No Time Like the Present: A Novel (13 page)

This was a London not the London he and Jabu had excitedly mapped together, famous landmark to landmark, Hyde Park (detour to the Centre for The Arts of Africa), the British Museum, da Vinci’s
Virgin of The Rocks
where Jabu had that other kind of religious experience which can come from a work of art and had bought the image of the experience as a postcard to send to her father, Elder in a KwaZulu Methodist Church. When they had stayed with immigrant comrades in a working-class district and he who had never chosen and paid for her clothes, apologised for the cold and wet, as if it were somehow a fault of his side of the old British colonial colour distinction, and bought her a ski jacket, the warmest one there was, the salesman assured.

There was no obligation now, this time, to see the sights. In leisure between sessions of conference, for most delegates to leave behind concentration was the object; no doubt a few of the old scholarly and the avid young attaching themselves for the benefit or favour they might catch, tocsin of ambition, sat on in one of the rooms at the Institute to continue some discussion beyond the time allotted. Alvaro wanted Spanish food if there were no genuine Cuban place anyone knew of and he and the comrade from Africa followed directions gained from the Cuban Embassy to an address, on foot, because Alvaro had been ordered by a doctor to take at least a three-kilometre walk a day (what’s that in old English miles)—You know Cuba we have the best doctors, you know that? If ever you get ill—serious ill, you come to us.—

—What he didn’t tell you, comrade, if you stuff so many helpings of paella you’ll cancel the effect of the English miles.—

There’s a light-hearted take-off from the morning’s proceedings when the delegate from a South African university had given his maiden dissertation on the level of laboratory research into the possible and in some instances proven presence of toxic substances in food as defined by the conference.

This had been taken even more broadly: whether the addition of chemicals to boost growth and the nourishment content of crops did not introduce toxic elements, and whether phosphates added to some wines did not represent the same risks at table. A Canadian delegate responded—this was a rather journalistic approach, prompted by the commercial interests of farmers who didn’t want the expense of buying new enhanced-variety seed each year essential for enlarging food crops in a world of hunger, and as for the second count…the agitprop of crusaders against the pleasure of imbibing alcohol.

There was laughter of the modest-superior kind from those who share that pleasure. Although good-natured, the charge—journalistic—made him feel his inexperience of the cut-and-thrust of these world conferences along with their necessity for the new salvation, Development, that has to take into consideration the ideas of a continent which had been regarded as only a ward in need of tutoring, before? With the exception of its Robert Broom, Leakey, Phillip Tobias…Those out there, down there, who brought to the surface knowledge of what we all
were
: in the process of becoming human. Whatever it is that we’ve become, now. Evolution a process of freedom? From whatever restricts your being? What part had
Umkhonto
had in the late getting up off the ground on your own two feet: never thought of that in quite this way before, taken the recognition in quite this train. Had to leave what’s politically taken for granted in order to see it not confined, contained by the Overcome: the Struggle a scientific process of existence. After a day of being received in groups at various scientific institutes the Canadian professor made the suggestion they might get together with a couple of others apparently thought well of and compatible, and do what—oh, go to some night-spot, we are in London after all, it’s more than a smelly laboratory. This from a man of age to be guessed at, his lips full and chapped, a little crease lengthwise under each lower lid suggesting he was always inwardly amused while intellectually focused. The casual approach, turning to Steve, was a way of assuring whoever this fellow was, academic from Africa whom nobody knew, so no reputation could be offended.—D’you think Steinman would like to be along? Professor Domanski—or maybe Jeff Taylor, and we don’t want to be all male, have you spoken at all to Sarah Westling from Gothenburg, and of course—Lindsay, she’s taken such good care of us, Dr Salim, no…that wife…—

He had no particular names to come up with.—Sounds fine…I’m on.—They set off raggedly assembled, late, everyone having had other obligations before; he took time to call home; Jabu would want to hear his version of how his ‘dissertation’ went down (he’d read it to her, tried it out after the department’s secretary word-processed it cleanly). Sindi picked up, Jabu was out. He said tell her not to call, I’ll call later.

The Toronto professor had hired a car for the period of the conference—Learn my way about what my grandparents called it, The Mother City. If I lose my Chair of Environmental Studies I can become a London taxi driver, famous guild, now consisting of foreigners like myself, Russians, Africans, Israelis, Pakistanis.—

Professor Domanski was fellow passenger on what they told the Canadian was his first cab call. A lot of wine was downed without any quips about additives, he was at a table beside the Swedish professor who expressed herself in the manner of an actress projecting the drama of her role, dark eyes inescapable, she knew the need to explain them—I’m half-Lapp on my father’s side that’s why I look a fake Swede—

—Well then I’m a fake African, not black.—But not the time or mood to exchange confidences, tell appropriately to the woman from surely the least racist country in the world that his wife is the real thing: Jabu. They talked occupational social shop for a while, she had taught in America and a semester as a biologist in Ghana. The people—they remember the time when South Africans were there from the liberation army, training—the name of The Spear of The Nation, wonderful—But it also wasn’t the time, place to take up her eagerness to press him: what is it really like living in your country now, tell me about how it is, people are with each other after so long
apart
? How without Mandela—what about the new one—

There is good music, a group of musicians’ instrumental individuality, also wearing outfits to express this, Indian punk, African, retro-skinhead?—cross-dressing not only gender style. They’re giving everyone—Domanski who had his dancing days many years behind him, French Desmoines looking so much in his own habitué night-club atmosphere—each dancer their rhythm, from current kwaito to jazzed-up twenties tango, whether a memory from blackout partying under Nazi bombs to a recall of last week’s secret farewell with the lover that students would never have credited their professor had. Professor Sarah Westling’s eager questioning about Jacob Zuma (she’d read the scandals, rape and arms deal)—to have at this point place him prancing, knee-after-knee flying up summoned by drums—couldn’t he now offer the other one, Thabo Mbeki—read of him?

Lindsay Wilson is standing; couldn’t see her profile for the fall of her hair that had its own illumination (natural or chemically produced by some toxic substance) in the dim lighting—he must be drunk on this wine to be joking so nastily, even to himself. Suddenly she and the Beard are dancing. The single conformation that is the body of two dancers if they’re good ones is hidden and revealed, hidden and revealed by the interleaving bodies of others. Of course the convict-shaven-skull macho’s a good dancer, what else.

She’s enjoying herself, she even catches his eye for an instant, or was it Sarah Westling’s this was meant for, and him just caught in the swift path of it, her professional attention to keep the spirit of the delegates equally shared, whatever the context. When she sat down again—Everyone all right for wine?—Although the party was the Canadian’s initiative and it was understood the bill would be contributed to by all, she was the organising presence. Domanski danced with her, there was a lot of laughter as a kind of argument, he demonstrating, twirling her wildly.

The Beard was dancing with the Swede; Lindsay Wilson descended with a flap of arms into the vacant chair, there was the rise and fall as if she were breathing on him.

He poured a glass of water. She gulped, choked, recovered herself as he rescued the glass and she took it back domestically as a child from an interfering adult.—It’s like wrestling with my dog, big Irish setter, who’s going to collapse and go racing round the grass first. These Poles.——I thought you were having a good time.——Of course! But it seems I’m off form. Haven’t been dancing lately.——Too busy over us.—She has her breath taken back to herself.—Oh new people, that’s what I like. You have to have a change from your friends although you love them, some spice, must meet people—in different places, different kinds, the relationships, the climate, everything…—

—Where?—

—Where…well, skiing in Italy, same station I went to learn, as a child. And Jamaica—have you ever been? And places I’ve still to go to. But people coming here, instead, coming from those countries, new people. It’s not trouble…—

—And the immigrants?—But she’s seeing conference arrivals, people who have ‘fields’ of chosen interest not the immigrants from Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq and Eastern Europe who like invasive plants seem to have become part of the indigenous bramble of manual workers in this country. Her quick wit—We moved in on them all right, now they’ve moved in on us.—Someone in charge of her life. You don’t always have to talk politics to be acquainted.

—Are you recovered?—

She stood up smiling as if asked if she wanted to dance. They talked while they danced, about—of all things—schooldays. It is accepted that like her he had been to some family traditional private school for boys as she had for girls. That was her segregation. Her innocence, ignorance: he found himself sharing, telling bizarre school adventures in deluding authority which lay forgotten on some shelf of discards in the canon of what had followed as adventure in the real life: as comrade.

—I’ve one friend who’s survived so far as I’m concerned from the dorm bosom pals, but I don’t go to reunions, do you, what’s there to reunion about?—It’s as if this stranger is telling him he doesn’t have to sit at Reed family Sunday lunches though Jabu makes him guilty of excuses. Exoneration come lightly from this chance proximity—the dancing isn’t an embrace but a kind of stalking, in the style the music demands at this moment.

—What are your plans for the weekend?—The conference programme lists a break from working sessions; it’s spring, there are several diversions, cultural trips offered for those who don’t have friends they might want to take the opportunity to visit.—Have you signed up? Of course it means the same company, extension of sessions.—

In agreement about that condition.—I thought I’d see the friends I stayed with my other time in London, I must call—if they’re going to be around. And maybe do some reading in the institute library, there’re issues coming up on Monday I don’t think I’m prepared for—equal to…among the great minds. I want to be sure of the questions I’ll take up, ask—

—You’re so conscientious.—Unserious, a tilt of the head.—If the friends aren’t around, you could come to our place in Norfolk if you like. It’s horsey, my brother has his retired show jumper, and a pony for his kids. My mother and father keep open house when they’re down there weekends. I could take a couple of you, welcome.—

Our place. Husband and family. He hasn’t met the husband who probably has preoccupations of his own, free of any obligation to socialise with the conference.—Thank you, it’s really more than you should have to think of for delegates—I’ll get hold of my friends and find out if they’re going to be in London. If not, well, thanks.——Jeremy’ll let you borrow his old nag, d’you ride?—

She didn’t wait for an assurance, the bossa nova had suddenly ceased just as they were about to pass the party’s table again, and he was commandeered by the Canadian while a singer with the elusive features of some Far Eastern origin caressed the microphone, cooing a pure voice in contrast to the phallic suggestion.—The cabby’s ready to take you back when you’ve had enough.—But Canada signalled for another bottle of wine and settled to reminiscences about colleagues, some from South Africa, Nobel Prize names in medicine, physics, was this one—didactic, but with such a critical mind—was he still alive, no, hadn’t he emigrated to some nuclear research project in Germany—we were cocky youngsters together years ago, Einsteins all, in our opinion.—

Except for the courteously gentle Phillip Tobias, whose inspiring lectures he had sat in on although the origin of hominids was not the area of his interrupted studies in chemistry, he knew the other great—all that matters—only by their works—some quoted in the doctoral thesis that earned him Assistant Professorship.

—Of course. You’re not old enough…you were in short pants, time of my student days—Flattery rather than condescension. And his student days; flunked out. On the run, in Swaziland; or in Detention Block D. Along with the wine, take the flattery as a woman would, glad to be looking less than her age.

The Canadian paid the bill with his credit card and everyone contributed their share, or if there was the muddle that they didn’t have the right notes for the amount, vociferously in exaggerated decorum—nobody was drunk but nobody was sober—assuring they’d settle tomorrow. All parted for the ‘cab’ and other cars that brought them, a kiss in the air grazing either cheek, given men and woman alike by their caretaker (the charming sense of the word) but she didn’t leave with them. From the door, straggling, yawning in the urge to be gone; she was to be seen, back within the music, Lindsay Wilson and the Beard, dancing.

In the morning: hadn’t called last night.

But at what an hour it would have been. The ringing jangling beside Jabu in the deepest cycle of sleep.

When he reaches her early in the morning Jabu is given a rundown of the evening’s scholarly entertainment with the relish of gossip between them—she’s in a rush and an account of the serious proceedings so far, although she’s eager for his impressions, will have to wait.