The Pickup (5 page)

No. I thought we're alone together.

Yes, we are together, living in your place, everything … More than five months. If a woman chooses a man for this, or a man chooses a woman, it is time for the parents to know. To see the man. It's usual.

Maybe where he comes from. For the first time, the difference between them, the secret conditioning of their origins, an intriguing special bond in their intimacy against all others, is a difference in a different sense—an opposition.

I have to tell you. You'll hate it. I wouldn't know which to choose first, my father and his new wife, my mother and the casino owner who's her latest husband.

Just to confirm: You have no sisters and brothers.

No, she is not part of that constellation of siblings which, she sees, he probably knows himself in even though it is not visible from under these skies where he and she lie together.

My life is my life, not theirs. And she repeats, not knowing how to say more: I didn't want to subject you to them.

He sulks; or is it lonely sadness in that profile? She is distanced and distressed. Love engraves a profile definitively as the mint does on a coin.

She is ashamed of her parents; he thinks she is ashamed of him. Neither knows either, about the other.

The next time her father invites her to Sunday lunch (without for some months at least a telephone call from his daughter) she says she'll be bringing someone with her. The phrase is intended as a hint, a preparation: the ordinary formulation would be that she will be with a friend. Not that this was customary, anyway; her father rarely was brought into contact with whoever these friends were, though he no doubt could judge, by her attitudes towards him and his wife, what sort of alternatives they might be.

—Will that be all right? With Danielle.—

She knows that the elaborate social life of her father's house is convened by the social talents of his wife.

—Good Lord, of course. You can bring anyone you like, your friends are always welcome, you know that.—

He hasn't caught the nuance; and there is one of his own, here: the slipping in of a reproach that his daughter keeps him out of her life.

In order to start off on the right foot in her father's house it is a good idea to observe some convention for guests—even if she is supposed not to be a guest in her own father's house, her ‘someone' is—so on the way she asks him to stop the car
at a corner where a flower-seller has a pitch, and she buys a bunch of roses. You dump them in the hands of Danielle so that she may not raise them, so to speak, against you. This is not something one shares with the young man she is beside. Another hint she thinks—hopes—might be caught by anyone seeing her car come through the security gates to the house, is that he, the Someone, not she, is in the driver's seat.

Don't be too sure you know what's to come, that set struck and rebuilt for the same scene every Sunday all over The Suburbs. These guests are not exposed, in every sense, half-clad to the sun on plastic chairs round a swimming pool, her father is not bending a belly over grilling meat. This is a different level of suburban entertaining. The guests are on a cool terrace opening from a living-room that leads through archways to other reception rooms of undefined function (to accommodate parties?), and the cushioned chaises longues and flower arrangements are an extension rather than a break from the formal comforts, mirrored bouquets and paintings in the rooms. The food, already set out by the time the daughter of the house arrives, is the cold poached Norwegian salmon with sauces and kaleidoscope-bright salads that Danielle has taught the cook to produce perfectly. The margaritas (host's speciality) have their rime of salt and the pewter beer mugs and wine glasses are misted by contrast of temperature between the warm day and their chilled contents. It is all very pleasant, the offering of this kind of Sunday, make no mistake about it; Julie comes upon it as always: sinking into a familiar dismay. But
he
is at her side, one of those invisible shields that turn aside arrows and keep the bearer intact.

When her father was introduced to her Someone there was across his face a fleeting moment of incomprehension of the name, quickly dismissed by good manners and a handshake. What was the immediate register? Black—or some sort of
black. But what she read into this was quickly confused by what she had not noticed—there already was a black couple among the guests—amazing: the innovation showed how long it must have been since she came to one of the Sunday lunch parties in that house Nigel Ackroyd Summers had built for his Danielle. Her father's pragmatic self-assurance knew easily how to deal with half-grasped names now common to the infiltration of the business and professional community by those who bore them. She might have realized by now that her father, as an investment banker in this era of expanding international financial opportunities and the hand-over-fist of black political power on the way to financial power at home, must have to add such names to the guest lists for a balance of his contacts. He let her complete the introductions: —This is my daughter Julie, and her friend …—

It was the name that was not his name that he responded to.

There was the bob this-side-and-that against her cheek that Danielle would have given without noticing, if she had a figure from a shop window placed before her for greeting, and then she turned to whoever it was Julie had brought along: her welcoming upward tilt of the head and smile. Either no reaction other than hostessly; or more likely one of no surprise that the girl would turn up with what was no doubt the latest wearying ploy to distance herself from her father. The Someone Julie produced smiled back, and this convention matched that which each one had at hand, in the reflex, purely aesthetical, sincerity irrelevant, the facility of a particularly beautiful transformation of the visage. (He smiled at Julie, out of his reserve, in the sombre greasy shades of the garage, or was it in the street, that first time.) And Danielle— her smile was a kind of personal announcement of her beauty. She was beautiful; trust the father for that. Her social intelligence was well managed to suggest, to anyone able to
appreciate this, that her real intelligence went drier and deeper. Her stepdaughter saw her, as so often, drawing away with the bait of some flattering request a female guest from a man being bored by chatter on matters the poor thing knew nothing about; moving with a sway of her graceful backside (she had been an actress, interpreter of sophisticated comedies set in London, Paris or New York, out-dated now by the changes that had also changed her guest list) as she mingled the guests like the deft shuffle of a pack of cards, slipping in a remark here and there (… I want you to come and tell that amazing …) particularly among the men, to show that she read the newspapers, was privy to gossip about entrepreneurs and politicians; picking up, among the usual three or four women whom nothing could induce to leave their huddle, variations on domestic anecdotes, and teasing an unsuspected elderly feminist who suddenly stood, glass in hand, to heckle two males who were enjoying men-talk witticisms about women members on their Board.

Apart from replenishing his rounds of margaritas, her father left this general company to his Danielle. He and what must be the principal guests he was cultivating (his daughter believes she knows him well) were gathered round the issues of the day, the week; for her, their lives were always in control, these people—talk around her, ‘buying into futures' (whatever that might be) was a mastery they took, from the immediate present, of what was to come: the future, of which any control for the Someone beside her did not exist. The emanation of his presence, bodily warmth and breath, was merely a haze which hid him from them; their reality did not know of his existence.

—Gold … hardly the issue any more. When you think of the crisis, nearly floored us not so long ago … first London sales that sent the market crashing… —

—a full vault somewhere doesn't earn anything—

—well exactly. Wasting asset. For any country. Sell it, sell, sell for dollars deutschmarks whathaveyou and buy blue-chip stocks. Assets must earn, law of survival, ay!—

—pretty sure AngloGold's going to reduce its forward hedge position within a year … more than fifty percent of production's probably there, with a big drop likely in the physical market—

—thirty-three thousand tons of the bright stuff in the vaults—

—Shift over and make room for platinum, wha'd you think—

—No profitable future in mining gold here, anyway—

—all that outcry about robbing the poor of their jobs, killing the industry—the unions, the government must face facts—economics of the past don't work, unemployment's not going to be solved by shoring up an industry that's lost its place in terms of global finance. It's the end of an old industrial era, not just something on a calendar—

—With an increase in operative efficiencies some mines—

—strikes? Huge labour problems?—

—Look, it was a bad day, sector down twenty-three percent—

—relief buying, block traders—

—I don't know … pretty broad-based recovery, a dedicated programme of expansion … chromium… —

—software—more hostile take-over bids—

—oh and more unbundling coming, you'll see—

—You must have at least a whole day for Ellora and Ajanta even though the road, my God, you can't believe your bones won't rattle apart.— A counterpoint of voices was exchanging enthusiasm about a holiday in India; as if she had spied a familiar artifact or perhaps out of a well-intentioned move to draw into conversation someone who did not seem to be heard anywhere in the company, a woman wearing individual
handcuffs of silver bangles turned, jangling, to speak to the stranger.

—I long to go again, can't explain, so
belonging
there, I think I'm some sort of old soul who once had a previous existence… I suppose you were born here, but your ancestors … have you ever been home to India?—

—I'm not Indian.—

He doesn't offer an identity. She jerks her head in dismissive apology (if that's what's called for) and makes some remark about the delicious food; —I'm on my way for seconds of Danielle's fish.— The set of her back is the conclusion: some sort of Arab, then.

—but when the Dow and Nasdaq differ significantly—

—a twenty-one percent rise in headline earnings, four billion—

—ah but that's well below expectations—

—how'd the Minister put it—‘toughing it out against inflation'—I mean three and six percent as a test case at the whim of the global financial system—

—how to hammer into their thick heads … their survival, privatization's the only answer, when a service must make profit it's made to work cost-efficiently, and that's when the public gets what it needs—

—I have a hunch, everyone rushing in, it's going to boom or bust with IT—

—our company's been reaping the benefit of rising exports in base metals and chemicals, pretty satisfying—

—look, nothing—zero—
nada
will happen unless the Reserve Bank—

The other black man among the guests was sitting forward in his chair, palms on knees. —Ah-heh… I don't dispute diversification, no no not at all. But our real problem is that there is not enough venture capital. Not enough in equities.—

—no question, global buffeting has queered our pitch for growth in many ways, currency down-down, oil prices up-up—

—turnover more than thirteen billion, futures dominating—

The enthusiastic interruption by the guest returned from India has deflected Julie's companion's attention only momentarily; his reply a polite aside. She watches how he listens to this intimate language of money alertly and intently—as he never listens at the EL-AY Café; always absent, elsewhere, entering whatever discussion only now and then, when confronted. She is overcome by embarrassment—what is he thinking, of these people—she is responsible for whatever that may be. She's responsible for
them.

Suddenly she has left, through the living-room, through the shadowy indoors and up the staircase.

But it is another house she's running away to hide in; she has never lived in this one. This is not the upstairs retreat of the house where she was a child. Each room she looks into up there—no one of them is the room that was hers, with the adolescent posters of film stars and on the bed the worn plush panda her father bought for her once on an airport. It is not that house she is wandering, pausing, listening to herself. The shame of being ashamed of them; the shame of him seeing what she was, is; as he must be what he is, away beyond the dim underworld of the garage, the outhouse granted him, the anonymous name she introduced him by, his being in the village where the desert begins near your house. Rejection implies hidden—her rejection hid this origin of hers now expansively revealed before him, laid out like the margaritas and the wine and the composed still-life of the fish-platter, salads and desserts. She blunders to one of the bathrooms; but cannot succeed in retching to humiliate herself.

—Enjoying yourself, sweetheart—it's an order to settle
down again, after wherever she disappeared to, from her father who is standing up apparently about to propose a toast.

—We're not going to weep and implore don't leave us, we're not even going to complain about being deserted, but we do want to tell you we'll get flabby on the squash court without your smashing serve, Adrian, not to mention the darts with which you hit—infallibly, you shrewdy—prediction in the rise of interest rates and fiscal matters. Always been there for us before the tax man cometh … and Gillie, her open house down at the coast in summer, her open heart … Danielle and I have brought friends together just to wish you enormous luck and happiness, may you triumph over Down Under, Adrian, with the huge expansion in relocation of your interests, this splendid recognition of your global-class expertise the communications giants have had the good fortune to take advantage of. You don't need any advice— just don't eat kangaroo meat if it's patriotically served at Aussie corporate dinners, that's strictly for Gillie's two labradors I hear she's taking with you …—