Imraan Coovadia’s latest novel takes readers from South Africa’s Apartheid years through to the staging of the Fifa World Cup in 2010, telling the story of a turbulent time in the country’s history through the lives of its ordinary citizens. The excerpt below takes place in 1970, and is placed early in the novel – so give it a read, safe in the knowledge that you won’t be spoiling the story for yourself once you get your hands on the book. You can watch the trailer, too!
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In town, she parked near Greenacres. The shop assistants were dressing the plaster-of-Paris mannequins in the window, holding pins in their mouths as they went over the clothes. Something to do with the wirework and the gluey brush strokes on the dummies’ arms disturbed Ann. They would hex the car. After her conversation with Lavigne, she would have to wait in their papier-mâché company until the truck arrived from the Automobile Association.
She hurried. Her son Paul had been caught with alcohol on the school grounds. Curzon College was strict. The penalty could be as severe as a suspension for the whole of Michaelmas term. Lavigne represented the school board. In his first letter home, Paul said Lavigne defined College as a place where punctuality came second to godliness. She couldn’t afford to be twenty minutes late.
She went past the telephone booths occupied by white men and women. The newsagent was setting out the overseas newspapers, his blue shirt rolled up above the elbow. The shops sold signs and flags claiming the province of Natal as the last outpost of the British Empire. Curzon College was a school of the same empire, attracting the sons of factory owners and Midlands farmers, members of the United Party who proposed extending the franchise to educated Bantus, Durban lawyers and bank managers.
Ann found Lavigne at the entrance of the Royal Hotel. He was compact in the shoulders, wearing a gold-buttoned blazer, grey trousers, and black shoes, which she imagined him brushing as fiercely as his teeth. Every Curzon College man, new boy or prefect, housemaster or headmaster, shone his own shoes.
Lavigne stood in his perfectly buffed shoes between the doormen, looking straight onto the road as the tram came clattering along, and didn’t see her until she was at his side.
—Mr Lavigne, Edward, I apologise for being late. My car refused to start. Every red light I was petrified it would stall.
—It’s of no consequence, Mrs Rabie. I must remind you, however, that my next appointment is set for 1 p.m. across town. These few days I spend in town are booked end to end. I reserved a table in the tea room.
Ann went past the doormen, noting their long white leather gloves and high red hats.
—Are you staying here?
—College has an arrangement for a reduced rate.
—I wasn’t objecting.
—The chairman of the hotel company is an Old Boy. It is the express wish of the board that the school maintain a certain standard. It should be this way to the tea room.
Ann went past wallpapered rooms and a procession of fronded plants in big brass pots. There was a long brass-framed mirror beside the lift in which she caught sight of herself while a clerk in a waistcoat pushed a cart in the opposite direction. The staff were lying in wait, looking for any reason to approach a visitor. Since returning from Paris, she had started to resent the omnipresence of servants and clerks over here.
The tea room was cordoned off by a rope looped through the eyes of four gleaming brass stands. She and Lavigne sat across from one another at a table beside the wall. The waiter, an Indian man with the pitted skin of a smallpox victim, wore a turban in addition to the stiff red tunic prescribed by the hotel. He spoke through his long moustache as he distributed the items for tea, placing them on the clean linen as if setting up his side of a chessboard, and then retired to his post to stand and watch.
Neil was right. To be a so-called European, here where you were supposed to be top of the heap, was a predicament. You were under surveillance, first of all by other Europeans, and second by the natives, who might have something to gain or to lose, and by Indian waiters beneath their turbans. European women were the most severe on women like Ann. She couldn’t escape the suspicion that, beneath his unshakeable business manners, Lavigne was acting to punish her on behalf of the general opinion.
—Mrs Rabie.
—Call me Ann.
—Ann, then. I have followed Paul since he entered the school in standard seven. I believe he won a scholarship at that time, a minor exhibition. Subsequently I acted as his housemaster, not to say his Geography teacher. I am delegated to take care of our best young scholars, the ones who might proceed to Cambridge. After the last rugby match, I invited Paul, along with three other promising young men, to dine at the Balfour Hotel.
—I know you have a good relationship, Edward. Whatever has happened has never altered my son’s loyalty to the school.
—Loyalty is a virtue the school endeavours to inculcate. Allow me to do the honours.
Lavigne poured the tea through the strainer, offering her the first cup without turning his face. He added a sugar cube to his own cup and then two drops of milk as carefully as if he were using an eye-dropper. He sat up straight and drank, his blue blazer with its heavy gold buttons done up and his long hands almost disappearing into the sleeves. She saw that he was wearing cufflinks and remembered Neil’s pair, inherited from his father, which had been borrowed and never returned by Sartre.
—I regret you and your husband have been unable to attend any of the important matches that make up our calendar.
—My husband is busy, Edward. He has taken a big part at the university since we came back from Paris. Sometimes it means that other things go undone.
—There’s no obligation whatsoever. Some of the boys travel from homes in Johannesburg or London. Others come from remote farms located in Rhodesia. We understand that parents have different circumstances. Nevertheless, it is a shame that our first real conversation should be under these circumstances.
—I agree.
—Then we understand each other. You understand the situation. A prefect brought his suspicions to me. Naturally it fell to me to investigate and to search Paul’s locker. That’s when I found the spirits.
—Should you be encouraging the boys to spy on each other?
—Spying is not a term I would use. The prefects have a duty to keep good order in the houses. The same system is in effect at leading schools in the United Kingdom, so there can be no question of our fairness in this matter. I found two bottles of Klipdrift, cheap brandy. Paul has refused to explain their provenance, which has only worsened his situation. Did he bring the brandy from home? Some students have been known to raid their fathers’ liquor cabinets in an attempt to win popularity.
—That doesn’t sound like Paul. But Neil doesn’t touch spirits. There is usually some wine in the house. I sometimes have a glass in the evening.
—And that’s no sin.
Lavigne and his dry laugh acted on her nerves. There was some intimacy in their conversation which Ann disliked, as if the housemaster wanted to show that he was in on her secrets. She thought that he didn’t mind offending her. She watched him more closely. Even in Neil’s utopia there would be a Lavigne.
—Paul probably went to an Indian shop, Mrs Rabie. They operate just beyond the limits of the Curzon estate. By law, they cannot obtain freehold in the area. So who rents them the land? At the board’s request, I am investigating the proprietors who allow these traders to operate. When we discover the names of the culprits we will take action. They must conform, or their tenants will have their licences revoked.
—It sounds severe, Edward.
—Severity is called for. I am not a racialist, believe you me, but I know that there will never be a peaceful settlement in the country until we have brought everyone up to a certain standard. I take an interest in the university. In which department does your husband work?
—Neil’s in Philosophy. We came back early from Paris so he could take up the position. I would have stayed in France longer if I could have. I married early, the first time, and never had a year to wander around Europe.
Ann wasn’t sure why she was saying more than she had to. She tried to be on good terms with other people. She wanted to help Paul.
—I had three years on the continent, Mrs Rabie, at Oxford. It convinced me that my place was here, because this is where our civilisation is being put to the test.
Lavigne excused himself for the toilet. Ann watched his solid figure striding down the corridor, confident that this life and the next belonged to him. In his Anglican afterlife he would shake hands with the boys whose backsides he had deliciously caned in the privacy of his study. They would thank him for putting them on the right track.
Ann was born Catholic, the product of Irish grand-parents. She had been confirmed, but did nothing more than light a candle when she entered a chapel. She was divorced, moreover, and did not fit in the same category as the other parents. It occurred to her that the private schools resembled the church. They shared the assumption of universal rule. Edward Lavigne could have been a bishop.
Ten years ago Ann would have been impressed. But she had enjoyed the years in Paris, living on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, visiting the houses of Lévi-Strauss and de Beauvoir. She didn’t mistake a Natal private school for the height of civilisation. She simply didn’t want Paul to lose a year. He had adapted to Curzon College, arriving on the bus at the end of term in black blazer and tie, eager to relate to her the great schoolboy debates about motorcycles, batsmen, and bowlers, and the rumours about the border that filtered down from older brothers.
Neil had been Dux at a similar institution. The table of punishments hadn’t changed since his time. Boys could be beaten with a cricket bat or cane, privately in the housemaster’s study, or in a line in the gymnasium in the case of a group offence. A boy could be forced to run cross-country miles, denied the privilege of going home on a long weekend, or made to reproduce tables of Latin conjugations.
It was a prodigious schedule of human sacrifice. Between her and the mother of an Aztec there was not so much difference as the historian supposed.
You can buy Tales of the Metric System for R186 at Kalahari.com.
