Free NF (1957) Going Home by Doris Lessing

nightclub? Seen our new restaurant? Jesus, we’ve got as good here as you’ve got in London, I’m telling you. Things have really changed since you’ve left, they have. It’s a fact.’
    After this conversation, I walked down First Street. On the pavement, sitting with their feet comfortably in the gutter, five African women, knitting, watching life pass by. They looked relaxed and happy. They wore good print dresses, crocheted white caps, sandals. Clothes have changed much for the better in a decade. Gone are the old blue-printed cottons, which were almost a uniform for African women. A man I know who imports for the African trade said: ‘The days of “Kaffir-truck” are over. Now we import quantities of cheap, bright stuff for the native trade. But already some Africans buy as good quality as the Europeans. In five or six years they won’t be manufacturing special goods for the African trade.’
    In Meikle’s lounge, a place where I spent a good part of my adolescence, I drank beer and watched what went on. Women having morning tea, farmers in for the tobacco auctions, everything the same.
    At the next table, two women, an American and an Englishwoman. It appeared they were both making trips through Africa, had met in Durban, were travelling back to England together for company. They knew each other previously. Now they were discussing some mutual friend who, it seemed, had come to no good.
     
    AMERICAN : So now I don’t know what he’ll do. You can’t start all over at fifty.
    ENGLISH : It seems such a shame. And what can it have been? Yes, of course he always drank too much, but why suddenly …I mean, he never drank too much.
    AMERICAN : Well, dear, he had problems.
    ENGLISH : But no worse than usual? And there was that nice wife of his. She always pulled him together when—I mean, I remember once, when they were visiting us in London, he was rather depressed, and she pulled him together. It was not that they needed to worry about money .
    AMERICAN : He was basically unstable, that’s all.
    ENGLISH : But suddenly ? There must have been something definite, something must have happened. Of course, people don’t drink too much for nothing. But everything must have suddenly piled up? Perhaps he was working too hard. He always did, didn’t he?
    AMERICAN : Now Betty, there’s no point in going on. He had a character defect.
    ENGLISH ( slightly irritated, but persistent ): I dare say, but his character couldn’t suddenly have got all that much more defective? There must have been some reason?
    AMERICAN : I keep telling you, he was psychologically maladjusted.
    ENGLISH ( after a pause, drily ): You always put your finger straight on to a thing, dear.
    AMERICAN ( very faintly suspicious ): What? But what more is there to say?
     
    Walking out of the hotel I was looking for the lavatory where it used to be. Coming towards me, a middle-aged woman. I used to know her well. ‘Where’s the lavatory these days?’ I asked. ‘Really, dear!’ she said. ‘It’s the powder-room since you left. Third door on the right.’
    At the post office, it says Natives and Europeans . I went to my part of the building, and watched the long queues of Africans patiently waiting their turn to be served.
    Then I went to get a copy of my driving licence, which I had lost. The office was in makeshift buildings on a waste lot; thegrowth of administration due to Federation has spread government departments everywhere there is room for them.
    There was a long queue of about 150 white people, and another parallel queue of black people. The sun was burning down, and puffs of pinkish dust settled from the shifting, bored feet. Pleasant to see these sunburned skins, the red-brown, glistening, healthy sunburn of the highveld; pleasant to stand in the hot sun, knowing it would not withdraw itself capriciously in ten minutes behind cloud.
    In front of me in the queue were two young farmers in for the day. Farm-talk: prices, cost of native