Four Gated City (42 page)

When Mrs. Quest woke in the morning, she lay smiling, waiting for when she would hear first his bare feet on the bricks of the veranda, the soft slur of the door over cement, the sounds of his movements in the kitchen, then see his bright face as he opened the door, very softly, to see if she was awake and he could bring in the tea. She hurried through bathing and dressing, to get back to the veranda, where she would sit with her friend and talk. He said one day:’ You have a black heart, missus, you are my mother.’ Mrs. Quest could not speak: she was crying. One morning, when she made an exclamation of pain as she moved her leg-her old arthritis was coming back-he leaped across and began rubbing her knee. She sat, suffering as waves of repugnance rose in her, then ebbed and went. A black child was rubbing her knee as, so he said, he had often rubbed his granny’s legs for her, when they had pain in them. She could not bear to think of what she was feeling now, what she had felt: she was having bad headaches, slept badly, was full of a low grieving emotion that she knew was probably remorse.

When, one Sunday she was lunching with the family and the new assistant, they asked if she liked Steven, or if she’d prefer another boy, she said No, he seemed a nice enough boy, she didn’t mind him. And, speaking like this, she realized how far she had moved from the woman who would have said once, he was cheeky,
he was dirty, he was-black. She was ashamed of her new friend, tried to keep a watch out for her son or his wife who might discover her telling Steven a story or talking to him. Once or twice they did: questions were asked. They said they hoped she was not spoiling him. She said, with appropriate severity, that she hoped she knew how to treat kaffirs after all this time. They made jokes that it was bad these days, to say kaffirs, or munts, one should say Africans, those loud-mouthed politicians in town who spoiled the blacks said so. She remarked, for it seemed to her utterly irrelevant, that if they wanted, she would call them Africans. Wasn’t she an African, after all this time? she inquired.

After nearly two years, a man passing through the compound brought a message from Steven’s father: they wanted him back home, if he had earned enough for his tax. Steven assured the old lady that though he must go home, he would be back again.

‘When?’

‘Oh, perhaps they want me for the planting, it will be the rains soon.’

‘Will you come back after the planting?’

‘Oh yes, yes, missus, I will come back.’

Of course, blacks, kaffirs, Africans, have no sense of time. She knew she could not ask. She knew she must not-what right had she? And besides, she was alarmed at the distance she had moved from her old self, that she could grieve because a black boy was going back to his village. This alarm was switched into a grievance against her son and his wife: if only they weren’t so cold, so unfeeling!-
they had white hearts
, she found herself thinking. She thought how, with this child, it would be inconceivable to conduct one of the cold logical exchanges where there was no feeling, no heart, only a kind of word-fencing where no emotions could be admitted. She thought: very well, they find me a tiresome old woman. Of course, it’s natural. Well why don’t they tease me for it then, make a game of it, instead of this therefore and because and if and but. When I’m bad tempered with Steve, he teases me, he jokes.

She thought that, with these black people, it was natural that an old woman was difficult, needed the tact that comes from the heart. Steven had talked of old people who were cross, or a bit crazy, or even hit other people-they were old, his manner suggested; they
were entitled, had a right, to be difficult. But Mrs. Quest was not, not with her own children.

She said that perhaps she might go to England to visit Martha. Yes, of course she would come back. She heard in her voice the same vague note that had been in Steven’s: yes, I’ll come back after the rains. He was not coming back. Why should he? He was fourteen years old. On this farm, the pet, or servant, of an old white woman he earned one pound a month, and-this was the point, saw nothing of the world. He said he wanted to go to a big town, a real town, like Salisbury. He had not ever seen a big white man’s city. Of course. It was natural. But when Mrs. Quest returned to her little house, where she had been pensioned off, from England, she would be alone again. No, she would see if Martha … after all, time changed people … time had changed her, May Quest… she had been told by a black boy that she had a black heart! Let Martha put that in her pipe and smoke it!

Steven left one Sunday morning, with his blanket rolled up over his shoulder, and in it a jersey knitted by Mrs. Quest, and an old shirt of Jonathan’s. His possessions. He was going to walk back home with some brothers who were going that way. He lingered, smiling, on the veranda. Mrs. Quest, lingered, smiling. Then she said briskly:’ Well, Steven, we will both have travelled a long way before we meet again

‘Yes, missus, goodbye, missus.’ He went off down the path into the trees and Mrs. Quest lay on her bed and wept.

Now, after Steven, there was Marie, the coloured girl. She brought the little boy from his nursery school, gave him lunch, and then cleaned the house while he took a nap. Then she prepared food, darned, made tea for Mrs. Quest. She was a brisk little thing, who looked about eighteen. She had two children, cared for by her mother while she worked. Mrs. Quest suspected them of being illegitimate. Marie was religious. Mrs. Quest, religious, found Marie’s religion altogether too much of a good thing. Marie could not smoke, drink, go to the pictures, dance or-Milly said yes, the children were illegitimate. Milly did not appear to be upset by this. She and her husband were liberals; they hated the nationalists; they took it for granted that Mrs. Quest, like themselves, must regard
apartheid
as criminal. Marie, staying late to baby-sit, slept in a spare room, and she sat down to eat with them if she was there at mealtimes. Mrs. Quest thought: well, it’s all right for them they
don’t understand our problems. Milly and her husband had been five years in the Cape, and proposed to return to England when they could.

It was not that Mrs. Quest disliked Marie, on the contrary. She was a very good kind of girl, clean, and responsible with the child. Once when Mrs. Quest had a headache, Marie put her to bed in a dark room, and laid strips of cloth soaked in vinegar on her forehead. Marie talked a great deal about her own two children, about her mother, and about God, who rewarded patience in this vale of tears. Mrs. Quest, listening, thought that her own faith was less, but had once been like this. She remarked, with the quietly grim humour which she knew upset some people, though not Milly, who shared it, that: She did so hope so, but there didn’t seem to be much evidence of it. Marie sighed, smiled, said she would pray for Mrs. Quest. Spending her afternoons with Marie, the old lady thought of Steven, whom she would probably never see again and reminded herself that in England she would be free of colour problems. She made a note never to discuss them with Martha: she really must remember not to.

Her pleasant intimacy with Milly ended when Milly’s husband Bob returned from America. He was very clever, well-informed, energetic. A short, spry, gingery man whose hands always seemed to be full of papers and newspapers, he seemed to Mrs. Quest to be not good enough for Milly. In the evenings, when he was not at his newspaper, he made a great many pronouncements about everything in the world, particularly America, which country he did not admire. He was opinionated about Africa, about the policy of her own country’s government. Mrs. Quest tried very hard to be tactful, to say yes, and no; and not to disagree.

It was from him she learned that her daughter’s employer Mark Coldridge, was a well-known communist writer. She was given a novel to read which she found cold, and intellectual. It described an ideal communist city somewhere in the Middle East. But it was a very dishonest book, sly: it did not mention communism. Discussing the novel with Bob, or rather, listening to his opinions, she agreed with him: communist propaganda was dangerous because it was so dishonest. No communist city was like the one he described, nor had ever been. But naive people or backward people (like the Africans), might very well read the book and believe it. Bob did
not believe in censorship, but he did think some kinds of propaganda ought to be forbidden: this novel, for instance.

Was her daughter a communist, he inquired? Mrs. Quest said she supposed she must be.

She remembered a letter from Martha in which she had said she was not. Mrs. Quest had a cardboard box with all Martha’s letters in it. She spent one evening reading back through the letters, which said so very little, until she found the one she looked for, dated about two years back. The relevant sentences were: You know I’m not a communist; don’t you think it would be a good idea if we kept off politics?

But she was probably lying: they were sly.

Mrs. Quest shut away Martha’s letters, feeling panicky, bewildered. She could not remember writing to Martha about politics at all. What had she written about? She had been writing a lot recently, of course, but that was only because she did not want to be a trouble when she arrived, she wanted to have things clearly understood.

The thought approached the borders of Mrs. Quest’s consciousness that she was writing three, four letters a day to Martha, from the balcony over the sea, and before she got up in the morning, and before she went to sleep at night. Well, wasn’t it natural?

Of course one wrote letters when … her mind went dark.

And so, her mind dark, she wrote the letters, fast, flowing, not thinking, page after page, and sealed them without reading them. She posted them in batches, every morning after breakfast, with the vague thought: Well, that’s taken care of.

She was glad when the time came to leave Cape Town. She was ready and packed two days before. On the day before, she felt bad, did not think she could get out of bed, all her body ached and her legs were like sticks. Milly had not gone to work that day; she stayed, quiet, concerned, affectionate, saying no more than that if Mrs. Quest did not leave by this boat, then there would be another in a couple of weeks’ time. Mrs. Quest lay in bed and looked at the young woman’s gentle, humorous little face; she knew that Milly had quarrelled with her husband because of her: she had heard the quarrel through thin walls. Then Bob came into the room and said that he was going to telephone the doctor. Milly was giving him looks that she seemed to imagine Mrs. Quest did not see: they thought she was stupid, did they? She announced, brisk, that there
was no need for the doctor, she would be ready to leave when the time came.

Bob left the room, brisk. Milly kissed the old woman, and held her for a moment in her arms. ‘Poor old thing, ’ she murmured, and Mrs. Quest, almost weeping with gratitude, said briskly that she was not at all a poor old thing! The two women exchanged their grimly humorous understanding, in a long close look-then Mrs. Quest heard herself give a snort, or yelp of laughter.

Milly, nodding, as if to say: Yes, but it won’t do, you know! There’s my husband to consider!-went out of the room, to the bedroom, where a married altercation took place. Mrs. Quest listened to its sense, not to the words, which she could not quite catch.

Ah, she was thinking, these awful, opinionated dogmatic people: well, thank goodness she was leaving tomorrow.

That morning she was up before the light came, to sit on the balcony for the last time. The sun rose over a flat grey sea, painted it purple and green, painted the great ship that was to take Mrs. Quest to England, in candid paint-box colours. The sky reverberated with light. She sat in a brilliant world which tired her badly, and she looked at the sun and said to it: I won’t be seeing you again, thank goodness! as if an entirely different sun, friendly and modest, shone over England.

She was seen off by Milly who gave her a bunch of flowers. In her cabin she found chocolates. She and two other old ladies settled themselves and their many belongings into an over-small space. She went back to the deck which her fare entitled her to cover, to watch Cape Town slide away into smallness. She needed to say good-bye to her Africa, as she had needed to say good-bye to its sun. In a confusion of emptiness she was laying hold of licensed and appropriate thoughts: about time, which passed; about life, which was unexpected; about death, inevitable. She was pleased, supported by the joyful bustle of the departure, by the flowers, the chocolates, a farewell telegram from her son. Checking up on these, and her thoughts, as she would have done the number of wreaths at a funeral, or soldiers at a ceremony, she was aware that behind the gestures and rituals that she was, as always, depending on, her mind lay bare, very quiet. Indeed, she seemed quite extraordinarily clear-headed: perhaps it was because she had got up so early. She took a chair as near the railings as she could get, among people
who stampeded about like herds of cattle, hoping that some of the salt spray might reach to where she was. When she had come out all those years ago, had people rushed about like this, made noises, shouted, fought over stewards and places? If so, she had forgotten it.

Reminding herself that she must not get tired enough to be caught talking to herself, she sat on while the confusion settled, and routines became established. Then she descended to find out which part of this great machine she was to fit herself to. She did it with a grim private amusement: on this longed-for sea voyage, she, gallant wayfarer, was going to be an old lady among old ladies. She had forgotten it.

By the end of the first day it was as if all these hundreds of people were obeying rules that had been posted up for them: for one thing they were sorted out into their age-groups. Children ran about in their private world, not seeing the grown-up world, seeing only each other. The young people-and there seemed an incredible number of them, flirted and drank and played games together-seeing each other. Mrs. Quest found their behaviour disgusting, but she kept this to herself: she knew she was old-fashioned. There were the married couples, worried about their children. And these shaded off, shredded away into middle age, and then into old age, which was chiefly old women, with one or two old men. So had the tables been arranged in the dining-rooms, and so they all conformed.