Charlie did not enjoy that conversation. He was already intimidated by the thought of Queenie-Queenie’s domestic circumstances—by the disparity between her social position and his—and to add the threat of an unfriendly dog hardly helped. He had also been worrying about Hector’s offer of a job. He was not at all sure that he wanted to work for somebody who was prepared to sabotage the cars of his debtors, but he had not been sure how to refuse. If he said no, then Queenie-Queenie’s father might well be offended—Hector, after all, was his only son, and he must approve of what he did. Yet, in spite of this uncertainty, he had made up his mind. He would refuse to do Hector’s bidding—he would not work for him.
And now, on the evening of his first invitation to have dinner with her father—her mother was away—that dreadful dog was starting up. He drew in his breath and made sure that his shirt was tucked properly into his trousers. He had polished his shoes and bought a new pair of laces. He had paid his cousin five pula to wash and iron his second pair of trousers—his church trousers, as his mother used to call them—and they, at least, looked smart enough, although one leg was fraying at the bottom. Nobody would notice that, though, especially if he crossed his legs in such a way that the good leg obscured the bad one.
Queenie-Queenie answered the door. He noticed how she smiled when she saw him, and his heart gave a leap. She would not smile like that, he thought, if she did not love him. She loves me…The words, uttered but not sounded, brought on a feeling that Charlie had rarely, if ever, experienced before—a feeling of pride, of gratitude, almost of relief. Nobody had been proud of him before, or at least nobody had expressed it; and he was not sure if he had been loved, even by his parents. His mother had been too busy, with too many mouths to feed and with her work as a domestic servant for an ungrateful employer; she had not had the time to love her children, because all her energy was spent in simply keeping them alive. And his father had been a drinker who spent all his time in the shebeen, and sometimes did not even recognise his children when he came home. It was no surprise, then, that there had not been much family life and that everyone had gone their separate ways as soon as an opportunity presented itself. And now there was somebody for whom he was special: me, he thought, me! Charlie! Special!
Queenie-Queenie whispered, “You aren’t nervous, are you?”
He looked down at his shoes, at his new laces, tied too tightly, perhaps. “Me?” He affected a laugh. “Why should I be nervous?”
But then he thought: I should be honest, because you must be honest with somebody who loves you. And so he said, “Yes, I am very nervous, Queenie. I am shaking inside my shoes.”
She looked down at his shoes. “You have new laces, I see. They are very smart.”
He smiled. “You like them?”
“Yes, I like laces like that.”
She glanced over her shoulder, into the room that opened up from the entrance hall behind her. Charlie followed her gaze. There was bulky, expensive furniture of the sort he had seen in Phuti Radiphuti’s furniture store: heavy chairs and a sofa covered in shiny grey leather. Those sofas cost more than he earned in a year, he reflected; more than his entire year’s wage as an apprentice detective. He could buy one sofa, at the most, and then have no money for anything else for twelve months; no money for food, even, or for bus fares or new laces, let alone new shoes. He would just have a sofa to sit on and not even anywhere to put it, because there would be no money for rent. He would have to put his sofa under a tree somewhere, at the edge of town, and live on it, eating lizards and birds’ eggs and even the remains of old sandwiches, crusts, thrown out of bus windows by passengers. He would sit on his sofa and eat such things and wait for something to happen.
Queenie-Queenie reached out and patted his shoulder. Even that had an electric effect on him, sending a shiver of pleasure down into his chest—into his heart, he felt; right into his heart.
“You don’t need to be nervous, Charlie,” she said. “The daddy is looking forward to meeting you.”
Charlie swallowed. “You have told him?”
She shook her head. “Not in so many words. But I did say: ‘Daddy, there is a really nice boy I want you to meet.’ That is what I said, Charlie, and he said, ‘I am always happy to meet nice boys, Queenie, if that is what you want me to do.’ ”
Charlie took some comfort from this, but not much. “What if he doesn’t like me?”
Queenie-Queenie brushed this aside. “Of course he’ll like you, Charlie.”
“And if I tell him that we want to get married? What will he say then? Will he say, ‘And how many cattle do you have?’ ”
“If he says that, then you should say to him, ‘There will be plenty of cattle in the future.’ ”
That, thought Charlie, was not the way it worked, but he did not have the chance to express these doubts, as Queenie-Queenie had begun to usher him through the hall and into the room beyond. As he walked beside her, Charlie was aware of the fact that his shoes were squeaking. He had not noticed it before, and perhaps it was caused by the expensive wooden floor underfoot, but they were definitely squeaking. He tried not to put too much weight on his step, which helped, but led to his using a strange, rather exaggerated gait, as if he were walking on hot coals.
“You shouldn’t walk like that,” whispered Queenie-Queenie. “My father won’t like a boy who walks like that.”
Charlie bit his lip. He was not sure that it was a good idea to have accepted Queenie-Queenie’s invitation. He did not belong here, in this house of expensive furniture, with its noisy floor and its…He looked up at the light fittings. He had never seen anything like this. Ten bulbs? Twenty? He had a single bulb in his room—a single, dim bulb that ran on electricity that he knew his uncle stole by attaching an illegal wire to a nearby cable. To live by stolen light, in a room shared with young cousins, one of whom still wet the bed, and another whose feet had an unpleasant odour, and now to be here, under the glare of a costly light fitting probably brought all the way from Johannesburg by some fancy electrician; that was to invite exposure. Queenie-Queenie’s father would see through him immediately. He would say, “This is not what you are used to, is it, young man?” And he would have to hang his head and say nothing because there was nothing he could say.
Queenie-Queenie’s father was sitting on one of the large leather sofas. On the wall behind him was a large picture of a giraffe, painted on dark velvet. Beside the sofa, on a glass-topped table, a table lamp in the shape of an eagle was surmounted by an elaborate tasselled shade in a silvery material.
“Ha!” said the father. “So here you are, Mr. Charlie.”
Charlie had expected a traditional greeting, and was taken aback. He muttered a few indistinct words.