Entertaining Angels

by Marita van der Vyver

  ‘Thanks,’ he said with a sigh of relief. ‘I’ll nip down and get my things from the car.’

  He was wearing a sarong, she saw as he walked away, and his mane of hair was fastened into a loose ponytail at the nape of his neck. Imagine what her father would say about a man who wore a dress! But she’d married a man any father would have trusted. She’d spent seven years with a man who was the epitome of respectability in his tweed jacket, grey wool socks and old-fashioned round-toed shoes. She’d been driven from her house by a careful man with a respectable job and enough life insurance to support five wives. And here she was hiding away from life in a dirty flat full of cockroaches. No, Griet decided, she wasn’t going to be as fearful as Grandma Lina.

  13

  Simple Gretchen Dreams She’s Clever

  ‘I don’t want to come every week any more,’ said Griet. Rhonda’s eyes widened a fraction. ‘I only want to come twice a month.’

  Griet felt she’d scored a victory. Could she at last have said something that surprised her shrink?

  ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ said Rhonda. She didn’t sound glad. ‘As long as you remember that I’m always here when you need me.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Though it wasn’t true. She couldn’t ring Rhonda when she really needed her. Between midnight and first light, when all Grandma Lina’s fears came back to haunt her granddaughter, when anxiety weighed on her chest like a ton of bricks – that was when she needed her shrink. Then, when Rhonda was sleeping peacefully beside her rich husband in her two-storey house, her children safe in their rooms full of toys, the whole nuclear family protected by an alarm system, two watch dogs and a high garden wall. Help me, Rhonda, help me, help me. ‘I’ll ring you if I can’t cope.’

  ‘How are you getting on with the divorce?’

  ‘We aren’t getting on, we’re going backwards.’ Griet was struggling against the suction power of the chair that she was rapidly sinking into. Today she wanted to be dignified, to show Rhonda that she could get by without her, even if only temporarily. ‘We’ve got to the stage where I’m being accused of theft and fraud. With general delinquency as an alternative.’

  ‘And it’ll get worse before it gets better. I know it isn’t much comfort, Griet, but it’s only what happens in the majority of divorces. The one who’s hurt worst is usually the one who slings the most mud.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me George is still capable of any feelings?’

  ‘It isn’t easy to acknowledge how badly someone else can hurt you,’ said Rhonda in her most sympathetic voice. ‘It’s much easier to stay angry the whole time.’

  ‘Not the whole time any more,’ she objected quickly. ‘I don’t think about him all day any more.’

  ‘But you dream about him at night?’

  Griet stared at Rhonda in amazement. So this is what had become of all the witches in the world – now that they flew in Boeings instead of on broomsticks. This was how they made a living these days. They hadn’t lost their mystic powers. They’d become psychotherapists.

  ‘It usually happens when you begin to control your thoughts consciously,’ explained Rhonda. ‘That’s when the unconscious takes over. You can’t control your dreams.’

  Three nights ago she’d dreamt that George was knocking at her door. He was naked except for a strategically placed fig leaf. Wings sprouted from his back. He was smiling as she’d last seen him smile before their wedding. He had the video camera she was accused of stealing and he raised it up to film her. She wanted to invite him in but her security gate had a series of locks and all she had to open it with was a huge icing-sugar key – the kind you get on a birthday cake when you turn twenty-one. The harder she tried to release the locks, the faster the key crumbled. By the time she got to the last lock, the key was reduced to a few crumbs of icing sugar. Her body was wet with perspiration when she woke up.

  ‘That’s a good sign,’ was Rhonda’s consolation when she saw Griet’s face. ‘You have to digest your emotions consciously and unconsciously. It takes time, but you’re on the right track.’

  ‘Divorced men spend more time in hospital than married men, they have a shorter life expectancy and are twice as likely to die of cirrhosis of the liver’, Griet had read in the paper that morning. She’d thought about the dirty glasses in her husband’s sink and underlined cirrhosis of the liver so determinedly that she tore the newspaper.

  After that she’d turned to the boring property pages and continued her half-hearted search for somewhere to live.

  ‘But what becomes of all the years you loved someone?’ Griet was wearing red today, the same colour as Rhonda’s sofa. She always reached for the red in her wardrobe when she was feeling greyer than usual. She’d never seen Rhonda in red. ‘Or do you simply have to accept that everything is going to be buried under the mud during your divorce?’

  ‘As long as you remember that in the long run mud bakes dry and flakes off. In a few years you might even be able to be friends.’

  ‘And sprout wings and gently soar up to heaven?’

  ‘Griet …’

  ‘Of course.’

  Rhonda wore creamy white and other peaceful shades – pale blue like her eyes, a peachy colour like her lips. Even witches were no longer what they used to be. Who sang that song about being so tired of living and so afraid of dying? Certainly not the Beach Boys.

  The night before last she’d dreamt that she had something very important to say to her husband, but she could only communicate with him through a children’s game. Everyone stood in a long line and the first one whispered a message to the second one, who whispered it to the third one, and so on, until the last one heard a hopelessly garbled version of the original message. There were any number of people in the line, from junior-school friends whom she’d last seen twenty years ago to the sunburnt surfer who’d ridden her virginity like a wave. ‘THIS IS YOUR LIFE!’ someone yelled excitedly. It took so long for the message to get to George that she almost woke up. A lifetime later he stood up, scarcely visible at the far end of the line, cupped his hands round his mouth and shouted: ‘BRZIFFGTPRKSS!’ She woke with wet cheeks. Did children still play Chinese whispers?

  ‘But in the meantime I have a more immediate problem,’ she admitted while she peered at Mickey Mouse on the wall. ‘There’s a man in my flat. Someone Louise got to know overseas …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’s terribly beautiful … and terribly young.’

  ‘And …’

  ‘Not very clever.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  It meant that she wanted to fuck the man all night long, Griet thought rebelliously. With clothes on, without clothes on, on the bed, on the balcony, on the stove, in the oven, on top of Table Mountain, Devil’s Peak and Lion’s Head, and in the cable car, swaying between heaven and earth. Why did you always have to spell everything out to your therapist?

  It was on days like this that she wished she was more like her rag trade sister. Nella didn’t agonise for weeks about whether she wanted to sleep with someone or not and whether it would be worth the trouble and how the hell she was going to feel about it for the rest of her life. She certainly didn’t discuss it with a therapist. She listened to her body.

  ‘Do you know a man called Adam?’ Griet had asked Louise in London the morning after the stranger had knocked at her door.

  ‘Shit,’ mumbled Louise, still half asleep. ‘I forgot to warn you.’

  ‘Against what?’ Griet’s voice sounded shrill in her own ears. ‘Warn me against what?’

  ‘That he’d probably pitch up there.’ Louise had dropped the receiver on to the floor with a clatter and picked it up again with some difficulty. ‘But I didn’t think he would.’

  ‘Well, it’s too late to warn me against anything, because right now he’s alone in your flat – stealing the taps and the doors for all I know – and I didn’t sleep a wink all night because I didn’t know whether he was going to rape me or murder me –’

&nb
sp; Louise roared with laughter and Griet broke off her sentence in confusion.

  ‘Relax, Griet, relax! I got to know the guy here in London and he wanted to go to Cape Town and I suggested he stay there with you. I think he’s just what the doctor ordered to help you shake off those divorce blues.’

  ‘Are you out of your bloody mind?’ Griet’s voice had risen with her unease again. ‘How well do you know him? Where the hell did he get a ridiculous name like Adam?’

  ‘Where the hell did you get a ridiculous name like Griet?’

  ‘Ask my mother!’ Griet shouted. ‘I always wished she’d called me Snow White.’

  ‘Well, there are people who have to struggle through life with a name like Adam.’ Louise giggled, and laughter started to tickle Griet’s throat too – a frog that would leap out if she opened her mouth. ‘I mean, there’s Adam Ant and Adam …’

  ‘… and Eve?’

  ‘I thought you’d be grateful if I sent you a nice man!’ laughed Louise. ‘You’re always complaining that they’ve become collectors’ items in Cape Town.’

  ‘How do you know he’s a nice man?’

  ‘How do you ever know?’

  Griet could literally hear Louise shrugging.

  ‘Where’s his family?’

  ‘Shit, you sound like an old woman. What does it matter?’

  ‘I feel like an old woman. He looks about twenty. And he wears a dress.’

  ‘His family is somewhere in the Eastern Cape, Griet,’ Louise said in the patient tone people use when they’re speaking to toddlers and the mentally disabled. ‘He came here five years ago because he didn’t want to fight for the South African army. He got a British passport because his grandfather was born here. He wanted to be with his family for Christmas. And I don’t know how old he is but he’s older than twenty.’

  ‘What about his underpants?’ Griet giggled.

  ‘Let me know as soon as you find out.’

  ‘I read in the paper that General Noriega of Panama has a passion for red underpants. Did you know that? And I always laughed at my sister when she said it was a dictator’s colour.’

  ‘Well, let that be a lesson to you.’

  Griet sighed.

  ‘Listen, Miss Prissy,’ said her friend, ‘if you didn’t think he was nice, you’d never have let him into the flat.’

  ‘How’s it going with the marriage therapy?’ asked Griet.

  ‘Shit. The arsehole is misusing it to try and floor me with his accusations. It’s incredible: he keeps bringing up things I’m supposed to have done wrong two years ago. Things he’s never said anything about before. Can you believe that men can nurse grievances like this?’

  ‘Well, he probably feels safer with the therapist than he does when he’s alone at home with you. Shame, he’s been soused in orange juice so often …’ Griet was giggling – again. ‘He probably smells of citrus fruit by now. There’s a man in every flavour?’

  ‘My best friend,’ Louise sighed.

  ‘OK, I know what you’re talking about,’ Griet consoled her. ‘My own experience of marriage therapy was traumatic. In the end we had worse fights in front of the therapist than we had at home. The only difference was the presence of a referee.’

  ‘How long did you stick it out?’

  ‘Only a couple of sessions. Then the ref chose my side. That’s how George saw it, anyway. He refused to go back.’

  And she was still stuck with Rhonda, who couldn’t do anything to save her marriage, and apparently could do just as little to help her through her divorce. Witches could cast spells, she thought. Witches in their offices. Here she was, sitting in a witch’s office with a witch who could cast spells. But one couldn’t expect miracles.

  The fact that she couldn’t even choose her own therapist surely summed up her life with George. When her husband finally agreed to marriage therapy, at the insistence of their GP rather than the insistence of his wife, he chose the therapist himself. It didn’t matter to Griet, she was only too thankful that they were going to be able to discuss their problems with someone. But when Rhonda told George one day that he was wasting his money, he looked at her like Jesus must have looked at Judas after that kiss.

  ‘I can’t help you if you refuse to be helped,’ Rhonda said with the closest approximation of emotion that Griet had ever seen her display. George could even make his therapist sound old and tired. ‘You can’t help an alcoholic who refuses to admit that he is an alcoholic.’

  George shook his head. He’d thought his therapist would be an exception. But in the end, like all women, she wasn’t clever enough to understand him.

  ‘So what!’ Griet let off steam to her sister Tienie. ‘So what if he is cleverer than his shrink! Sometimes I think even I’m cleverer than my shrink.’

  After that afternoon she knew that it was no longer worth the trouble of fighting with her husband. Their therapist had condemned their marriage to death. All that remained was a few weeks of waiting in a house that had become a death cell. Waiting for the end and hoping for a miracle, deus ex machina, fairy godmother, angel from heaven, reprieve from the state president. And in the end there wasn’t even a Last Supper. The executioner had come to fetch her unexpectedly in the middle of the night, not shortly before sunrise as happens in books and movies.

  ‘Do you remember Robertson Davies’s The Rebel Angels?’ her clever sister asked. ‘Do you remember the advice the decadent priest gave the young girl? Stay out of the hands of a shrink who is less intelligent than you are, even if it means you have to bear your misery alone.’

  ‘But I am also more intelligent than my mechanic and my plumber, Tienie, and it doesn’t mean that I can fix my broken car or my dripping tap myself. It’s possible that you can be cleverer than most therapists, but that they can help you nevertheless. They’re trained, just as a mechanic is trained to open the bonnet of a car and fix the engine. They’re trained to open you up and dig about in your emotions. Anyway, that decadent priest committed suicide in the end. Or am I thinking of another chap who wanted to bear his misery alone?’

  ‘Isn’t that perhaps what the writer was trying to say?’ asked her clever sister.

  Last night she’d dreamt she stood before a stove wearing red high-heeled shoes and yellow oven gloves, cooking for her husband and an unknown guest. But an insatiable hunger gnawed at her stomach and she ate everything as fast as she took it out of the oven: crisp roasted chicken and golden potatoes, crunchy on the outside, and sweet potatoes and honeyed carrots gleaming like dark orange flames on the tongue, and cauliflower under an eiderdown of cheese sauce, asparagus that melted in the mouth, broccoli al dente, beetroot staining the rest of the food red … And still she was hungry, hungry, hungry. When her husband got home, she was too frightened to tell him not a morsel of food remained.

  She asked him to sharpen the carving knife and she opened the door to the unknown guest – Anton in one of his wife’s dresses – and yelled: ‘Listen, he’s sharpening his knife, he thinks we’re having an affair, run for your life!’ And when Anton ran away, she yelled at George: ‘Run, he’s eaten all your food and stolen your video camera! Catch him!’ And when George took up the carving knife and charged after Anton in his wife’s dress, she took off everything except the yellow oven gloves and caressed her body … and woke up with wet loins.

  ‘That means,’ she told her therapist, ‘that I can’t look a winged horse in the mouth.’

  That meant that she wanted to tell her therapist to go to hell.

  Sometimes one needs swear words. Strong words, magic words, spells. Brziffgtprkss!

  14

  The Black Sisters

  Griet’s sister Tienie had inherited her mother’s hair and her father’s temper. Everyone in the family said so. Short Shirley Temple curls and a shorter than short temper. But right now she was sitting at a restaurant table, radiantly happy, with no trace of the seven devils she sometimes carried around with her.

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Griet op
posite her. ‘You’re in love.’

  ‘A holiday romance.’ Tienie nodded. ‘It probably won’t last. But it doesn’t matter. I’m old enough not to think this is for keeps every time I meet someone. Not any more.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Griet as it behoves an older sister to do. ‘Who’s the lucky lover?’

  ‘Someone local.’ Tienie smiled mysteriously. ‘With a gorgeous beach house up the West Coast.’

  ‘So that’s where you’re going to hide these holidays.’

  Griet took in her sister’s curly hair and unmade-up face: she still looked like the teenager that she’d been years ago. ‘I suffer from a small man complex,’ Tienie had said herself. ‘I can’t impress my students with my stature. I have to vanquish them with my brilliant brain and fearless tongue.’ And when she frowned, her abundant eyebrows met over her nose, making her look fear-somely bedevilled.

  She’d always been more independent than her sisters. She was the only one who’d ventured out to an English-medium university. Now she worked as a sociology lecturer – at an English university in Johannesburg.

  ‘Have you seen Ma and Pa?’

  ‘I’m having supper with them tonight.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Me, myself, I,’ she hummed over the rim of her tea cup. ‘Without the lover?’

  ‘Anything to keep the peace.’ Tienie shrugged, pushing the sugar bowl around on the table. ‘I’ve already given them enough shocks.’

  ‘I don’t think anything that you or Nella pitch up with at home could still shock them. Do you remember the time Nella invited a boyfriend with a wooden leg and an eye-patch over for supper?’

  ‘The one Pa called “Shiver Me Timbers”?’

  ‘Ma thought the eye-patch was a new fashion and asked him if he wouldn’t be more comfortable if he pushed it up while he ate. So he obliged and it turned out he didn’t have an eye under it. Ma tried so hard not to look shocked!’