pretty she was, how helpful in the house, everybody loves her.
He sent back money and two books he had bought for her by James Baldwin and Lewis Nkosi, not guns but arms of the mind.
When she was deployed on a mission back to the home country, arrested and detained for three months, he applied for parental right to visit her in the women’s prison in Johannesburg and was refused.
He went to Johannesburg and persuaded the chief wardress, entitled ‘matron’, to accept clothing sent by the girl’s mother and what he declared as study materials, from him, her father. In which textbooks he sent messages by turning down dog-ears on certain pages and marking words to be linked up from the text. He had introduced himself by caringly enquiring what church the matron belonged to (over her uniform collar there was a crucifix) and it was indeed Methodist, the denomination of worship where he informed her he was himself an Elder.
So long as he’s happy.
Pauline pronounced on their son, to his father, Andrew.
A mother always goes to the essential, she’s right, but the father came to have other more objective, if supportive reasons for approving Steve’s choice of the woman. The physical attraction goes without saying—she’s extremely pretty in her way as any man knows the distinctive attractions of a blonde as different from those of a brunette, although he himself has never (so far; all changes possible at all ages in the wonderful mystery of sexuality) been attracted to a black girl. He finds her intelligent, beyond question, quick on the uptake with opinions of her own and respectful of those of others, also you don’t have to feel you must be careful of what you say because experience of the world they happen to live in has been different (like the looks you don’t share). Her manner. She is neither unspokenly aggressive in some reprisal for whites’ denigration of black; whether or not Andrew Reed ever held it? Her presence is not the hostile proud grudging one of some blacks now; making clear it’s no privilege to be accepted in white circles. She’s simply herself. And he, he’s not simply a Father, he’s a new individual in her life she’s getting to know.
So long as he’s happy.
Andrew Reed’s parents: somewhere unexpressed to him might have had the same thought when Andrew married Pauline Ahrenson. They were not anti-Semitic—of course not! Discrimination is unchristian. But if as they were reluctant to think, he might have become not just neglectful of observance but an unbeliever, he was still Christian by his father’s background, ethics and culture.
They got on well enough with his Jewish wife Pauline. Maybe she too was non-observant of her religion. She and Andrew brought Steven, Alan, Jonathan to sit cheerful and expectant round the Christmas tree with cousins, receiving their presents from the hands of grandfather Thomas Reed beard-disguised as Father Christmas. Pauline and Andrew exchanged gifts for each other secretly placed under the tree and opened between laughter and embraces. His parents had not remarked on not being invited to any baptisms of Andrew’s children; he didn’t see the need to tell them about the circumcisions.
Steve remembers from childhood those Christmas celebrations as the only family occasions. And his mother once saying guiltily with a mock thankful grimace something he didn’t understand because he didn’t know of the occasion she referred to, she never had to spend those Friday nights sitting around a Sabbath table listening to her brother’s responses to the groaned blessing. Andrew went along with her to the weddings of her collaterals in synagogue just as they attended marriages of his in church. Their own community was that of his business associates and their wives with its own rituals of dinner parties in favoured restaurants, gala cocktail parties at the golf clubs where the men discussed the stock exchange and shots from the rough and the women