‘Why should it?’ she asked, simply. I didn’t have the moral energy to fight it, and after a pause she said: ‘What did George want you for? I suppose he said I was a bitch for hitting him?’

‘Can you imagine George saying anyone is a bitch for hitting him? Well why did you?’

‘I was crying about that too. Because of course, the real reason I hit him was because I know someone like George could make me forget my brother.’

‘Well perhaps you should let someone like George have a try?’

‘Perhaps I should,’ she said. She gave me a small, old smile, which said so clearly: What a baby you are! — that I said angrily: ‘But if you know something, why don’t you do something about it?’

Again the small smile, and she said: ‘No one will ever love me like my brother did. He really loved me. George would make love to me. And that wouldn’t be the same thing, would it? But what’s wrong with saying: I’ve had the best thing already and I’ll never have it again, instead of just having sex. What’s wrong with it?’

‘When you say, what’s wrong with it, like that, then I never know what answer to make, even though I know there’s something wrong.’

‘What, then?’ She sounded really curious, and I said, even more angry: ‘You just don’t try, you don’t try. You just give up.’

‘It’s all very well for you,’ she said, meaning Willi again, and now I couldn’t say anything. It was my turn to want to cry, and she saw it, and said out of her infinite superiority in suffering: ‘Don’t cry, Anna, there’s never any point. Well I’m going to get washed for lunch.’ And she went off. All the young men were now singing, around the piano, so I left the room too, and went to where I had seen George leaning. I clambered through nettles and blackjacks, because he had moved further around to the back, and was standing staring through a group of paw-paw trees at the little shack where the cook lived with his wife and his children. There were a couple of brown children squatting in the dust among the chickens.

I noticed that George’s very sleek arm was trembling as he tried to light a cigarette, and he failed, and threw it impatiently away, unlit, and he remarked calmly: ‘No, my bye-blow is not present.’

A gong rang down at the hotel for lunch.

‘We’d better go in,’ I said.

‘Stay here with me a minute.’ He put his hand on my shoulder, and the heat of it burned through my dress. The gong stopped sending out its long metallic waves of sound, and the piano stopped inside. Silence, and a dove cooed from the jacaranda tree. George put his hand on my breast, and he said: ‘Anna, I could take you to bed now — and then Marie, that’s my black girl, and then go back to my wife tonight and have her, and be happy with all three of you. Do you understand that, Anna?’