she discovered Nadia Paulson, one of her husband’s graduate students, sitting cross-legged in a short dress surrounded by books and open dictionaries and encyclopaedias. At first Nadia didn’t budge. She continued to take notes. Then she turned the radio down, and moved her dyed hair to the other side of her face. She still didn’t get up, but she smiled.
Each time they met it took half a minute before Ann wanted to slap the girl. It wasn’t jealousy. The girl intended to cause aggravation.
—I thought it was Neil here.
—There was a demonstration. The police closed the library. Neil gave me the key so I could concentrate on checking the footnotes. We’re finishing that article for the Labour Bulletin, you know, the one about Pixley Seme, Clements Kadalie, and the difference between national rights and workers’ rights.
—I’ll leave you to get on with it. I want to get something in the oven.
The kitchen was Ann’s favourite room. Everything was useful. There were big windows and a Dutch half-door opening onto the yard, wooden shelves on which were set a bowl of glazed fruit and a stack of gold-rimmed plates. Pans hung on nails. In the glass-door cabinet, she kept an array of pewter mugs and spoons, and the collection of Paul’s engraved school trophies.
In the lowest drawers, which she opened no more than once in a year, were streamers and box kites, thimbles, egg-timers, and other fossil footprints. They instructed Ann that life was in progress, distributing junk, and that any strange sensation in her heart today was inconsequential. It reassured her to run her hand along the chipped blue tiles on the kitchen counter and think that they were almost cold on the hottest day. She believed, as she did it, that her life with Neil was as solid as the tiles.
Nadia was her husband’s most assiduous graduate student. She was from Cape Town, but had some family connection to Mauritius, where she had spent a year and picked up French. She did rough translations for Neil from Merleau-Ponty, Fanon, and Alexandre Kojève, and kept the minutes for the Free University, writing them in secretarial shorthand. Her looks impressed, her light-brown skin and her large, slow, and nearly stupid almond-shaped eyes. In Durban, where Group Areas kept people to their own locations and the buses and drive-ins and restaurants were segregated, Nadia had few options for adventure. Naturally she wanted to belong to Neil’s sphere. And it turned out you couldn’t keep somebody out when they wanted to come in.
When Nadia came down, her satchel loaded with books, Ann found that she was pleased at the intrusion. After Lavigne, anybody was a relief.
—You’re going?
—I reckon the library must be open again. The police go in and find anybody who was protesting and then they leave.
—I can drive you to the university once I manage to get this cake out of the oven. I am trying a recipe from Fair Lady. If it’s successful I’ll make it again for my son.
Nadia put her satchel on the table.
—Paul was in Neil’s office last term. He was waiting to go to a lecture in Botany. Something about ferns. He is the mirror image of you.
Ann was already putting out forks and plates for the cake, and set the kettle on the stove. She cut two thin slices for her companion, one on top of the other, and another for herself, rejoicing in the texture. It was light and aerated. She was good at baking. It was rare that something refused to rise for her.
—Paul knows everything there is to know about ferns. He is really a Rabie, his father’s son. He trusts authority. Although here you can see through the pretence. I was just meeting with his Geography teacher who wanted me to contribute to their music building to help Paul. They’re brazen about it.
—Neil said something was going on at the school with Paul. I’m not surprised. My first boyfriend went to Kearsney. We had to keep our relationship a secret from his family. It taught me about their way of doing things. They insist there are rules that have to be followed, but then, when they want, the rules suddenly don’t apply.
Ann poured two cups of tea and brought the milk from the fridge.
—What did Neil tell you about Paul?
—He just said there was trouble and he wasn’t surprised and didn’t want it to interfere with Paul’s schooling. You know that, for Neil, everything comes down to education, how you liberate your mind. He won’t allow us to get involved in demonstrations at Howard College like today. He knows how quick they are to expel a non-European.
It took some time for Ann to see the cause of her feelings. Nadia dressed tightly, in her thin dress and blue cotton blouse, so that when she was across the table you could not but be aware of her body living and breathing beside you. Before coming downstairs she had repaired her lipstick. You became conscious of her mouth. It was strong and beautiful and nevertheless insinuating. It said to Ann that she would soon be obsolete, that before long her skin would be cracked by sunshine, that her sinews and thighs would dry in the heat, that her body would never again breathe and love and blush and burn as it had with Gert, and that no man would ever run his hand with so much pleasure along her side. It said that her second marriage, this dream of connection to the Hunters, was also finished, and instructed Ann not to resist the alteration.
Ann was impatient when dealing with a foregone conclusion. She turned to the end of a book before she made it halfway. If a problem put her in suspense, she would do almost anything to bring it to an end. It was for this reason that she had made the decision to marry so rapidly when she met Gert, and, after that, Neil. Now, for a minute, she found she was looking forward to the end of her marriage.
On the way out she didn’t say anything more to her companion. The car started without further difficulty. She drove to Howard College. The wind was searching through the trees and along the ground among the flower beds in front of the bookshop and the red-brick tea room and the dormitories. There was no sign of police. Two men were pushing a roller over the tennis courts at Golf Road, the cylinder moving ponderously across the clay. The new library building had bronze windows.
—Thanks for driving me, Ann.
—You’re welcome. We’ll see you.
Nadia got out. Then she put her head back into the car.
—Isn’t the Free University meeting at your house tonight? I might have to take the minutes.
—Neil doesn’t give me a word of warning. I turn around and the house is full of people wearing disguises. Do they really think it will stop them being picked up? Last time one of them left his false beard next to the sink. I couldn’t make head or tail of it until Paul put it on.
—I would expect visitors tonight. They also closed down the hall at Howard College, where the workers’ councils were meeting. They used teargas. Some of those people are friends with Neil. They need somewhere to go.
—I didn’t realise it was so bad. Why didn’t you tell me before?
—I thought Neil had warned you. He was worried that they were going to come to his office next. Just in case, he was moving some of his books to the department tea room.
—They may come to the house as well. I should clear up.
Ann called Neil from the telephone outside the library but the switchboard couldn’t connect her to his office. On their home telephone she sometimes heard the clicking of the recording machine when she picked up the receiver. She drove
