Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

Lindsay Wilson is standing; couldn’t see her profile for the fall of her hair that had its own illumination (natural or chemically produced by some toxic substance) in the dim lighting — he must be drunk on this wine to be joking so nastily, even to himself. Suddenly she and the Beard are dancing. The single conformation that is the body of two dancers if they’re good ones is hidden and revealed, hidden and revealed by the interleaving bodies of others. Of course the convict-shaven-skull macho’s a good dancer, what else.

She’s enjoying herself, she even catches his eye for an instant, or was it Sarah Westling’s this was meant for, and him just caught in the swift path of it, her professional attention to keep the spirit of the delegates equally shared, whatever the context. When she sat down again — Everyone all right for wine? — Although the party was the Canadian’s initiative and it was understood the bill would be contributed to by all, she was the organising presence. Domanski danced with her, there was a lot of laughter as a kind of argument, he demonstrating, twirling her wildly.

The Beard was dancing with the Swede; Lindsay Wilson descended with a flap of arms into the vacant chair, there was the rise and fall as if she were breathing on him.

He poured a glass of water. She gulped, choked, recovered herself as he rescued the glass and she took it back domestically as a child from an interfering adult. — It’s like wrestling with my dog, big Irish setter, who’s going to collapse and go racing round the grass first. These Poles. — I thought you were having a good time. — Of course! But it seems I’m off form. Haven’t been dancing lately. — Too busy over us. — She has her breath taken back to herself. — Oh new people, that’s what I like. You have to have a change from your friends although you love them, some spice, must meet people — in different places, different kinds, the relationships, the climate, everything…—

— Where?—

— Where…well, skiing in Italy, same station I went to learn, as a child. And Jamaica — have you ever been? And places I’ve still to go to. But people coming here, instead, coming from those countries, new people. It’s not trouble…—

— And the immigrants? — But she’s seeing conference arrivals, people who have ‘fields’ of chosen interest not the immigrants from Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq and Eastern Europe who like invasive plants seem to have become part of the indigenous bramble of manual workers in this country. Her quick wit — We moved in on them all right, now they’ve moved in on us. — Someone in charge of her life. You don’t always have to talk politics to be acquainted.

— Are you recovered?—

She stood up smiling as if asked if she wanted to dance. They talked while they danced, about — of all things — schooldays. It is accepted that like her he had been to some family traditional private school for boys as she had for girls. That was her segregation. Her innocence, ignorance: he found himself sharing, telling bizarre school adventures in deluding authority which lay forgotten on some shelf of discards in the canon of what had followed as adventure in the real life: as comrade.

— I’ve one friend who’s survived so far as I’m concerned from the dorm bosom pals, but I don’t go to reunions, do you, what’s there to reunion about? — It’s as if this stranger is telling him he doesn’t have to sit at Reed family Sunday lunches though Jabu makes him guilty of excuses. Exoneration come lightly from this chance proximity — the dancing isn’t an embrace but a kind of stalking, in the style the music demands at this moment.

— What are your plans for the weekend? — The conference programme lists a break from working sessions; it’s spring, there are several diversions, cultural trips offered for those who don’t have friends they might want to take the opportunity to visit. — Have you signed up? Of course it means the same company, extension of sessions.—

In agreement about that condition. — I thought I’d see the friends I stayed with my other time in London, I must call — if they’re going to be around. And maybe do some reading in the institute library, there’re issues coming up on Monday I don’t think I’m prepared for — equal to…among the great minds. I want to be sure of the questions I’ll take up, ask—

— You’re so conscientious. — Unserious, a tilt of the head. — If the friends aren’t around, you could come to our place in Norfolk if you like. It’s horsey, my brother has his retired show jumper, and a pony for his kids. My mother and father keep open house when they’re down there weekends. I could take a couple of you, welcome.—

Our place. Husband and family. He hasn’t met the husband who probably has preoccupations of his own, free of any obligation to socialise with the conference. — Thank you, it’s really more than you should have to think of for delegates — I’ll get hold of my friends and find out if they’re going to be in London. If not, well, thanks. — Jeremy’ll let you borrow his old nag, d’you ride?—

She didn’t wait for an assurance, the bossa nova had suddenly ceased just as they were about to pass the party’s table again, and he was commandeered by the Canadian while a singer with the elusive features of some Far Eastern origin caressed the microphone, cooing a pure voice in contrast to the phallic suggestion. — The cabby’s ready to take you back when you’ve had enough. — But Canada signalled for another bottle of wine and settled to reminiscences about colleagues, some from South Africa, Nobel Prize names in medicine, physics, was this one — didactic, but with such a critical mind — was he still alive, no, hadn’t he emigrated to some nuclear research project in Germany — we were cocky youngsters together years ago, Einsteins all, in our opinion.—

Except for the courteously gentle Phillip Tobias, whose inspiring lectures he had sat in on although the origin of hominids was not the area of his interrupted studies in chemistry, he knew the other great — all that matters — only by their works — some quoted in the doctoral thesis that earned him Assistant Professorship.

— Of course. You’re not old enough…you were in short pants, time of my student days — Flattery rather than condescension. And his student days; flunked out. On the run, in Swaziland; or in Detention Block D. Along with the wine, take the flattery as a woman would, glad to be looking less than her age.

The Canadian paid the bill with his credit card and everyone contributed their share, or if there was the muddle that they didn’t have the right notes for the amount, vociferously in exaggerated decorum — nobody was drunk but nobody was sober — assuring they’d settle tomorrow. All parted for the ‘cab’ and other cars that brought them, a kiss in the air grazing either cheek, given men and woman alike by their caretaker (the charming sense of the word) but she didn’t leave with them. From the door, straggling, yawning in the urge to be gone; she was to be seen, back within the music, Lindsay Wilson and the Beard, dancing.

In the morning: hadn’t called last night.

But at what an hour it would have been. The ringing jangling beside Jabu in the deepest cycle of sleep.

When he reaches her early in the morning Jabu is given a rundown of the evening’s scholarly entertainment with the relish of gossip between them — she’s in a rush and an account of the serious proceedings so far, although she’s eager for his impressions, will have to wait.

That day the sessions’ range branched off, burrowed, dived in on trail of toxins beyond domestic examples, the food industry, cosmetics. — Industrial products — a loose term that hardly covers the pervasive products of nuclear power stations. — A delegate who so far had been withdrawn in perfect attention of others, stood up with his microphone and had to pause, applauded: he must be someone unapproachable in his, this field. Ignoring the accolade the man spoke with distant eloquence. — We are all afraid of extinction. That is what the nuclear threat is, to most people. The nuclear threat that is not the Big Bang is one that kills slowly. The state of world data, our information, let alone fully examined and assessed knowledge of the nuclear threat that is not a Big Bang, is incomplete and perhaps never will be. This symposium is an opportunity — obligation — to hear from our colleagues from many regions of the planet which compromise our engulfing environment, anything in the experience of their own country which will add to the data.—