Short of Glory (20 page)

‘Yes, I’d do them all if I could. I’d live a dozen different lives.’

‘But you won’t?’

‘Probably not.’

Jim drank from his can. ‘I don’t reckon you will stay in. You’re not the type.’

‘What’s the type?’

‘Wet-arsed old women.’ Jim’s tone was matter-of-fact.

‘What makes you think I’m not one?’

Jim put his can to his lips again. His Adam’s apple bobbed slowly and when he lowered the can he wiped his lips on the back of his arm. ‘Have you seen Joanna today?’

Patrick felt his stomach tighten. Piet sat impassively on the sofa. ‘Yes. Have you?’

‘Not today.’

Jim’s tone was affectedly offhand. It irritated Patrick. ‘D’you see her nearly every day?’ he asked.

‘That’s my business.’ Jim’s face looked heavy and brutal but he said nothing. They drank in silence until Patrick made a self-conscious remark to Piet about World Service
reception.

‘You heard anything about Whelk?’ asked Jim.

‘No. Have you?’

‘Not a squeak.’

‘D’you have any more theories?’

‘I never had any. He hasn’t telephoned you – or anyone on his behalf – no funny calls?’

‘No, nothing.’ His denial sounded glib and unconvincing. They were probably tapping the embassy phones or had perhaps seen the L and F man when he called or had read the exchange of
telegrams.

‘You normally expect something by this time,’ Jim continued. ‘You would let me know, wouldn’t you, if you heard anything?’

‘Of course I would.’ Patrick had no real compunction about lying but felt he did it badly. He was relieved when they left although regretful as he watched the bakkie pull away. He
would certainly have to get a car now that it looked as if he would be seeing more of Joanna.

He was unable to sleep at first, and then only fitfully. The encounter with Jim and Piet discoloured his memories of the earlier part of the evening and made it impossible to recall them
untainted by Jim’s heavy brutal expression, or by his quiet tense voice. He was awoken very early by the sound of a vehicle but asssumed it was Sarah’s man, Harold, and went back to
sleep. When he got up he found the battered red bakkie parked in the drive. The keys and documents had been pushed through his letter-box.

‘The man bring it, massa,’ said Sarah. ‘The policeman who was here before. He tell me not to wake you.’ She smiled listlessly. ‘I thought he was here about Stanley
but he go away. I was happy for that.’

Before going to work that morning Patrick sent Jim a cheque for the trade-in price.

I
t was Saturday morning. The murky green of the swimming-pool had become opaque and was now sinister, possibly fecund. The sun was warm and the
rest of the garden cheerful and busy with birds, but the pool looked dangerous and sullen. It had absorbed all the chemicals in all the right combinations but with none of the right effects. For
some minutes Patrick stared at a patch of water where he thought he saw something move.

‘Massa.’

Sarah’s face was screwed up against the sun. She held one of his shirts by the collar, not pressed and folded as usual when she had finished them but limp and open. He glanced anxiously at
it, expecting to be told that it was of such poor quality and so worn it would have to be thrown away.

‘Yes, Sarah?’

‘De shirt has come off de button.’

It was clear from her English that she was embarrassed. ‘Ah. Yes. Right, Sarah, I’ll get some more buttons.’

‘Yes, massa.’

She remained standing, holding the shirt. He had known for two days that the house was short of nearly everything and that a major shopping expedition was necessary. He had hoped that by doing
nothing a solution would occur naturally. However, there was now the bakkie in which to take Sarah to the supermarket. This was another excuse to drive it. ‘We must go shopping together this
morning.’

Her face brightened and she folded the shirt over her arm. ‘Yes, massa, we do big shopping.’

In a large and deliberate hand she wrote a list of food and household items and brought it to him to inspect. He felt he was expected to comment and pointed at the two unfamiliar items.

‘For me, massa, for my food,’ she said of the first.

‘But you can share mine.’

She smiled awkwardly. ‘I like to eat mealie-meal. It is better for me.’

He pointed at the other item.

‘For killing de noo-noos,’ she said.

‘Noo-noos?’

She pointed at the floor. ‘Noo-noos.’ She stamped her foot several times, laughing. ‘Noo-noos. What you call’ – she struggled for the word –
‘ants,’ she said, triumphantly.

They both laughed. ‘Noo-noos is a good word for ants.’

‘Swahi word, massa, from Swahiland. Also there are cockroaches.’

‘In Swahiland?’

‘No, here, but also in Swahiland, yes.’

‘I’ve never seen a cockroach.’

Her eyes were wide with surprise. ‘There are not cockroach in England?’

‘No – well, yes, there are but I’ve never seen one.’

‘When it rain there are many cockroach in the house.’

‘They don’t like the rain?’

‘No, they come in the house when it rain.’ She frowned. ‘My first madam when I first begin my work say to me it rain all time in England.’

‘It rain – rains – quite often, yes.’

‘But still there are no cockroach in the houses?’

Patrick thought for a moment. ‘There are but they hide so that it is hard to see them.’

She went into her quarters to put on a clean blue maid’s dress and white apron and cap. When she came back she stood in the kitchen tying the apron. ‘Are there black people like me
in England?’

‘Yes, Sarah, there are many black people, just like you.’

She smiled a little shyly, looking down as she smoothed her apron. ‘Ready now, massa.’

It was a great pleasure to cruise in the bakkie through avenues of jacarandas but the journey was not long enough. He had hardly got into top gear when Sarah directed him to a large car-park in
front of a low new building. He drove unnecessarily right round the car-park before choosing a place. As he was locking the vehicle two small black boys approached wearing trousers and shirts that
were torn. One had a sore on the side of his head.

‘Guard car, massa, guard car,’ they said peremptorily, holding out their pink palms.

They looked very needy. He gave them some of the loose change that was in his pocket. ‘Guard it well and I’ll give you the other half when I come back.’

Sarah frowned across the high red bonnet of the bakkie. ‘Mr Patrick,’ she said firmly. ‘I am sorry. Please excuse me.’ She walked round to his side of the vehicle,
dignified and offended. ‘Excuse me, please,’ she said again, then turned to the two boys and delivered herself of a torrent of debased Zulu. Her voice was shrill and her speech rapid.
The two boys scampered away behind other cars. She turned rather formally to Patrick. ‘Massa, please, no money for them. They are bad boys. It is bad to give money to bad boys.’

‘I thought they would look after the car.’

‘No. They steal. But now they will not come back.’

The supermarket turned out to be an underground town on a scale beyond anything in Britain. Escalators led down through several levels, and opening off each of these were arcades and avenues of
shops. They radiated like spokes from a central well about thirty yards across. At the bottom a great chess-board had been painted on the ground. The pieces were four or five feet high and the two
players, young whites in jeans and T-shirts, moved them around by pushing or by lifting them with both arms. They walked around and between the pieces, gesticulating and talking. Captured pieces
were laid on their sides off the board, like forsaken gods. A few other young men sat or straddled them, giving advice or laughing.

Everything in the underground town was clean. There was piped music and air-conditioning. Most of the staff were black and most of the customers white, and the majority of these were women.
Uniformed guards sauntered about, the blacks armed with truncheons and the whites with revolvers. Some had Alsatian dogs.

Sarah led the way to the supermarket. There was a bewildering acreage of shelves. Patrick, unaccustomed to shopping, found it difficult to pick out particular items from amongst the whole. The
profusion glazed his eyes. Sarah consulted her list whilst he tried to extract a trolley that was stuck inside three others.

Sarah was used to shopping with experienced, interested madams. She was reluctant to make decisions herself and treat Patrick as a porter. He therefore attempted to make up in system for what he
lacked in knowledge and interest by ordering one of each where there was a choice of two brands and by choosing the largest or most colourful when there were more than two. He went for bold primary
colours.

‘Is that it?’ he asked after about twenty minutes, when the trolley was nearly full.

‘Meat, massa. There is no meat. I don’t know what you like.’

‘I like all meat.’

‘All?’

‘I like all food.’

She put her hand to her mouth. ‘But you have to choose. I don’t know what you want.’

He chose steak, a pound of each kind. This principle worked equally well with fruit and vegetables. He bought eight toilet rolls, two for each toilet, and a couple of big sacks of mealie-meal
for Sarah. He discovered that she usually had her own tea, sugar, milk and coffee.

‘Why not share mine?’

‘Because it is yours, massa.’

‘Then we’ll share it.’

Sarah never feigned reluctance. ‘Thank you, massa.’

Dog-food was all that remained and Patrick, determined to find something for himself, suggested they leave the trolley by the fruit shelf and each set off in search.

She was to look for meat, he for biscuits. He soon returned in triumph with two sacks, one of each kind. Having seen Sarah crossing the lanes near the check-out counter he took the trolley and
set off after her between the gardening tools and the boots and shoes. She was gone by the time he reached the top but he thought he glimpsed her crossing lower down. Eyed by a dour white security
guard, he went rapidly down between the household utensils and the soap powders. Near the bottom the lane was blocked by an attendant who was restacking and by three women talking. Patrick turned
his trolley round and headed quickly back. At the corner he collided with another trolley, catching it broadside-on. It toppled over, quite slowly. Bread, meat, tin foil, washing-up liquid,
Marmite, butter, potatoes and apples spilled on to the floor. Some of the apples rolled as far as the check-out counter. A bag of self-raising flour burst over the shiny black boots of the security
guard.

‘Oh, Jesus bloody Christ!’ shouted the woman who had been pushing the trolley.

He recognised her as the woman he had met at the police headquarters. He started to apologise but she turned angrily to the guard.

‘Did you see him do that? Did you see what he did? Downright bloody criminal stupidity!’ She stepped over the rubble so that she was closer to the guard and turned to face Patrick.
‘Coming straight at me as if I wasn’t there. Haven’t you got any consideration for other people? Are you blind or something?’

‘What are you doing speeding about like that?’ asked the guard. ‘You’ve no business speeding like that in here. This is a shop, not a race-track.’

Patrick held up his hand. ‘I’m sorry. It was entirely my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’

‘That’s no excuse,’ said the guard.

Patrick got down on his hands and knees and began picking up the woman’s shopping. His own trolley had remained upright and nothing had fallen from it. ‘I’ll pay for everything
that’s broken.’

‘Me or the shop?’ asked the woman.

He looked up at her. ‘Whoever claims it.’

The guard stamped his feet to get the flour off his boots and then stepped back, crushing some biscuits. ‘You are responsible,’ he said as if the point were in dispute.

‘Yes, I am,’ said Patrick.

‘You should look where you’re bloody going in future,’ said the woman.

He ignored her. A few seconds later a pair of black hands joined his in rapidly picking up the goods. Sarah was on her knees beside him, gathering tins and packets with submissive haste. She did
not glance at him but worked quickly, almost fearfully. After stacking tins in the trolley she put in a packet of Oxo cubes that was intact though battered. The woman stepped forward, took it out
and flung it back to the floor by Sarah’s hand, causing it to break open.

‘That’s no use, that’s damaged.’

Sarah did not look up but humbly pushed the packet towards the pile of damaged goods.

‘Dumbo,’ added the woman, under her breath.

Patrick took the broken packet and stood. He saw his own anger reflected in a look of alarm on the woman’s face and a sudden watchfulness on the guard’s. ‘What did you
say?’

The woman hesitated. ‘I said – I said it was damaged, it was already damaged.’

She was frightened but still hostile. The sight of Sarah’s bowed head fired his anger for a few seconds more. ‘It wasn’t but it is now. By you. You pay for it.’ He tossed
the broken packet at her feet. She stepped back.

The guard put one hand on the belt of his holster. He pointed at the mess. ‘We want this cleared up.’

‘It will be.’ Patrick’s anger evaporated as he became more aware of the absurdity. It seemed he only ever got angry in ridiculous circumstances and. his anger never lasted
because he was never more than fleetingly unaware of its uselessness. He and Sarah were joined by a cleaner with a broom and then by a supervisor who said that no one need pay for anything. The
woman had simply to replace the goods she had lost and take them out in the normal way. She left without a word as soon as her trolley was loaded.

At the check-out Patrick paid for Sarah’s mealie-meal, for which she thanked him in a subdued voice. The bill was so large that he decided to abandon his system of buying at least two of
everything in future even if it did mean they would have to shop more often. Sarah still looked chastened and so he attempted to cheer her by buying a women’s magazine like one he had seen in
her quarters.