In Pursuit of the English Read Online Free Page B

you.’
    Meanwhile, it was observable from my windows that a great deal of human energy was being misapplied. The deeply lush garden was teeming with small children, and about two dozen young mothers were perched on the outside stairs, on the front steps, or on the grass, each anxiously watching her own offspring. I knew that they were all waiting for that blessed moment when these children would be sleepy, so they could put them to bed and rush off down into the city in order to interview housing agents and employment agents. For my part. I wanted to look up friends. I therefore approached a woman sitting rather apart from the rest, a small, plump, dark, fiery-cheeked person, who was guarding a small girl, and said it would be a good idea if we all look turns to look after the children, thus freeing the others, ‘You’ve just come,’ she said. ‘Yesterday,’ I said, ‘This is not a place I would leave my child alone in,’ she said. ‘But surely, they wouldn’t be alone,’ I said. She said: ‘Some of these girls here I wouldn’t trust a dog with, let alone a child.’ I went to my room and considered this. It was only afterwards I realized she was middle-class and most of the other women were not. Believing that Myra Brooke-Benson’s knock on my door entitled me to the same intimacy, I knocked on hers. She opened it with annoyance. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I was trying to get the baby to sleep.’ I apologized and withdrew.
    After dinner, at what was the right time. I put my plan to her. She thought it was admirable. ‘The trouble is, there’s only one other woman here I’d trust with my poor little boy. She has a delightful little girl. Some of these women here are quite appallingly careless with their children.’ I realized she meant Mrs Barnes, the red-cheeked woman in the garden. I still did not know what was the matter with the others, but suggested that in that case we three might take turns with the children. ‘I should be quite delighted to keep an eye on your charming little boy,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid that mine doesn’t take easily to strangers.’
    We spent the evening discussing the carafe. It turned out that Mrs Coetzee didn’t have a carafe. Through Jemima, Mrs Brooke-Benson had insisted she should buy one. Mrs Coetzee had said, through Jemima, that if Mr Brooke-Benson wanted a carafe so badly he could buy one for himself.
    We all went to bed early. The boarding house resounded until late every night with people coming in, going out, shouting good-bye and singing. Noises in the passage sounded as if they were in my room. I did hear furtive sounds in the night, but imagined they were made by some lucky reveller creeping in so as not to disturb the rest of us. As if this were likely. When I woke in the morning there was a young man asleep in the double bed opposite. My son was watching him with much interest. I got up, shook him, and demanded what he was doing in my room. He started awake, let out a furious exclamation in Afrikaans, shook his fist, exclaimed some more, and strode out to the bathroom. Luckily, the taxi-driver dropped in to see his aunt after breakfast, so I stopped him and explained what was happening. He sat on the edge of my unmade bed, picked up my son, set him on his knee and said: ‘You have the best room in the house. It is too big for you and your child.’ ‘But I’d be quite happy to have a smaller one.’ ‘But there is no smaller one.’ ‘Weil, that isn’t my fault.’ ‘But my Aunt Marie has a kind heart and is not happy to turn away a man who has no place to sleep.’ ‘But you must see I can’t go to bed every night not knowing who I’m going to find when I wake in the morning. Besides, it’s not good for my son.’ ‘Ach, he is avery fine child, your son.’ ‘You must talk to your aunt.’ ‘Ya, man, but this terrible war we have had, the English started it, and now we are all suffering.’ ‘But please talk to your aunt.’ ‘Ach,