Free Occasion for Loving by Nadine Gordimer Page B

don’t you, Mum—” The little girl had forgotten about eating and was smiling proudly round under this attention. “Let her concentrate on getting her breakfast down, Morgan, please.” “All right.” He finished his own quickly, and slipped away from the table.
    In his bedroom, they saw he knew they would come. He had gone to ground quietly, without hope. The radio was on, softly howling; it was not really his own ground—in a few days he would be back at school, and the bed, the portable radio, the socks lying on a chair and the curling pile of science fiction magazines and comics would be gone. Tom’s filing cabinets and boxes of papers remained in possession. Tom went over and switched the radio off, gently, but before he could turn round again, Jessie had spoken: “What makes you go to that place?”
    If only she had started with the expected preamble, given them all a chance! What was needed was an explanation, not the truth. Tom tried to hold her with a look, but she was looking around the little boarded-in verandah as if the scattered marks of the boy’s tenancy were mysteriously eloquent, like smashed glass and overturned chairs left witness to a brawl.
    Morgan was dead still. If they had put a gun against his ribs just then he would not have spoken. And then he picked up some bits of wire that were lying on his bed and began to wind a loose end of insulating tape round them. He looked at his mother and Tom, kindly, helplessly, blindly.
    â€œWell?” Jessie could not stop staring at him, roving curiously over the little thin neck in the open shirt, the lips closed withnervous lightness over the slightly forward projection of the jaw (he had nice teeth; what a good thing that was), the shabby grey trousers folded over like a dhoti under the circle of belt round his thinness; the raw and tender hands. They were like the hands she sometimes saw on young mechanics at the garage, coarse and sad, not yet hardened to the bruises of heavy metal, and with their pinkness still showing through ingrained grease.
    â€œJessie and I didn’t think you were keen on dances and things like that yet, Morgan,” Tom said to him. “If you are, there are clubs and places for chaps of your own age, and girls, of course. I should think you’d enjoy those more.” Poor little bastard! Healthy recreation, they were offering him; who knew what it was he needed? We can offer him only what we’ve got, thought Tom.
    â€œYou don’t have to sneak off to some joint.” Jessie made an effort to be friendly. “You could have invited people here, for that matter, if you’d told me. Now it’s too late—you’re going back to school.”
    He said, as if fascinated by her voice, “Yes, I know. Only two more days.”
    They were talking about someone else. Morgan would never invite croaky-voiced jolly boys and petticoated girls to dance to the gramophone. Neither did he have any share of the teddy-boy’s animal vigour; the reverse side of cosy home respectability acquired in regular instalments. The interview had come to nothing; there was only the relief that it was over.
    Tom said, “He may do the same thing again. I don’t see what’s to stop him. We’ll have to make some plans before he comes home next time.”
    â€œHe’ll have forgotten. You know how children leave things behind them.”
    â€œYes,” said Tom, “but he won’t be leaving them behind any more.”
    Jessie was caught up again in the uncomfortable, uncontrollable amusement that had unnerved her the night before.“Tom, Tom, really now, Tom, can you believe that he ever did it, though? Is it real, to you? That little boy? That little pest, with his boring stories?”
    It was over and he would be back at school in less than two days, and she accepted that that was an end to the whole ridiculous, queer business. She felt a cold