Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [81]
Howarth, who is an Australian, seems to have taken a liking to him, he cannot see why. For his part, though he cannot say he likes Howarth, he does feel protective of him for his gaucherie, for his delusion that South African students care in the least what his opinion is of Gascoigne or Lyly or for that matter Shakespeare.
On the last day of term, after their final session together, Howarth issues an invitation. ‘Come by the house tomorrow evening for a drink.’
He obeys, but with a sinking heart. Beyond their exchanges on the Elizabethan prosaists, he has nothing to say to Howarth. In addition, he does not like drinking. Even wine, after the first sip, tastes sour to him, sour and heavy and unpleasant. He cannot see why people pretend to enjoy it.
They sit in the dim, high-ceilinged living room of the Howarths’ home in the Gardens. He appears to be the only one invited. Howarth talks about Australian poetry, about Kenneth Slessor and A. D. Hope. Mrs Howarth breezes in, breezes out. He senses that she does not like him, finds him a prig, lacking in joie de vivre, lacking in repartee. Lilian Howarth is Howarth’s second wife. No doubt she was a beauty in her day, but now she is simply a squat little woman with spindly legs and too much powder on her face. She is also, according to report, a lush, given to embarrassing scenes when drunk.
It emerges that he has been invited for a purpose. The Howarths are going abroad for six months. Would he be prepared to stay in their house and look after it? There will be no rent to pay, no bills, few responsibilities.
He accepts on the spot. He is flattered to be asked, even if it is only because he seems dull and dependable. Also, if he gives up his flat in Mowbray, he can save more quickly towards a boat ticket to England. And the house – a huge, rambling pile on the lower slopes of the mountain with dark passages and musty, unused rooms – has an allure of its own.
There is one catch. For the first month he will have to share the house with guests of the Howarths, a woman from New Zealand and her three-year-old daughter.
The woman from New Zealand turns out to be another drinker. Shortly after he has moved in, she wanders into his room in the middle of the night and into his bed. She embraces him, presses against him, gives him wet kisses. He does not know what to do. He does not like her, does not desire her, is repelled by her slack lips seeking out his mouth. First a cold shiver runs through him, then panic. ‘No!’ he cries out. ‘Go away!’ And he curls himself up in a ball.
Unsteadily she clambers out of his bed. ‘Bastard!’ she hisses, and is gone.
They continue to share the big house until the end of the month, avoiding each other, listening for the creak of a floorboard, averting their gaze when their paths happen to cross. They have made fools of themselves, but at least she was a reckless fool, which is forgivable, while he was a prude and a dummy.
He has never been drunk in his life. He abhors drunkenness. He leaves parties early to escape the stumbling, inane talk of people who have drunk too much. In his opinion, drunken drivers ought to have their sentences doubled instead of halved. But in South Africa every excess committed under the influence of liquor is looked on indulgently. Farmers can flog their labourers to death as long as they are drunk when they do so. Ugly men can force themselves on women, ugly women make overtures to men; if one resists, one is not playing the game.
He has read Henry Miller. If a drunken woman had slipped into bed with Henry Miller, the fucking and no doubt the drinking would have gone on all night. Were Henry Miller merely a satyr, a monster of indiscriminate appetite, he