Nadine Gordimer - No Time Like the Present

She’s telling him that she really wants a cottage, some little place she can fix up, of her own, although she loves the family-free-for-all she can always take friends to. A cottage nearer the city so she could even come down during the week for a night. But it doesn’t make sense, she supposes, while she’s going to be away, sometimes a post for several years—

When a flash sears across the road a leaping dark thing hare or dog and her voice become the mad swerve of her left hand over the steering wheel the speeding car heaves he grabs the arc of her arm to correct violent imbalance and she rights in a skid — whatever the creature was it’s escaped, her left palm falls rigid spread-fingered on his thigh as the speed shudders madly and her sane right hand gains control of the wheel. Drawing back his arm, his hand rests a moment on the hand on his thigh as on flesh that has taken a blow. Then she’s in charge, she doesn’t stifle the engine, stop the car, she drives them slowly out of the zigzag the tyres have ploughed.

— You didn’t touch it. It’s unhurt. I saw. — The assurance. Neither suggested they should have got out to make certain. It was true he saw it disappear into a thicket of bushes. — I don’t think it was a squirrel — was all she said. Are squirrels special, to her, among wild creatures.

As her car came to itself again, she cried out and turned to him with a twitching grimace — I apologise. I think you need a coffee, shall we stop at a village. Get ourselves together? We’re near now, about half an hour to go.—

— You handled it well, I’m the one to apologise for grabbing your arm like that, it must be bruised.—

— I’ll tell you after I’m in the bath, too much sleeve to roll up now. We were both pretty cool.—

They had coffee anyway at a rural stall, served by what the stranger would appreciate in the English countryside, a bright-faced old man with an accent of some region he hadn’t heard before; that one other time in England. There was a parrot in a cage, nibbling his bars at them. She spoke to it, Hi there Polly two cappuccinos please, and it cursed back in a hoarse invective learnt from some drunk — Shut yer fucking trap fucker FUCK-EER LOS LOS GET LOS — curses certainly lost in their buoyant laughter. All part of the incident on their way. It passed with the early dusk.

In light from the windows an old farmhouse appeared leaned against by two great bent trees he thought must be old oaks — Not so old — she discarded sentiment — my great-grandfather decided to try farming when he came back from that First World War with lungs messed up in a gas attack. My grandfather preferred the stock exchange and that was a good thing for the rest of us. It’s never been farmed since. Most of the land was sold off, of course.—

Seen for the first time as if come upon an unfurled painting, an orchard of some kind, a line of trees curving beyond a field where two horses switched tails in the company of (by comparison) an awkward donkey, the tree-line imagined as probably covering a stream; the house not thatched but with rural solidity enlivened by some obvious additions. There were three cars and a station wagon at homely angles on the grass, where shadow children in the light from the house darted between them after a ball.

— Ah, full house tonight. — She, recognising vehicles and children. Apparently it was customary no one, including herself, was expected to call that they were going to be there for the weekend. But he felt rather intrusive, just turning up with her, open house full house. — Is it all right? — She gave a call of mock surprise — Of course!—

His tote bag and her stack of whatever her kit was for the country were left in the car. Everyone was already around food and drink in a wide echoing room with a fire being fed rough logs in fooling competition by two teenage boys and a girl in sheepskin boots. He was taken by the hand to have it presented to a heavy man, evidently her brother, blond as the strands so restless this way and that over her forehead and cheeks due to what happened on the road; so the water-blondness was shared, not chemical. The brother Jeremy took the hand and then grasped its forearm male-welcomely (not the black double-shake, eish ), although he didn’t seem to give much attention to registering the name of the one changing weekend cast she brought to open house. — The parents aren’t down — she asked.

The brother was the host, then. — Help yourself before everything’s gone — this family’s a ravenous lot. Wine’s there, beer if you’d rather. My sister’s always for Guinness, she knows where to find it. — Women came over from the long table of food. I’m Tracy…Ivy, Isabel. I’m this girl Lindsay’s Ugly Sister (a beauty); a small girl with her mother’s lipstick a purple scar on her mouth insisted, Who’re you… Steve , thanks…Steve Steve Steve, repeated in the parrot’s cadence.

It could be heard from his South African accent that although he wasn’t one of her foreigner friends (Domanski’s cried off, yes) he was some variety of colonial. — You here from Australia, mate? — Oh…this one or that among the men had a son or a cousin in South Africa, communications or was it automation, Cape Town. A young one dismissed the Square connection: his brother was down there with the Liverpool rugby team. A grey-locks woman with the presence of some other kind of achievement found herself beside him as he topped up his wine glass, there must have been something about him suggesting her supposition: Does he know the work of the artist from his country, Karel Nel, who recently had an exhibition in London, Cork Street, an extraordinary talent, astrophysics in art. He’d never met the painter but Jake had taken Jabu and him to an exhibition of the work at home. Among the jet and fall of voices, the mood stir of people enjoying food together, there was the momentary link of particular experience, an artist’s vision, between strangers.

He was free of any ‘taking care’ of him by the one who’d brought him along with her, made at ease by another family accustomed, as in the Suburb, to additions of passing company. She was keeping up with this one’s news and that one’s questions about what she was up to; he caught snatches of her description of the array of conference delegates between gleeful interjections this encouraged. But once she came over — as she would drop in according to her duty to check all going well with the needs at conference sessions — and saw that he was helping himself to ham, pickles, roast beef, store-boxed quiche, and engaged with Jeremy’s account of a weird burglary at his London house where only sports equipment, his golf clubs, tennis racquets, son’s sailing gear had been taken. — Thieves rather specialised according to the pawn shop demand, these days. Tracy suspects an inside job facilitated by the man who comes to clean the windows, the nice chap she makes coffee for as soon as he arrives… — Someone’s son with a single earring and a tattoo like a secondary venous system on the back of his hand (familiar insignia of white students at home, earrings are not discriminatory, but tattoos don’t show up well on black skin) wants to know if there is good deep-sea diving there, South Africa.

South Africa.

He takes the chance to slip out of the company to find quiet where he can use his mobile. A passage past clamorous timpani of utensils and voices in a kitchen and farther on avoiding an open bedroom where a woman was admonishing a child in the special goodnight register, came upon another open door, a small room evidently the nook of someone who had to keep in touch with principals in the city — there were computers, calendars with circled dates under logos of insurance brokers, industrial companies. The call to the Suburb: summoning as if inside him. Jabu’s voice, no distance. — Jabu, hi you can’t imagine where I’m speaking from, darling, an old English farmhouse used as a weekend place, everybody, family African-style almost — but of course no one actually lives here. — Oh lovely. How’d you come to get there — The conference has a break Saturday Sunday, there are excursions, invitations, this’s the family of the director’s Girl Friday, public relations, she has to make arrangements for us all. She invited a couple of us but the other one didn’t show up. For once it isn’t raining in England, but of course I haven’t had a chance to walk around yet, there’re horses, I could go riding if I knew how…tell Gary I’m told the children have a donkey to ride, wouldn’t he love that — I won’t tell him, he’ll be cross because he’s not there with you! Anyway he’s got his pal to sleep over…but Stevie did you see…a farmer’s shot a man he saw on his mealie field, he says he thought it was a baboon — She doesn’t have to say white farmer (who else). — Justice Centre’s taking up proceedings for the man’s family, he was a worker on another farm coming to see a friend. — Oh my God (though since the days of being taken to church dutifully by his father he hasn’t believed there is One) I see only English papers, they wouldn’t be reporting that, too many big horror stories, Congo, Sudan, Iraq. I’ll go to the Embassy next week, must read our papers.—