Nadine Gordimer - Occasion for Loving

The business of choosing books to match a mood or atmosphere was a bit of an insult, really — whether to the writers or herself she didn’t bother to decide. It was something amusing to mention to Tom in a letter — she often dreamed letters to people, on the beach, sometimes people to whom she had owed a letter for years. (She did write Tom’s, of course.)

She was reading on the beach on a morning so quiet that her book actually seemed to sound aloud. It was a cloudy day with the heat of the hidden sun coming hypnotically off the blurred shine of concentrated radiance on a smooth grey sea. The grey moved oilily and broke in slow rolls, hesitantly, upon the sand. The tide was out, the rocks looked flattened. Once when she gazed up without focus she saw a woman pausing as if she had just come down “their” path, the path from the house. She kept the figure in this same dreamy gaze and then felt the pull of its attention on her. The woman was making for her, moving with the slightly ploughing gait that the heavy sand, up there where the tide did not pack it smooth, made necessary. It was Ann. Before she could make out the face, Jessie knew from the look of attention that the face had fixed upon herself that it was Ann coming.

The girl stood there holding her shoes in her left hand; seemed to begin to lift them, as if to wave, but then did not, and came on.

She saw she was recognised and came faster. “Jessie.”

“How did you find me?”

There was no wind and no sound in the airless air. Their voices dropped to the beach like dead birds. Both were amazed, as if Ann had given up thought or hope of her being really there.

“I tried to phone you. It went on for hours.”

“Oh, last night! That was last night?”

“Yes, I hung on and hung on, I think I actually heard you shouting hullo at one point.”

“I was just about to go to bed.” Jessie scrambled up and now they were both standing. “I thought the exchange was crazy— eleven o’clock — and no one ever rings me anyway. I nearly didn’t answer …” They might have been two people bumping into each other in a coffee-bar after a misunderstanding about a meeting-place. Ann went into an animated, exaggerated explanation about how difficult it was to find someone who knew where the cottage was . She was laughing, making faces of mock despair, drawing deep breaths of exasperation, and the hand that she put up to her face now and then made the gesture tremulous. She wore one of the full skirts and dark shirts that she liked, but her hair looked limp, and the thick line of pencil behind the thick eyelashes was smudgy and unrepaired. The white skin with its few small black moles shone new and strangely exposed to the hot, open radiance. Yes, it was strange to this place; the understanding rushed in on Jessie while the girl was talking. She had a moment of violent dismay, cringing fiercely from the intrusion. They began to walk back toward the house, and Jessie knew; it was only a matter of form that Ann paused, turning on to the path, pressing on the leaf of wild ice-plant that became a juicy stain under her foot, and said, “Gid’s in the car.”

The back of his head and one arm, stretched along the top of the seat with the hand dangling, had the look of a person obdurately real, almost ordinary, at the centre of an upheaval. Jessie saw the sight in dissolving unbelief — he had gone out of existence, for her, into the situation he had created: he was here, alive. He didn’t turn his head. He let them come up in silence.

Jessie had difficulty in bringing out a smile or the normal platitudes of greeting; and she could see, as he at last moved his head when they were facing his profile, that he knew this. He said, like a survivor, “You picked a nice quiet spot for yourself. Hullo …”

“Why don’t you get out?” Ann chided, smiling. He gave her a glance to make sure of the signal; he continued to half-smile at Jessie, beginning remarks he didn’t finish, lapsing into his selfish chuckle. “Hell, I don’t know why … stuck here, I guess. You want to look for this place in the dark, man, the end of the earth … you’re sure this is really where you live, eh …?”

“… I had no idea anyone was really trying to get me.”

“Bring the cigarettes,” Ann said. She was frowning into the glare, business-like now. He was out of the car, leaning back into it to get his jacket. “And that — no, my other one, the underneath—” He hung himself with her saddle-bag, then fished for something on the floor of the car and came up with one of the satchels made of woven mealie leaves that Zulu women sell on the road. The floor was crowded with newspapers, bruised apples, the cellophane from cigarette packets, a pineapple, milk cartons, a half-drunk bottle of brandy, and on the small back seat there was a new tartan rug and one of the lumpy, grubby cushions off the verandah chairs at home.

“The trouble is that all the houses around here are known by the names of their owners, but no one would know what you were talking about if you asked for Fuecht’s because my stepfather never lived here and the place’s always known by the couple who lived in it for years — Grimald’s cottage.”

“Well, of course we were spelling Fuecht to everybody, black kids, old women in the fields …”

“Tom should have told you.”

“Gid kept saying how confusing life is in the country. All the time he was moaning about how simple it is to move around among a million people with names on the streets and numbers on houses—” Ann began to giggle as one does at something that was not funny at the time, making common cause in amusement at him with Jessie. With the ruthlessness of a woman who wants to secure something for a lover or a child, she imposed upon them the pretence that she and Jessie were leading the man into the house with a shared sense of warm attention. They moved in a dazed, ill-assorted progression between the hibiscus bushes, down the cracked concrete steps to the back of the house, that lay below the level of the track: Jessie with sun-scrubbed face and brown hands with white nails, blanched clean in the physical honesty of salt water and abrasive sand; the other two full of the creased shadiness of those who have been too long in their clothes.

It was half past eleven in the morning. Jessie led the way into the house that acknowledged no ownership. “Would you like tea? You’ve had breakfast?”

Ann went to the windows of the living-room like a weekend guest, hands on her hips, looking at the sea. Gideon sat down in the middle of the divan that did duty as a sofa, sending up the sound of broken piano strings. He leaned forward with his hands clasped, elbows on knees, and looked round slowly from under his brow. “Any chance of a brandy in the house?”

“Of course. Beer, too, I think. Would you like a beer, Ann? I’ll look in the fridge — I bought myself a couple of cans the other day.”

“Milk,” said Ann. “A big glass of cold milk.”

Jessie went into the kitchen. The young Zulu who was caretaker of the house when it was empty, and worked for the occupants when it was let, stood stirring a mug of tea. He said “Missus?” and she said “It’s all right,” and if he did not understand the words he understood the tone and the smile, and she took the milk and a jug of water out of the refrigerator and arranged the tray for herself. She emptied a packet of biscuits on to a plate and unwrapped a piece of cheese, sweating in its red rind.

When she came back to the living-room with the tray Ann was deep in a big chair and Gideon had taken one of the stiff, curled-edge magazines left in the magazine rack by previous tenants and was turning the pages without looking at them. Ann sat up and drank the milk and cut a chunk of cheese, and Jessie said, “The brandy,” and took a bottle out of the sideboard. She put the iced water beside it, but he poured himself a big neat tot and drank it off. Ann pressed him: “Have some cheese. Don’t you want biscuits?”