Get A Life

Was it Berenice or Be

The two personae were more and more mingled in the life they lived now. It was certainly after the several months following that Saturday, months during which there were the same kind of easy invitations in response to her trial one; she was asked by her Agency colleagues to bring along those nice bushmates of Paul, Thapelo and Derek whatsisname, with their kids, and Thapelo and his wife Thandike in return included the copywriter (who was this time accompanied by her woman), the photographer and his American girlfriend, to celebrate a birthday in Thapelo's family.

Let's have a baby.

Another child. She did not tell him it was even a career decision; she was prepared to lose some of her energy, her drive towards success after success, to give her body over to the disadvantages of distortion and accept the distracting, absorbing emotions of loving care for an infant.

– It's right for Nickie. An only child – that's lonely. -

God knows, he must have had enough experience of loneliness, those days weeks that have to be forgotten, made up for somehow (how was she to decide), to understand loneliness although there was no comparison in kind… childhood is another state.

He said nothing, met her eyes for slow moments; the hold twitched away and his head stirred in what could be a questioning or assent.

Anyway. – I'm not using – taking anything. – It was up to nature to decide.

Berenice had no doubt of her fecundity. Most of her sexual life had been focused on avoiding it. But months went by and there was no conception. Blood every twenty-eight days. Was she prematurely ageing – at thirty-two, ridiculous. She had a

There was still no conception. She consulted the gynaecologist again.

You ovulate all right, that's established. Your husband should have a sperm count.

Paul is to make an appointment with his doctor.

When is it?

He has not made an appointment.

Shall I give a call?

No, I'll do it.

He doesn't. Berenice/Be

Ca

Ca

He ca

After some months of the good enough quality of the ordinary life that is valued only when it has been destroyed and then in some effort put together again – she has been made deputy director of the advertising agency, he has completed his on-location report on the Okavango for his team to place before the Minister of Environmental Affairs and release to the press – she brings up the subject of the second child. Not reproachfully, almost with a kind of hesitant tenderness?

– If you want another child you'll have to find another man. -

iv / Get a Life

Lyndsay didn't expect to be met at the airport. Paul was in Pretoria that day with a delegation of the World Conservation Union to the Minister of Environmental Affairs and it wasn't in any way Be

– Even though you were a working woman, a lawyer? Able to contribute? Must have been some other reason, in my father, that he couldn't – didn't want -

– I was a struggling begi

Was he a poor family-man, that what she meant. But the three words dropped away. What had emanated from him, isolated as a threat to others, means that the usual standards, rewards and punishments should not be applicable, so soon, to him. She read out from a letter she'd had a mishap related humorously, exasperation become a good story, from his father. A car the usually trusty Norwegian had hired suddenly began to behave like one of the volcanoes, smoking wildly, and the guide and her charge had to leave it burning itself out while they spent a night sitting up in the single-room adobe house of Indians with whom even the Norwegian linguist couldn't communicate. Not to worry, help came in the form of a passing bus next morning. He was sensibly staying on in the country a few days longer than the date he was expected home because the incident had wrecked not only the car but the trip to a site he most wanted of all to see, and who knows when he'd ever get the chance again. There followed a description of what he sought, was dug up there, which Lyndsay handed over to be read by Paul himself. – Sounds wonderful. I know the feeling, when we're out in the bundu and can't get to where we should be. -

The letter was warmth between them. She spoke of the third who belonged in it. – Really finding himself. I can see us having to pay a return visit. -