Life Times Stories - By Nadine Gordimer Page 0,177

step and second of it, slapping with the flat of a hand the pump of whose specifications, volume of water per hour, etcetera, he spared no detail, opening stuck cupboard doors and scratching a white-ridged thumbnail down painted walls to the accompaniment of patter about storage space and spotless condition; and all the time he was wanting just to turn round and herd right out the front door people who were wasting his time.

But this girl didn’t have the averted face of the wives who had made up their minds they wouldn’t let their husbands buy. Naas knows what interests the ladies. They don’t notice if guttering is rotted or electrical wiring is old and unsafe. What they care about is fitted kitchen units and whether the new suite will look right in what will be the lounge. When he pointed out the glassed-in stoep that would make a nice room for sewing and that, or a kiddies’ playroom (but I don’t suppose you’ve got any youngsters? – not yet, ay) she stood looking over it obediently through her big round glasses as if taking instructions. And the lounge, a bit original (two small rooms of the old farmhouse from the twenties knocked into one) with half the ceiling patterned pressed lead and the other ‘modernised’ with pine strips and an ox-wagon wheel adapted as a chandelier – she smiled, showing beautiful teeth, and nodded slowly all round the room, turning on her heel.

Same thing outside, with the husband. He was interested in the outhouses, of course. Nice double shed, could garage two cars – full of junk, naturally, when a place’s been empty, only a boy in charge – Kleynhans’s old boy, and his hundred-and-one hangers-on, wife, children, whatnot . . . ‘But we’ll get that all cleaned up for you, no problem.’ Naas shouted for the boy, but the outhouse where he’d been allowed to live was closed, an old padlock on the door. ‘He’s gone off somewhere. Never here whenever I come, that’s how he looks after the place. Well – I wanted to show you the room but I suppose it doesn’t matter, the usual boy’s room . . . p’raps you won’t want to have anybody, like Mrs Klopper, you’ll rather do for yourselves? Specially as you from overseas, ay . . .’

The young husband asked how big the room was, and whether, since the shed was open, there was no other closed storage room.

‘Oh, like I said, just the usual boy’s room, not very small, no. But you can easy brick in the shed if you want, I can send you good boys for building, it won’t cost a lot. And there’s those houses for pigs, at one time Kleynhans was keeping pigs. Clean them up – no problem. But man, I’m sure if you been doing a bit of farming in England you good with your hands, ay? You used to repairs and that? Of course. And here it doesn’t cost much to get someone in to help . . . You know’ (he cocked his head coyly) ‘you and your wife, you don’t sound like the English from England usually speak . . . ? You sound more like the English here.’

The wife looked at the husband and this time she was the one to answer at once, for him. ‘Well, no. Because, you see – we’re really Australian. Australians speak English quite a lot like South Africans.’

The husband added, ‘We’ve been living in England, that’s all.’

‘Well, I thought so. I thought, well, if they English, it’s from some part where I never heard the people speak!’ Naas felt, in a blush of confidence, he was getting on well with this couple. ‘Australian, that’s good. A good country. A lot like ours. Only without our problems, ay.’ (Naas allowed himself to pause and shake his head, exclaim, although it was a rule never to talk politics with clients.) ‘There’s a lot of exchange between sheep farmers in Australia and here in South Africa. Last year I think it was, my brother-in-law had some Australian farmers come to see him at his place in the Karoo – that’s our best sheep country. He even ordered a ram from them. Six thousand Australian dollars! A lot of money, ay? Oh but what an animal. You should see – bee-yeu-tiful.’

In the house, neither husband nor wife remarked that the porcelain lid of the lavatory cistern was broken, and Naas generously drew their attention to it