side of my bed.
There were people like Bruno van Thaal, who relied on me to behave quite differently, and like Joel Sachs, whose livelihood might depend on it; old friends like Peggy Marchant, who expected me to be an angel; and old enemies like Mrs Arkell, who had known all along that I was a complete harlot.
Sometimes, I thought of it in terms of my own un-pretty columnese: ‘ Kate Marais , who tells us all how to behave , cosily installed with left-winger Jonathan Steele. Such beautiful music … He writes as well , though not just now …’ But the subcutaneous smear had not yet been coined which could make me feel second-rate, or tarnish this idyll. This time, I was doing it, and so it was all different.
Thus, at the mirror, in the street, on my bed, all the foolish lineaments of love … I got the flat ready. I bought six bottles of champagne, and some masculine-type soap that smelt of hot tar. I alerted Julia who, as expected, was shocked to the back teeth and refused to speak anything but Cape-Coloured Afrikaans for three whole days. I visited my doctor, whose eyebrows rose a full inch before he said: ‘Of course …’
Then suddenly it was the day, and, more suddenly, the night.
Chapter Six
I met his plane at the airport. Standing in the sunshine, looking across the sandy expanse of the Cape Flats towards the broad bulk of Table Mountain, still dominant against the blue flag of the sky even at a distance of twenty miles, I felt sure of myself, and happy, and excited. When his plane came winging in from the north-east, dropping steeply as it crossed the last outcrop of the Drakensberg Range, I stared at it – a tiny silver bird catching the sun joyfully on its wings – and thought: All that I love, all that I am going to love, is up there in blessed suspension, coming towards me, keeping our appointment … But that turned out to be the last moment of certainty, of assurance, for several long hours.
He seemed taller than I remembered, and pale (‘We came down too fast’), and nervous (‘I always forget that I hate flying’). I was suddenly nervous too; the words I spoke, the answers I gave, were wayward and nonsensical. There were two or three people I knew, among the disembarking passengers; I felt that they were looking at me, and then at Jonathan Steele, as if we were a strange couple indeed, undoubtedly suspect. (‘Kate Marais was at the airport,’ I imagined the dark commentary, ‘meeting someone we’d never set eyes on before! He looked so odd! Do you suppose …’) I felt odd also, for the first time within a now shaky memory.
I drove into town abominably, earning horn-blasts from other, infuriated road-users, and a harsh glare from a motorcycle cop on the watch for just such female mavericks as myself. It was nerves, of course; I wanted to do everything well that day – driving cars, mixing champagne cocktails, organising a meal, making love – and the omens already were quite otherwise.
It grew worse later on; in my flat which should have been a warm, exciting refuge from everything and everyone that was not us, we found ourselves talking with ludicrous constraint. It seemed that we had said all that had to be said, on that last night together in Johannesburg; the next stage could only be a headlong dive into action, and it was too early for that, too light, too soon.
Serving amid lengthening silence a dinner which was not as good as I had planned, Julia looked at me as if I were out of my wits, and at Jonathan as if he were a burglar. If this was madam’s idea of love, her caustic glances said, then madam should see the head-doctor, now. Tomorrow would be too late.
Ten o’clock came, and then eleven. Julia had long since gone home, though the resentful clatter of dishes in the sink still rang in my ears. I sat feet-up on the couch, wearing a housecoat which had seemed just the thing when I bought it, two days earlier, but which now felt indecorous, even indecent.
There were people like Bruno van Thaal, who relied on me to behave quite differently, and like Joel Sachs, whose livelihood might depend on it; old friends like Peggy Marchant, who expected me to be an angel; and old enemies like Mrs Arkell, who had known all along that I was a complete harlot.
Sometimes, I thought of it in terms of my own un-pretty columnese: ‘ Kate Marais , who tells us all how to behave , cosily installed with left-winger Jonathan Steele. Such beautiful music … He writes as well , though not just now …’ But the subcutaneous smear had not yet been coined which could make me feel second-rate, or tarnish this idyll. This time, I was doing it, and so it was all different.
Thus, at the mirror, in the street, on my bed, all the foolish lineaments of love … I got the flat ready. I bought six bottles of champagne, and some masculine-type soap that smelt of hot tar. I alerted Julia who, as expected, was shocked to the back teeth and refused to speak anything but Cape-Coloured Afrikaans for three whole days. I visited my doctor, whose eyebrows rose a full inch before he said: ‘Of course …’
Then suddenly it was the day, and, more suddenly, the night.
Chapter Six
I met his plane at the airport. Standing in the sunshine, looking across the sandy expanse of the Cape Flats towards the broad bulk of Table Mountain, still dominant against the blue flag of the sky even at a distance of twenty miles, I felt sure of myself, and happy, and excited. When his plane came winging in from the north-east, dropping steeply as it crossed the last outcrop of the Drakensberg Range, I stared at it – a tiny silver bird catching the sun joyfully on its wings – and thought: All that I love, all that I am going to love, is up there in blessed suspension, coming towards me, keeping our appointment … But that turned out to be the last moment of certainty, of assurance, for several long hours.
He seemed taller than I remembered, and pale (‘We came down too fast’), and nervous (‘I always forget that I hate flying’). I was suddenly nervous too; the words I spoke, the answers I gave, were wayward and nonsensical. There were two or three people I knew, among the disembarking passengers; I felt that they were looking at me, and then at Jonathan Steele, as if we were a strange couple indeed, undoubtedly suspect. (‘Kate Marais was at the airport,’ I imagined the dark commentary, ‘meeting someone we’d never set eyes on before! He looked so odd! Do you suppose …’) I felt odd also, for the first time within a now shaky memory.
I drove into town abominably, earning horn-blasts from other, infuriated road-users, and a harsh glare from a motorcycle cop on the watch for just such female mavericks as myself. It was nerves, of course; I wanted to do everything well that day – driving cars, mixing champagne cocktails, organising a meal, making love – and the omens already were quite otherwise.
It grew worse later on; in my flat which should have been a warm, exciting refuge from everything and everyone that was not us, we found ourselves talking with ludicrous constraint. It seemed that we had said all that had to be said, on that last night together in Johannesburg; the next stage could only be a headlong dive into action, and it was too early for that, too light, too soon.
Serving amid lengthening silence a dinner which was not as good as I had planned, Julia looked at me as if I were out of my wits, and at Jonathan as if he were a burglar. If this was madam’s idea of love, her caustic glances said, then madam should see the head-doctor, now. Tomorrow would be too late.
Ten o’clock came, and then eleven. Julia had long since gone home, though the resentful clatter of dishes in the sink still rang in my ears. I sat feet-up on the couch, wearing a housecoat which had seemed just the thing when I bought it, two days earlier, but which now felt indecorous, even indecent.
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