure come to the door. Even through the distortion of the glass I recognised Suzie’s wide red mouth and long blonde hair and her big eyes and my heart seemed to turn over. She threw open the door and her eyes widened and she just stood there.
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