None to Accompany Me (20 page)

He couldn't hear; or he heard only as an echo in an empty chamber. His head stirred, she thought—imagined?—as if he were somewhere shaking it. The side of his mouth twisted. It was the way a baby's did when it was too young to smile—could be mistaken for a smile.

The Egyptians took with them furniture, jewellery, food, wine and oil, and attendants who must finish their lives in the next world. Even his false teeth had been taken from him. His watch, his time run out, had been handed to Ben for safekeeping. His attendant, as usual for whites in this country, was a black woman, caring for the failing functions of the body without shaming him. This black face crumpled with weariness, a deep division of effort frowning between the eyes, as if in perpetual anxiety to catch the crammed minibus that brought her back and forth from Moletsane or Chiawelo or Zondi to be with him on the last threshold.

There was no one else.

When the nurse saw he had crossed she would replace her knitting in its plastic bag, pack up her cardigan and tube of lip salve, collect her pay and maybe a gift of oranges from a box bought thriftily in bulk by Lou, and leave.

 

Vera was sorting the clothes to give to charity, taking the opportunity of one of the public holidays renamed like the streets under successive regimes to reflect shifts in the ethos of power: Dingane's Day, his victors oddly conceding the force of the black warrior-king's name, changed to Day of the Covenant, commemorating his defeat by the Boers' hard bargain with God, and become for the present something presumed semantically less offensive to blacks sold out by God: Day of the Vow. It was the first time she had handled a dead person's clothes; life shed like a skin. Different garments marked the ambivalence of the species to which the old man could be ascribed. Why two dress suits and a white dinner jacket as well, whereas the shirts were so worn they were not worth giving away, and there seemed to be only three pairs of misshapen shoes. A silk dressing-gown with satin revers was folded in tissue paper in its presentation box, apparently never worn, and of a style (she shook it out) that suggested it must have been very costly, even in the Thirties in which it must have originated. The awareness of a survivor that one knows so little about the other and there will be no
opportunity to know more, is usual; an accompaniment to death. Only speculation on the evidence of relics: one of the few known personae with which the old man could be identified was as an Englishman among expatriates of various roving nationalities in corporate outposts and Belgian colonial clubs in the Congo. There (Bennet had picked up only the barest outline of his own origin, with which to fascinate her in the mountains) the liaison with the half-Spanish half-Lebanese wife of a dealer in wild animal skins had led to his marriage to his mistress's daughter. The dressing-gown had no place in the category of charity clothing for refugees or drought victims. But Ben wouldn't wear it, it was hardly for him, either. She was just thinking that the one person she could imagine it on, to his pleasure, was young Oupa, she would take it to the Foundation and offer the gift in such a way that it would not be a hand-me-down—when the phone rang. There was Oupa's voice. —Telepathy! You were in my mind—

Agitation made him hoarse. —Mrs Stark, please come over. To the flat.—

A call from Oupa on a public holiday? If he had been in her mind putting a living form into the dressing-gown that, for some reason, the old man had never brought to life, his immediate self had been placed by her, far removed, in however a young man like him would be spending a day at leisure. What on earth—an accident, a mugging, police raid, eviction—all the ordinary hazards that surrounded his life—she thought instantly of what it would be necessary to bring: money and a demeanour to pull rank with the police.

—Mrs Maqoma says you should come.—

—Mrs Maqoma? But what is all this about? Why Mrs Maqoma?—

She heard he was being interrupted by voices in the background. His hand must have cupped the receiver and lifted again. —Please, Mrs Stark, come.—

—Oupa, who's crying there, tell me what's happening— But the call was cut off; she had the impression someone had taken the receiver from him and replaced it.

In the living-room Ben was listening to his favourite Shostakovich piano concerto while reading. She stood about a moment; under her own sense of alarm was the serenity he had regained for himself, alone with her, now that his father and daughter were no longer in the house. —There's just been such a peculiar call from Oupa.—

He looked up over his glasses. —On a holiday? What's he want.—

—God knows. He said Sally says I must come to the flat— (she corrected)—his flat.
Sally
—.

—What's Sally doing there?—

—How would I know?— All she did know was that she had forgotten her promise to call Sally back when she telephoned just before the old man died.

—D'you want me to go with you … what's that you've got— The glasses slipped, his strange deep eyes rested on the dressing-gown lying over her arm; the eyes belonging along with the garment to some unexplained aspect of the old man's being, perhaps even belonging together?—the mistress's gift to her lover, and the son her daughter had borne him—in the double liaison out of which Bennet emerged.

—No … no, I'd better do as they asked.—

Oupa belonged to her Foundation responsibilities, Ben had no obligation to get up from his chair, his books, his music. She lifted her arm: —Grandpops's finery.— Annick's childish name for the old man.

—When would he ever wear it.—

—Of course not. Someone must've given it to him. Long ago, it's old-fashioned luxury.—

The son put out his sallow hand, as he could do now that her house was theirs alone again, to touch hers as she left, spoke drily. —Some woman.—

 

Oupa must have been hanging about at the door waiting to open it to her. There he was. His curly-lashed eyes were lowered sulkily as if to ward off reproach and his tongue comforted dry lips before he spoke. —Sorry. It's her mother made me call you here.—

—And what is this all about?— But they were already entering the room where her voice invaded a silence so charged she might have been shouting. She had the sudden impulse of distaste—premonition—to turn and leave: what am I doing here? What were they all doing here? Sally sat upright, thrust forward on the single armchair; Didy stood with his back to the television set against images without sound; and on the floor, shockingly, face hidden on her knees and arms shielding her head, was the girl, Mpho. Now Vera, with Oupa a step behind her: all might have been thrust by a stage director—you here, you there. Each waited for someone to speak. Only Didy flicked a blink of greeting at Vera's presence.

Sally's face was that of a stranger confronting Vera, broad with hostility and accusation. —Ask your favourite, ask the man you introduced her to, the one she met in your house, the one
you liked so much that we let her go around with him and his friends. Ask him.—

Didy dropped back his head and expelled a breath of distressed embarrassment. He made some sort of appeal to her in her own language.

—No, let Vera ask him!—

—I don't know why you have to drag Vera into it.—

—Well if there's trouble … among friends … we're all in it.— Vera lied against the impulse to back out.

—You knew he was married, you know she's a child, why did you let us believe he and his crowd would be nice company for her, safe? Why didn't you warn us—

Vera turned from Sally's assault to Oupa, uncertain whether to defend or accuse. —What's happened with you and the girl?—

—He's been sleeping with my child, my daughter. I take her to a doctor and I find she's pregnant. That's what's happened. That's the result of the nice people you introduced her to! Not a word from you, Vera, not a word of warning, you must have known she was running around with him—

—I? I knew nothing, I had no idea. I don't have anything to do with the private lives of the people at the Foundation—

—Oh yes you do. You had him in your house. You said nothing to me when she went to parties and they were not parties, he was bringing her back to this place to sleep with her! You had him and the other nice friends in your house, you and Ben.—

The girl began to wail, twisting her feet one upon the other. Everybody looked at her, nobody touched her.

Vera did not turn to Oupa, who slunk out to fetch a kitchen chair for her, a gesture Sally read with a despising glance as a call upon his employer-friend's support.

And did the companionable lunches in her office count for nothing? The years of deprivation on Robben Island, did they not make understandable a weakness for the pleasures of affection and love-making, the temptation of an enticing girl? But a schoolgirl. Sally and Didy's daughter.

He placed the chair. —Oupa, you idiot.— The moment the aside came from her she realized it would be taken by Sally as a dismissing insult to her. And to say to him, is this true, would be worse: doubting Sally. She looked at the bowed head of Mpho, the dreadlocks falling either side of her pretty ears dangling ear-rings large as they were. Likely that this girl had made love with others, as well, and Oupa was the one named as culpable, unable to prove he wasn't. This lovely child—she saw now what should have been evident while the girl lived in her house—had all the instincts of her sex Annick never had had. She wanted to put out a hand and stroke her head, but there was in Sally a forbidding authority against anyone making such a move.

Vera addressed Didy as if he stood once again in the persona she had not recognized at her door. —How was I to know? Do you think I wouldn't have done something, I would have spoken to him …—

Sally wrested the attention away. —But you should have told us your nice young man was married, his wife wasn't here, he was running around like any man … and look at him, ten years older than a schoolgirl, and no respect for her or her parents. Parties! She lied to us. When a girl-friend came to call for her, it was him! That pig. He sent a girl so we wouldn't know he was waiting in this place.—

Vera knew it was pointless to question Oupa but could not ignore that this was expected of her. Their gaze met apart from the others, he was cornered by her, counting upon her. —How
did you let it begin.— He understood this signalled
You knew I trusted you, there are plenty of other women for you.

—It was nothing, quite okay, we all went to Kippies together to hear the music, poetry readings, and that. And then one time she said she wanted to see a play, she used to go to plays in London and—I even asked you, you remember … what was a good one … and she said her parents mustn't know she would go out alone, she was only allowed if there were other girls, she'd tell them she was going to a party. So after that, we saw each other.—

—And the wife?— Sally rang out. —The wife and children, and now he makes my child, under age—does he know that?— a criminal offence—he gets my child pregnant? He'll go to jail, does he know that!—

—Your child is not under age, don't talk like that Sibo. Sixteen is not under age. She's an adult by law. And what's the use of threatening? You want him to divorce his wife? You want Mpho to get married at sixteen, not yet passed her A levels? Is that how we want to see her end up before her life's begun. Is that what you want? Of course you don't. Then what's the use of all this, blaming this one, blaming that.—

—We should never have brought her from London. She should have been left at school there. You wanted her home; ‘home' here, to get pregnant at school like every girl from a location.—

—All right. You also wanted her here. Blaming again, blaming doesn't help.—

—That's how you can count on these people.— Sally spoke of Vera as if Vera were not summoned by her to be present. —Same as it always was, eager to help so's to be on the right side with us. And making a mess of it. Bringing us harm.—

—Sibongile, stop it! You're talking nonsense, you don't
know what you're saying. It's my fault, it's Vera's fault—what's the use, what we need is to talk about what we're going to do, have you forgotten about Mpho, she's sitting there on the floor, she's our daughter—

—
I
don't know what we're going to do about her. I only know she's got herself into a mess.—

—What we're going to do has nothing to do with this young man. We shouldn't be in this place of his at all. He's out of it now, the whole matter. What happened between Mpho and him is finished. That's all he needs to know. Finished and
klaar.
This child will not be born. Over and done with. Vera will help us—

How could they all keep the girl grovelling before them on the floor—her mother, her father, Oupa, herself? Vera, shamed, spoke roughly. —Mpho, get up, come on, you're not alone—

Usually so quick and graceful, the girl lumbered to her feet, her tear-bloated face had the withdrawn expressionlessness Vera was familiar with in accused brought before court without hope of being found not guilty. Still the wrong thing: making her stand there. Perhaps she was in love with Oupa; but she knew, young and inexperienced in the judgments of the world as she was, that this was no plea.

—You mean Mpho should have an abortion.—

Didymus was used to doing what had to be done. —Yes. And we're new here, now. It must be without danger to her. You're the one who'll be able to make sure of that for us, we know.—

Sentence passed. The girl went over to the arm of the chair where her mother was sitting and picked up a duffle bag decorated with the iconographic names of pop groups. She ignored her mother and took out a handkerchief, blew her nose.