The Sun Between Their Feet (20 page)

‘But how do you know, Molly? You could live next to
someone for fifty years and still not know. Perhaps he's got something that gives him hell when he's alone, like all the rest of us?'

‘No, I don't think so, Mr Farquar.'

‘Molly,' he said, appealing suddenly, and very exasperated. ‘You're too hard on yourself, Molly.' She didn't say anything.

He said: ‘Listen, why don't you get away for a while, get yourself down to the sea, this altitude drives us all quietly crazy. You get down off the altitude for a bit.'

She still said nothing, and he lowered his voice, and I could imagine how my mother's face would have gone stiff and cold had she heard what he said: ‘And have a good time while you're there. Have a good time and let go a bit.'

‘But, Mr Farquar. I don't want a good time.' The words, a good time, she used as if they could have nothing to do with her.

‘If we can't have what we want in this world, then we should take what we can get.'

‘It wouldn't be right,' she said at last slowly. ‘I know people have different ideas, and I don't want to press mine on anyone.'

‘But
Molly -'
he began, exasperated, or so it sounded, and then he was silent.

From where I sat I could hear the grass chair creaking: she was getting out of it. ‘I'll take your advice,' she said. ‘I'll get down to the sea and I'll take the children with me. The two younger ones.'

‘To hell with the kids for once. Take your old man with you and see that Emmy Pritt doesn't go with you this time.'

‘Mr Farquar,' she said, ‘if Mr Slatter wants Emmy Pritt, he can have her. He can have either one or the other of us. But not both. If I took him to the sea he would be over at her place ten minutes after we got back.'

‘Ah, Molly, you women can be hell. Have some pity on him for once.'

‘Pity? Mr Slatter's a man who needs nobody's pity. But
thank you for your good advice, Mr Farquar. You are always very kind, you and Mrs Farquar.'

And she said goodbye to my father, and when I came forward she kissed me and asked me to come and see her soon, and she went to the station to get the stores.

And so Mrs Slatter went on living. George Andrews bought his own farm and married and the wedding was at the Slatters'. Later on Emmy Pritt got sick again and had another operation and died. It was a cancer. Mr Slatter was ill for the first time in his life from grief, and Mrs Slatter took him to the sea, by themselves, leaving the children, because they were grown-up anyway. For this was years later, and Mrs Slatter's hair had gone grey and she was fat and old, as I had heard her say she wanted to be.

The train left at midnight, not at six. Jansen's flare of temper at the clerk's mistake died before he turned from the counter: he did not really mind. For a week he had been with rich friends, in a vacuum of wealth, politely seeing the town through their eyes. Now, for six hours, he was free to let the dry and nervous air of Johannesburg strike him direct. He went into the station buffet. It was a bare place, with shiny brown walls and tables arranged regularly. He sat before a cup of strong orange-coloured tea, and because he was in the arrested, dreamy frame of mind of the uncommitted traveller, he was the spectator at a play which could not hold his attention. He was about to leave, in order to move by himself through the streets, among the people, trying to feel what they were in this city, what they had which did not exist, perhaps, in other big cities – for he believed that in every place there dwelt a daemon which expressed itself through the eyes and voices of those who lived there – when he heard someone ask: Is this place free? He turned quickly, for there was a quality in the voice which could not be mistaken. Two girls stood beside him, and the one who had spoken sat down without waiting for his response: there were many empty tables in the room. She wore a tight short black dress, several brass chains, and high shiny black shoes. She was a tall broad girl with colourless hair ridged tightly round her head, but given a bright surface so that it glinted like metal. She immediately lit a cigarette and said to her companion: ‘Sit down for God's sake.' The other girl shyly slid into the chair next to Jansen, averting her face as he gazed at her, which he could not help doing: she was so different from what he expected.

Plump, childish, with dull hair bobbing in fat rolls on her neck, she wore a flowered and flounced dress and flat white sandals on bare and sunburned feet. Her face had the jolly friendliness of a little dog. Both girls showed Dutch ancestry in the broad blunt planes of cheek and forehead; both had small blue eyes, though one pair was surrounded by sandy lashes, and the other by black varnished fringes.

The waitress came for an order. Jansen was too curious about the young girl to move away. ‘What will you have?' he asked. ‘Brandy,' said the older one at once. ‘Two brandies,' she added, with another impatient look at her sister – there could be no doubt that they were sisters.

‘I haven't never drunk brandy,' said the younger with a giggle of surprise. ‘Except when Mom gave me some sherry at Christmas.' She blushed as the older said despairingly, half under her breath: ‘Oh God preserve me from it!'

‘I came to Johannesburg this morning,' said the little one to Jansen confidingly. ‘But Lilla has been here earning a living for a year.'

‘My God!' said Lilla again. ‘What did I tell you? Didn't you hear what I told you?' Then, making the best of it, she smiled professionally at Jansen and said: ‘Green! You wouldn't believe it if I told you. I was green when I came, but compared with Marie …' She laughed angrily.

‘Have you been to Joburg before this day?' asked Marie in her confiding way.

‘You are passing through,' stated Lilla, with a glance at Marie. ‘You can tell easy if you know how to look.'

‘You're quite right,' said Jansen.

‘Leaving tomorrow perhaps?' asked Lilla.

‘Tonight,' said Jansen.

Instantly Lilla's eyes left Jansen, and began to rove about her, resting on one man's face and then the next. ‘Midnight,' said Jansen, in order to see her expression change.

‘There's plenty time,' she said, smiling.

‘Lilla promised I could go to the bioscope,' said Marie, her eyes becoming large. She looked around the station buffet,
and because of her way of looking, Jansen tried to see it differently. He could not. It remained for him a bare, brownish, dirty sort of place, full of badly-dressed and dull people. He felt as one does with a child whose eyes widen with terror or delight at the sight of an old woman muttering down the street, or a flowering tree. What hunched black crone from a fairy tale, what celestial tree does the child see? Marie was smiling with charmed amazement.

‘Very well,' said Jansen, ‘let's go to the flicks.'

For a moment Lilla calculated, her hard blue glance moving from Jansen to Marie. ‘You take Marie,' she suggested, direct to Jansen, ignoring her sister. ‘She's green, but she's learning.' Marie half-rose, with a terrified look. ‘You can't leave me,' she said.

‘Oh my God!' said Lilla resignedly. ‘Oh all right. Sit down baby. But I've a friend to see. I told you.'

‘But I only just came.'

‘All right, all right. Sit down I said. He won't bite you.'

‘Where do you come from?' asked Jansen.

Marie said a name he had never heard.

‘It's not far from Bloemfontein,' explained Lilla.

‘I went to Bloemfontein once,' said Marie, offering Jansen this experience. ‘The bioscope there is big. Not like near home.'

‘What is home like?'

‘But it's small,' said Marie.

‘What does your father do?'

‘He works on the railway,' Lilla said quickly.

‘He's a ganger,' said Marie, and Lilla rolled her eyes up and sighed.

Jansen had seen the gangers' cottages, the frail little shacks along the railway lines, miles from any place, where the washing flapped whitely on the lines over patches of garden, and the children ran out to wave to the train that passed shrieking from one wonderful fabled town to the next.

‘Mom is old-fashioned,' said Marie. She said the word old-fashioned carefully; it was not hers, but Lilla's; she was tasting it in the way she sipped at the brandy, trying it out, determined to like it. But the emotion was all her own; all the frustration of years was in her, ready to explode into joy. ‘She doesn't want us to be in Joburg. She says it is wrong for girls.'

‘Did you run away?' asked Jansen.

Wonder filled the child's face. ‘How did you guess I ran away?' She said, with a warm admiring smile at Lilla: ‘My sister sent me the money. I didn't have none at all. I was alone with Mom and Dad and my brothers are working on the copper mines.'

‘I see.' Jansen saw the lonely girl in the little house by the railway lines, helping with the chickens and the cooking, staring hopelessly at the fashion papers, watching the trains pass, too old now to run out and wave and shout, but staring at the fortunate people at the windows with grudging envy, and reading Lilla's letters week after week: ‘I have a job in an office. I have a new dress. My young man said to me.' He looked over the table at the two fine young South African women, with their broad and capable look, their strong bodies, their health, and he thought: Well, it happens every day. He glanced at his watch and Marie said at once: ‘There's time for the bioscope, isn't there?'

‘You and your bioscope,' said Lilla. ‘I'll take you tomorrow afternoon.' She rose, said to Jansen in an off-hand way: ‘Coming?' and went to the door. Jansen hesitated, then followed Marie's uncertain but friendly smile.

The three went into the street. Not far away shone a large white building with film stars kissing between thin borders of coloured shining lights. Streams of smart people went up the noble marble steps where splendid men in uniform welcomed them. Jansen, watching Marie's face, was able to see it like that. Lilla laughed and said: ‘We're going home, Marie. The pictures aren't anything much.

There's better things to do than pictures.' She winked at Jansen.

They went to a two-roomed flat in a suburb. It was over a grocery store called Mac's Golden Emporium. It had tinned peaches, dried fruit, dressed dolls and rolls of cotton stuffs in the window. The flat had new furniture in it. There was a sideboard with bottles and a radio. The radio played: ‘Or would you like to swing on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar, and be better off than you are …'

‘I like the words,' said Marie to Jansen, listening to them with soft delight. Lilla said: ‘Excuse me, but I have to phone my friend,' and went out.

Marie said: ‘Have a drink.' She said it carefully. She poured brandy, the tip of her tongue held between her teeth, and she spilled the water. She carried the glass to Jansen, and smiled in unconscious triumph as she set it down by him. Then she said: ‘Wait,' and went into the bedroom. Jansen adjusted himself on the juicy upholstery of a big chair. He was annoyed to find himself here. What for? What was the good of it? He looked at himself in the glass over a sideboard. He saw a middle-aged gentleman, with a worn indulgent face, dressed in a grey suit and sitting uncomfortably in a very ugly chair. But what did Marie see when she looked at him? She came back soon, with a pair of black shiny shoes on her broad feet, and a tight red dress, and a pretty face painted over her own blunt honest face. She sat herself down opposite him, as she had seen Lilla sit, adjusting the poise of her head and shoulders. But she forgot her legs, which lay loosely in front of her, like a schoolgirl's.

‘Lilla said I could wear her dresses,' she said, lingering over her sister's generosity. ‘She said today I could live here until I earned enough to get my own flat. She said I'd soon have enough.' She caught her breath. ‘Mom would be mad.'

‘I expect she would,' said Jansen drily; and saw Marie react away from him. She spread her red skirts and faced him politely, waiting for him to make her evening.

Lilla came in, turned her calculating, good-humoured eye from her sister to Jansen, smiled, and said: ‘I'm going out a little. Oh, keep your hair on. I'll be back soon. My friend is taking me for a walk.'

The friend came in and took Lilla's arm, a large, handsome sunburned man who smiled with a good-time smile at Marie. She responded with such a passion of admiration in her eyes that Jansen understood at once what she did not see when she looked at himself. ‘My, my,' said this young man with easy warmth to Marie. ‘You're a fast learner, I can see that.'

‘We'll be back,' said Lilla to Marie. ‘Remember what I said.' Then, to Jansen, like a saleswoman: ‘She's not bad. Anyhow she can't get herself into any trouble here at home.' The young man slipped his arm around her, and reached for a glass off the sideboard with his free hand. He poured brandy, humming with the radio: ‘In a shady nook, by a babbling brook …' He threw back his head, poured the brandy down, smiled broadly at Jansen and Marie, winked and said: ‘Be seeing you. Don't forget to wind up the clock and put the cat out.' Outside on the landing he and Lilla sang: ‘Carry moonbeams
home
in a jar, be better
off
than you are …' They sang their way down to the street. A car door slammed, an engine roared. Marie darted to the window, and said bitterly: “They've gone to the pictures.'

‘I don't think so,' said Jansen. She came back, frowning, preoccupied with responsibility. ‘Would you like another drink?' she asked, remembering what Lilla had told her. Jansen shook his head, and sat still for a moment, weighted with inertia. Then he said: ‘Marie, I want you to listen to me.' She leaned forward dutifully, ready to listen. But this was not as she had gazed at the other man, the warm, generous, laughing, singing young man. Jansen found many words ready on his tongue, disliked them, and blurted: ‘Marie, I wish you'd let me send you back home tonight.' Her face dulled. ‘No, Marie, you really must
listen.' She listened politely, from behind her dull resistance. He used words carefully, out of the delicacy of his compassion, and saw how they faded into meaninglessness in the space between him and Marie. Then he grew brutal and desperate, because he had to reach her. He said: ‘This sort of life isn't as much fun as it looks'; and ‘Thousands of girls all over the world choose the easy way because they're stupid, and afterwards they're sorry.' She dropped her lids, looked at her feet in her new high shoes, and shut herself off from him. He used the words whore and prostitute; but she had never heard them except as swearwords, and did not connect them with herself. She began repeating, over and over again: ‘My sister's a typist; she's got a job in an office.'