And sometime after that Emily reported to me Joseph’s light bulb had gone out, he needed another. I had Josias fetch one from the garage and give it to Emily, to take down, next time. I worried about the light for his eyes, I knew it wasn’t really an adequate light, at all.

And another day I said to Emily, because it was bothering me: you know what work he’s doing there, don’t you, Emily? She looked at me, then looked away. Yes ma’am, I know, I know what it is. He’s a good man, ma’am. A good man. Yes, he is, I said. I felt close to tears.

I WENT TO VISIT ERIC at his store. He was happy to see me; I was happy to see him too. But then he said: you look very thin, have you been alright? Where’ve you been? Oh, Eric, I was a bit sick, yes. But I’m fine. Not painting though. Eric knew this was not a good thing, not good at all. He looked concerned. Look, will you have some tea, he said, I’m boiling water now. I had tea with Eric.

We sat up on high stools near his cash register at the front of the store. He brought me tea in a mug. Black please, I said. His was milky. We shared a plate of biscuits, perhaps I had one biscuit. Eric was still working on his own portfolio, he showed me some new things. Every week he’d bring out a work-in-progress, and prop it up against one of the easels, and we’d both stand back then, and study it, and I’d comment. His work was becoming more refined over time, I could see that. Just keep going, I’d say, this is the right direction you’re moving in. It’s good, it’s good.

AND SO tea with Eric, in 1972, became a highlight of my week. His store was dusty, and full of stacks and stacks of stretched canvases, against the walls. Then there were the stacks of wooden frames, and stretcher bars. There were his shelves of paints, tubes and tubes of them; then brushes; palette knives.

We talked and talked.

Eric had said he’d teach me to stretch my own canvases, then I could do it myself at home. I used to watch him doing it, a long procedure with many careful steps. Most artists do it themselves, he said. You have more flexibility that way, make different sizes whenever you want, that kind of thing. No, no, I said, I don’t want to, I’ll just buy them stretched here. I didn’t trust myself and perhaps I was even a bit lazy that way: a whole extra set of steps to follow, pieces of wood, the measuring. I wouldn’t do that. Eric primed my canvases for me too, although he’d suggested I could do that myself also. (In later years I always primed my own canvases, and stretched them too.)

We talked about artists we admired, South African artists. We spoke of David Goldblatt, the photographer just making a name for himself, then. If the subject of politics came up — and how could it not — Eric would swear, terrible expletives, he’d just swear. He was speechless with fury. As I was, but in a more measured and quiet way. So we steered away from that subject, and it never occurred to me, in a million years, to mention the man in our garden room.