Nadine Gordimer - Life Times - Stories 1952-2007

Yet although the lovely home was every brick as good as any modern lovely home in the city, it had something of the enclosing gloom of the farmhouse in which Naas had spent his childhood. He never brought that childhood to the light of reminiscence or reflection because he had put all behind him; he was on the other side of the divide history had opened between the farmer and the trader, the past when the Boers were a rural people and the uitlanders ran commerce, and the present, when the Afrikaners governed an industrialised state and had become entrepreneurs, stockbrokers, beer millionaires — all the synonyms for traders. When he began to plan the walls to house his wife’s artistic ideas, a conception of dimness, long gaunt passages by which he had been contained at his Ma’s place, and his Ouma’s, loomed its proportions around the ideas. He met Mrs Naas now in the dark bare passage that led to the kitchen, on her way to drain the rice. They never used the front door, except for visitors; it seemed there were visitors: ‘Ag, Hester, can you quickly make some coffee or tea?’

‘I’m just getting lunch! It’s all ready.’

There was something unnatural, assumed, about him that she had long associated with him ‘doing business’. He did not have time to doff the manner for her, as a man will throw down his hat as he comes into the kitchen from his car in the yard. ‘All right. Who is it, then?’

‘Some people about the Kleynhans place. They’re in the car, so long. A young couple. Unlock the front door.’

‘Why’d you say tea?’

‘They speak English.’

A good businessman thinks of everything; his wife smiled. And a good home-maker is always prepared. Her arched step in high-heeled shoes went to slide the bolt on the Spanish-style hand-carved door; while her husband flushed the lavatory and went out again through the kitchen, she took down her cake tins filled with rusks and home-made glazed biscuits to suit all tastes, English and other. The kettle was on and the cups set out on a cross-stitched traycloth before she sensed a press of bodies through the front entrance. She kept no servant in the house — had the gardener’s wife in to clean three times a week, and the washwoman worked outside in the laundry — and could always feel at once, even if no sound were made, when the pine aerosol-fresh space in her lovely home was displaced by any body other than her own.

Naas’s voice, speaking English the way we Afrikaners do (she thought of it), making it a softer, kinder language than it is, was the one she could make out, coming from the lounge. When he paused, perhaps they were merely smiling in the gap; were shy.

A young man got up to take the tray from her the moment she appeared; yes, silent, clumsy, polite — nicely brought up. The introductions were a bit confused, Naas didn’t seem sure he had the name right, and she, Mrs Naas, had to say in her English, comfortable and friendly — turning to the young woman: ‘What was your name, again?’

And the young man answered for his wife. ‘She’s Anna.’

Mrs Naas laughed. ‘Yes, Anna, that’s a good Afrikaans name, too, you know. But the other name?’

‘I’m Charles Rosser.’ He was looking anxiously for a place to set down the tray. Mrs Naas guided him to one of her coffee tables, moving a vase of flowers.

‘Now is it with milk and sugar, Mrs Rosser? I’ve got lemon here, too, our own lemons from the garden.’

The young woman didn’t expect to be waited on: really well brought up people. She was already there, standing to help serve the men; tall, my, and how thin! You could see her hip bones through her crinkly cotton skirt, one of those Indian skirts all the girls go around in nowadays. She wore glasses. A long thin nose spoilt her face, otherwise quite nice-looking, nothing on it but a bit of blue on the eyelids, and the forehead tugged tight by flat blonde hair twisted into a knob.

‘It’s tiring work all right, looking for accommodation.’ (Naas knew all the estate agent’s words, in English, he hardly ever was caught out saying ‘house’ when a more professional term existed.) ‘Thirsty work.’

The young man checked the long draught he was taking from his cup. He smiled to Mrs Naas. ‘This is very welcome.’

‘Oh, only a pleasure. I know when I go to town to shop — I can tell you, I come home and I’m finished! That’s why we built out here, you know; I said to my husband, it’s going to be nothing but more cars, cars, and more motorbikes—’

‘And she’s talking of fifteen years ago! Now it’s a madhouse, Friday and Saturday, all the Bantu buses coming into town from the location, the papers and beer cans thrown everywhere—’ (Naas offered rusks and biscuits again) that’s why you’re wise to look for somewhere a bit out — not far out, mind you, the wife needs to be able to come in to go to the supermarket and that, you don’t want to feel cut off —’

‘I must say, I never feel cut off!’ his wife enjoyed supporting him. ‘I’ve got my peace and quiet, and there’s always something to do with my hands.’

Naas spoke as if he had not already told her: ‘We’re going to look over the Kleynhans place.’

‘Oh, I thought you’ve come from there!’

‘We going now-now. I just thought, why pass by the house, let’s at least have a cup of tea. .’

‘Is there anybody there?’

‘Just the boy who looks after the garden and so on.’

When they spoke English together it seemed to them to come out like the dialogue from a television series. And the young couple sat mute, as the Klopper grandchildren did before the console when they came to spend a night.

‘Can I fill up?’ Standing beside her with his cup the young man reminded her not of Dawie who had Naas’s brown eyes, didn’t take after her side of the family at all, but of Herman, her sister Miemie’s son. The same glistening, young blond beard, so manly it seemed growing like a plant while you looked at it. The short pink nose. Even the lips, pink and sun-cracked as a kid’s.

‘Come on! Have some more biscuits — please help yourself. . And Mrs Rosser? — please — there’s another whole tin in the kitchen. . I forget there’s no children in the house any more, I bake too much every time.’

She was shy, that girl; at last a smile out of her.

‘Thanks, I’ll have a rusk.’

‘Well I’m glad you enjoy my rusks, an old, old family recipe. Oh you’ll like the Kleynhans place. I always liked it, didn’t I, Naas — I often say to my husband, that’s the kind of place we ought to have. I’ve got a lovely home here, of course I wouldn’t really change it, but it’s so big, now, too big for two people. A lot of work; I do it all myself, I don’t want anyone in my place, I don’t want all that business of having to lock up my sugar and tea — no, I’ll rather do everything myself. I can’t stand to feel one of them there at my back all the time.’

‘But there’s nothing to be afraid of in this area.’ Naas did not look at her but corrected her drift at a touch of the invisible signals of long familiarity.

‘Oh no, this’s a safe place to live. I’m alone all day, only the dog in the yard, and she’s so old now — did she even wake up and come round the front when you came? — ag, poor old Ounooi! It’s safe here, not like the other side of the town, near the location. You can’t even keep your garden hose there, even the fence around your house — they’ll come and take everything. But this side. . no one will worry you.’

Perhaps the young man was not quite reassured. ‘How far away would the nearest neighbours be?’

‘No, not far. There’s Reynecke about three or four kilometres, the other side of the koppie — there’s a nice little koppie, a bit of real veld, you know, on the southern border of the property.’