Going Home - Doris May Lessing [24]
A group of these slow-moving, heavy-bodied women turned: one advanced towards me. Another school-friend. ‘My old man heard it from his boss, and he heard it from a friend at the airport, so I knew you were back. Things have changed here, don’t you think so? I hope you are going back to write something nice about us for a change. Hell, man, what have we done to you? You were always doing well for yourself before you left, weren’t you, so what are you getting excited about? Hell, man, what have we done? I’ve had my cookboy for fifteen years, since I got married, and I’ve always treated him right. And what do you think of the lights of London? I was there last spring, did you know? But we went to Paris. Man, I don’t know what they see in Paris. It cost ten pounds for a cabaret and a bottle of some champagne and some night-life.’
‘They were cheating you,’ I said.
‘Is that so? Well, next time we are going to Johannesburg. We’ve got just as good night-life there. And the Belgian Congo, too. They’ve got some night-life just as good as Paris. And if my old man wants to go and see some nudes, then he can go and see them there, because those nudes in Paris haven’t got anything we haven’t got. And it only costs half. Seen our new nightclub? Seen our new restaurant? Jesus, we’ve got as good here as you’ve got in London, I’m telling you. Things have really changed since you’ve left, they have. It’s a fact.’
After this conversation, I walked down First Street. On the pavement, sitting with their feet comfortably in the gutter, five African women, knitting, watching life pass by. They looked relaxed and happy. They wore good print dresses, crocheted white caps, sandals. Clothes have changed much for the better in a decade. Gone are the old blue-printed cottons, which were almost a uniform for African women. A man I know who imports for the African trade said: ‘The days of “Kaffir-truck” are over. Now we import quantities of cheap, bright stuff for the native trade. But already some Africans buy as good quality as the Europeans. In five or six years they won’t be manufacturing special goods for the African trade.’
In Meikle’s lounge, a place where I spent a good part of my adolescence, I drank beer and watched what went on. Women having morning tea, farmers in for the tobacco auctions, everything the same.
At the next table, two women, an American and an Englishwoman. It appeared they were both making trips through Africa, had met in Durban, were travelling back to England together for company. They knew each other previously. Now they were discussing some mutual friend who, it seemed, had come to no good.
AMERICAN: So now I don’t know what he’ll do. You can’t start all over at fifty.
ENGLISH: It seems such a shame. And what can it have been? Yes, of course he always drank too much, but why suddenly…I mean, he never drank too much.
AMERICAN: Well, dear, he had problems.
ENGLISH: But no worse than usual? And there was that nice wife of his. She always pulled him together when—I mean, I remember once, when they were visiting us in London, he was rather depressed, and she pulled him together. It was not that they needed to worry about money.
AMERICAN: He was basically unstable, that’s all.
ENGLISH: But suddenly? There must have been something definite, something must have happened. Of course, people don’t drink too much for nothing. But everything must have suddenly piled up? Perhaps he was working too hard. He always did, didn’t he?
AMERICAN: Now Betty, there’s no point in going on. He had a character defect.
ENGLISH (slightly irritated, but persistent): I dare say, but his character couldn’t suddenly have got all that much more defective? There must have been some reason?
AMERICAN: I keep telling you, he was psychologically