Nadine Gordimer - A Sport of Nature

Pauline and Joe had been able to avoid segregated education for their son Alexander by sending him to a school for all races, over the border in an independent neighbouring black state. But there was some reluctance, even at the expense of this advantage, to part with both their children. The other was the younger, and a girl — they decided to keep her under the parental eye at home, although to spare her, at least, the education primed with doctrinal discrimination at South African government schools. Olga (even in her sister Pauline’s house nobody denied the generosity of Olga when it came to family obligations) must have been paying the fees for Hillela at the expensive private school at which she had joined her cousin. From there one day Carole came home in tears because at the school refectory where black waiters served lunch to the schoolgirls, one had said to a black man, Don’t lean your smelly arm over my face.

Pauline made Carole repeat the remark.

Don’t lean your smelly arm over my face .

Pauline was staring at her husband to impress upon him every syllable.

— That’s what we pay through the nose for. Serves us right. Let’s take them out of that place now and put them in a government school. Take them away at once.—

Joe’s small features were made smaller and closer by the surrounding fat of his face. His dainty mouth always moved a moment, sensitively, before he spoke. — Where to? There’s nowhere to go from anything that happens here. — He put on his glasses and gently studied the two girls, his daughter and his wife’s niece, while Pauline’s voice flew about the room.

— Exactly! Idiots we’ve been. No possibility to buy your way out of what this country is. So why pay? Racism is free. Send them to a government school, let them face it as it’s written in your glorious rule of law, canonized by the church, a kaffir is a kaffir, God Save White South Africa — anything, anything but the filth of ladylike, keep-your-little-finger-curled prejudice—

It was the first time the niece saw the full splendour of this aunt. Pauline’s eyes rounded up attention; her long, rough-towelled hair, prematurely and naturally marked with elegant strokes of grey while Olga’s blond streaks required artifice, seemed to come alive, stirring and standing out as physical characteristics create the illusion of doing in people possessed by strong emotion. The maid Bettie, bringing in a parcel that had been delivered, changed expression as if she had put her head through a door into the tension of air before thunder.

Joe heard Pauline out. — No, we won’t concede, we’ll confront. We’ll explain to Miss Gidding what we expect of the school; what we mean by table manners. — (He caught Hillela’s eye to bring a smile from her.)

Again the two chairs turned to one another facing the desk in a headmistress’s study.

Pauline’s rising inflections, the text of which her daughter and niece could supply like words that go along with a tune, came through the walls to the anteroom where they waited, but no doubt it was the cross-examination technique of inaudible Joe that must have convinced the headmistress of need for the course she took. Hillela had not witnessed the incident at school, she had been eating at another table, but she was a member of the family and was called with Carole into the presence: parents, headmistress behind the desk. The headmistress wished to apologize for the offence given by the behaviour of one of their fellow pupils. Lack of politeness to the staff, whether black or white, was not tolerated at the school. The girl in question would be informed, and so would her parents. But it was to be understood by Carole and Hillela that the matter was not to be spread about as a subject for school gossip. Humiliating a fellow pupil would be a repetition of the original offence. — We want to guide, not accuse.—

Joe took them all off for an icecream before he returned to his office. Pauline was elated and sceptical, every now and then drawing a deep breath through narrowed nostrils, her black eyes moving as if to pick out faces in an invisible audience. — ‘The parents are such important people’—

— She did not say important, she did not say that—

— All right, that’s what she meant—‘she is quite sure such behaviour wasn’t learnt at home’. Well, then, must have been learnt at school, mmh? You heard me put that to her. How absolutely ridiculous, anyway, that schoolgirls shouldn’t wait on themselves. But no, the procedures of the Northern Suburbs dinner table are those into which young ladies are to be inducted — she didn’t like it at all when I told her that, did she? — And the reaction of that Calder child comes from the attitudes that secretly go with those procedures: she said what she did innocently . In case you’re ever tempted, girls, that’s what’s called gracious living.—

Hillela and Joe laughed but Carole’s pallor as she withdrew into herself made her freckles stand out all over her face like a rash. In the car, she was suddenly weeping as she did when she reported: Don’t lean your smelly arm over my face.

— Good god, what is it now? — Pauline accused Joe.

— It’s all right for you. Now she won’t speak to me again.—

At Olga’s house, arguments, confessions or chastisings never took place in front of others, but Pauline didn’t believe in confining weak moments and dark thoughts behind bedroom doors. — Now listen, Carole. And you too, Hillela. When you do what’s right, here, you nearly always have to give up something. Something easy and nice. You have to accept that you won’t be popular — with some people. But are they really the kind of people you want as friends? And there are a great many other people with whom you’ll be popular just because they appreciate what you’ve done.—

— Where? I don’t know where they are. You, and daddy — your friends. It’s all fine for Sasha, over there up on a nice green hill in Swaziland. It’s easy for him to be what you want.—

— Bettie. Alpheus. The waiters at the school — yes, maybe they’ll never know you’re the one who did it, but they’ll appreciate the change when they’re not treated like dirt by little schoolgirls any longer.—

— At school they’ll all just say I got Annette Calder into trouble over a kitchen boy. She won’t speak to Hillela, either, now.—

Hillela did not know for whom, her cousin or Pauline, she spoke up. — I’m not keen on Annette, anyway, she’s the one who had the idea all the boys must wear suits to the end of term dance. And when we had to draw a self-portrait in the style of a famous painting, she drew herself as the Virgin Mary, blue veil and all.—

Joe settled the back of his neck, appreciatively.

— Hillela’s kicked out of that Rhodesian place (Carole stopped, to look for her way of escape if the others were to close in on her) and at this place, now, people won’t speak to her because we stick up for Africans all the time.—

Joe drove with drooping head, as, in the political trial in which he was appearing for the Defence, he listened to State evidence. — Let us drop it, now, Pauline.—

— No, no. I don’t want Hillela to be confused in any way about this. What Hillela did in Rhodesia wasn’t wrong — nothing to be guilty about, nothing — but it didn’t mean anything. She was pleasing herself, showing off a bit and taking a silly risk. When one’s very young one gets a kick out of just being defiant. But that’s anti-social, that’s all. It’s quite different from what we’ve all decided and done today. If the girls are made to suffer in some small way at school now, it’s for something , it’s principled. I don’t have any time for rebels without a cause.—