Summertime Read Online Free PDF Page A

ever.'
     
What question, I asked myself? And what is this it that is going to take for ever?
     
'I have to go now,' I said. 'I have a child waiting for her lunch.'
     
'You have children?'
     
'Yes, I have a child. Why shouldn't I? I am a grown woman with a husband and a child whom I have to feed. Why are you surprised? Why else should I spend so much time in Pick n Pay?'
     
'For the music?' he offered.
     
'And you? Don't you have a family?'
     
'I have a father who lives with me. Or with whom I live. But no family in the conventional sense. My family has flown.'
     
'No wife? No children?'
     
'No wife, no children. I am back to being a son.'
     
They have always interested me, these exchanges between human beings when the words have nothing to do with the traffic of thoughts through the mind. As he and I were speaking, for instance, my memory threw up the visual image of the really quite repulsive stranger, with thick black hair sprouting from his earholes and over the top button of his shirt, who at the most recent barbecue had ever so casually placed a hand on my bottom as I stood dishing up salad for myself: not to stroke me or pinch me, just to cup my buttock in his big hand. If that image was filling my mind, what might be filling the mind of this other, less hirsute man? And how fortunate that most people, even people who are no good at straight-out lying, are at least competent enough at concealment not to reveal what is going on inside them, not by the slightest tremor of the voice or dilation of the pupil! 'Well, goodbye,' I said.
     
'Goodbye,' he said.
     
I went home, paid the house-help, gave Chrissie her lunch and put her down for her nap, then baked two sheets of chocolate brownies. While they were still warm I drove back to the house on Tokai Road. It was a beautiful, wind-still day. Your man (remember, I did not know his name at that point) was in the yard doing something with timber and a hammer and nails. He was stripped to the waist; his shoulders were red where the sun had caught them.
     
'Hello,' I said. 'You should wear a shirt, the sun isn't good for you. Here, I've brought some brownies for you and your father. They are better than the stuff you get at Pick n Pay.'
     
Looking suspicious, in fact looking quite irritated, he put aside his tools and took the parcel. 'I can't invite you in, too much of a mess,' he said. I was clearly not welcome.
     
'That's all right,' I said. 'I can't stay anyway, I have to get back to my child. I was just making a neighbourly gesture. Would you and your father like to come over for a meal one evening? A neighbourly meal?'
     
He gave a smile, the first smile I had had from him. Not an attractive smile, too tight-lipped. He was self-conscious about his teeth, which were in bad shape. 'Thank you,' he said, 'but I'll have to check with my father first. He isn't one for late nights.'
     
'Tell him it won't be a late night,' I said. 'You can eat and go, I won't be offended. It will just be the three of us. My husband is away.'
     
You must be getting worried. What have I let myself in for? you must be asking yourself. How can this woman pretend to have total recall of mundane conversations dating back three or four decades? And when is she going to get to the point? So let me be candid: as far as the dialogue is concerned, I am making it up as I go along. Which I presume is permitted, since we are talking about a writer. What I am telling you may not be true to the letter, but it is true to the spirit, be assured of that. Can I proceed?
     
[Silence.]
     
I scribbled my phone number on the box of brownies. 'And let me tell you my name too,' I said, 'in case you were wondering. My name is Julia.'
     
'Julia. How sweetly flows the liquefaction of her clothes.'
     
'Really,' I said. What he meant I had no idea.
     
He arrived as promised the next evening, but without his father. 'My father is not feeling well,' he said. 'He has taken an aspirin and gone to bed.'
     
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