Nadine Gordimer - None to Accompany Me

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.—