Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [71]
Paul and Elinor take him along to one of their get-togethers, held in a bungalow on Clifton beach. Elinor’s sister, the unstable one he has been told about, is among the company. According to Paul, she is having an affair with the owner of the bungalow, a florid-faced man who writes for the Cape Times.
The sister’s name is Jacqueline. She is taller than Elinor, not as fine-featured but beautiful nonetheless. She is full of nervous energy, chain-smokes, gesticulates when she talks. He gets on with her. She is less caustic than Elinor, for which he is relieved. Caustic people make him uneasy. He suspects they pass witticisms about him when his back is turned.
Jacqueline suggests a walk on the beach. Hand in hand (how did that happen?) in the moonlight, they stroll the length of the beach. In a secluded space among the rocks she turns to him, pouts, offers her lips.
He responds, but uneasily. Where will this lead? He has not made love to an older woman before. What if he is not up to standard?
It leads, he discovers, all the way. Unresisting he follows, does his best, goes through with the act, even pretends at the last to be carried away.
In fact he is not carried away. Not only is there the matter of the sand, which gets into everything, there is also the nagging question of why this woman, whom he has never met before, is giving herself to him. Is it credible that in the course of a casual conversation she detected the secret flame burning in him, the flame that marks him as an artist? Or is she simply a nymphomaniac, and was that what Paul, in his delicate way, was warning him about when he said she was ‘under therapy’?
In sex he is not utterly unschooled. If the man has not enjoyed the lovemaking, then the woman will not have enjoyed it either – that he knows, that is one of the rules of sex. But what happens afterwards, between a man and a woman who have failed at the game? Are they bound to recall their failure whenever they meet again, and feel embarrassed?
It is late, the night is getting cold. In silence they dress and make their way back to the bungalow, where the party has begun to break up. Jacqueline gathers her shoes and bag. ‘Goodnight,’ she says to their host, giving him a peck on the cheek.
‘You’re off?’ he says.
‘Yes, I’m giving John a ride home.’
Their host is not at all disconcerted. ‘Have a good time then,’ he says. ‘Both of you.’
Jacqueline is a nurse. He has not been with a nurse before, but received opinion is that, from working among the sick and dying and attending to their bodily needs, nurses grow cynical about morality. Medical students look forward to the time when they will do night shifts at the hospital. Nurses are starved for sex, they say. They fuck anywhere, anytime.
Jacqueline, however, is no ordinary nurse. She is a Guy’s nurse, she is quick to inform him, trained in midwifery at Guy’s Hospital in London. On the breast of her tunic, with its red shoulder-tabs, she wears a little bronze badge, a casque and gauntlet with the motto PER ARDUA. She works not at Groote Schuur, the public hospital, but at a private nursing home, where the pay is better.
Two days after the event on Clifton beach he calls at the nurses’ residence. Jacqueline is waiting for him in the entrance hall, dressed to go out, and they leave without delay. From an upstairs window faces crane down to stare; he is aware of other nurses glancing at him inquisitively. He is too young, clearly too young, for a woman of thirty; and, in his drab clothes, without a car, plainly not much of a catch either.
Within a week Jacqueline has quit the nurses