John Davis - Roots of Outrage

‘Just fun love,’ she said. ‘Look at it this way: we wouldn’t make love so much if we were allowed to sleep together every night. You simply couldn’t keep up this spectacular weekend performance.’

‘Yes I could.’

‘No you couldn’t. You’d get bored. Sexually bored.’

How could any man become sexually bored with this sensual beauty, those legs, that heavenly bottom, those glorious curves, that classically lovely face, those sparkling, flashing dark eyes. ‘Impossible. But maybe you’d get bored with me?’

‘That hard-on? Impossible. But, you see, if it were legal, I’d want to marry you. And that’s the good deed apartheid’s done us – if we could get married you’d get scared and run away.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Oh yes. You’re far too young to get married, Luke. You haven’t sowed enough wild oats yet.’

‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Fuck the wild oats.’

She smiled sadly. ‘I am your wild oats, Luke. Your forbidden wild oats. I just hope your memory will be the more vivid because of that.’

Oh Jesus. ‘I love you and I love you and I love you. And I’m not going to leave you.’

‘And I believe you mean it. But you cannot marry me. Illegal, So? So you’re safe to be in love without the responsibility that usually entails.’

‘But I do want to marry you.’

‘And you’re lucky. Because if you weren’t screwing me you’d be screwing some nice white girl who’d be wanting you to marry her. I’m saving you all that hassle. Us women are trouble, Mahoney; remember that when you leave me.’

‘You’re not listening. I’m not going to leave you.’

She sighed. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘you will leave me. And if you don’t, I will leave.’

‘That’s a terrible thing to say.’

‘I’ll never want to leave you ,’ she said sadly. ‘I’ll be leaving … what? Us? But there is no “us”. Because there’s no future in “us”. “Us” means being together forever. That means a home. Home means marriage, all the things Mother Nature designed “us” for. But all that is impossible – for us. So there is no real “us”, to leave. So I will leave … our heartbreak.’ She waved a hand at the cottage walls.

He could not bear to hear this. ‘We could leave this fucking country instead!’

She snorted softly. ‘Oh, don’t imagine I haven’t thought about it often. But I don’t want to leave Africa. And go where?’

‘Australia.’

‘Australia? Never heard of the White Australia Policy? They haven’t got a black problem because they shot most of them. And they don’t intend acquiring a new one.’

‘You’re not black , for Christ’s sake!’

She smiled. ‘Oh, I know I’ve got a good complexion. All I’ve got to do is read the ads for suntan lotions. Drive along the beaches I’m not allowed to lie on and see all the pretty white girls desperately trying to get themselves the tan nature gave me. But the fact of the matter is that I’m not white , and Australia has a White Australia Policy. And so has Canada.’

‘England then.’

She waved her hand. ‘But that’s not the point. The point is I don’t want to leave this country, Luke! It’s my country. I just want to change the bloody place! I want to stay right here and raise hell until they change it. I refuse to leave.’

Oh, Jesus. ‘And how’re you going to raise hell?’

She sighed, then grinned and kissed his cheek. ‘Just a figure of speech. Don’t worry, darling, my hands are as clean as the driven snow.’

He badly wanted to believe her. ‘Tell me the truth, Patti.’

‘Darling?’ She looked at him with big innocent eyes. ‘I also want us to keep a low profile so that we don’t have trouble. Just examine the facts. Have I made trouble since we started going together? Have I climbed or any whites-only buses? Walked into any white restaurants? Tried to cash a cheque in any whites-only queue at the bank – or buy a-whites-only postage stamp? Tried to swim in a whites-only pool? Have I?’

‘No,’ Mahoney sighed.

‘And that used to be my stock-in-trade. Now Patti Gandhi has disappeared from the magistrates’ courts. Why? Because I want to be happy with you. I don’t want to get into trouble and spoil it. So, I suppose I’ve become like ninety per cent of the white South Africans. Like ninety per cent of Germany under Hitler: don’t make trouble with the big bad authorities.’ She looked at him with big dark eyes. ‘Which is pretty despicable, I suppose, but that’s where yours truly is at.’ Then she flashed her brilliant smile. ‘And we’re not allowed to talk about politics, remember? So …’ She heaved herself up out of the bath, gleaming, and reached for a towel. ‘So, shall we just have fun while it lasts?’

‘Don’t talk like that.’

While it lasts. Oh God, those words frightened him. But somehow he did not believe them, that these glorious days could not last, somehow they would get away with it. This apartheid craziness could not go on forever. Lying alone in his bed in The Parsonage, staring at the ceiling in the darkness, he knew that these laws would not change for a long, long time and then only because of the bloodbath, and he knew she was right when she said they were doomed, living in an unreal world. But out here on Buck’s Farm, drinking wine by the pool in the sun, lying together in the slippery caress of the bath, making love on the big double bed, it felt like the real world, how people were meant to feel and live, and he could not believe it was not going to last.

Unhappiness came in the second year of their relationship. In May he was going to Write his law examinations: when he had that degree what the fuck was he going to do with it? What were they going to do?

‘You’ll write the local bar exam, and practise,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to practise law.’

‘Nonsense, you’ll be an excellent lawyer. You can’t keep on working for Drum. It’s been a great job but it’s a dead-end.’

‘I could work for the Star. Or the Rand Daily Mail .’

‘Luke, you’re destined for greater things than newspaper work.’

‘What’s wrong with being a political columnist? An opinion-maker.’

‘Luke,’ she said. ‘With your brain and gift of the gab you should be in the courtroom fighting for justice, raising hell. Helping people who’re politically persecuted , not being an armchair political commentator. We need people like you.’

‘Patti, law isn’t a very portable qualification – it’s not like medicine or dentistry, which is the same the world over – a lawyer cannot easily uproot himself and go to practise in another country. He’s got to write their local bar examinations. And one day South Africa is going to blow up. I don’t want to start exams all over again in Australia or Canada.’

‘That’s exactly the point! Yes, this country is going to blow up. But that’s when you must stay and help rebuild it after the dust settles, not run away to Australia or Canada!’

He sighed. ‘Patti, when the dust settles there’s going to be very little law. The policeman and the judge are the cornerstones of society, and they’re going to be black.’

She said quietly: ‘You don’t believe that us blacks are capable of running this country, do you?’

‘You’re not black, for Christ’s sake.’

‘The point is you don’t believe that we in the ANC can run a decent government, do you? You think it will be corrupt, inefficient and under-qualified.’

Mahoney sighed. True. ‘Not true. I just think it will take a hell of a long time to rebuild on those ruins. And during that time I will be unable to earn a reliable living as a lawyer. So if I’m going to be a lawyer I must leave South Africa, as my father said. But if I’m going to be a journalist, a political commentator, South Africa is the best place to be. Because there’s more to write about here than anywhere else.’