Nadine Gordimer - The Conservationist

There is an anxious silence for the last few minutes of the journey; the old fellow seems to feel guilty that he has run through his conversational repertoire. Anyway, at the first robot towards the centre of town both passengers alight, with sounds of heaving and pushing as the veteran slides along the seat and gets himself out (perhaps he has some disablement). The girl has never uttered a word during the ride; the old man, after profuse thanks, suddenly signals as the car is about to pull away. Of course they’ve left something.

— It’s still on. Trinity, I mean. It’s a good Western, I think you’d enjoy it, you know — The light’s green, everyone is nosing and blaring at the stationary car, the old man is carried in a momentum of people let loose from where they were damned up at the crossing, and some impatient bastard even shouts abuse whose sarcastic twang catches at the car window as he whips by.

All right. All right. The Mercedes sinks into the entrance of the underground garage where the attendant Zulu with disc ear-rings stoppering his lobes, and a cap less grand than a commissionaire’s, has recognized it instantly, and drawn aside, ceremonially as a curtain, the loop of chain that bars unauthorized entry.

He felt that he really must have a strong cup of coffee. Doing without breakfast when he slept at the farm was a good thing, almost a virtue he liked to enjoy, but there was an arch of emptiness under his diaphragm that only decent coffee and a first cigar could support. One of the little girls at the office would bring him a cup of instant if he waited a few minutes for them to come in, but he was earlier than the lowliest messenger on days when he came from the farm, and he didn’t want to wait even ten minutes. Not that that muck was coffee. He went up to the foyer and out into the street. There must be a place near by. Business lunches simply meant driving from one underground parking bay to another; the only time he walked through the streets was when he went to get his hair cut.

The coffee bar was packed. Apparently young people crowded in to meet their friends before work in the mornings, clustered along the counter like birds on a telephone wire. It was an Italian place, smelt deliciously of what he’d come for, and was noisy as the street. He got a double espresso and stood where he could find room for himself, at a ledge that formed a table of sorts for the cup, at elbow height, round a pillar. How they talked, little typists and students — whatever they were — predominantly girls, although a few young men fooled here and there, a few moony couples were holding hands between the stools and absently caressing. How they could talk! Confidential, animated, fresh from the toothbrush, their eyes circled with colour, butterflies on their trousers, hieroglyphs on their satchels, almost skirtless bottoms almost bare on stools — they could have been his daughters. Any of them. The coffee seized upon his tongue. He concentrated on sipping it round the edges of the cup, it went down slow, thick and fiery as dark molten metal poured into the ingot and as soon as it was comfortable to drink he was already at the dregs, and ordered another. To get the fresh cup off the conveyor band that moved along the main counter, carrying orders to customers one way and dirty cups the other, he had to lean his long arm in the pale grey sleeve with the half-inch of striped shirt cuff and the Roman coin cuff-link, between blonde and dark heads: a strange intrusion. The two whose conversation it parted slowed talk momentarily and looked at it as something disembodied, out of their world. He caught a whiff of scent — not perfume, something they washed their hair with or sprayed under their arms. This cup he could take more temperately; he could wait until it was possible to hold a mouthful, hot and strong. He had lit a cheroot. But one was smiling at him — one of the dozens of girls — twiddling the fingers of a hand in a childish wave. He looked away as when, in a crowded room, a glance intercepts the greeting intended for another. When he looked up again the girl was laughing, shaking her head a little as if to say: it’s me.

He put down the cup. He was not sitting — no chairs in a place like that — but he stood away from the ledge, the pillar, he took a step, drawn up, as if he rose from a table.

She had slid round and off her stool in one easy movement and was coming to him.

— Hul- lo . We haven’t seen you for such a long time. Mummy was saying only yesterday. And someone said you were in Japan or Brazil or somewhere. —

— No. Not at the moment. As you see —

They laughed, and without meaning to he actually opened his hands as if to display — one of the half-dozen well-cut summer suits, the edges of the trousers giving him away by just a hairline of grass-stained wet where they hung at the right length over his shoes.

— What’re you doing here? — So early, in our coffee bar, the smile suggested, not unwelcomingly.

— Thirsty. And what about you? Why aren’t you at school? Or am I being insulting — you’ve left school, that’s it? You’re a lady of leisure. -

— Oh ho. Am I! Slaving away. I’m at art school. I have to get up at quarter-to-six to catch the bus every morning. -

— Why doesn’t Dad buy you a car? —

— I know. It’s mean. — She was laughing as if this were the wittiest conversation of her life.

— I’ll have to talk to him about that. —

— I just wish you would. You tell him. -

— A nice little sports car. What would you like? A Jag? A Triumph? Something with wire wheels? —

She pulled a face that made white dents in her firm pink-brown flesh. — I’ll take any thing. Any old jalopy. And what’s Terry doing? I suppose he’s got a car, lucky thing. -

— Not so lucky. Writing matric at the moment. Still incarcerated at school. -

— Good. Good — she said, vaguely.

There was a pause; the espresso machine made a gargling, hawking racket at which he raised his eyebrows and she laughed again, the habituée .

— But this coffee’s wonderful. My second round. Will you have one with me? —

— I know. It’s great. I’ve just got mine. Wait I’ll fetch it. — With a turn of the long waist, she was off and back again, pushing through her friends or at least contemporaries. He had guarded the ledge against the intrusion of anyone else who might approach with wobbling cup. The two of them leant over their coffee a moment, breathing it in. — You don’t smoke, do you? I don’t have to incur parental wrath by offering you one of these? —

She shook her head. — You’ve always smoked that kind. I used to know you’d come when I smelt that smell in the house. —

He blew away the cloud that in the close atmosphere made a curly nimbus round her hair. He was obliged to ask: — And how’s your mother? I’ve been away such a lot —

— Oh fine. We had a bit of a hassle over my flunking out before matric. You can’t imagine. Dad was all right but she was difficult. She wanted me to go to a finishing school in Switzerland… no thanks —

— If you go to Switzerland it’ll be to ski. —

— Exactly. —

— You’re enjoying this art school of yours? Have you any talent? —

— I don’t know. I don’t suppose I’ll ever do anything inspired. But it’s fun. -

— Specially the part that’s spent in places like this, mmh? —

— If I’d still been in that bloody school, do you know where I’d be now? At prayers! —

— So it’s gossip and romances and slipping off to drink espresso and go to the pictures? —

— Of course. You know it all! —

— Lucky thing. —

She smiled debunkingly at his use of her idiom. - What stops you? You can just walk out of your office and go to a movie if you feel like it? Why not? Daddy always groans as if he were in chains in that big plush office of his — I think you people make it all up. Why can’t you just say, I’m going to a movie this afternoon? If you feel like it? —