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It had been dark in the car. He put an arm round her and pulled her towards him.
“Not here, please.”
Obi was hurt, especially as he knew his driver had heard.
“I’m sorry, dear,” said Clara, putting her hand in his. “I will explain later.”
“When?” Obi was alarmed by her tone.
“Today. After you have eaten.”
“What do you mean? Aren’t you eating?”
She said she did not feel like eating. Obi said in that case he too wouldn’t eat. So they decided to eat. But when the food came they merely looked at it, even Obi, who had set out with a roaring appetite.
There was a film show which Clara suggested they should see. Obi said no, he wanted to find out what was on her mind. They went for a walk in the direction of the swimming pool.
Until Obi met Clara on board the cargo boat Sasa he had thought of love as another grossly overrated European invention. It was not that he was indifferent to women. On the contrary, he had been quite intimate with a few in England—a Nigerian, a West Indian, English girls, and so on. But these intimacies which Obi regarded as love were neither deep nor sincere. There was always a part of him, the thinking part, which seemed to stand outside it all watching the passionate embrace with cynical disdain. The result was that one half of Obi might kiss a girl and murmur: “I love you,” but the other half would say: “Don’t be silly.” And it was always this second half that triumphed in the end when the glamor had evaporated with the heat, leaving a ridiculous anticlimax.
With Clara it was different. It had been from the very first. There was never a superior half at Obi’s elbow wearing a patronizing smile.
“I can’t marry you,” she said suddenly as Obi tried to kiss her under the tall frangipani tree at the edge of the swimming pool, and exploded into tears.
“I don’t understand you, Clara.” And he really didn’t. Was this woman’s game to bind him more firmly? But Clara was not like that; she had no coyness in her. Not much, anyway. That was one of the things Obi liked best about her. She had seemed so sure of herself that, unlike other women, she did not consider how quickly or cheaply she was captured.
“Why can’t you marry me?” He succeeded in sounding unruffled. For answer she threw herself at him and began to weep violently on his shoulder.
“What’s the matter, Clara? Tell me.” He was no longer unruffled. There was a hint of tears in his voice.
“I am an osu,” she wept. Silence. She stopped weeping and quietly disengaged herself from him. Still he said nothing.
“So you see we cannot get married,” she said, quite firmly, almost gaily—a terrible kind of gaiety. Only the tears showed she had wept.
“Nonsense!” said Obi. He shouted it almost, as if by shouting it now he could wipe away those seconds of silence, when everything had seemed to stop, waiting in vain for him to speak.
Joseph was asleep when he got back. It was past midnight. The door was shut but not locked, and he walked in quietly. But the slight whining of the door was enough to wake Joseph. Without waiting to undress, Obi told him the story.
“The very thing I was thinking to ask you. I was thinking how such a good and beautiful girl could remain unmarried until now.” Obi was undressing absentmindedly. “Anyhow, you are lucky to know at the beginning. No harm is done yet. The eye is not harmed by sleep,” Joseph said somewhat pointlessly. He noticed that Obi was not paying any attention.
“I am going to marry her,” Obi said.
“What!” Joseph sat up in bed.
“I am going to marry her.”
“Look at me,” said Joseph, getting up and tying his coverlet as a loincloth. He now spoke in English. “You know book, but this is no matter for book. Do you know what an osu is? But how can you know?” In that short question he said in effect that Obi’s mission-house upbringing and European education had made him a stranger in his country—the most painful thing one could say to Obi.
“I know more about it than yourself,” he said, “and I’m going to marry the girl. I wasn’t actually seeking your approval.”
Joseph thought the best thing was to drop the matter for the present. He went back to bed and was soon snoring.
Obi felt better and more confident in his decision now that there was an opponent, the first of hundreds to come, no doubt. Perhaps it was not a decision really; for him there could be only one choice. It was scandalous that in the middle of the twentieth century a man could be barred from marrying a girl simply because her great-great-great-great-grandfather had been dedicated to serve a god, thereby setting himself apart and turning his descendants into a forbidden caste to the end of Time. Quite unbelievable. And here was an educated man telling Obi he did not understand. “Not even my mother can stop me,” he said as he lay down beside Joseph.
At half-past two on the following day he called for Clara and told her they were going to Kingsway to buy an engagement ring.
“When?” was all she could ask.
“Now, now.”
