The Fetch. Finuala Dowling

Emmanuel was an unlikely hero. But he walked purposefully towards the primate, swinging his arms and grunting as though he were a male baboon himself. Chas too adopted a simian demeanour.

      Reluctantly, the baboon dismounted the gatepost. They watched it make its way slowly up the track towards the mountain, like an admonished schoolboy. Nina felt a pang of pity as she watched his knuckled gait. He was going away but as he had nowhere to go to, no troop or family, he could only pretend to be on his way somewhere.

      The baker opened the back of her van and brought out a tray bearing Chas’s birthday cake. We love you, Chas, it said in toffee-coloured piping on the dark chocolate icing.

      “It’s sweet of your mother to order you a cake like that,” said Fundiswa.

      “Oh, no, I ordered it,” said Chas. “One’s friends need a little prompting every now and then. Let me take that,” he added, relieving the baker of the cake and heading back towards the house.

      “If you could just sign the invoice,” said the baker. “That’ll be three hundred and fifty rand, including the delivery.”

      “So much! Do you take credit cards?” asked Chas.

      “No, we’re strictly cash on delivery, I’m afraid.”

      “Oh dear,” said Chas. “I don’t have a sou on me. But I can’t have a birthday without a cake. Seems a bit embarrassing. I’ll have to ask my guests if they have any cash. Unless, of course … ”

      He looked at Fundiswa and then at Nina.

      Fundiswa stared at him as if she would like to grind him to a fine powder and offer him as snuff to a passing sangoma.

      “I’ll pay,” said Nina, putting down Fundiswa’s shopping so that she could open her purse. Let this god have his cake and eat it, she thought.

      She regretted her generosity immediately. Would he pay her back? She hoped he didn’t think that she had money to burn. It was just that making one big withdrawal rather than several little ones saved on bank charges.

      Chas smiled at her. “Why, thank you, Nora,” he said.

      “Nina. Her name is Nina,” said Fundiswa.

      “I do apologise. You’re the very opposite of a Nora.” Chas took her in from head to toe, lingering slightly when he reached her thick-soled fisherman’s sandals.

      “I’ve got some books for Emmanuel,” Nina said quickly, in order to deflect his attention from her dusty feet.

      “King-i Richard?” asked Emmanuel, leaning his broom against the gatepost so that he could take the books with both hands. He added an -i suffix randomly to the few English words he knew. “Dankie, Miss Ni-ni.”

      “And another one about Namibia.”

      In addition to pictorial biographies of ancient royalty, Emmanuel liked big, full-colour ethnographic studies of Namibia. In an odd mixture of sound effects, sign language and English and Afrikaans, he would describe to Nina the books he wanted. He read with difficulty, blaming his poor eyesight, but loved books for their own sake, holding them with a kind of helpless reverence in his long, slender hands.

      “What’s keeping you, Chas? The drinks are flowing like glue!” A female guest posed at the kitchen door with one hand on her slim hip; she wore only a flimsy sarong, knotted tightly at her cleavage.

      “I must get back,” said Chas. “However can I thank you?”

      “It’s nothing really. I enjoy helping Emmanuel with his interests. So few people use the library as a library any more – they just come in to use the internet.”

      “Not for the books, darling, for the cake. However can I repay you?”

      “You can just repay her by repaying her, is what I would suggest,” said Fundiswa. “And you could invite her round for some of that birthday cake.”

      “Of course! An excellent idea! Come along later, after the meeting. I feel I should pop in and do my civic duty. I’ll see you two there, I presume? But afterwards, why don’t both of you come and join the party?”

      “Thank you. I’d love to. If you’re sure … ?” said Nina.

      “Count me out,” said Fundiswa. “My partying days are long over. But, please, keep the noise down. I think you sometimes forget that there are people living behind you.”

      They looked up at the duplex, which the architect had designed with only economy in mind: low pitched, extensively glassed. No wood, stone or even a touch of greenery to soften the blank and now somewhat stained whitewash.

      “It’s your landlord’s fault for building that monstrosity right on the boundary line,” said Chas. The sharpness was momentary, then he was all bonhomie again: “I hope you like sangria, Nina. Just the thing for a hot February evening.”

      “Are you happy now that I’ve got you your invitation to Midden House?” asked Fundiswa as they watched Chas and Emmanuel make their way through the back gate of Midden House, the one triumphantly bearing his birthday cake, the other carefully examining the covers of his library books.

      “Thank you,” said Nina as they turned to cross Cockle Way. “But, of course, I’m feeling nervous now. All those artistic people from the City Bowl. I suppose I could wear my white dress with the red piping – the one you said you liked.”

      “It’s a nice dress; it’s becoming. Go along. But don’t get your hopes up. Later, when you’re my age, you’ll know how disappointing a party can be.”

      Fundiswa used her remote to open the gate. Nina helped her carry her groceries inside before climbing the stairs to her own flat. She was nearly at the top when Fundiswa called out: “By the way, I’m planning to start a jogging regime tomorrow. In fact, it was my new year’s resolution, so I’m a month late. Why don’t you come with me?”

      “I don’t jog. I’ve never jogged,” said Nina, by way of an excuse.

      “Come on, what’s the worst that could happen? We might get fit! I need some company, and I can assure you that it won’t be very strenuous.”

      It wasn’t the exercise that Nina was afraid of, but the prospect of people staring at her as she puffed along. Still, she would love to be fitter, slimmer. If there were any onlookers, they’d probably find Fundiswa more of a spectacle. She agreed to jog.

      Nina kicked off her dusty sandals and opened the sliding doors onto her balcony to let out the accumulated stuffiness of the day. The incoming tide brought in a strong smell of sea and kelp. She breathed in the clean atmosphere. All day long she worked in a pall of farts: library borrowers seemed to experience an immediate relaxing of their bowels as they perused the shelves or read the free newspapers.

      When she had begun studying for her diploma, she’d thought that she would end up working with scholarly or at least thoughtful people. But she had ended up in a suburban library that mostly serviced pensioners who fought with one another over whose turn it was to take out Foyle’s War. The staff was also kept busy by children from three or four local schools. Teachers set identical projects with identical deadlines so that there was always a crisis about “Volcanoes” or “Robben Island”. Once a week the librarians were supposed to get together for a book discussion, but it turned out that two of Nina’s colleagues didn’t like reading or perhaps struggled to read. Her career had more in common with police work or refereeing. She had to stop patrons from stealing the Bob Marley biographies, bringing recording devices into the music section and, every now and then, photocopying whole books.

      She liked the detail of classification, though. Only the other day, for example, they had received a batch of CDs from the provincial library, classified alphabetically rather than according to the Dewey decimal system. Absurd, thought Nina. You couldn’t have books on Beethoven shelved at 780.92 and then some music by Beethoven (but not all) shelved at Beet. It gave her pleasure to fix that.

      While she