The man removed his hat from his head and started turning it around and wringing it in his hands. ‘Please, sir … I am having to be going home. My wife, she is having a baby. The other boys are going to their homes already. The baas, he is not coming, Miss Marion, she is not coming … you are coming. Please, sir, I am having to go home. The last train, it is leaving at eight o’clock, sir. I know baas will be very angry with me, leaving the house alone … I am head boy. But I am having to go home. You are understanding, sir?’

Spokes looked at his watch. It was just gone past seven o’clock; the man would not make it to the train station on time if he did not leave soon. Spokes was more than understanding, ‘I will give you a lift to the train station,’ he said.

‘No, sir. No. That is not what I am asking. My brother-in-law, he is coming soon,’ the man said, pointing at something on the lit veranda. It was a battered and almost-bursting suitcase. ‘Please do not be worrying yourself about me, sir. It is just that I am having to leave the house with no one … you are understanding?’

Just then the hoot of a car sounded at the bottom of the driveway, and the man became even more visibly agitated.

‘It is all right,’ Spokes said. ‘I will see to it that someone comes to guard the premises during the holidays.’

‘Ah, thank you. Thank you, sir. You are coming just in time to be saving me. God bless. God bless,’ he said, pumping Spokes’s hands in his, and placing in them a bunch of keys he had retrieved from the pockets of his overalls. Once the keys had passed from his hands to Spokes’s, the man looked very relieved. ‘You are saving me,’ he repeated as he ran to get his suitcase.

‘I’m afraid I did not get your name.’

‘Sorry, sir. It is Machipisa,’ Machipisa said, offering his hand for one last handshake. ‘I am being the garden boy here.’

Spokes shook Machipisa’s hand and, looking him straight in the eye, said, ‘You are not a boy, Machipisa.’

Machipisa stood up a little straighter. ‘Thank you, sir.’ He put his hand over his heart and then ran down the driveway, lugging his heavy suitcase.

It took Spokes three tries to find the right key to open the front door.