Up Against the Night

by Justin Cartwright

  Nellie is on Bertil’s arm; she wears a cream dress, and carries a posy of little bell-shaped lily of the valley, peonies, white and pink roses, lavender and cornflowers. I am wearing an ivory suit, with a yellow rose in the buttonhole. I am escorted by Alec. Lucinda has a shorter version of Nellie’s dress, and carries a smaller posy. She and Isaac walk together, each with a yellow rose as a buttonhole. Isaac is dressed in long velvet shorts in a kind of burgundy colour and a floppy antique white shirt, which Lucinda found in a market in Cape Town. In his long shorts, Isaac is dignified, regal, a young Haile Selassie. He appears to know that this is an important occasion and he also appears to understand what is required of him. He carries a present for Nellie, which he can’t wait to open. This present has acquired a sort of symbolic importance, although no one has said what it is. Lindiwe carries a posy too; she wears a dress that she and Nellie chose. Alec is my best man; I have some worries about his medical condition. He is wearing his panama with the band of colours of the Garrick Club around the crown. He says he is fine but I think that another stroke is possible. He has the ring firmly under his control, although he is a little unsteady on his pins, as he puts it. The bridesmaids, including Lindiwe, follow behind us.

  For the service, Nellie has chosen a sort of bower under a huge indigenous tree. We have opted for the 1662 version of the Book of Common Prayer:

  Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this Congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church; which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence …

  The words are enduring and powerful. They are too grand for the marriage we have in mind. I wonder just what ‘man’s innocency’ might have been. And I also think of Emma Woodhouse writing of the selfsame wedding service ‘the part in which N takes M for her wedded husband, for better for worse’. Nobody now takes the ‘for worse’ option too seriously.

  When we are safely married – rings exchanged, vows made, red roses handed over, kisses and hugs, prompted by Tim the vicar, complete – Lucinda reads her sonnet. She is standing under the dense tree, which is inhabited by small, busy green birds. I think they may be white-eyes. These birds provide a light and cheerful accompaniment, a squeaking encouragement to Lucinda’s reading:

  ‘… love is not love

  Which alters when it alteration finds,

  Or bends with the remover to remove:

  O no! It is an ever-fixed mark,

  That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

  It is the star to every wandering bark,

  Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken …’

  Lucinda’s assured recitation and the words she is speaking are profoundly moving for all of us and for many different reasons. Nellie looks at me from beneath her little jaunty hat of blue silk. I kiss her.

  ‘I proclaim you husband and wife.’

  Our friends clap and whistle.

  We move to a courtyard where the lunch is spread out on long tables under a vine. Geese fly, screaming their anxiety above the round hill, which stands inexplicably all on its own – as if in a previous age it was a tumulus.

  My best man stands up to speak; he says that not just the women of the New Forest but women all across England are going to be upset when they hear I have married. Then he asks the guests to explain, if they can, how I managed to bewitch such a beautiful and serene woman. There are cries of ‘Hear, hear!’ and more whistling, led by Lucinda; her two-fingers-in-the-mouth whistle is piercing; she mastered it at a very young age.

  Both Nellie and I speak. She says that I am a wonderful man, kind, generous and surprisingly knowledgeable. She says that she is astonishingly happy to be married to me. ‘Frank has changed my life for ever,’ she says finally. She kisses me and presses herself to me for a few long moments. Her body is conveying its own complicit message to me.

  ‘Let her go, you beast,’ Alec shouts.

  He may even mean it. There’s a kind of desperation about him, so different from how he was in his pomp when he had the arrogance and the almost visible self-esteem of an emperor of finance.

  It’s my turn:

  ‘To our friends and family gathered, I want just to say how wonderful it is to see you here, in this beautiful place. My life, too, has changed out of all recognition since I first met Nellie. She has brought joy into our lives, and I have been incredibly happy and lucky. To marry her is to have squared the circle. Please drink to Nellie and the life to come.’

  We toast Nellie and the life to come.

  ‘But I also want to say a word or two about Bertil, this upstanding young surfer and apprentice heart-breaker, who has been astonishingly tolerant and charming. Bertil, I want to thank you; I know that I am not your father and that I am not going to replace him in any way, but I just want to tell you, so that there is no misunderstanding, that the closer I come to you, the happier I will be. To Bertil.’

  Now Bertil stands up.

  ‘I want to say that I am like totally happy that my mom and Frank have gotten married. My mom is so happy and that has made me happy. She deserves happiness, believe me. And Frank, I want to thank you for everything. Frank, this place is like totally awesome, bru.’

  I give him a knuckle bump to cement our burgeoning relationship.

  ‘A moment, please,’ I say. ‘I have one more thank-you. Lucinda, I want to tell you that having you here with us has been an utter blessing. I have always loved you, as you know, and these few weeks together have reminded me, if I needed reminding, just how much I love you. Immoderately is the answer. We also adore little Isaac, but that is a story for another time. To my beloved daughter, Lucinda, thank you for reciting so beautifully, and being so innately beautiful yourself. And thank you to Nellie, my wife.’

  Nellie hugs me, and Lucinda joins in, sobbing, and Isaac comes to lend succour, his hair more like a nimbus than ever.

  The afternoon slows. There is a heavy calm all around. The calls of the turtle doves in the oaks have become subdued. Some of the party take to their cottages to swim or to sleep. The swimming pool is deliberately styled on the traditional round cement farm dams that I remember so clearly: here a deck is raised up all around the dam, with loungers and piles of pristine white towels and tables of wine and juice. A woman, with a little kappie on her head and swathed in a deep green apron, comes around carrying a tray of brightly coloured fruit lollies, home-made. Guinea fowl are taking a dust bath. A tortoise staggers along a path, driven by some prehistoric and half-understood urge.

  Nellie, Bertil, Isaac and I walk the length of the astonishing parterre, through walls of espaliered pears and across lawns of thyme and camomile and under trellises of many fruits and vines heavy with red and white grapes. Water is being directed through channels towards the various parts of the garden, each one a small fiefdom. I see, as if it was yesterday, the tongues of water setting off to feed the dry soil of Welgelegen. I can’t fully understand why it affects me so deeply; without warning, the water in the channels has produced a Proustian moment: I see my childhood and my patchy history and my Tannie Marie and my beautiful mother.

  We walk on towards the small hill, the ziggurat that gave the place its name – Tower of Babylon.

  ‘Frank, are you all right?’ Nellie says.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘You are looking a bit, I don’t know, worried for a moment. Preoccupied.’

  ‘I was thinking of my childhood when I was left with my aunt, Tannie Marie, on the farm miles from home. We have come a long way. My aunt used to read to me from Pinocchio by candlelight; I am sure I told you all this. It’s never left me. It all came back to me, how baffled I was, and how I didn’t understand the reasons why I was dumped there and I remembered my father telling me my mother had died. You probably think I am crazy, but these ch
annels of water running into the garden remind me as if I were there. Nellie, darling, I love you. Never leave me.’

  ‘I love you, Frank. Med hela mitt hjärta. With all my heart. I will never leave you, darling. Thank you for what you said about Bertil. It was so powerful.’

  ‘In a nice way?’

  ‘Yes, it was perfect and so generous. And what you said about Lucinda was wonderful too. You made her cry.’

  ‘We Boers have a tender side. We cry easily.’

  ‘Yes, I have noticed.’

  Little Isaac and Bertil are crossing a stream and heading towards the hill. Neither of us broaches the question of Isaac’s future. Anyway it will depend on Lucinda.

  We set off up the Tower of Babylon from the relative cool of the garden to the baking sun of the climb. The way up is strewn with smooth brown rocks, which contain iron. Two stones knocked together give off a metallic sound. From the top of the hill we see endless vineyards, the old Cape Dutch house and outbuildings and in the distance rows of mountains, baking in the sun, gently out of focus behind a blue haze.

  Before dinner we have music to dance to. It is langarm, which means long arm. Under lanterns in the trees, five local musicians play the accordion, a banjo, a trumpet, a saxophone and drums. We all dance; we have been seized by madness under the rising moon. I have the first dance with Nellie, each of us at arm’s length, the traditional langarm. Then I dance with Lucinda. Vanessa and Bertil dance. Vanessa’s parents dance. It’s strangely liberating and carefree and reminds me of my roots. My school friend, Neil, and his Eleanor know all the moves. Neil manoeuvres Eleanor vigorously, as though he is drawing water from a rural hand pump. Nellie says it’s like country dancing in Sweden.

  Finally, exhausted, we swim and get ready for dinner. Lamps have been lit to mark the way to the cottages and to the main house. We are in a febrile state. There is too much emotion in the air, too much expectation, too much energy, too many hopes. The moon has now risen directly above the strange, symmetrical, lonely hill. This southern moon is the colour of aged Cheddar and so close that I can see its valleys and mountains.

  I feel that we have been born again, that we have shed our too-tight old skins, like puff adders.

  24

  The name Menemsha is cut into some wood and painted gold. I am waiting. There is nobody at home. I am most of the day staying in the bush by the end of the beach and sometimes I walk a long way to the harbour by a beach where moffies stands naked, kaalgat, not any clothes on except a hat. Their cocks hangs out. They don’t care. They fuck in the bushes white and black it’s all the same. When I am walking yesterday they was whistling me. If one of them comes near me true’s God I will kill him. I have some money still and I buy two pies at Pick ’n Pay and a jack of brandy. I eat one pie now and keep the other for the night. I like the chicken pie and the steak the best. There is boats unloading by the harbour. Maybe I can get a job on a boat and go to some place like Namibia so nobody will find me. Now I walk back along the beach. It’s still hot. The mofgats seems to be gone. When I get to the house I see the gate is unlocked. I walk in. Down below I can see the swimming bath and the outjie who is cleaning it. He’s a coloured guy holding a long pole. There’s lots of them around here. The first coloureds was born nine months after the Hollanders landed. This outjie tells me I cannot come in.

  Listen, I am the cousin of Mr Frank McAllister. Hy is my oom.

  They are not here.

  Where are they?

  Mnr Frank and his lady, they got married somewhere.

  Married? When they coming back?

  It can be tomorrow.

  Just give me the code for the garden gate.

  I am not allowed to do that, sorry. I am not allowed.

  I take out the gun:

  Now you are allowed. Give me the code. I am here to check the security for my uncle but if you wants to make trouble I can shoot you. You unnerstan?

  Ja, sorry, meneer, I unnerstan.

  When are you coming back here?

  I work here once a week, Thursday, sir.

  Okay, just stay away while I check out the security. Security is my business and my uncle have asked me to do it. He have sayed he will be home this week. So you give me the code and then you fuck off for a week. You unnerstan?

  Yes, meneer, I unnerstan.

  I tell him: you must test the lock for me to see.

  Okay, meneer.

  You sure you unnerstan?

  Yes, sir.

  He test the lock for me and he give me the code.

  Goodbye. If you know what’s good for you, you won’t come back until next week.

  I walk around the garden past the swimming bath and the braai area. The doors of the house is locked. The swimming bath has a little wooden house by there. It has cups and glasses and water inside there. This shall be much better than sleeping in the bushes or with all those bergie coloureds. They are high on tik. They don’t even know what they are saying. They all talk kak. Their teeth has fallen out. The cupboard in the store-room is full of mattresses and cushions and so on. All sorts. Even Nescafé and powder milk. Bum in the butter like my uncle. He will help me for sure. He knows the big shots, they can make a plan. I’m sitting in a lounger, that’s what they call it. They have a lot of loungers in Sun City where I met that girl with the big tits, Casey. I wish my girls was here with me they would love it here. Maybe Oom Frank will lend the place to us for a holiday. I am eating the steak pie. And drinking some brandy. I feel great. ‘Ring Of Fire’. June and Johnny. What a song. I am falling asleep happy now, chilled.

  25

  We are driving home after three days. Alec had to go early for a check-up in Cape Town. The wedding has had an adverse effect on him. He says he feels even more isolated and lonely as though it has become difficult for others to see him. As though he is a fading fresco, he says. He tells me he has given us a painting as a wedding gift; it can be collected from Sotheby’s whenever we are home. He won’t tell us whose work it is. It’s a surprise, he says.

  We see a sign to a crocodile farm and turn off. The reality is not so much a farm as a series of pens with cement pools, a gulag, containing hundreds of crocodiles, many of them destined to be shoes. You are not supposed to loathe whole species, but it is difficult to like crocodiles. They are designed entirely to kill. Every so often something alarms the crocodiles and there is an awful chaotic scramble for the water. I remember my school friend who was taken by a crocodile; I can’t imagine a worse way of dying.

  Also, Nellie says that we should go: ‘This is really horrible, Frank.’

  ‘We’re out of here. I am so sorry.’

  Isaac says, ‘Goodbye, crocs.’

  As we drive down the corrugated dirt road, I ask Nellie if she thinks I have been insensitive.

  ‘How could you know what it would be like, Frank?’

  I had assumed there would be a few crocodiles taking their ease in bluish, natural and clean ponds – very different from the frightful, nightmarish, mêlée which took place below us in the filthy water. I am glad that Lucinda went ahead with Vanessa and Bertil and Vanessa’s parents.

  As we come down the pass we see Table Mountain in the distance.

  As always, I feel myself subject to the attraction of mountains: We read landscapes, we interpret their forms, in the light of our own experience and memory, and that of our shared cultural memory.

  We are all pleased to be going home. Our mountain, our sea, our house, all are waiting. We have another two weeks before we go back to England. Bertil can’t wait to surf with Vanessa, and Lucinda has an appointment to go to see the Hand Spring Puppet Company in Cape Town. She would love to learn how to make giant puppets. Maybe she could get an internship there. Putting behind me memories of her false starts, I encourage her. Sometime soon we have to discuss Isaac’s future with her. The strange thing is that Isaac has dropped into the world from nowhere: he appears to have no memory of his mother or father, and never mentions his home. But he is onl
y two years and a few months old, if Lucinda is giving us the true facts.

  We decide to have tuna grilled on the fire tonight. Lindiwe wants to help but I tell her to rest. She seems to be disappointed, so I ask her to make one of her potato salads and Nellie will make her famous mayonnaise. Lindiwe dons her housecoat.

  I arrange the wood and light the fire. Bertil has gone off with Vanessa and now he calls to ask if Vanessa can come for supper. Of course, if her mom doesn’t mind.

  I understand. As a boy I was susceptible to the superior attraction of my friends’ houses and even of their parents. When my mother died, the house died with her. Disloyally I thought that our house was dreary by comparison with others’. So I am pleased that Vanessa wants to come to Menemsha. I have seen that there is something about Nellie that children find very attractive. They understand immediately that she is always interested in them and does not have to feign interest, as so many adults do. Like Georgina, who saw Lucinda only as a prop in her glamorous social life of buying hotels and losing money. God, what a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

  26

  I hear the car coming and the gate opening to the underground parking. I stay in the pool house because I don’t want to just sommer say hello, here I am, Oom, in your pool house. I must phone him and say I want to talk to him serious – can I come over to see you sort of thing. Maybe we can have a beer. I must get up early tomorrow to phone from the harbour before anyone shall find me. Now I see Oom Frank and them around a braai, the fire is burning in the braai place on the other side of the pool. Two or three of them is sitting in chairs. The maid is walking with a tray from the house. I can hear them laughing and speaking. They’s happy, no worries. Maybe they has had a drink. Oom Frank says loud okay let’s braai. Soon I can smell the fish cooking. I don’t like fish, only fish and chips. I like Snoekies by the harbour. They knows how to make it – the best. Fresh fresh fresh. Vars vars vars. I don’t know if Oom Frank will help me again. I juss don’t know. But all these important people has friends who can make things right. I mean he gave the Scientology outjies $50k, that’s a fuck of a lot of money. No skin off his nose.