'What was my lesson?'
'Stay with your own kind.'
Your own kind: who is this boy to tell him who his kind are? What does he know of the force that drives the utmost strangers into each other's arms, making them kin, kind, beyond all prudence? Omnis gens quaecumque se in se pecere vult. The seed of generation, driven to perfect itself, driving deep into the woman's body, driving to bring the future into being. Drive, driven.
Ryan is speaking. Let her alone, man! Melanie will spit in your eye if she sees you.' He drops his cigarette, takes a step closer. Under stars so bright one might think them on fire they face each other. 'Find yourself another life, prof. Believe me.'
He drives back slowly along the Main Road in Green Point. Spit in your eye: he had not expected that. His hand on the steering wheel is trembling. The shocks of existence: he must learn to take them more lightly. The streetwalkers are out in numbers; at a traffic light one of them catches his eye, a tall girl in a minute black leather skirt. Why not, he thinks, on this night of revelations?
They park in a cul-de-sac on the slopes of Signal Hill. The girl is drunk or perhaps on drugs: he can get nothing coherent out of her. Nonetheless, she does her work on him as well as he could expect. Afterwards she lies with her face in his lap, resting. She is younger than she had seemed under the streetlights, younger even than Melanie. He lays a hand on her head. The trembling has ceased. He feels drowsy, contented; also strangely protective.
So this is all it takes!, he thinks. How could I ever have forgotten it?
Not a bad man but not good either. Not cold but not hot, even at his hottest. Not by the measure of Teresa; not even by the measure of Byron. Lacking in fire. Will that be the verdict on him, the verdict of the universe and its all- seeing eye?
The girl stirs, sits up. 'Where are you taking me?' she mumbles. 'I'm taking you back to where I found you.'
TWENTY-TWO
HE STAYS IN contact with Lucy by telephone. In their conversations she is at pains to assure him that all is well on the farm, he to give the impression that he does not doubt her. She is hard at work in the flowerbeds, she tells him, where the spring crop is now in bloom. The kennels are reviving. She has two dogs on full board and hopes of more. Petrus is busy with his house, but not too busy to help out. The Shaws are frequent visitors. No, she does not need money.
But something in Lucy's tone nags at him. He telephones Bev Shaw. 'You are the only person I can ask,' he says. 'How is Lucy, truthfully?'
Bev Shaw is guarded. 'What has she told you?'
'She tells me that everything is fine. But she sounds like a zombie. She sounds as if she is on tranquillizers. Is she?'
Bev Shaw evades the question. However, she says - and she seems to be picking her words carefully - there have been `developments'.
'What developments?'
'I can't tell you, David. Don't make me. Lucy will have to tell you herself '
He calls Lucy. 'I must make a trip to Durban,' he says, lying. 'There is the possibility of a job. May I stop off for a day or two?'
`Has Bev been speaking to you?'
'Bev has nothing to do with it. May I come?'
He flies to Port Elizabeth and hires a car. Two hours later he turns off the road on to the track that leads to the farm, Lucy's farm, Lucy's patch of earth.
Is it his earth too? It does not feel like his earth. Despite the time he has spent here, it feels like a foreign land.
There have been changes. A wire fence, not particularly skilfully erected, now marks the boundary between Lucy's property and Petrus's. On Petrus's side graze a pair of scrawny heifers. Petrus's house has become a reality. Grey and featureless, it stands on an eminence east of the old farmhouse; in the mornings, he guesses, it must cast a long shadow.
Lucy opens the door wearing a shapeless smock that might as well be a nightdress. Her old air of brisk good health is gone. Her complexion is pasty, she has not washed her hair. Without warmth she returns his embrace. 'Come in,' she says. 'I was just making tea.
They sit together at the kitchen table. She pours tea, passes him a packet of ginger snaps. 'Tell me about the Durban offer,' she says.
`That can wait. I am here, Lucy, because I am concerned about you. Are you all right?'
'I'm pregnant.'
'You are what?'
'I'm pregnant.'
`From whom? From that day?'
`From that day.'
'I don't understand. I thought you took care of it, you and your GP.
'No.'
'What do you mean, no? You mean you didn't take care of it?'
'I have taken care. I have taken every reasonable care short of what you are hinting at. But I am not having an
