Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [64]
But there is not only Le Roux, it turns out. There are other men, other drinking companions, to whom his father has been lending money. He cannot believe it, cannot understand it. Where does all this money come from, when his father has only one suit and one pair of shoes and has to catch the train to work? Does one really make so much money so quickly getting people off?
He has never seen Le Roux but can picture him easily enough. Le Roux will be a ruddy Afrikaner with a blond moustache; he will wear a blue suit and a black tie; he will be slightly fat and sweat a lot and tell dirty jokes in a loud voice.
Le Roux sits with his father in the bar in Goodwood. When his father isn’t looking Le Roux winks behind his back to the other men in the bar. Le Roux has picked out his father as a sucker. He burns with shame that his father should be so stupid.
The money his father has been lending, as it turns out, is not actually his to lend. That is why Bensusan has involved himself. Bensusan is acting for the Law Society. The matter is serious: the money has been taken from the trust account.
‘What is a trust account?’ he asks his mother.
‘It’s money he holds in trust.’
‘Why do people give him their money in trust?’ he says. ‘They must be mad.’
His mother shakes her head. All attorneys have trust accounts, she says, God only knows why. ‘Jack is like a child when it comes to money.’
Bensusan and the Law Society have entered the picture because there are people who want to save his father, people from the old days when he was Controller of Letting. They are well disposed towards him, they don’t want him to go to jail. For old times’ sake, and because he has a wife and children, they will close their eyes to certain things, make certain arrangements. He can make repayments over five years; once that is done, the book will be closed, the matter forgotten.
His mother takes legal advice herself. She would like her own possessions to be separated from her husband’s before some new disaster strikes: the dining-room table, for instance; the chest of drawers with the mirror; the stinkwood coffee table that Aunt Annie gave her. She would like their marriage contract, which makes the two of them responsible for each other’s debts, to be amended. But marriage contracts, it turns out, are immutable. If his father goes down, his mother goes down too, she and her children.
Eksteen and the typist are given notice, the practice in Goodwood is closed. He never gets to see what happens to the green window with the gold lettering. His mother continues to teach. His father starts looking for a job. Every morning, punctually at seven, he sets off for the city. But an hour or two later – this is his secret – when everyone else has left the house, he comes back. He puts on his pyjamas and gets back into bed with the Cape Times crossword and a quarter-litre of brandy. Then at about two in the afternoon, before his wife and children return, he dresses and goes to his club.
His club is called the Wynberg Club, but it is really just part of the Wynberg Hotel. There his father has supper and spends the evening drinking. Sometime after midnight – the noise wakes him, he does not sleep heavily – a car pulls up before the house, the front door opens, his father comes in and goes to the lavatory. Soon afterwards, from his parents’ bedroom, comes a flurry of heated whispering. In the morning there are dark-yellow splashes on the lavatory floor and on the toilet seat, and a sickly sweet smell.
He writes a notice and puts it in the lavatory: PLEASE LIFT THE SEAT. The notice is ignored. Urinating on the toilet seat becomes his father’s ultimate act of defiance against a wife and children who have turned their backs on him.
His father’s secret life is revealed to him when one day he stays away from school, ill or pretending to be ill. From his bed