Life Times Read Free

inquisitive childhood she picked up a thin wand of twig and prodded the locust, very gently. ‘Funny thing is, it’s even the same leg, the left one.’ She looked round at him and smiled.
    â€˜I know,’ he nodded, laughing. ‘The two of us . . .’ And then he shook his head and, smiling, said it again: ‘The two of us.’
    She was laughing and just then she flicked the twig more sharply than she meant to and at the touch of it there was a sudden flurried papery whirr, and the locust flew away.
    She stood there with the stick in her hand, half afraid of it again, and appealed, unnerved as a child, ‘What happened? What happened?’
    There was a moment of silence.
    â€˜Don’t be a fool,’ he said irritably.
    They had forgotten that locusts can fly.

The Amateurs
    T hey stumbled round the Polyclinic, humpy in the dark with their props and costumes. ‘A drain!’ someone shouted, ‘Look out!’ ‘Drain ahead!’ They were all talking at once.
    The others waiting in the car stared out at them; the driver leaned over his window: ‘All right?’
    They gesticulated, called out together.
    â€˜ – Can’t hear. Is it OK?’ shouted the driver.
    Peering, chins lifted over bundles, they arrived back at the car again. ‘There’s nobody there. It’s all locked up.’
    â€˜Are you sure it was the Polyclinic?’
    â€˜Well, it’s very nice, I must say!’
    They stood around the car, laughing in the pleasant little adventure of being lost together.
    A thin native who had been watching them suspiciously from the dusty-red wash set afloat upon the night by the one street light, came over and mumbled, ‘I take you . . . You want to go inside?’ He looked over his shoulder to the location gates.
    â€˜Get in,’ one young girl nudged the other towards the car. Suddenly they all got in, shut the doors.
    â€˜I take you,’ said the boy again, his hands deep in his pockets.
    At that moment a light wavered down the road from the gates, a bicycle swooped swallow-like upon the car, a fat police-boy in uniform shone a torch. ‘You in any trouble there, sir?’ he roared. His knobkerrie swung from his belt.
    â€˜No, but we’ve come to the wrong place—’
    â€˜You having any trouble?’ insisted the police-boy. The other shrank away into the light. He stood hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, looking at the car from the street light.
    â€˜We’re supposed to be giving a play – concert – tonight, and we were told it would be at the Polyclinic. Now there’s nobody there,’ the girl called impatiently from the back seat.
    â€˜Concert, sir? It’s in the Hall, sir. Just follow me.’
    Taken over by officialdom, they went through the gates, saluted and stared at, and up the rutted street past the Beer Hall, into the location. Only a beer-brazen face, blinking into the car lights as they passed, laughed and called out something half-heard.
    Driving along the narrow, dark streets, they peered white-faced at the windows, wanting to see what it was like. But, curiously, it seemed that although they might want to see the location, the location didn’t want to see them. The rows of low two-roomed houses with their homemade tin and packing-case lean-tos and beans growing up the chicken wire, throbbed only here and there with the faint pulse of a candle; no one was to be seen. Life seemed always to be in the next street, voices singing far off and shouts, but when the car turned the corner – again, there was nobody.
    The bicycle wobbled to a stop in front of them. Here was the Hall, here were lights, looking out like sore eyes in the moted air, here were people, more part of the dark than the light, standing about in straggling curiosity. Two girls in flowered headscarves stood with their arms crossed leaning against the wall of the building; some men cupped their hands