Nadine Gordimer - The Lying Days

My father caught her with an accusing look, a kind of concentration of irritation, suspicion and wariness that comes from long observation, if not understanding, of someone’s methods and motives. It was as if he did not know what her next move would be, but he knew it should be prevented. He gave a curiously awkward fending gesture of the hand, and said, “Oh, the library —What sort of a career, pushing a barrow of heavy books about and stamping people’s names on cards! That’s no life for her. That’s not what I want for her.”

And then, with the inconsequence of daily life in the fluid of which are suspended all stresses, the jagged crystals of beauty, the small, sharp, rusted probes of love, the hate that glints and is gone like a coin in water, my mother said without change of tone, “You won’t forget about the lawn mower, will you? It’s Charlie’s day again tomorrow.” And with a little glance at his watch to recall him to himself, my father nodded and returned to his office for the afternoon’s work.

I went down to the Mine swimming bath. At first there was almost no one there; only the small boys, splashing and squealing hoarsely in their flapping wet rags of costumes. I lay looking at my shining brown legs; a stranger bearing the distinguishing marks of another land. Later some boys and girls of my own age came and dropped to the grass around me, gasping, fanning themselves after their bicycle ride. They exclaimed over me. You were away a long time! How long was it, Helen? My, she’s burned — look how she’s burned! They giggled and threw sweet-wrappers at one another, and every now and then, without a word, as if at some mysterious sign, a girl would tug at a boy’s ankle to trip him as he stood up, or a boy would pull the bow end of the strap that held a girl’s bathing suit, and suddenly they would be wrestling, chasing each other, shrieking round the pool, rolling and falling back into the middle of us, the girl screaming between laughter: No! No! Soon the grass around us was strewn with lemonade bottles and broken straws. A bright-haired girl, with the dimples she had had when she was four still showing when she smiled, carefully broke up a packet of chocolate so that it would go round. When I got up to swim, they all came flying, bouncing, chasing into the square tepid tank of water. Lorna Dufalette’s head broke through the surface beside me, water beading off her powdered forehead. “It’s not fair, those filthy Cunningham kids have got ringworm, and they come into the water. We might all get it.” I floated along amid used matches and dead grass. At last I pulled myself out by the shoulders and sat, feet dangling, on the side. One of the boys, at a loss for a moment, swam over to me, a bright challenging grin on his red face. His big teeth in the half-open mouth combed the water like a fish. “Come away to the lagoon with me, Tondelayo!” I had been watching the water streaming over his teeth and was startled when he suddenly appeared beside me. Saliva and water streaked his chin as he grinned, waiting my response. Apparently there was some film I had not seen that would have given it to me. Water poured from him and he laughed toward me. “Come on—” He slipped down into the water again and, at a howl from one of the others, turned his thick scarred neck and bellowed something back, then caught at my ankle. But with a quick slither I snatched my legs back and he was gone, threshing noisily after the jeer that had challenged him. I shifted away from the uneven puddle that marked where he had sat beside me.

In the damp change cubicle I put on my clothes and rolled my bathing suit in my towel. Looking at myself in the post card of mirror that was nailed to the wall brought two tears of loneliness into my eyes.

My mother was sitting behind the fly screen on the veranda when I got home. She was following a knitting pattern from a book, and the tray from her afternoon tea was on the ledge beside her. As I saw her the words seemed to come to me quite suddenly, as if someone had given me a push forward, “Mother, I’ve made up my mind I’m not going to University.” She said, after a pause, not looking up, “All right. I suppose you’re old enough to know what you want. Nobody gave me the opportunity.” I pulled myself up on the ledge beside the tray and we sat in silence, rather heavily. After a while she said, “It’ll disappoint your father,”—and went indoors.

My mother always had had the knack of filling me with apprehension by the meagerness of what she said, and the magnitude of what she left unspoken. Now, as I sat in her chair while the sun went down, the shape that she had hollowed for herself in the cushions, the warmth where she had leaned her back, seemed to speak on for her. I began to feel tense and nervous; in the heat, my hands were cold. I went down into the cooling garden and walked up and down, watching for my father. My heart was beating fast and I wanted to tell him at once. When he saw me hanging about the gate his tired, neat face lifted pleasurably into life and he gave a little signal as if to say, I’ll be with you rightaway, but I did not even wait for him to put the car into the garage, but opened the door as he slowed down to enter the gate, and got in beside him. He said: “Give us a kiss,” and his cheek was faintly salty from the sweat of the day. “—Daddy, I’ve made up my mind I don’t want to go to University.” As I said it we came to a halt in the dusty gloom of the tin garage.

“Well, I won’t press you, my dear. It’s very important that you should be happy about what you do — no making a success of anything unless you’re happy in doing it. I must say I believe that. Not everyone has to go to a university to improve and open their mind, you could do a correspondence course — what about French? Always useful to learn a language. So long as one cultivates one’s mind, it doesn’t really matter—” He sat on in the car a minute or two and I watched his profile. But I could see he was not unhappy, he was absorbed, he had already set his mind on something else for me.

We strolled into the house together, with him talking sensibly, enthusiastically. I found I was not listening but was thinking of Ludi, seized up increasingly by thoughts of Ludi and what he would have said if I had really thought of going to the University. Getting on, the bright ambitious daughter of the Mine Secretary. I smiled to myself at the idea that I might have lent myself to it. Now I would be able to tell him; I lay in the sun somewhere, caring for nothing, and we refuted the University together. Now that I had decided, it seemed ridiculous that I had ever even considered the place. I felt that Ludi and I were proudly alone, and I was as happy in the knowledge of him as if he had been there. I felt he knew all that passed in me, and that only the things that he and I knew mattered. My tongue shaped his name over and over, an intoxication of Ludi, Ludi, Ludi. I was excited and happy. It overflowed. Suddenly I kissed my father, having heard almost nothing of what he had been saying to me. He said: “Not such an ununderstanding old father, after all, eh?” And stood looking at me with proud tenderness.

I went slowly up the passage to the bedroom, dreaming, hugging my arms, and I heard him in the kitchen: “—Why d’you do it? You know it makes your hair smell, and you grumble—” My mother was frying fish. I lay down on my bed with my eyes closed; I could see Ludi’s walk, the startled way his eyes looked without glasses, the way he gave a little snort and his mouth curled up one side before he told me what he thought of something. I could have lain there all evening.

My father was calling me. I let him call three times before I answered: “What?”

“Look — I think this’s for you—”