Get A Life

– And hubris. – Adrian 's remark as Lyndsay took his hand in confirmation of what they were experiencing together.

Then they were walking the length of the Teotihuacán plumed serpent uncoiled, grey-green. They had seen so many colours and textures hewn from the mille

Adrian dozing: Of course, we understand the present a bit better by knowing the past.

Of course: Adrian, missed vocation in archaeology.

What they had both lingered before, irresistible and oddly stirring, was a cinema-sized screen of juxtaposed images, like a series of enlarged passport photographs. But the images were not static, fixed. Each was a skull that changed in the next take and the next, the blink of the camera of time, the bone structure modified, angles and emphasis receded, realigned, flesh-covering emerged, shaping nose, outlining the apertures of eyes and mouth, then flick-flick – a generic human face evolving into a recognisable one: Asiatic, Caucasian, Negroid, the round eyes, the epicanthal folds, the arched nose, the malleable-looking broad flat one, the soft everted lips, the straight thin line in which others meet.

Passport photographs of more than one's ancestry back to a common design of bone. Lyndsay was unaccustomedly loud-voiced although there were other tourists around: – It's a kind of DNA! – And they stood unable to leave the exhibit, now quietly, amusedly pointing out to each other, youngsters exchanging secrets, look how that one's exactly like so-and-so, that one definitely tells that so-and-so has Japanese blood somewhere. And what about us, mmh? Each born of the Western European type that had been two or three generations in Africa; isn't there likely to be some mutation, detail of feature or flesh that records entry of a black strain, not just the evolutionary effect of climate and elements of nouriture. And the juxta-presence of other strains, Malays, Indians, Chinese, all come to Africa over generations. They must take a new good look at the face of the other in the nakedness of a shared bathroom, when he's exposed, freshly shaven, and make-up has been creamed-off her public image. The guide stands by smiling. She must've seen it all numerous times before; she is not quite recognisable, anyway, as the definitive Scandinavian type. Mixed exotic interruptions, not an unbroken lineage – what about the Vikings? Their ventures? Great voyagers, maybe their encounters mixed the bloodstock of ancestry. Lyndsay is so rousedly interested that Adrian says to her, not remembering that once she used to say to him, You would have made a good lawyer – You would have been a good anthropologist. – At least as an avocation, like archaeology, but of course law was both vocation and avocation, for her. And with the smiling onlooker, they laughed. Over lunch Adrian offered at a Chinese restaurant their guide recommended (unexpected find in Mexico, like herself), she said with her way of stretching her soft full throat and turning her head back and to one side, they were the most enthusiastic people she'd taken around for years. A compliment is always pleasing. They raised their glasses of Chinese beer to her expertise and tact.

Lyndsay had an important case coming up, one of those arising out of a government agency's inquiries into corruption between government officials, highly-placed politicians, and what is collectively called private enterprise, which includes cabinet members – stockholders in the businesses of their cousins and in-laws. She had to return to prepare with her partners the defence of one of the accused. Adrian knew better than to ask if she really believed the man was not guilty. But he thought it absolutely u

This was not a conference, it was a case of important moral significance to the government of their country! He was in the preparatory phase of his retirement, didn't he realise he was free at last. Freed to follow, for once, his avocation, in a country where there were archaeological sites you wouldn't find among the Makapan Caves and the dig where Mrs later identified as Mr Ples lay for mille

But you?

I'm a big girl… You wouldn't be seeing much of me anyway, the case's going to be heard in Bloemfontein.

They made love the night before she left. She said as they turned to sleep, under brief emotion difficult to control – heaven knows why, because the statement was in line with their plans for retirement – This probably will be my last big case, it'll drag on to the end, end of the year. As if as she spoke, a decision was made. The Mexican venture was only the first of those they were going to take, free together.

Be

There was Paul's return to the bush with his team of black as well as white mates – and you held your breath or didn't think about it: he seemed absolutely restored to strength enough to go out and live rough. The other factor was the relationship with their child. (Her friends remarking, what a good father, lucky you.) It was so normal, familial – after all that had happened – he had never confessed the deprivation, those times they sat apart, facing one another in the quarantine garden, the grown man's childhood, the past. Wouldn't it be part of what she ought to do to restore life in him, bring children and wives of his Thapelos, not just the ecological bushmates alone, home to the house, as a natural expression of what ordinary life is now that the colour you are doesn't compose it. So not just restore him; there's the unexamined sense that life can never be as it was. Something the new man may need to bring a new kind of relationship into the old one (left in the garden) that served – the attraction of opposites. Saturday braai on the terrace seems the occasion to invite Derek and Thapelo with emphasis that this includes wives and children. The mix of a few friends from the Agency includes a black photographer with his Afro-American girlfriend and a lesbian copywriter (white) who is surprised by the arrival of the dishy husband's bushmates, Thapelo and Derek.

– I wouldn't have thought as they prefer living away miles from anywhere their idea of pleasure would be to come back to all these swarming kids. -