He was obviously distressed, and his voice as he recalled these details was trembling. I took a sip of my wine, not knowing quite how the ideal host should react to this sort of thing. A kindly word? A change of subject? Finally I said, in as reasonable a tone as I could muster: ‘I don’t think I should like house arrest.’
For some reason this innocuous statement did not seem to sit well with Kate. She gave me another of her formidable frowns, and then, as if to draw attention away from her unworthy spouse, said to Father Shillingford: ‘What I don’t understand is, what you’re really trying to do at UN. Why go to all that trouble, if you feel as you do? Surely South Africa doesn’t deserve to keep her membership.’
Father Shillingford, now more composed, shook his head. ‘If she were expelled – which is what they are trying to do – I believe it would be nothing short of disaster. There would then be no form of pressure or persuasion left, except the threat of war, which is unthinkable. The very people who most need our help would be the first to suffer. They would be left to the wolves.’ He looked from one to the other of us, seeking allies, seeking confirmation of his urgent hope. ‘I have thought about this for a long time, and I am sure I am right. South Africa in isolation would go her own way, and a sordid and terrible way it would be. But South Africa as a member of a world body might still listen to reason, and be brought to reform. The United Nations is now a very sophisticated and powerful body. All the members are subject, whether they know it or not, to a sort of group civilising influence. It’s far better for such a country to be a member, however unpopular, rather than an outcast. You cannot hope to reach a country, or a man, who has locked himself in.’
It was at that moment, faced with this barrage of marginal though lofty logic, that I was trapped by an uncontrollable fit of the gapes. At one moment I was sitting back in comparative ease, doing nothing except perhaps compare the flavour of our present company with the sharper tang of Rhein wine; at the next, a cavernous yawn split my face, just as Father Shillingford glanced in my direction. Kate also caught the tail end of it, and gave me a furious look. There could be no doubt that this was a social gaffe, and would be classed as such for a very long time to come.
I smiled at them, brave to the last. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve really been working very hard. I must have been saving that one up all day.’
‘I’m afraid I’ve been neglecting you,’ said Father Shillingford, with a contrite air which was really very irritating indeed. ‘My trials and troubles must seem excessively dull … Tell me about your play.’
‘Well, it’s a musical,’ I began, readily enough, ‘and it’s funny, and it’s about–’ Suddenly, the words simply would no longer flow. It was not that I wanted to hide anything; it was just that I did not feel like another argument – and an argument it would become, as soon as the pair of them got busy on the suitability of certain themes for merriment. Why should I strip in this frosty climate? ‘Oh, you don’t want to hear all this,’ I said after a moment. ‘It’s only a play. Mass entertainment.’
‘About South Africa, I think I read. Based on that wonderful book of yours.’
‘About South Africa.’
‘I would not have thought,’ said Father Shillingford, ‘that there was a great deal of humour to be found in that particular subject.’
There it was, damn it, flat on the table in front of me, before I had a chance to dodge. I bunched my shoulders, not listening to his voice any longer. I did not want to talk about it. I did not want to talk to Father Shillingford. This inability to meet his mind, to face this strange little spectre of the past, might have shamed me; instead, it only goaded and irritated. It was a hateful reminder of Kate’s own crusade, and the role of low-class, scarcely mentionable target which had been assigned to me, throughout the last few months, the last few years.
I was fed up with playing that part; and when Father Shillingford ended his small homily with the words: ‘You should really be back there, you know, Jonathan,’ I suddenly found that I had had enough, and was going to tell him so.
‘I don’t agree,’ I said roughly. ‘I’m not interested in South Africa. I don’t want to go back there. In fact, I don’t even want to talk about it any more.’
‘Jonathan!’ said Kate, with a look which might have snuffed the candles. ‘That will do.’
‘You’re damned right it will do,’ I told her. I surveyed them both, first over the top of my wineglass, then through its stem, then through its empty shell. What was there to be afraid of? I had long forfeited my chances of a good conduct medal. Surely, in the company of my dear wife and my old and sanctified friends, I could speak my little piece … ‘OK, I’m selfish, I’m making a balls out of my entire life, and this is all part of Hate Steele Month. Sorry, Father,’ I threw across to him, ‘we’re raking over a few very old ashes tonight.’ Yet I was going to rake them, nonetheless, and not all the cassocks in holy church were going to stand in my way. ‘But the fact is, I’m fed up with being made to feel like a criminal, just because I want to work at one sort of book rather than another.’
Father Shillingford was looking at me with infuriating mildness. ‘Why should anyone hate you, Jonathan?’ he asked gently.
‘Because I’m trying to talk sense, and live sense!’ I turned from one pair of eyes to the other; his were inquiring, hers were steely and unforgiving, and I did not give a damn about either. ‘Come on, let’s cut out all the nonsense! What are you trying to do? What do you actually want for South Africa? How do you want her to change? You think the natives can take over and run the country? That’s complete rubbish, and you both know it.’
‘Johnny,’ said Kate, icily, ‘I think we’ll–’
‘Johnny, Johnny!’ I mimicked her, as savagely as I could. ‘You going to send me off to bed? I’ll try for a warmer one … Let’s hear some more about the great South African Negro republic! Who’s the black Oppenheimer? Who’s the new chairman of De Beers? What particular coloured boy from the Free State is taking over Gerald Thyssen’s job?’
‘You have a very fair point there,’ said Father Shillingford surprisingly. ‘And I would never presume to answer it, not for perhaps fifty years. There are no qualified natives in South Africa, fit to govern a modern industrial country. How could there be? But one day there will be, and we must make a start, perhaps a very slow start, on finding them and training them.’
‘You make a start,’ I told him. ‘I’m too damned busy making money.’
Kate rose. ‘Coffee, I think,’ she said, in her loftiest voice.
I glanced up at her. ‘I haven’t finished.’
Father Shillingford was also standing up, and now he looked across at me. He seemed to be facing the fact that we had moved far beyond all acceptable patterns, that this was already part of saying goodbye; and he met it with dignity.
‘You cannot deny the need,’ he said, much more firmly than he had spoken before. ‘If you do not wish to play a part in helping, that is your choice to make. But you should never discourage other people from doing their best. That is wrong. You know that there is misery. I am a priest, and I can do something – though a very little – to make it bearable. You know that there is political baseness and cruelty. You are a writer, and could do something to help in that area. Turn your back on it, if you want to. Deny your gifts. But don’t pretend that a thing does not exist, because you are not there in person to witness it.’ He smiled suddenly, an old worn-out smile, full of the compassion I had no use for. ‘God bless you,’ he said softly. ‘Jonathan, my son.’
I smiled back. Then, with matching softness, I brought the palms of my hands together, and apart, and together again, in a round of restrained applause which saw them both out of the room.
I stayed where I was, gradually tipping the last of the bottle. Julia came in, and looked at me, and left again, wordless. I heard Father Shillingford saying goo
dbye, and the door opening and closing. I wondered what Kate would do and say now. I did not have long to wait. She appeared in the doorway, and stood staring at me as I lolled very comfortably in my chair.
‘How could you, Johnny?’ she asked presently. There was cold astonishment in her voice.
‘Easily. Try me again.’
‘But he’s your friend.’
‘I never saw him before in my life.’
We were silent. She seemed to be waiting, listening, hoping. Eventually I sat up, and said: ‘You won’t hear it, Kate.’
‘What?’
‘That third cock-crow … Now leave me alone.’
She turned, with a face of stone, and walked out, leaving me indeed alone; alone with an empty table, and a full glass, and a perfect if subdued contentment with both.
I did not see Father Shillingford again – which could have come as no surprise, nor any great denial, to either side – but it seemed that I had not yet finished with Old Home Week. The pressure from the Good Guys was still upon me; for now Eumor was in town once more, en route from farthest Peru to uttermost South Africa. I supposed that this was an innocent reappearance, but in my present mood I could not be sure of it.
I had suspected Kate’s artful hand in the arrival of Father Shillingford, unscrupulously imported to put swinish Steele to shame; and now we had Eumor on the same stage in the same morality play. Perhaps he was making a chance landfall, like some wizened snow-goose; yet somehow he seemed part of this matching frieze of disapproval. His visit, at that particular moment, was probably unplanned, but – like any other coincidence – it did not feel so at all.
However, after a cagey introduction, we enjoyed ourselves – a surprise benevolence, like a sprig of mistletoe in hell; and we spent a curious truce-like evening, which recalled that other night, long ago and far away, when Kate and I first met, and all known patterns were suspended. It was now near Christmas, and so we walked the Christmas streets, a-glow and a-glitter under the black winter sky, raucous with the hard sell of our Saviour’s later disciples, yet beguiling and heartening at the same time.
Strolling, moving with the crowds or stemming their formidable advance, we munched hot roasted chestnuts from the street-corner barrows, and gave money to poor strangers, and talked to Salvation Army girls rattling their collecting boxes, and went into bars and stood drinks to down-at-heel customers who had had enough already, and window-shopped at Tiffany’s, and Bonwit Teller, and Doubledays, where a lone Pocket Book edition of Ex Afrika stood sentinel for global culture and my own solvency. Then it was time to eat, and eat we did, like happy, hungry humans who had no other care but appetite.
We chose Luchows, for a hearty Teutonic blow-out, and there we swam out upon a sea of Bismarck herrings and Sauerbraten and dumplings and Apfel Strudel, fit to stupefy Santa Klaus, however long and hard his journey. Suddenly we found it easy to be merry; neither envy, nor evil, nor deceit divided us – we were three friends whose concord had survived a long apprenticeship, and the world after all was warm and kindly, and hell! it was Christmas … We ate, we argued, we reminisced; we drank long draughts of Munich beer, bitter and sugary at the same time, and put on paper hats modelled upon the Pickelhauben of the Prussian corps d’élite, and presently we grew sure, without voicing it, that the ancient Christmas miracle had once again flowered into substance.
Fantastically, it seemed that, for this easy hour, a world of innocence and love was being born again, with tidings of comfort and joy for all concerned.
At one point, Eumor became bawdy, and drew us along with him. He had a short two hours before his plane for Lisbon, and he affected an ambition to make a last conquest in North America, before, as he put it, ‘unpacking the old bags of Johannesburg.’
‘Get me a calling girl,’ he commanded.
‘You mean a call-girl, Eumor,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘Call-girl not grammatical. Calling girl, please.’
‘Six calling girls, five French hens,’ sang Kate – and since it was Luchows, and Christmas, no one minded her small contralto contribution.
‘I can give you a couple of numbers,’ I told him, sophisticated like.
‘Numbers? Do they not have names?’
‘They’re all called Lacy Faire,’ said Kate.
We made up some more suitably silly names: Belle Ring, Inna Circle, Annie Moore (an Irish devotee), Cosie Van Tootie. Eumor translated some of them into Greek; they sounded authoritative and vaguely frightening, like Homer at his most majestic. As usual, my friend was having a wonderful, tonic effect on both of us; but this time I feared that the effect would fade out swiftly, as soon as he did, and I was right.
We saw him off in his hired car, towards midnight, under the solemn, shabby portico. He embraced me à la française, without embarrassment, and then he kissed Kate with his usual fervour, and said: ‘See you before long,’ which, for me, struck a small cold note of warning. Then she and I were left to ourselves, and, content enough, we began to stroll back up town, hand in hand, heading for home.
It had been a happy evening, a dividend of our interwoven past. But the small cold note had been the true one. Next day, the axe fell.
I had left the house early, for another long day at Erwin Orwin’s salt-mine, and I did not get back till nearly seven. As I closed the front door behind me, and stood in the hall, I seemed to encounter a curious waiting silence; there was no music, no radio, no visitors’ chatter, no promising sounds from the kitchen, but simply a blank, as if I had stepped onto a bare stage into the wrong play. For a moment I thought that Kate had gone out; but then I saw her, standing by the fireplace, her back towards me and her hands clasped behind her head, staring at a vase of tall yellow roses.
They must have been newly delivered that day, and I came forward and said: ‘Who’s your admirer?’
‘Your friend,’ she answered, without turning. There was a sort of gritty enmity in her voice. ‘Your protective friend Eumor.’
I heard enough in her tone to warn me to keep silence, but I still had to query whatever situation this was. It would not go away, whether in silence or not.
‘Protective friend? Why protective?’
She turned at that, and I saw her face; and her face surprised me very much, being set in a mask of almost murderous determination. She looked as if she had waited a long time for this moment, and now that it had come she was going to play it like a pro.
‘The clue is the roses. So good for a girl’s morale … I suspect that you two boys are sharing a secret,’ she went on crisply. ‘One of those male secrets which has to be hidden from the staunch little woman at home … Does Eumor know anything that I don’t know?’
‘Lots, I should think.’ I wasn’t going to answer any such riddles this evening, nor any other evening. ‘You name something.’
‘It’s just a suspicion,’ she said, now almost savage. ‘Did you tell him about that girl?’
‘What girl?’ Then I realised that this sounded silly, and I said: ‘Yes, I mentioned her.’
‘I don’t want us to get these girls mixed,’ said Kate. ‘I mean, stunning old Susan Crompton, the girl you met in one of Erwin Orwin’s shows.’
‘That’s the one I meant, too.’ I was now making for the bar, and a little more protection than Eumor seemed to be giving me. When I turned, glass in hand, Kate had picked something up from the mantelpiece, and was staring at it with special, almost theatrical concentration. Before I could add anything to the general gaiety, she spoke, in the most brutally sarcastic voice I had ever heard her use: ‘I did so enjoy our stay at the Bon Soir Motel in Richmond, Virginia. What a lovely time that was!’
She was stretching out her hand towards me, commandingly, and with a slightly sick feeling I took what she held in it. It was an oversize postcard, ornate and glossy, from the motel she had named. ‘Happy Chr
istmas!’ it said. ‘Come back real soon for another fine stay!’ It was addressed to ‘Mr and Mrs J Steele’.
I said the first thing that came into my mind. ‘They shouldn’t do that.’
Kate was watching me, very closely. ‘A lot of people shouldn’t do a lot of things.’
‘Oh, come on, Kate – you knew about Susan.’
‘Not from you, I didn’t … Of course I knew about her. Do you think I couldn’t smell her perfume on you, when you came back each evening? … But now it’s different. Now I know!’ Before I had time to sort out this piece of feminine logic, she burst out, in sudden furious onslaught: ‘You bloody liar!’ she stormed at me. ‘She wasn’t just a girl in one of Erwin’s shows! Richmond is on the way back from Florida! This must have started weeks earlier than you said! You must have met her in Barbados!’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘That’s the way it was.’
‘You took her there in the first place!’
‘No. She was there already.’
‘Waiting for the spring trade …’ But anger, which had boiled up so swiftly, now seemed to be ebbing, fading to a bitter mood of mourning. ‘Oh, Johnny, why, why, why? What’s this all about? Is it still going on?’
‘Well – you know.’
‘Jonathan!’
‘Now and then, yes.’
She had turned away again, back to the fireplace, back to the yellow roses which had given her so odd an extra jolt. From there she spoke, sad, disillusioned, taken unawares; but the basic question was the same.
‘I don’t understand. What does it all mean? Who is this girl?’
I took a fierce gulp of the drink I needed, and tried my best.
‘Kate, she’s a beautiful, uncomplicated, rather loving whore. I bought her. That’s all there is to it.’
Kate’s face in the mirror had now become expressionless; it was difficult to tell what she thought of this, or if she thought at all, or felt at all. Her only reaction seemed to be puzzlement.