‘Yes, I’m deaf in my left ear actually. Sorry, I often forget to mention it. I lip-read. Let me put this down and give you my full attention.’ Trudy placed Hortensia’s exercise file on the desk and turned to face her charge. ‘You were saying?’
Hortensia, her lips pushed forward in displeasure, shook her head.
‘What I meant was sleep is good at this stage. Doctor would be happy to hear the small change in medicines is working. You ready for your ablutions? And then today we’ll walk the hallway. I’ve set up a little obstacle course for you to make it fun.’ At this Trudy giggled.
Hortensia cursed God.
Lawyer Marx called. He asked if she’d contacted Esme. And she said no, she hadn’t contacted Esme. To hell with Esme. What, was it a crime to take her time? An old woman like her.
The medication took turns making Hortensia feel like a superhero and making her want to punch everyone. In other words, it had little effect on her. She felt she owed Trudy a daily battle when it came to the time to swallow the pills.
‘What’s this now?’ Hortensia asked, although it was the same dosage of medicine she’d been taking for the past couple of weeks. ‘They giving me morphine again?’
‘Nothing’s changed, Mrs James. We stopped the morphine – Carole stopped that, as far as I can tell from your chart. This is jus—’
‘And no sleeping pills. I expressly asked for no sleeping pills.’
‘Absolutely, Dr Mama made that clear to me. He’ll make a call tomorrow by the way. Check in on you.’
Trudy handed Hortensia the cup of water and then passed her the pills one by one.
‘What’s that noise?’ Hortensia asked, alarmed.
Trudy swung her head.
‘Bassey!’ Hortensia called out.
‘I’ll get him.’
‘Bassey!’ she called again, pressing the button at the same time.
When he appeared, Hortensia questioned him.
‘It’s next door,’ he explained.
The mess of insurances had been sorted out, Marion the Vulture was repairing her nest. Hortensia felt a pang of jealousy. Her builder had wanted to know if she’d be continuing with the works to No. 10 and she’d had to decline, had to accept that in her state she didn’t have the energy for managing the project just then.
Hortensia spent the day tuned to the sound of what she guessed was rubble being cleared, the occasional call of one worker to another, bits of broken house scraping about. Then, with late afternoon approaching, came the doorbell and the sound of Marion herself. Hortensia tried to make out what was going on in the front room. After she heard the front door shut, she prised an explanation from Bassey. Marion had simply needed a drink of water. Next door, her water had been switched off and while the workers were drinking from an outside tap – linked to a borehole – Marion, who’d come to visit the site, didn’t think that suitable drinking water. The hag, Hortensia said. Bassey frowned and excused himself to make dinner.
TEN
MARION HADN’T BEEN on a building site in longer than she cared to remember. It felt good. The builder had not been on-site when she dropped by, but she’d phoned and made an appointment with him for the following day.
She awoke uncertain what to wear, even from her limited supply. The phone went, reception said Agnes was downstairs to see her. Marion rehearsed in her head. Only when walking down the dank stairway did she realise her buttons were misaligned.
‘Agnes.’ Marion walked up to where her maid stood at the reception counter.
‘Good morning,’ Agnes said.
‘Your key, please, Ma’am,’ the receptionist said.
Marion placed the key attached to an oblong piece of wood on the counter. She walked towards a grouping of chairs. Agnes followed. The woman was still shapely at her age, in a way Marion had always envied but never had the strength to admit to herself.
‘Sit down, Agnes.’ Marion liked the sound of her own voice. She was relieved it sounded stronger than she felt. She was relieved at being able to give orders. Bring command to chaos.
Agnes settled herself on a weary couch and Marion sat beside her. She looked around; she’d keep her voice down, say as little as possible. Agnes wouldn’t make a scene.
‘As you know … things at home have changed slightly.’ Marion coughed into her hand for no reason.
Agnes’s face had always surprised Marion. Two eyes, a nose and mouth, yes, but the composure. Where does someone, especially without much money, buy that kind of peace? And even, as here and now, about to hear bad news. She must know surely.
‘Agnes, I—’
‘I found this, Ma’am.’ Agnes pulled a long chain from the pocket of her skirt.
‘Oh, gosh.’
Marion had thought it lost for ever in the rubble. She’d searched for it, racking her brain to remember what the last valuer had offered. It was a thick spiral of gold links. A gift from her father before her parents divorced, before life got more tangled. The rope of gold had always seemed inelegant, but Marion was grateful for it now. That and the large sapphire.
‘Where did you find it, Agnes?’
Agnes shrugged. ‘I went back. After the accident, Niknaks came with a bakkie to pick up my things. I wasn’t with her and when I looked I saw I’d left something, so I went back. A picture of her when she was still a baby, with her father. And then, I don’t know, one of those things, while looking at the damage I saw something shiny. There’s a small break.’ She stretched across to show Marion where she meant. ‘But otherwise good.’
‘You went back. Oh, did you … perhaps see …?’ She wanted to ask without letting on how important it was, although this impulse embarrassed Marion – after all these years, to think Agnes would steal from her. ‘I had wrapped a painting. Just before the accident. But Marelena can’t find it. Did you see anything like that when you went back?’
Agnes frowned, thinking.
‘I mean, thanks for this. Thanks for the chain, but did you see a painting?’
‘No, Ma’am.’
Marion felt like crying; in a few seconds she’d convinced herself that Agnes had the Pierneef in her back pocket. ‘Well, okay. Let’s get on with it. I actually don’t know what to say. You’ve been with us so long.’
‘It’s fine, Ma’am. Ag, Niknaks has been saying I must retire anyway. For some years now.’
‘Oh.’ Why did Marion always feel like she had to fight so much in Agnes’s presence. Fight for her own dignity.
‘She sends her greetings. And says she’s sorry about all the … for the accident.’
‘Yes. Thank her.’
They sat. Marion had no money to give Agnes but felt thankful, for the first time in her life, for the government and that Unemployment Insurance Fund business. She’d been sluggish in registering when they first employed Agnes, but the woman had pestered her and, now, Marion was glad she had.
Both women sat with their hands in their laps. Marion looked at her loafers – good enough for site?
‘Well …’ Agnes made to stand.
‘What will you do, Agnes?’
‘Niknaks is about to have another little one. Her business is doing well, which is why, I suppose … why she kept asking. She wants me to be a grandmother.’ Agnes sighed in a way Marion hadn’t heard before. ‘But … my boyfriend asked me to go with him on holiday … to Mozambique. He was in exile there back when … Anyway, I think I’ll do that first.’
A boyfriend. A holiday. Marion nodded to convey an understanding she didn’t feel. Her tongue wouldn’t move.
‘Will you be alright?’ Agnes asked and Marion nodded more vigorously.
Shaken, inexplicably angry, Marion took the short walk from the guest house to her own home, still worried about her choice of shoes, unable to erase the image of Agnes’s face from her mind. She fingered the jewel in her pocket, wondered why she wasn’t happier to have had it returned to her.
A man in a once-white shirt greeted Marion at her gate and said his
name was Frikkie. She blinked – someone that black called Frikkie, come on! When they’d spoken on the phone, his English had been so good. She’d been impressed that an Afrikaans person could sound so Brit, she’d never have thought she was speaking to a black man.
‘Well,’ Marion said, stopping and standing, arms akimbo, at the bottom of what used to be the porch steps.
Someone had set up a ramp. There were two workers on-site. One man with his shirt tied around his waist was separating a pile of rubble. Useless and useful, Marion supposed were the two categories. She took a breath: that site-smell, dust and metal and sweat. She’d missed it.
‘We’ll spend today and maybe part of tomorrow preparing the site. And I ordered a portable. Should be here any moment.’
Marion nodded. She’d asked that her toilets remain off-limits, which seemed a reasonable request.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here yesterday. I thought we could discuss the works now, if you have a moment.’ He indicated a bench and two chairs, some papers held down with stones.
‘Yes.’ Marion joined him at the makeshift office. ‘So this is your business?’ She’d owned a business once.
Frikkie nodded. Marion attempted to sit down on the low chair. She managed it, but not without some strain. Frikkie touched her elbow by way of support; she snatched her arm back and lowered herself.
Whose idea had it been to leave the practice? Marion wanted to heap the blame onto Max, but she couldn’t forget her own pressing need to prove herself as a mother. She was already two kids in and still working, when Selena’s difficult birth had put her in hospital, drugged and horizontal. The doctor’s ‘slow down’ coupled with the increase, over the years, of Max’s insinuations about her mothering quickly translated into two-day working weeks and ever shorter conversations with her partner, Harry Cumfred. Damned fool! Long before he bought her out, he’d already started referring to the company as Cumfred Architects. Baumann and Cumfred was no more. There was a time after giving up the practice when Marion thought she could still bully Harry into allowing her back in, then another bump appeared – Gaia. The result of careless sex, Max returning home after an extended conference, feeling guilty and eager to please. After the birth of her fourth child Marion’s head got fuzzy – four children shouting different things at you, the world creeping in, getting in through the holes. It became too much. By 1972, almost twelve years after launching her practice, Marion stayed home.
‘Hold on a minute.’ Marion rose to answer her cellphone, walked some distance away from Frikkie and dropped her voice. ‘Darling? I’m in a meeting … Yes at the house … We haven’t spoken about how long yet, we were just getting to his schedule. Honestly, though, I think it’ll take several weeks, plus the rain-days – just under two months, my guess … I understand you’re using your own money for the guest house … Yes, I realise you’re a stay-at-home mom … Marelena … Marelena, can I get a word in? No, I’m not suggesting your husband bankroll me … Two months is long, I realise. I wasn’t planning on being at the guest house all that time, by the way … Well, I could stay here the minute the roof is fixed, for instance … Yes, of course I see that … Yes … Well, goodbye then.’
What had set her off? Was it the over-assured Frikkie – why did she hate him so much? – or the spite of her daughter, once the size of a worm in her belly, completely helpless and dependent on her. Marion couldn’t decipher, but she dropped her phone into her handbag and placed her fingers over her face. Thank goodness she knew how to cry quietly.
The woman was crying. Marion the Vulture was crying. Hortensia strained her neck to see; she pushed her weight, through her arms, into the walker and stretched until the gentle cold knock of her head pressing against the window stopped her. Couldn’t have been an ordinary phone call to reduce Marion to such a puddle. Unless Hortensia had overestimated her adversary. She stayed watching. Such a long crier too – wouldn’t have guessed it. She was watching so intently that Hortensia didn’t hear Bassey behind her. He cleared his throat and she jumped.
‘You scared me.’
He walked to where she stood by the window. Took in the view. Marion had stopped heaving. She’d taken a mirror from her purse and was arranging her face. Hortensia swivelled her gaze between Marion and Bassey.
‘Heard anything?’ Hortensia finally asked, feeling dirty for prying.
‘What do you mean?’
This man, always the epitome of decency.
‘You know.’
‘I think there have been some … difficulties.’ He coughed. ‘Financial and what-have-you.’
The following day Hortensia heard the bell go.
‘Bassey,’ she shouted from her bed, simultaneously pushing the buzzer. ‘Bassey!’
His head appeared.
‘Call her in. Don’t look at me like that – call her in.’
Marion came in, talking, ‘Hortensia, I am not someone you can summon at will. I’m actually quite busy and cannot visit. I merely wanted a drink of water, which this kind man obliged me with.’
Bassey left them alone.
‘So?’ Marion folded her arms, jutted her chin at Hortensia.
Hortensia wished she was standing, felt too easy a target flat. Oh well.
‘I wanted to ask you something.’ Hortensia hated having to be careful with words. She was so bad at it.
‘What?’
‘Marion, I … saw you yesterday.’
Marion looked puzzled, so Hortensia gestured with her hand towards the window. Marion moved to the window and looked out into her garden. Probably regretting the low country-style walls. When Marion turned back to Hortensia her face was pasty. Hortensia longed for a bigger sense of victory. It wasn’t there.
‘So?’ Marion said, but her voice was quiet.
‘I hate gossip.’
‘Yes, well, if there’s no real reason for me being here, I’d better go.’ She moved to the door.
‘Marion. You should come here.’
‘What? What do you mean? I am here.’
‘No, I mean … to this house. You should come here.’
Marion stayed rooted.
‘I’m responsible for all the damage, the turmoil. You come here, you stay in your own quarters – the house is big enough. You don’t have to shuttle back and forth between the site and that dreadful, sorry excuse of a guest house—’
Marion snorted; at least they agreed on one thing. She opened her mouth to say something, but Hortensia raised a finger.
‘Think about it. Don’t answer now. We aren’t friends, Marion. I’m just—’
‘I’ll think about it.’
She left the room. Hortensia didn’t hear the front door bang.
To ensure her plan would work Hortensia called Dr Mama, asked if he would stop by. She felt she was bothering him but didn’t care.
‘Any complaints?’ Dr Mama asked after the initial physical examination was complete. It wasn’t why she’d called him, but Hortensia had played along.
She lowered her voice, ‘I don’t like Trudy.’
Mama smiled.
‘She’s a good nurse.’
Hortensia nodded slowly. Marion hadn’t called yet.
‘I mean, what does she really do?’ she continued.
Mama stood up and walked towards his bag. ‘No complaints then,’ he said and they both laughed.
‘Seriously, though. You said even just another body.’
Mama looked perplexed.
‘In case of emergencies.’
‘Hortensia, I hate to put it to you, but there is no one else. Trudy is actually one of the nurses from my own practice. I spoke with the folks at Constantinople – none of their people will come here.’
He looked the most serious she’d ever seen him and she was sorry to be the cause of it.
‘Gordon, what I’m trying to say is … what if someone else was available?’
He looked relieved at the thought. ‘A friend?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t quite
call it that.’
‘You have someone that you’d like to come and stay?’
‘What if I did? Would that be … acceptable?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘As in no Trudy?’
Mama’s face relaxed and he shook his head. ‘You really don’t like her?’
‘It’s not personal, you understand. I mean, it’s more out of compassion. Such a nice child, Trudy. No one like that should have to look after me.’
‘But there’s another person.’
‘Oh, this woman is truly awful. Perfectly suited for someone like myself.’
Mama laughed.
‘Well, I’d need to meet her, this woman. I mean, I know I said “another body”. I was trying to be agreeable at the time. I’d run her through a few things. It isn’t a joke, you know, Hortensia. It’s your health. Your well-being.’
He was so earnest that for a moment he seemed younger than he looked. A little Boy Scout. A delicious one.
‘Grandma?’
It was the little one knocking. She’d phoned from reception. Caught off-guard, Marion had barely had time to straighten her blouse and refresh her lipstick.
‘Come in, Innes.’
Neither of Marelena’s girls had Baumann in them, not the way their mother did. They looked – one simply an almost exact but miniature copy of the other – like their father: dark hair, fine eyebrows. Lara was prettier in that beauty-magazine kind of way. And Marion noticed how Lara was the one who wanted Barbie dolls, make-up kits, and Innes, with thick glasses, her hair cut short, her nails clean but unpolished, asked for books. As if life itself was a cliché.
‘Where’s Lara?’ Marion guessed the older girl was exercising her disgust by staying away.
‘She dropped me. She’ll phone on her way back from Grandpa.’
Marion frowned for a second, then relaxed. She kept forgetting that the kids still had a rather dull-looking paternal grandfather. He lived in a neighbouring suburb – she forgot which.
‘Ah, I see.’
Marion indicated for Innes to sit on the hastily made-up bed while she took the chair. One leg was wonky. Guest house indeed. As she balanced her weight, Marion watched Innes take in the room. Their eyes met and Marion smiled. She could only imagine the chutzpah Innes would have needed in order to be allowed to visit. The stories she’d have had to endure from her mother, specific recollections well suited to showcase Marion’s ineptitude as a parent and possibly as a human being.
The Woman Next Door Page 11
