Politeness

Dan's first time in Colleen's house. A promising start ends in disaster.

                Politeness

Elizabeth, rising at eight, found Colleen brewing tea in the kitchen.

“Where’s Dan?”

Colleen did not look up from pouring hot water into the teapot. “He’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“I woke up half an hour ago. I didn’t see him anywhere. His bag is gone. I assume he left.”

“But . . .  why? Wasn’t he with you last night?”

“No. He slept in his room. Then he left sometime after dawn I guess.”

“What happened last night?”

 Colleen her face down, stared at the counter. “Nothing happened; nothing at all. After you left I sat on the couch waiting for him to join me. He sat in the big chair and read a book. After a while I told him I was going to bed. He just kept reading. I waited up half the night hoping that he would join me. I even heard him outside my door. Then he stepped away back into his room I suppose.  When I woke he was gone.”

Elizabeth sat at the table. She thought for a moment.

The two of them, she and Colleen had met Dan three weeks before. He and Colleen seemed to have taken to one another. The only flaw to their relationship was that Dan had been posted two hundred kilometers away from Kano. Elizabeth wrote to him inviting him for Saturday dinner. Her plan to bring the two together should have worked. It seemed to be working. They had a pleasant spaghetti dinner,  chatting about life in Kano and in Hadejia.  Colleen and Dan did the dishes while Elizabeth went to change. She had slipped away from the house to visit the Greens allowing them privacy.

Where had it gone wrong? “Didn’t he say anything to you?”

“Nothing. Not a word. He just sat and read that damn book.”

“Did you say anything?”

“No. I just assumed that he understood that he should join me.”

“You didn’t ask him to join you?”

“Why would I have too? It was obvious what I wanted.”

“Then when you were bored with waiting, you stood, told him that you were going to bed and left him.”

“Yes.”

“You left him in a strange house, to go to bed alone.”

“My room is across from his. All he had to do was to open the door.”

“Without knocking?”

“He could have knocked.”

“Maybe he thought you were asleep? He didn’t want to waken you.”

“Why are you defending him?”

“I’m not. I’m trying to understand him. Perhaps, if you had done that, he might still be here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Colleen. He was being polite. He was waiting for you to ask him to join you. You never did.”

“He shouldn’t have just left like that.”

“Perhaps not but why should he stay where he felt he did not belong?”

“I would have made him feel that he did. All he had to do was to sit beside me.” She recalled looking at him reading, his eyes lowered to the pages. Occasionally they would flick towards her staring eyes and then quickly return to the safety of the printed words.

“I thought he liked me.”

“He did. Maybe he still does. He just came from a different world. Not the one you grew up in.” 

She touched Colleen’s right shoulder. “Maybe you can write to him. Explain that it was a misunderstanding, that you would like to see him again . . . ”

“Maybe.” Perhaps she could write but there were others living closer, easier to understand; Simon Habib for instance. He had a nice car. Still, she knew what Elizabeth wanted to hear. “I’ll think about it.”

Reviews

[Alira]

Interesting to get more insight into these characters after having read “The Cross.” Im guessing many more of your posts involve these characters, which I guess I’ll find out for myself soon. Like I said in my last review, clearly you’ve put a lot of thought into them, and I am looking forward to seeing more of them, if that is, indeed, the case. Many of the issues I found in “The Cross” were not present here. The dialogue flowed quite well and I didn’t see any mistakes in terms of punctuation. I would say that I just want to know more, but I actually find it quite interesting to have this small peek into the lives of these people. Obviously, I know things end up working out between Colleen and Dan, but still I feel the need to root for their relationship as it develops.