I would think of my mother sitting on her shaded porch, a patch held in her practiced way, her knitting needles, her bag with the tortoiseshell handle alongside her, on a still afternoon. Cicadas. Her miniature cacti on metal stands, many-shaped and many-spiked, small, so small, like creatures, behind her, against the windows of her house.

IN MY BEDROOM I had a rocking chair, its seat was covered in faded blue — so the room was not entirely white, I’m wrong! The chair was old, I had found it in an antique shop, a shop on Oxford Road I went into from time to time.

And then there was my dressing table. It was in the bay window, the window looking onto the garden. The table was large and a faded ivory, I can’t remember where I had found it, perhaps the same shop on Oxford Road. It had its three mirrors, the two on the sides could be moved to change the angle. I would see my profile if I moved the one side. Its surface had on it my hairbrush and comb, my comb was of tortoiseshell, perhaps it had been my mother’s. The table had a matching chair. Ivory, an old yellow tinge to it, and a worn, embroidered cushion.

There were also small drawers in the dressing table, where I kept things. Notes I’d written on scraps of paper, and small stones, some from our garden. I had a coloured stone, deep blue, from some other shop. I felt the stone carried within it the sea, or an idea of the sea. The sea was very far away from there, from Johannesburg.

I didn’t care for necklaces and bracelets. Howard knew soon after he met me I didn’t care for shiny things, for jewellery. Once, for a birthday, he bought me a gold bracelet, of course in South Africa gold was . . . everywhere, and the best gold. The best gold? I don’t know if there is such a thing. I still don’t know. In any case, I didn’t care for it.

I HAD PICTURED HOWARD going at lunchtime during his work day, a short walk down Rissik Street, I knew that jeweller. A busy street, shadowed by old buildings, gloomy in my mind, Black workers lounging around stone doorways on their breaks. The shop was on a corner, its windows were small, just gold lettering with the owner’s name, you had to press a buzzer to get in. An old man owned that shop, I heard he passed it down to his son when he died years after. The glass cases, framed with heavy wood, were filled with things of many shapes, larger, and smaller. They glinted, gold. So much gold. And there were diamonds. I cared even less for diamonds. To look into the face of a diamond made me afraid. I don’t know why this is, but it’s true. It’s even true now. I never had a diamond.

The bracelet Howard bought disturbed me right away. I asked — then I begged — Howard to take the bracelet back, to return it to the shop. I felt some distress, Howard could see it in my face. At first he was hurt. Then he was puzzled. Then, he understood. Or, he accepted, he accepted I just didn’t want it. Howard understood me.