let blacks move in.
It had become impossible to talk about what was happening, back there. He and his wife listened in silence and he noted subconsciously something trivial that he could remark on when the radio was switched off. —Did you find someone to take the kittens?—They were no longer in the hut.
She got up sluggishly from the bed; she certainly had been taking a nap.
—I drowned them in a bucket of water.—
She used sometimes to answer him outlandishly, out of sarcasm, when he suggested she might do something it was beyond question—by nature and intelligence—for her to have done. Now don’t let slip to Parkinson I don’t intend to go to the meeting because I’ve no intention of voting, mmh.—Oh I’ve already had a good chat with Sandra about it, just to be sure he’ll get to hear.
This kind of repartee belonged to the deviousness natural to suburban life. In the master bedroom, sometimes it ended in brief coldness and irritation, sometimes in teasing, kisses, and love-making of a variety suggested by the opportunities of the room and its rituals—a hand between her legs while she was cleaning her teeth, the butting of his penis, seeking her from behind while she bent over the bath to swish a mixture of hot and cold water.
She was lean, rough-looking—the hair on her calves, that had always been kept shaved smooth, was growing back in an uneven nap after so many years of depilation. That she had said ‘in a bucket’: he understood that as it was meant, a piece of concrete evidence of an action duly performed.
—Oh my god.—His lips turned out in disgust, distaste, on her behalf.
She scratched efficiently at her ribs, working the shrunken T-shirt against the bones just below her shallow breasts.
—Oh my poor thing.—
She pulled the shirt over her head and shook it. To lie down was to become a trampoline for fleas. —What’re you making a fuss about.—The baring of breasts was not an intimacy but a castration of his sexuality and hers; she stood like a man stripped in a factory shower or a woman in the ablution block of an institution. —I used to take them to be spayed.—
—Well of course you took them to be spayed.—
—Obsessed with the reduction of suffering. It was all right, I suppose…. Not how to accept it, the way people do here.—
—I should damn well hope not.—
Her neck was weathered red and over-printed with dark freckles down to a half-circle bisected by a V, the limits of the T-shirt and cotton blouse which were her wardrobe. He would never have believed that pale hot neck under long hair when she was young could become her father’s neck that he remembered in a Sunday morning bowling shirt.
The tight T-shirt dragged back down her features, distorting eyes, nose and mouth. It was as if she grimaced at him, ugly; and yet she was his ‘poor thing’, dishevelled by living like this, obliged to turn her hand to all sorts of unpleasant things. —Why didn’t you get one of them to do it?—
Chapter 13
At first the women in the fields ignored her, or greeted her with the squinting unfocused smile of those who have their attention fixed on the ground. One or two—the younger ones—perhaps remarked on her to each other as they would of someone come to remark upon them—a photographer, an overseer (at certain seasons they had used to hire themselves out as weeders on white farms, being fetched by the truckload from many miles distant). She followed along, watching what it was they selected, picked and dug up—July’s mother, in particular, seemed to have a nose for where her pointed digging-stick would discover certain roots. She herself could not expect to acquire that degree of discernment but could recognize wild spinach and one or two other kinds of leaves she saw the women bend for and put in their baskets. When her hands were full, she dropped what she had garnered into one of these. Then she found herself an old plastic bag that had once
It had become impossible to talk about what was happening, back there. He and his wife listened in silence and he noted subconsciously something trivial that he could remark on when the radio was switched off. —Did you find someone to take the kittens?—They were no longer in the hut.
She got up sluggishly from the bed; she certainly had been taking a nap.
—I drowned them in a bucket of water.—
She used sometimes to answer him outlandishly, out of sarcasm, when he suggested she might do something it was beyond question—by nature and intelligence—for her to have done. Now don’t let slip to Parkinson I don’t intend to go to the meeting because I’ve no intention of voting, mmh.—Oh I’ve already had a good chat with Sandra about it, just to be sure he’ll get to hear.
This kind of repartee belonged to the deviousness natural to suburban life. In the master bedroom, sometimes it ended in brief coldness and irritation, sometimes in teasing, kisses, and love-making of a variety suggested by the opportunities of the room and its rituals—a hand between her legs while she was cleaning her teeth, the butting of his penis, seeking her from behind while she bent over the bath to swish a mixture of hot and cold water.
She was lean, rough-looking—the hair on her calves, that had always been kept shaved smooth, was growing back in an uneven nap after so many years of depilation. That she had said ‘in a bucket’: he understood that as it was meant, a piece of concrete evidence of an action duly performed.
—Oh my god.—His lips turned out in disgust, distaste, on her behalf.
She scratched efficiently at her ribs, working the shrunken T-shirt against the bones just below her shallow breasts.
—Oh my poor thing.—
She pulled the shirt over her head and shook it. To lie down was to become a trampoline for fleas. —What’re you making a fuss about.—The baring of breasts was not an intimacy but a castration of his sexuality and hers; she stood like a man stripped in a factory shower or a woman in the ablution block of an institution. —I used to take them to be spayed.—
—Well of course you took them to be spayed.—
—Obsessed with the reduction of suffering. It was all right, I suppose…. Not how to accept it, the way people do here.—
—I should damn well hope not.—
Her neck was weathered red and over-printed with dark freckles down to a half-circle bisected by a V, the limits of the T-shirt and cotton blouse which were her wardrobe. He would never have believed that pale hot neck under long hair when she was young could become her father’s neck that he remembered in a Sunday morning bowling shirt.
The tight T-shirt dragged back down her features, distorting eyes, nose and mouth. It was as if she grimaced at him, ugly; and yet she was his ‘poor thing’, dishevelled by living like this, obliged to turn her hand to all sorts of unpleasant things. —Why didn’t you get one of them to do it?—
Chapter 13
At first the women in the fields ignored her, or greeted her with the squinting unfocused smile of those who have their attention fixed on the ground. One or two—the younger ones—perhaps remarked on her to each other as they would of someone come to remark upon them—a photographer, an overseer (at certain seasons they had used to hire themselves out as weeders on white farms, being fetched by the truckload from many miles distant). She followed along, watching what it was they selected, picked and dug up—July’s mother, in particular, seemed to have a nose for where her pointed digging-stick would discover certain roots. She herself could not expect to acquire that degree of discernment but could recognize wild spinach and one or two other kinds of leaves she saw the women bend for and put in their baskets. When her hands were full, she dropped what she had garnered into one of these. Then she found herself an old plastic bag that had once
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