pretty sure he remembered trestles full of fruit of all kinds, of all colours, but could not find it: stern hygiene had intervened.
She saw how he looked carefully at every face, in gardens, in the hotel, in streets; and she did too, she was looking for a younger version of James. He would be a young man now, a very young man, like the photographs of James, in uniform.
Day after day: and then James said they should go to the university. It was term time. And they walked about everywhere, looking at every youngster who passed: Jimmy Reid, James the younger, walking towards them, or in a group, or with a girl. That was one day and then James wanted to go again, for another. After that, it would be time to leave Cape Town.
Helen said to him, ‘Look, James, you mustn’t give up. One day there’ll be a letter, or a telephone call, or we’ll open the door and there he’ll be.’
He smiled. She didn’t know of that thick pack of letters. He was certain Betty would have kept her promise: she had promised. Daphne would have read those letters to her which contained the best of himself, his essence, his reality, ‘what I really am’. She must have read them. But if she had told her son, their son, then by now there would have arrived that letter, been that phone call, the ring at the door. He was twenty. Twenty and so many months and days. If he knew, he was old enough to make up his own mind.
‘You’ll see,’ said Helen. ‘It’ll happen one of these days,’
They were lying in bed, and she knew what he was thinking, because he was staring, as he so often did, into the empty dark.
He put his arm around her and drew her to him, in gratitude for her kindness, her loyalty to him, her love. But he was thinking, a deep, secret, cruel thought: ‘If you want to call that love.’
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