Nadine Gordimer - A Sport of Nature

— Tell us about Olga’s house — is it lovely? Up on the hills or near the beach? Oh of course it must be lovely! What heaven, just to run out of bed straight onto the beach, and on that side of the headland, completely private, right away from the crowds. And did you eat lots of gorgeous crayfish — oh crayfish straight out of the sea, with lemon and butter … Pure ozone going down. No wonder you look so well, Olga’s transformed you as only Olga can. Even waterskiing lessons! She just has a gift for giving pleasure, a special sort of generosity of her own. — Pauline herself seized upon a generosity and sisterly pride as if something sadly discovered to have been packed away in herself. Her interest in Olga’s beach house, in the outings and beach parties (—And they liked your guitar-playing in the moonlight, eh? — ) worked up intoxicatingly in her, that glance of hers that always seemed to create its own public found an agitating response invisible to others at table. — So you didn’t only see the dolphins, you actually swam among them? Those wonderful creatures. Joe, what about that record? Wasn’t there once a record of dolphins singing or talking? Made under the sea? Cousteau or somebody. It would be a nice present for Hillela to give Olga, to thank her, I must see if I can get it — She began to eat stolidly, eyes down on the plate like a child who has been forced to do so. The withdrawal of animation left a vacuum from which no-one could escape. Another voice came out of her, for Joe alone. — And there’s your work to think of. That’s what I should have said. That’s the point. If we — all right, I, but it’s the same thing, no-one would separate the culpability, would they — if we were to get involved in this kind of thing … It’d only have to come out once, and your credibility—

He closed his eyes momentarily and opened them again.

— I mean professional integrity would be finished. For good. And what you can do in court is of far more importance—

He moved his head, prompting correction.

— No, well, I’m not making any excuses. We know nothing is more important than what people like that have done … but your work’s absolutely necessary, too, in the same context. One has to be sensible. I should have made that point. She should go to others for this kind of thing. I should have told her. Not lawyers’ houses. I should have said, if you were to be accused of being involved in any way other than professionally, you’d never be able to take on such cases again … would you? They ought to understand they also need people like you.—

— You acted correctly. That’s the end of it.—

The boy and girl saw Pauline’s hands falter on knife and fork. She put them down and her hands sought each other, each stiff finger pushed through the interstices between those of the other hand. — ‘People are expected to put their actions where their mouths have been.’ You can imagine how the word will get around. She’s the kind who’ll see to that.—

Joe dismissed this with a twist of lip and tongue to dislodge a tomato pip from a tooth.

Pauline drew her hair back tightly held on her crown a moment, exposing her nakedness, the temples that were always covered, then dropped the thick hair again. — Dolphins, Hillela. I love those stories about how they save drowning people and push sinking fishing-boats to shore. I wish they were true.—

Whatever the reason, the parents must have gone out later that night. They couldn’t have been there? Sasha and his cousin helped Bettie wash up and gossiped in the kitchen. Bettie’s nails, outgrown the patches of magenta varnish in the middle, flashed through the dirty water. — Did Miss Olga take her girl with her or her boy?—

— Jethro and Emily came. At least, they followed by train.—

— Lucky, lucky. I want to go to the sea. Sasha, why don’t you take me sometimes?—

— Come on, Bettie … when we go on holiday you go on your own holiday, you don’t have to do the same old housework in a different place.—

Bettie’s laughter jiggled her like a puppet. — I want to swim and get a tan same like Hillela. — They all laughed — she flung her arm, wet hand extended, round Hillela and Hillela’s head rested a moment under her cocked one, cradled against her mauvish-black, damp neck.

Sasha had his mother’s insistence on facing the facts. — You wouldn’t be allowed on the beach. Isn’t that true, Hillela?—

— Well, Jethro’s afraid of the sea anyway, but Emily used to go down early in the morning, when nobody was there.—

— They lucky, like I say. Miss Olga gave them a fridge for their rooms. Emily’s pay is very high, very high. I wish I could be working for Miss Olga!—

— Better than your pay?—

— Better than my pay, Sasha? More than ninety pounds a month.—

— My parents wouldn’t take you to a place where you couldn’t even walk on the beach.—

Bettie wiped the sink with the absent vigour of a task performed through a lifetime. — I’m not thinking about walking, I’m thinking about money, what I must pay my mother for looking after my children, what I must pay for schoolbooks, for uniform, for church—

— We’re not rich people like Olga.—

Bettie laughed. — Maybe you not rich, I don’t know.—

— You know how hard my mother works to help — black people, I mean. And she doesn’t get paid.—

— Yes, she works hard. I work hard and I’m thinking about money. Money is the thing that helps me. Are you going to lock up, lovey?—

She took out of the oven a pot containing her man’s supper and a jug with the remains of the dinner coffee and went off across the yard to her room.

The two young people played the records they liked as loudly as they wished. They sat on the floor in the livingroom under rocking waves of the rhythm to which their pleasurable responses were adjusted by repeated surrender to it, as each generation finds a tidal rhythm for its blood in a different musical mode. Hillela gazed at her feet, transformed by the sun and sea into two slick and lizard-like creatures, thin brown skin sliding satiny over the tendons when she moved her toes. Her attention drew the boy’s.

— What was all that about? — A tip of the head towards the dining-table.

She took a moment to make sure he was not referring to Bettie. — Someone was here when I came home today.—

— Someone we know?—

— Not you. You weren’t here when she came before. Quite long ago. Before the Chief stayed.—

— But you don’t know who? — After a moment he began again. — Were you there?—

— I was unpacking my things. They were on the verandah. — She bent her head and began stroking over her feet and ankles. — I heard them talking when I went to fetch a banana—

— And?—

— I was thinking about something else.—

— A-ha, some chap you got keen on at Plett, mmh?—

She mimicked Bettie. — Maybe, I don’t know.—

He rolled onto his stomach and began playing with her toes to help her remember. — But you understand what they were talking about, now.—

— Well, I remember some things.—

— Such as? — He scratched suddenly down the sole of her foot and her toes curled back over his hand in reflex.

— Oh you know.—

— Me? How could I?—

— You heard what Pauline said, at dinner.—

— Yes. It’s about someone on the run from the police, isn’t it. — He traced down her toes with his forefinger. — Look how clean the sea has made your nails. You’ve got a funny-looking little toe, here.—

— Pauline told me that toe was broken when I was two years old, in Lourenço Marques with my mother.—

— Do you remember?—

— I was too small.—