Nadine Gordimer - Occasion for Loving

The man behind the counter plonked down two frozen chickens. “Look at this, Stanley, Mrs. Gidley’s just brought in a poster — there’s going to be a meeting at the hotel on Tuesday.”

“Well, don’t you agree — we feel that, as residents who’ve built up Isendhla, we want to enjoy our beautiful beach in privacy …”

“… she said to me, I didn’t want to go into the water with all those natives looking at me … in trunks they were, too, the men.”

The majestic bosom had turned to the man. “Major Field suggests that we might set aside a stretch … Up near Grimald’s cottage, then there would be no question—”

With thanks and profuse friendliness the woman left the poster and turned on her high heels and made her way out, backing into Jessie, gasping a smiling apology, as she went. Jessie caught full on for a moment, like a head on a pike, the fine grey eyes, the cheerful bright skin, the full cheeks and unlined mouth of a tranquil, kind woman.

The woman behind the counter set the meat-cutter screeching back and forth across a ham, and, while she was weighing out the slices for Jessie, remarked, “This always used to be such a lovely clean beach … I don’t know if you was down on Sunday? You’d of thought they owned it, that’s the truth … undressing all over, behind the bushes.”

“No, I wasn’t down.”

“Where are you staying then?”

“I’ve got Grimald’s cottage.”’

The woman pulled a face that was quickly suppressed. “Oooh, that’s out of the way, isn’t it?” she said, loading Jessie’s basket with pampering tact calculated to take her mind off anything else.

Jessie was occupied for an hour or so in the house when she got back; then she got as far as the terrace and stood looking with a kind of disbelief at the wild, innocent landscape; the rain-calmed sea, the slashed heads of strelitzia above the bush almost translucent green with the rush of sap. The sun put a warm hand on her head. But nothing was innocent, not even here. There was no corner of the whole country that was without ugliness. It was no good thinking you could ever get out of the way of that.

She went down to the beach. Ann came slowly to meet her. “Is Gid up at the house?” she called.

“No, why?”

Ann was smiling, but she said, “Well, I don’t know what’s happened to him, but he hasn’t been back …”

“You mean since I left?”

“Mmm,” said Ann, watching her expression.

“I saw him wander up the beach.”

“Yes, I know. I’ve walked right up beyond the third lot of rocks, but he doesn’t seem to be anywhere.”

Jessie looked around the beach, as if she expected to be able to say: there he is. She was conscious of Ann watching her, ready to take a cue from her. She sat down on the sand, waving to the children. “When you start walking here, you go on for miles without noticing it. He’ll get hungry soon, and be reminded it’s time to turn back.”

Ann was still standing. “I’ve been miles.”

She drew a half-circle, dragging her toe in a ballet step over the sand, making a deeper and deeper groove. “Some fishermen came past while I was lying down.”

Jessie indicated surprise.

“The children shouted and I opened my eyes and there they were, in a jeep, of all things.”

“White men?”

“Oh yes. Lots of equipment.” She pointed up the beach where Jessie now noticed two long lines of ploughed-up sand.

After a minute, Jessie said, “Perhaps Gideon saw them and thought he’d keep out of the way.”

“Yes, but then he’d have gone up to the house from the bush,” Ann turned at once with the quick dismissal of someone who has already considered and discarded the same conclusion. “—Wouldn’t he?” Jessie saw she was hoping for an alternative to be suggested.

“No, well, he might have gone a long way round.” But what other way was there? If he wanted to cut back to the house, he wouldn’t walk further away in order to do so. “He’ll turn up.” She wandered off to the children. Ann lay on her stomach on the sand, head resting on her hands. Jessie tried to round up the little girls. “It’s lunch-time. Put your shirt on. Madge, isn’t that your cap, there? No more water, Elisabeth—” but they dawdled and ignored her.

“What’s the time now?” Ann asked.

“About half past one.”

“And when you left?”

“I don’t know — tennish — after ten.”

At last the children began to drift up the beach towards the path. Madge hung back and shouted, “Ma, I’m waiting for you.” Jessie did not answer but she felt the pull of that imploring, obstinate figure turned on her. “Go on up,” she called. “I’m coming,” and, sentenced, Madge dragged away over the sand, far behind the others.

Jessie tried to work out what Ann was thinking. Her eyes went over the hunched shoulders and the lovely dip of the waist, the fingers thrust into the hair. The girl wore one of his shirts again; the clothes of a lover are both a private reassurance and a public declaration: another kind of woman would wear rings and jewels, but for the same reasons.

“I must pack.” Jessie’s remark rolled away, unanswered. “We ought to leave fairly early tomorrow,” she added.

“Oh I’ll get things together tonight. There’s so little.”

Ann swung round and sat up suddenly. She giggled a little, and, eyes searching Jessie, said, “What on earth can he be doing? Are we going to be here all day?”

“I think we should go to the house. He’ll come to the house when he turns up, anyway.”

Ann continued to look at her and look away with an attempt at casualness, childishly nervous, smiling, pressing her lips one against the other. Her eyes met Jessie’s deeply, dazzling, evasive in their displayed frankness, guilty in their innocence, as if she had done something that was about to be found out.

“But what could happen to him?” Jessie asked.

Ann was not looking anywhere now, though her gaze was holding the other woman. Her eyes seemed trapped, swimming with the tinsel fragments that made light refract in their depths. As a confusion of thoughts concealed sometimes stops one’s mouth so that one loses the power of speech, so there is an aphasia of sight, when eyes cease, for a moment, to show anything but mechanical responses to light and the trembling of objects.

“Well … he wouldn’t just walk out into the sea …?”

The moment it was said she was smiling at the absurdity, the preposterousness of it.

Jessie laughed too. “But why on earth should he do such a thing?”

In Ann’s deep blush she saw the unconscious desire to have the course of this love affair decided by something drastic, arbitrary, out of her own power.

When they got up to the house they found Gideon about to come down to the beach for them. Ann was almost shy to approach him. “I went for a walk,” he said from the top of the steps. “I had no idea it was so far.”

“That’s what I said!” said Jessie.

Ann was carrying the trench-coat, hung by the loop from one finger, over her shoulder. He came down the steps and took the coat from her. She said nothing.

The children had been given some lunch by Jason, and were already playing on the track at the back of the house. Jason was in his room, as always between two and four in the afternoon. The three of them sat in the dim cool dining-room eating cold meat and cheese that had been left set out.

“And what are you going to do now?” Jessie said suddenly. They waited but she did not go on.

“Ann’ll probably come back with you to the house tomorrow,” he said, passing on something that had been decided as part of a plan. He looked at Ann, who was watching Jessie.