9 The Banker’s Widow.
THE LIFE OF A SEVENTY-PERCENTER
The following Short Story, The Banker’s Widow, relates to the chapter I have called ‘One Good Turn Deserves . . . ?’ I called it that for a good reason. It took place in Johannesburg in 1956. I have cast the happening in the form of a short story because the story-form enables me to bring out some of the emotional content of the encounter. The narrative is substantially factual. I did encounter and befriend the woman in the circumstances described. Soon after I met her, I won ₤1,000 on the then Rhodesian Sweepstakes, equivalent to three-year’s salary to me at the time. I was very superstitious in those days and immediately figured that it was the reward for befriending the lonely soul. Where the reward came from, I would have had no idea because at that stage I had no concept of God whatsoever, I neither believed in God nor disbelieved, I just had no concept of an imminent God. So it was just fate that saw to it that the one good act of kindness deserved the windfall! As it turned out, the windfall may not have been the best thing that could have happened to me because it sent me on a drinking spree for nine months until the money ran out. But who can really tell? — the period ended in me meeting Dorothy who became my wife bringing four wonderful children into my life.
But here is the story I wrote, the fiction being that I didn’t actually have the bottle of Brandy to drink on the train, and I can’t remember what the old lady’s husband had actually been in life except his position gave them some good social standing. I called him a banker because that was the career path I was leaving to return to University in Durban. I also remember nothing about her children, if she had any, but her circumstances suggested an old lady abandoned by family and friends.
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The Banker’s Widow.
She misses her footing as she steps from the tram onto the street. He is alighting immediately behind her. He helps her to her feet and supports her across to the sidewalk. Her ankle is sore but seems to be not seriously injured. She has grazed her knees and hands as she landed on the tar. It is raining.
Her apartment is in the building immediately over the street from the tram stop. He helps her across and then continues to support her into the building and up the flight of stairs to her apartment. She clings to his arm, he thinks, more than she actually needs to, but he doesn’t mind. How very light she is.
The apartment is small — just one room with a bed in the corner, a shabby chair ot two, a cupboard and a chest of drawers, and a kitchen area where she can boil a kettle for tea or prepare a simple meal. The place is as tidy as it can be for a person living alone with her possessions in such a confined space.
Thank you, she says, for helping me. It is good of you. Can I make you a cup of tea?
Yes, that will be nice. He stands at the window looking out over Twist Street, Johannesburg, while she busies herself with the kettle. Through the lace curtain that covers the window, he watches as a tram stops across the street, disgorges passengers into the rain, and hurries away with clanging bell up the hill towards Hillbrow. And another on the downward route which stops just below him and moves on toward the city centre. The tramlines are set into the tar beneath the overhead wires in the middle of the street. Cars and lorries, motorbikes and bicycles use the inner lanes but all have to stop when the tram stops. Johannesburg in the fifties, a restless city peopled with important business-people, young hopefuls, urgent messengers — and old cast-offs like his host busy making tea for him.
She is in her seventies. He compares her face with the pretty face in the black-and-white photo in the round frame hanging on the wall above the bed. She was very young then, about the age he is now. She was very pretty, beautiful really. He turns and studies her face. She is still recognisably the same woman. Still beautiful in a made-up sort of way, and with the remnants of something genteel about her bearing, but there is sadness in her eyes.
My husband was a bank manager, she tells him. Interesting — I work in a bank, he tells her. He died ten years ago today, she says. That’s us in that photo over here.
So, she was someone important once — the wife of the bank manager, an important person. We lived in Houghton, she says. We knew a lot of people and played tennis at the Country Club. That’s a photo of Harry and me when we were a lot younger. He also played golf, quite a good player actually.
He studies her face carefully when she is not looking, but she sees him and seems pleased. He continues looking at her when she looks fully his way. She is not embarrassed. Yes, she was a beauty once, but that is all gone now, or most of it. All gone with the life that went away sometime after her husband died — or started disappearing even before that? He could see the signs. Drink had got to her, to both of them perhaps. And she had just continued downwards until the larger life in Houghton had given place to this little space in a rundown building at the foot ot Twist Street. Even now she is drunk. That is why she missed her footing alighting from the tram. Drunk, but hardly showing it. That is what an alcoholic is like, she can drink all day and still make a cup of tea for a stranger and drink her own with a steady hand.
He feels sorry for her. Drunk at all times but still living as much as she could in the old style. A nice old lady, drunk today but living in the glorious past. He finishes his tea. Thank you, he says, I must go now.
Will you come again? she asks. Yes, I will.
And he does. He becomes her friend, her only friend. He comes straight from the tram on his way home to his lodgings after work. She looks out for his knock at her door. She makes tea for them and tells him stories from the past. I knew Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, she says. My Harry and I met him at the Club when he came out here to research a book. He was interested in fairies, you know. He believed they were real. Here’s a photo he gave me. Look. See the tree on this side? That is a fairy peeping through between those leaves. He got the photo somewhere in England. It was taken by some young girls who said they had met fairies. I also believe in them but I have never seen one really.
She rambles on and he lets her. He likes to see her eyes light up as he listens to her. There is no one else in her life to whom she can tell her stories, no one with whom she can relive her past. It makes him happy to see her happy. Those are your children? he asks. Yes — my two sons. This one is in London. A journalist on a daily paper. That one is in Canada. He has three children. All girls. Do you ever see them? he asks. She shakes her head. She looks sad. Not often anymore, she says. Sometimes he comes on business but he doesn’t stay long. The children came with him once, said hello and went away to Durban for a holiday. They don’t visit me often.
He understands, but says nothing. They feel embarrased because grandmother is always drunk. Shame on them! Great shame. Great shame for a lovely old lady to be all on her own, abandoned by all, even her children. But they do write to me, she says. Shame, again, he thinks, as if letters can do the same as a hug and a kiss.
When he leaves, Do please come again, she asks. Yes — I will, he says. And he does. Frequently for three months.
He comes into some money suddenly. He will give up his job in the bank and go to Durban. To University. To get a degree. His real life will begin. One day he will be a lawyer earning a lot of money. He will join the club and associate with bank managers, doctors and accountants. The good life will fill his days. He will tell her, but not before he is about to depart on the train.
She opens the door to his knock. Her smile is broad as she calls him inside. He makes her very happy. She makes the tea while he looks around at the now familliar apartrment — the shabby upholstered chairs, the bed in the corner with the chintz spread, the photos in frames standing on all the surfaces, memories of life long ago. The present nostalgia which is not so sad now because her friend is here. His visits take away a lot of the pain, the loneliness is swallowed in cups of tea.
The tea is finished, the cups are cold.
I —- he starts, and stops as quickly as he starts, —- I came to tell you that I am leaving Johannesburg. Tomorrow. I am going to Durban. He watches as the colour drains from her face and the deep lines which had grown less pronounced over the months since they met, return suddenly. The look of dispair, of lostness, in her eyes makes him drop his own eyes. He cannot bear to see her like that. I must go, he says.
She is sobbbing as he descends the stairs to the street. She moves to the window, moves the lace curtain to one side to watch him leave the building and walk up the street. It is raining outside. She sobs and waves, but he does not look back. She sinks onto the bed and sobs — then she opens the drawer and takes out the bottle. She takes the gin neat, straight from the bottle. The present has gone and all the past sweeps back into her life. She is alone with her memories of the glorious days.
I’ve destroyed her, he says to himself as the train pulls out of Johannesburg station. I built her up, gave her life again, and then dashed her back to the ground. Life for him will have a future, a good future — but where will it end? He opens his hand luggage and takes out the bottle. At twenty-one, he is already too used to the taste of brandy.
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