Chapter Two
On the night of the reunion, Sarah took pains to look her best. For her, that meant a careful application of lip gloss and mascara, the choice of her most-becoming dress, shaving her legs and wearing the one pair of high-heeled shoes she owned. She also, after some dithering, decided against wearing underwear, in her mind to make things easy later. She arrived early, hoping to catch Hunter as he arrived. First she did a quick survey of the Hall, and was relieved to find that the curtains and the window seat were just as she remembered them. The curtains, however, were opened, so choosing a moment when no one was looking, she drew them closed, setting the scene for the drama she was expecting to take place. Then she loitered around the entrance to the school, pretending to look at the pictures and trophies of sports teams that were displayed there. Several of the girls who had been members of her class walked by her, their conversations becoming whispers punctuated by giggles as they passed her.
Only one couple greeted her. They were Stanley and Moira Bandawe. She had been Moira Mposa when they were at school and had married Stanley soon after graduation. The few Malawians who attended St. Andrew’s didn’t associate a lot with the whites, but Stanley had been almost as near the top of the class as Sarah and had attended the church where Sarah’s parents ministered, so knew her before they had turned up at St. Andrew’s together. Knowing her to be friendly and non-racist, he had turned to her as a safe companion with whom he shared the common ground of being thinkers and academic achievers. Moira wasn’t a top class brain, but her father had been Ambassador to the UN for several years, so she’d been to primary school in New York which gave her an academic advantage at St. Andrew’s and also drew her to Sarah, who was American. The three of them had formed a kind of natural clique.
Stanley had gotten a job in Lilongwe soon after graduation, so they hadn’t seen much of each other for a long time, and enjoyed catching up. While they were chatting, Sarah saw Hunter stroll in, but felt unable to be rude to the Bandawes by breaking their conversation off abruptly, so let him pass. The Bandawes, however, sensed that she was no longer fully engaged in the conversation, and with some disappointment soon broke it off themselves. They felt, as they agreed later, that it was just another example of how unviable inter-racial friendships were in Malawi.
As soon as they left, Sarah went looking for Hunter. She soon saw him, but he was surrounded by a cluster of females, which didn’t fit at all with her ideas of how their meeting should take place. She figured that Hunter wouldn’t be free to say how he really felt about her with the others present, let alone make a rendezvous with her behind the curtains. So she skulked around, trying to look occupied, but keeping Hunter in sight. It was almost an hour before she saw her chance and Hunter was alone. She saw that he was heading for another group of friends, though, so she practically ran across the floor to intercept him. “Hell-o Hunter,” she got out rather breathlessly.
“Hello,” he said with a rather bemused expression on his face. “Do I know you?”
“It’s Sarah!”
“Oh yes,” he replied, with an expression that showed he still didn’t have a clue who she was. “Nice to see you.” Then he turned away and carried on where he was headed. Sarah, stunned, just stood there rooted to the ground with her mouth open and watched him go. The group Hunter was approaching had seen it all and were giggling, and when Hunter reached them they told them who she was, and the whole group looked at her and laughed. Sarah, her face scarlet, turned and almost ran out of the hall, managing not to cry until she was safely in her bedroom at home, but then sobbed for a good deal of the night, appalled at how stupid she’d been, just like a silly Mills and Boons heroine. In retrospect, she saw that her daydreams had been entirely the product of wishful thinking. Pathetic! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Finally, as the cocks began to crow, she decided that a life of misery, of being overlooked and insulted, was her inevitable lot, her destiny, and she might as well get used to it. On that note, exhausted, she fell asleep.
The next day, by coincidence – or, as Sarah was convinced in retrospect, God incidence, Sarah was in the Times Bookshop, when a magazine on the rack caught her eye. It was a magazine for teens called, “The Good Life” and was, a typical teen advice magazine. The cover article was entitled, “You Don’t Have to be a Loser!” and looking over it, Sarah thought it was speaking directly to her. So she bought the magazine, hurried home and read it in her bedroom with the door locked. It was, as she had thought, directed at teens in exactly her situation and contained specific instructions on how to get out of it. It told her to take the example of someone who was very popular and make a list of all the things that she thought kept her from being popular. For many of those things, there was a paragraph or two with advice about how to change. It counseled readers to concentrate on the exterior physical things, because if you took care to eliminate them, that would automatically take care of many of the interior problems of personality, because of the improved self-image and self-confidence.
Sarah took every word of the article to heart. It said that you shouldn’t try to change everything at once, but to concentrate on one, or at most two things at a time. After some thought and an analytical look at herself in the mirror decided that she would get her hair styled – that would be easy - and lose weight which would be more difficult. That very day she asked around her friends at work to find a good hairstylist. The barely concealed surprise of her friends, and the covert glances they threw at each other when she asked were confirmation that she’d made the right choice. Obviously her hair had been a topic of conversation, and it couldn’t have been approving, that she was sure of. It didn’t take long for her to discover that there were only 3 hairdressers that did whites’ hair in Blantyre, and there was a general agreement on which was the best, which was, unsurprisingly, the priciest. Money was not a problem; she just hadn’t thought it worth the bother, so she made an appointment immediately. The hairdresser pursed her lips disapprovingly when she saw Sarah, and recommended that she cut her hair to a length that just covered her ears and dye it a shade that was lighter than Sarah’s natural color and adding some tawny streaks to give it life. Sarah asked if she should perm her hair, since she had often wished her hair was curly, but the stylist recommended not. “Straight hair,” she said either combed down or pulled back in a ponytail would minimize her rather pudgy jaw and heavy neck. When Sarah said that she was going to lose weight too, the stylist encouraged her and said, “When you do that, we can look at curls again.
When the stylist was finished she showed Sarah her work in the mirrors and Sarah was delighted. “You know,” said the stylist, “with a little bit of work you could be really beautiful. Why don’t you go around the corner to the beautician’s? I go there myself and she’s really good and not too expensive. She could show you what make up you need. Sarah thanked her and said she would, but she didn’t intend to take the advice; she wasn’t the painted lady type, she thought, and didn’t want to be. When she got home, she discovered that her parents didn’t really approve of the money she had spent, but were nonetheless pleased at her new appearance. At work the next day, her colleagues were so complimentary and excited that it made her day, and even the customers seemed friendlier, possibly because Sarah for the first time in her life felt approval coming her way, so held herself straighter, smiled more often, and talked more easily.
3 Book Romance Bundle: "Her Last Love Affair" & "Loving Him Peacefully" & "Unwelcome Reunion" Page 27