'Why is it easier for a woman?'
'Easier, I mean, to produce something with a life of its own.'
'Doesn't being a father count?'
'Being a father . . . I can't help feeling that, by comparison with being a mother, being a father is a rather abstract business. But let us wait and see what comes. If something does come, you will be the first to hear. The first and probably the last.'
'Are you going to write the music yourself?'
'I'll borrow the music, for the most part. I have no qualms about borrowing. At the beginning I thought it was a subject that would call for quite lush orchestration. Like Strauss, say. Which would have been beyond my powers. Now I'm inclining the other way, toward a very meagre accompaniment - violin, cello, oboe or maybe bassoon. But it's all in the realm of ideas as yet. I haven't written a note - I've been distracted. You must have heard about my troubles.'
'Roz mentioned something on the telephone.'
'Well, we won't go into that now. Some other time.'
'Have you left the university for good?'
'I have resigned. I was asked to resign.'
'Will you miss it?'
'Will I miss it? I don't know. I was no great shakes as a teacher. I was having less and less rapport, I found, with my students. What I had to say they didn't care to hear. So perhaps I won't miss it. Perhaps I'll enjoy my release.'
A man is standing in the doorway, a tall man in blue overalls and rubber boots and a woollen cap. 'Petrus, come in, meet my father,' says Lucy. Petrus wipes his boots. They shake hands. A lined, weathered face; shrewd eyes. Forty? Forty-five?
Petrus turns to Lucy. 'The spray,' he says: 'I have come for the spray.'
It's in the kombi. Wait here, I'll fetch it.'
He is left with Petrus. 'You look after the dogs,' he says, to break the silence.
'I look after the dogs and I work in the garden. Yes.' Petrus gives a broad smile. 'I am the gardener and the dog-man.' He reflects for a moment. 'The dog-man,' he repeats, savouring the phrase.
'I have just travelled up from Cape Town. There are times when I feel anxious about my daughter all alone here. It is very isolated.'
'Yes,' says Petrus, 'it is dangerous.' He pauses. 'Everything is dangerous today. But here it is all right, I think.' And he gives another smile.
Lucy returns with a small bottle. 'You know the measurement: one teaspoon to ten litres of water.'
'Yes, I know.' And Petrus ducks out through the low doorway. 'Petrus seems a good man,' he remarks.
'He has his head screwed on right.'
'Does he live on the property?'
'He and his wife have the old stable. I've put in electricity. It's quite comfortable. He has another wife in Adelaide, and children, some of them grown up. He goes off and spends time there occasionally.'
He leaves Lucy to her tasks and takes a stroll as far as the Kenton road. A cool winter's day, the sun already dipping over red hills dotted with sparse, bleached grass. Poor land, poor soil, he thinks. Exhausted. Good only for goats. Does Lucy really intend to spend her life here? He hopes it is only a phase.
A group of children pass him on their way home from school. He greets them; they greet him back. Country ways. Already Cape Town is receding into the past.
Without warning a memory of the girl comes back: of her neat little breasts with their upstanding nipples, of her smooth flat belly. A ripple of desire passes through him. Evidently whatever it was is not over yet. He returns to the house and finishes unpacking. A long time since he last lived with a woman. He will have to mind his manners; he will have to be neat.
Ample is a kind word for Lucy. Soon she will be positively heavy. Letting herself go, as happens when one withdraws from the field of love. Qu'est devenu ce front poli, ces cheveux blonds, sourcils voхtйs?
Supper is simple: soup and bread, then sweet potatoes. Usually he does not like sweet potatoes, but Lucy does something with lemon peel and butter and allspice that makes them palatable, more than palatable.
'Will you be staying a while?' she asks.
'A week? Shall we say a week? Will you be able to bear me that long?'
'You can stay as long as you like. I'm just afraid you'll get bored.'
'I won't be bored.'
'And after the week, where will you go?'
'I don't know yet. Perhaps I'll just go on a ramble, a long ramble.'
'Well, you're welcome to stay.'
'It's nice of you to say so, my dear, but I'd like to keep your friendship. Long visits don't make for good friends.'
`What if we don't call it a visit? What if we call it refuge? Would you accept refuge on an indefinite basis?'
