Life Times by Nadine Gordimer Page B

through the crowd to the table.
    â€˜What d’you want, Roy, my boy?’ said a little, very black-faced African, gleaming up at them.
    â€˜Barberton’ll do for me.’ The young man pressed a hand on the African’s head, grinning.
    â€˜Ah, that stuff’s no good. Sugar-water. Let me give you a dash of Pineapple. Just like mother makes.’
    For a moment, the girl wondered if any of the bottles really did contain Pineapple or Barberton, two infamous brews invented by African natives living in the segregated slums that are called locations. Pineapple, she knew, was made out of the fermented fruit and was supposed to be extraordinarily intoxicating; she had once read a newspaper report of a shebeen raid in which the Barberton still contained a lopped-off human foot – whether for additional flavour or the spice of witchcraft, it was not known.
    But she was reassured at once. ‘Don’t worry,’ said a good-looking blonde, made up to look heavily suntanned, who was standing at the bar. ‘No shebeen ever produced anything much more poisonous than this gin-punch thing of Derek’s.’ The host was attending to the needs of his guests at the bar, and she waved at him a glass containing the mixture that the girl had been drinking over at the window.
    â€˜Not gin. It’s arak – lovely,’ said Derek. ‘What’ll you have, Joyce?’
    â€˜Joyce,’ said the gangling young man with whom she had been dancing. ‘Joyce. That’s a nice name for her. Now tell her mine.’
    â€˜Roy Wilson. But you seem to know each other quite adequately without names,’ said Derek. ‘This is Joyce McCoy, Roy – and, Joyce, these are Matt Shabalala, Brenda Shotley, Mahinder Singh, Martin Mathlongo.’
    They smiled at the girl: the shiny-faced African, on a level with her shoulder; the blonde woman with the caked powder cracking on her cheeks; the handsome, scholarly-looking Indian with the high, bald dome; the ugly light-coloured man, just light enough for freckles to show thickly on his fleshy face.
    She said to her host, ‘I’ll have the same again, Derek. Your punch.’ And even before she had sipped the stuff, she felt a warmth expand and soften inside her, and she said the names over silently to herself – Matt Sha-ba-lala, Martin Math-longo, Ma-hinder Singh. Out of the corner of her eye, as she stood there, she could just see Jessica Malherbe, a short, plump white woman in an elegant black frock, her hair glossy, like a bird’s wing, as she turned her head under the light while she talked.
    Then it happened, just when the girl was most ready for it, just when the time had come. The little African named Matt said, ‘This is Miss Joyce McCoy – Eddie Ntwala,’ and stood looking on with a smile while her hand went into the slim hand of a tall, light-skinned African with the tired, appraising, cynical eyes of a man who drinks too much in order to deaden the pain of his intelligence. She could tell from the way little Shabalala presented the man that he must be someone important and admired, a leader of some sort, whose every idiosyncrasy – the broken remains of handsome, smoke-darkened teeth when he smiled, the wrinkled tie hanging askew – bespoke to those who knew him his distinction in a thousand different situations. She smiled as if to say, ‘Of course, Eddie Ntwala himself, I knew it,’ and their hands parted and dropped.
    The man did not seem to be looking at her – did not seem to be looking at the crowd or at Shabalala, either. There was a slight smile around his mouth, a public smile that would do for anybody. ‘Dance?’ he said, tapping her lightly on the shoulder. They turned to the floor together.
    Eddie Ntwala danced well and unthinkingly, if without much variation. Joyce’s right hand was in his left, his right hand on the concavity of her back, just as if – well, just as