She closed her eyes. Her lids were white against the tan of her face. She was breathing deep: she was shocked. He waited until she opened them. Betty had deep brown eyes, he remembered, brown kind eyes in a smiling lightly tanned face: he had thought of her as ‘a nut brown maid’. Well, there were the eyes, and there were tears in them. Not unkind, no, they were still kind.
‘James, do you want to ruin Daphne’s life?’
‘No. I love her.’
‘That’s what you’ll do if you go on with this.’
‘I want my son.’
‘But you must see …’ She stopped. That sigh again, almost a gasp. Oh, yes, she was frightened all right. But she was on guard, fighting: she was protecting her friend.
‘Do you still see her?’
‘Of course. She’s my best pal.’
He produced his great lump of parcel: the letters. He held it out.
‘What is that?’
‘My letters. I’ve written to her, you see. I’ve always written to her. In the war there was the censorship. Then I didn’t want to cause trouble. So I brought them.’
She didn’t take them from him.
He stood obdurately there, holding out the parcel: the force of his demand caused her hand to come towards it. She hesitated, then took it. ‘Will you give them to her?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Do you promise?’
They stared at each other, then her gaze lowered to the parcel.
‘Yes, I promise.’
‘My son,’ he urged. ‘It’s my son. I think of him … yes, all the time. Perhaps he will come and visit us in England?’
‘You’re mad. Yes, you’re mad. Yes, you are.’
But she held the parcel against her chest.
‘You’ve promised,’ he said.
She backed a couple of steps, then turned and ran for it, but over her shoulder she said, ‘Wait, just wait there.’
He waited. He did not look at all at the verandah where the old woman now read her book, the dark glasses pushed up to her forehead.
After a good twenty minutes, the maid emerged from inside the house, white apron, white headscarf, a worried face. She stopped in front of him and held out a large envelope. There she stood while he tore open the envelope. She was peering to see what she could. From inside the house came a voice from the invisible Betty. ‘Evelyn, Evelyn, I want you.’
Taking her time, her eyes never leaving the envelope, the maid turned and went off, sending back slow thoughtful looks over her shoulder.
Inside the envelope was a sheet of writing paper and scrawled on it, ‘Please, please, go away. Go away now. Please. Don’t hurt her. This is your boy’
A photograph, a decent size for a casual snap, of a boy of about eight, standing by himself, legs apart, smiling. This picture was like one of himself, James, at about the same age. Black and white of course, so you couldn’t see what colour his eyes were. But if the rest was like James, then why not the eyes? And Daphne had blue eyes.
lie took his time putting the photograph back, and then the sheet of paper. He stood smartly to attention and saluted the invisible Betty, who was watching him, he knew. He went off down the street, slowly, keeping in the shadows from the trees, as he had learned to do in India where the heat struck and burned, was not kindly, as it was here.
It was late morning, a fine Cape day, and over the famous mountain thin loose cloud lay, white and shiny. The famous tablecloth. Down he went, sending distracted looks to the sea shimmering peaceably there. He walked clumsily, people were staring. He sat on a bench in some public place but then got up and walked on, found another, sat down, pulled out the photograph and looked at it, for a long time.
He could not stay still. He began aimless fast walking, and found himself in some kind of market, where under trees long trestles were laden with every kind of dried fruit: peaches, apricots, pears, plums, apples, yards and yards of them, every trestle with its attendant woman, who was black or brown, at least, not white. Fruit pale yellow burnt umber, purple, black; fruit red and pale brown and gold and rosy and green. Some was crystallised, colours glowing though a frosty white crust. A vision of plenty He picked up a greengage, put it in his mouth, heard a shout from the vendor, realised he had to buy, and bought a couple of pounds of mixed crystallised fruit. ‘Helen will like this,’ he thought.
Off he walked, went up streets and down them. They were full of people, but he did not see them. lie sat on benches and looked at the photograph of the boy who might just as well be himself, at that age, put back the photograph, walked on. His feet had the devil in them, he could not keep still. Dusk came. He was in streets that smelled spicy and hot: it was the Malay quarter, but Cape Town in his mind did not define itself in areas, it was a spreading smiling city, a Cape of Good Hope, radiating welcome, like the stamps he had as a child. He saw a stall, bought a sticky bun, ate it, standing up, while the Coloured man told him he had to pay for it. Oh, yes, that must be Afrikaans, he supposed, and gave the man a fistful of money. Then it was dark and he was in a public garden and he saw a bench and at once fell on it and bent sideways in a tight clench of his whole body. Pain had finally overcome him. He was afraid of crying out, and of people coming, so he stayed not moving, aching all over because of the tension of his position.
He was thinking of Betty, in her unlikable smart matron’s dress. That scene was already in the past, gone, and
