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children. Now again, in the presence of Sally and Didy, the Starks were the lovers in an affair continuing in the protection of domesticity, expansive towards others in the bounty of sexual happiness. Vera had not seen Ben as the woman at a party once had, his male allure, for a long time, had not even been aware, in her familiarity with him and her preoccupations, of not seeing him. He, Bennet Stark, was still there, with only the deep lines from the corners of those lips to that fine jaw to mark him, as if in the conduct of his life he had sculpted his own face.
    She exchanged again with him the side-glance smile of complicity, displayed the coquetry of joking reproaches that claimed him as hers, the recognition of his judgment in quoting him on this matter or that, which was the atmosphere the young couples used to generate between them. The class difference set by white privilege had been rather less than was usual between whites and blacks. Didymus was an articled clerk then, in a law firm, as Vera had been a few years before, Sally ran a black cooperative and ambitiously attended the extramural classes Bennet taught at the university, moonlighting for the money. That was how they met—through Bennet, and made the discovery that there was a link in that both their partners had chosen law. Of course, Vera had the house that had come to her with divorce,and the Maqomas lived in Chiawelo, Deep Soweto; Didymus carried a pass. But the Maqomas, both politically active, even then had open confidence that they would be among those who would destroy white privilege sooner or later, and pragmatically made use, as of right—and this was recognized unembarrassedly by the Starks—of the advantages the white couple had. It was more pleasant to pool the children in the Starks’ run-wild garden on a Sunday than to have the Starks over in the two-roomed Chiawelo place, although the Stark couple enjoyed breaking the law of segregation, from the comfort of their side, by coming at night into Chiawelo to listen to jazz recordings—Didymus was a collector and himself played the trumpet in those days!—and drink and perhaps dance, bumping into Sally’s well-polished furniture.
    Sally and Didy now back in the same living-room in the same house where the four of them had been together so many times, talking across one another in the same animation. The Maqoma boys might have been there, in Vera’s house, as they often used to be, come to spend the weekend, Ivan might have been there, sharing his schoolboy room with them, and, down the passage, the disdainful small girl, Annie, against whom they ganged up.
    It was not nostalgia Vera was experiencing on such occasions, but something different: a sense of confrontation with uninterpreted life kept about her, saddled on her person along with the bulging shoulder bag always on her arm, her briefcase documenting inquiry into other people’s lives.
    Didymus Maqoina, whose whitening curls sat like the peruke of a seventeenth-century courtier worn stately on his black head, and Vera Stark with the haircut of a woman who has set asideher femininity, in this joyful reunion of friends gave no sign, even to one another, that it had not been twenty years since these two had seen each other. One Saturday morning five years ago Vera, alone in the house, had answered a ring at the door. A black man with a scanty peppercorn beard round lips and chin, wearing thick glasses and the collar of a clergyman, stood there. He did not speak, or before he could, she gave her usual response to anyone in the racket of purporting to collect church funds. —Sorry, I’ve nothing for you.—
    The man smiled. —How mean of you Vera.—
    It was long before the encounters in the street where people waited to be reassured by recognition, to have confirmed the claim that they were back. There were no indemnities, there was no lifting of bans on political movements. The last thing