The Lying Days Read Online Free PDF Page A

another and said, “Don’t take him, sir, that boy’s no good,” and I had laughed but my father had tightened his nostrils and walked through the native children saying Hamba! Hamba! “Something should be done about it,” he often said, “little loafers and thieves, they should chase them off the streets.”
    Wherever we went to shop in the town we were known, and when my mother bought anything she would simply say, “G. P. Shaw, Atherton”—and that would be enough. The charge slip would go shooting away up the wire in its little brass cage to the office perched above. If by any chance—there might be a new shop assistant—we were asked to give an address, my mother would raise her eyebrows and say in a high, amused voice, lifting the corner of her mouth a little, “Mrs. G. P. Shaw, 138 Staff Officials’ Quarters, Atherton Proprietary Mines Limited—but really, Atherton’s all that anyone ever wants.”
    The little town with its one busy street was alive with the mines on a Saturday. The Mine people came from Atherton, Atherton Deep, Platfontein, New Postma, Basilton Levels and the new mines opening up, but not yet in production, to the east of the town. In the three barbershops behind curtained doorways scissors chattered ceaselessly and the crossed feet of waiting men showed tilted up before newspapers in the outer shop. The bright windows held hundreds of small objects, from razor blades and pipe cleaners to watches and brooches, and the smell of sweet violet oil came warmly out to the pavement. I dragged slowly past, afraid to peep in (barbershops were mysterious as bars, and as unapproachable) but wondering if my father were there. I never found him; but later when we met him at the car his neck would be pink and there would be tiny short sharp fragments of hair dusted into the rim of his ear.
    There were two big grocers in Atherton, but Mine people didn’t go to Golden Supply Stores but to Bond and Son. It took at least half an hour to give an order at Bond’s because there Mine women met not only their neighbors from their own property, and womenfrom other properties, but also the surprise of women who had been transferred to some other mine on another part of the chain of gold mines called the Reef, and transferred back again just as unexpectedly. Then Mr. Bond, a short, thick-faced man with many opinions, had known my mother for many years. He liked to lean across the counter on one ham-shaped forearm and, with his eyes darting round the shop as if he didn’t want anyone else to guess at what he could possibly be saying, tell her how if it wasn’t his bread and butter, he could talk, all right. Cocktail cabinets and radiograms and running up big bills for the food they ate. “I could mention some names,” he’d say. “I know. I know.” My mother would smile, in a soft voice, pulling her mouth in. “Only if you’re in business you dare not talk. Smile and say nothing.” “Smile and say nothing,” the grocer took up as if it had been just what he was looking for, “that’s it all right. Smile and say nothing. But how people can live like that beats me. …” “How they can put their heads on the pillow at night. …” My mother shook her head. “But it just depends on how you were brought up, Mr. Bond. I couldn’t do it if you paid me. …”
    If Mr. Bond was already serving, it would be Mr. Cronje, the tall thin Afrikaans assistant, who spoke a very careful and peculiar English and had a duodenal ulcer. Before she started to give her order my mother would ask how he was. He would take his pencil from behind his big sad ear and put it back again and say, “Ag, still alive, you know, Mrs. Shaw, still alive.” And then looking down the long flat expanse of his white apron he would tell her about the attack he had on Sunday night, or the new diet of