Nadine Gordimer - A World of Strangers

I couldn’t find change to pay for my paper. While I dredged into my trouser pocket, I felt, feebly, that I couldn’t defend myself against her. Again she was dressed with showy simplicity, a cosmetic emanation — not merely the perfume she had used, but the impregnation of skin, hair, and clothes with the incense of the rites of female self-worship — came headily from her. ‘I’ve only met you here once before.’

‘Yes. Yesterday,’ she said, as if this called for an explanation. ‘So it was.’ I really could not believe that it was only twenty-four hours since I had encountered her in the bar.

She laughed. ‘You are vague,’ she said, then, mimicking my startled air: ‘Yes, it was yesterday.’

‘My office is here, in this building.’

She craned her neck, smooth with powder under the tight necklace that the flesh swelled against as she talked. ‘Up here? Above Adorable? Well I’m darned!’

‘What is Adorable — I’ve been wondering ever since I’ve been here.’

She opened her handbag, as if compelled to get my fumbling over with. ‘Here’ — she gave me three pennies for the paper seller. ‘It’s Paul’s place — the hairdresser. My hairdresser; that’s where I’ve come from now.’

She wore one of those wide hats that every now and then hid her face entirely; from what I could see of her hair it looked different again; brighter, gilded. It seemed to me stupid and tiring to be expected to find an approach to a woman who changed herself every day.

She was looking at me curiously, with a faint rise of interest. ‘You look awful,’ she said. ‘What’s happened to you since yesterday?’

‘I feel grim,’ I said, with a smile.

‘This bloody heat is grim,’ she said. ‘I’m going to go home and lie in a cold bath. Thank goodness I don’t have to do any social drinking today.’

There was a pause; one of those imperceptible moments of hanging-fire when the direction a conversation is to take is silently decided.

Almost reluctantly, I was the one to speak. Yet the instant in which she saw that I was about to do so, her eyes gave the faint blink of encouragement and part responsibility.

‘I was trying to decide which one was your husband.’

She said, ‘They’re two idiots who make film advertisements.’

‘And you act in them.’

She pulled a face. ‘Not yet. I’ve been fiddling about, doing a bit of modelling lately. As you see.’ She indicated herself with sudden naturalness, as if she were in carnival dress.

‘You look charming,’ I said, dutifully.

‘Thank you.

‘So you see’, she spoke again, quickly, ‘that was why I didn’t introduce you when you came up to the table yesterday.’

I remembered, out of the hazy immediate past, how animated and eager she had seemed with her companions. ‘You appeared to be enjoying yourself very much.’

‘Oh, my dear’ — an echo of that same social manner sounded in her defensive voice — ’ Enjoying myself! And you thought one of them was my husband — what a mood of self-deception you were in!’

‘Oh well,’ I said wearily, ‘anyway, I’m forgiven, you’re forgiven — ’

‘Forgiven?’ she said shrewdly, happily, ‘I’m forgiven? What for-?’

I was confused. ‘Not introducing,’ I said, and she knew that I meant, ‘For enjoying yourself so much.’

So I found myself in the Stratford bar again, and this time I had what I had wanted; I was with the girl, Cecil Rowe. But this carelessly-aimed largesse from whatever pile of favours has been stored up in the name of my existence, was flung at me on the wrong day. I was tired and the idea of a drink filled me with nausea; but it was more than that; the girl I had coveted jealously yesterday, the girl I had met at the dream-feast in the Caliph’s house above the gold-mines, the fair lady to my urban knight, pinning her colours on a briefcase — she belonged to the unreality through which I had fallen. It was odd to find her here at all; it was an effort to confirm her existence in, and therefore her sober kinship with, the city that I was aware of when I wakened in my flat that morning.

I sat with her in the bar on the hard Tudor chairs under the sign of the plaster lion and the picture of Henry the Eighth, without a trace of the triumph and pleasure I had imagined, but male opportunism, with the farsightedness of instinct, saw to it for me, in spite of myself, that I behaved just as I would have if that triumph and pleasure had been alive in me.

As we sat down, she said, with a careless air of wanting to get it over with, ‘About the husband; I have no husband, idiot or not. I’m divorced.’ And as we both laughed, she added: ‘I never know whether to tell people or let them find out. If I say nothing, they say something that embarrasses them, sooner or later, and if I come out with it, it always sounds like an announcement.’ She was rather forlornly lively (perhaps my own subconscious inert state affected her) and she clutched a young Englishwoman’s bright social manner about her as if it were a disgusting old coat that she’d love to throw away. Now and then, when I was talking and she was listening, she would lapse, quite unconsciously, I was sure, into perfect mimicry of the part she was dressed for — the languid object that is the mannequin, showing herself off like a diamond whose facets must be turned in the light. She told me that she lived in a flat with her three-year-old child; the modelling work was something quite new to her, it seemed to be fun; she would like to go to Rome and be a model there. There was a girl who’d done quite well — but she was dark and had an angry tom cat’s face. That was the fashionable face to have, just now, she assured me. When we parted, she said, ‘Why don’t you come out to Alexanders’ on Saturday and ride?’ I said I might; unable to project myself into the imagined scene as to the milieu of the moon.

I wanted to see Steven Sitole again, quickly. I had no idea where to find him, so next day I telephoned Sam at the magazine offices where I had been told he worked. His big voice sounded surprised, then obliging: ‘Oh, Mr Hood-were you all right the other night?’ ‘Of course. Fine.’ ‘Well, I’m glad to hear that. I was a bit nervous about letting you go off with old Steven.’

He couldn’t tell me, right off, where I could telephone Steven, and a third person, someone in the office, was drawn into the conversation. ‘-Eddie, where’s Steven operate from these days? What? No, man, the phone number. Where can you get hold of him?’ Back into the telephone, he said, ‘You can try him at this number, Mr Hood. He’s not there all the time, but they’ll take messages for him. It’s a printer’s; 31-6489 — got it?’ I thanked him and said I hoped I’d see him again some time. He laughed embarrassedly and said, ‘I wonder if we will,’ as if it were not a simple matter that would be likely to be brought about without any particular effort on our part.

Steven was in when I telephoned the printer’s. ‘Wha-at? Oh, that’s O.K. And me too, I’m O.K.,’ he said, when I thanked him for taking me with him the other evening.’ The taxi was magnificent,’ I said. ‘Got me in well before the milk.’ ‘Wh-at?’ he said again. ‘The what? Oh, old Dhla-mini. Good. Good.’ He was one of those people who, over the telephone, always sound as if they are not listening. Some small tension of novelty and excitement that had drawn tight in the recollection of the unexpectedness of the night I had spent with him, gave way; for him, the incident was part of unremarkable experience to which my presence had perhaps given a mild fillip. I said guardedly, because I meant it, as I had said merely as a piece of meaningless politeness to Sam, I hoped I should see him again some time. But he said, ‘Sure thing. Whenever you say?’ ‘Could we have lunch together, Friday, perhaps?’ He laughed at me in a leisurely fashion. ‘But where can we go together for lunch, man?’ Of course, I hadn’t thought; he couldn’t go into any restaurant or tea-room in town. ‘What about one of your places?’ I said.’ Would I be allowed in one of them?’ Now he roared with laughter. ‘You haven’t seen them,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t suggest it if you’d seen them.’ ‘All right, all right. Where do we eat?’ ‘I could come over to your place if you make it Saturday instead of Friday,’ he suggested. ‘Jolly good. We’ll knock up some lunch at the flat. What time? Half past twelve-ish? I usually leave the office about eleven on Saturday mornings.’ As I agreed, I suddenly remembered the half-promise to go riding at the Alexanders’; and dismissed it. I told Steven where the flat was, and we hung up.