“Who is that fat man?” I asked quietly. I’d never seen him before.
“Perkis,” my old man answered, still looking into the hole. “He’s my assistant. But keep your voice down.”
“What’s his first name?”
He took a moment. “Harold, I think.”
But when this Harold Perkis got to us he told my father: “Come back when you’re ready. There’s no rush. I’ll get someone else in for a while; I’m sure we’ll manage without you.”
Which I thought was an odd thing for an assistant to say. I looked to my father but he wouldn’t meet my eye.
Mr. Craven rang to say I could be excused the last two weeks of term. I didn’t want to be, but out on the veranda, all alone, my old man sat with a slight hunch and suddenly looked much older than he ever had done.
So I stayed.
I didn’t sleep well at home anymore. The bed was too springy, the pillow too soft. Most of all, I missed Ivan. I regretted my decision to stay at home almost straightaway but it was too late. Time had passed and all of a sudden I was marooned in the middle of the holidays with endless days of drinking tea and watching my old man being unable to do anything. Boredom became frustration; frustration became anger.
“He isn’t your assistant, is he?” I faced my father one day. “The fat man at the funeral. He controls you. You don’t run the office at all; it was all a lie.”
He didn’t so much as twitch, the only sign he’d heard was a deep, labored intake of air.
“Have you been to your mother’s grave since we laid her to rest?” he said. “I think you should go. She’d like that.”
“She won’t know.” Inside, I lamented my words instantly.
“I’d also like you to help me clear out her room. I think it’s time. I’m not sure I can do it on my own. Please.”
I felt too sorry for him to say no.
“Okay.”
“I’ve also been thinking,” he went on, “that Matilda should come and live in the house. It’s a long way to the village, plus I could do with the company. It’ll be lonely when you’re at school.”
Straightaway I thought of Ivan. As if he were there, turning to me and staring.
“You’re giving Mum’s room to a black?”
My father looked up sharply.
“Don’t ever let me hear you talk in that derogatory way again.”
“Okay, the maid.”
“She has a name, and for your information I’m actually giving up the spare room. I shall go back next door. We all have a right to move on, don’t you think?”
I thudded my mug onto the table, spilling tea, and marched inside.
It was as dim and musty in my mother’s room as it had always been, almost untouched since the day she did what she did, and I was certain I could still see her waxen face set among the pillows.
I tore the curtains apart.
She hadn’t worn clothes in ages but they were all over the chair at the bottom of the bed because my old man had gone through everything, trying to remember what her favorite dress had been for the coffin. I took them off their hangers and folded them into a pile. Everything felt like it might fall apart and I was terrified proof of her existence might disappear in my fingers.
I put her shoes alongside the bed in a row and got everything from the chest into a single drawer and put that on the floor as well.
I was surprised by how few things she had. I was also surprised, then, to find the bedside cabinet bursting with stuff. Papers, mostly. Letters. They spilled out onto the floor. I recognized my own handwriting; it looked as if they were all here: the initial pleas, then the moans, then the lies about how good a time I was having. The memory of all those half promises she’d made and then taken away pained me so there was little remorse when I saw the most recent letter of mine had a postmark of almost a year ago.
On other letters I saw British stamps, from people I scarcely remembered.
. . . “How are you?” . . .
. . . “We’d love to hear from you” . . .
. . . “It’s been so long; you promised to write” . . .
Friends. From our old life in England. The creases on the paper looked like they’d been read a million times, only clearly my mother had never responded and so in the end they’d given up.
Them, too?
“Stupid cow.” I folded the letters back with quivering fingers.
Right at the bottom of the pile I found the tattered envelope my mother had once tried to show me before, on the day I’d come in to ask about my grandmother. The one with the word URGENT written in big capitals.
I opened it up.
It was from Marjorie Downe, my grandmother’s best friend.
Dear Valerie, it began. I could never describe the sorrow it gives me to have to deliver this news . . .
The moment was a punch. I felt hot and sick. I was nowhere and nothing mattered, and all the letters I’d been clutching fell from my hand and scattered over the floor. It didn’t really matter what the rest of this letter contained because I already knew, yet I read anyway, words searing my eyes.
. . . Your dear mother . . . suddenly, and regrettably for the worse . . . peacefully in her sleep . . . a small mercy . . . miss her terribly . . . no way of phoning you . . . the funeral will be held . . .
Granny?
Was dead?
Why hadn’t anyone told me? When hadn’t they told me?
The letter trembled in my grasp, the date in the top corner shining like a beacon.
June 1983.
Way back during my first year at the school.
And I remembered clearly a time in my second term, calling home because it was nearly half term and I was worried my parents might pick me up late again. And my mother acting weird and distraught on the phone and my father telling me I couldn’t come home for the weekend, that I should make alternative arrangements.
Your mother’s had a bit of bad . . . She needs rest, he’d told me. Hiding the truth.
And I’d spent the half term on Ivan’s farm for the first time, completely unaware of what was really going on.
A shape fell across the doorway.
“She’d planned to tell you. During the holiday.” To give him credit, my father didn’t even try to pretend. “She’d insisted on doing it herself. And when I found she hadn’t been able to . . . Well, there was never a right time. She knew it was wrong, she just couldn’t do it. I guess she never wanted to admit it was true.”
It sounded so ridiculous to me it was almost funny. I thrust the letter at him.
“That her mother had died? It was right here.”
He shook his head.
“More than that. That her lifeline had gone. I knew she had dreams of going back one day. I’m no fool. Living abroad was never her choice. But I wanted to be able to look after my family comfortably, you see, and it’s almost impossible to do that over there where it’s a struggle just staying afloat. It is with my level of salary. When Granny was alive your mother at least had hope, a light at the end of the tunnel; without her, she has . . . she had nothing.”
He made a weary gesture.
“Everyone lies. They don’t necessarily mean or want to, they just do it because it’s easier. I think your mother’s duplicity ate her from the inside.”
I felt I couldn’t stand. At long last all sorts of emotions pushed at the seams but I wasn’t familiar with any of them, and I screwed the letter up before pushing past my father.
“Robert?” I heard him say. “Where are you going?”
I didn’t know. I had no idea what to do.
“What do you care? No one cares.”
“That’s not true. I do.”
“Oh, sure.”
“I always did. I was just so scared of letting you down all the time because I’ve never had much to give.”
“Well, you’ve done a good job of that now.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I hate you. I hate you both.”
It was like a bullet. He reeled.
“You don’t mean that.”
“You want to bet?” I had to fire something at him because he was right, and he might have seen I knew that.
“Don’t walk out. Talk to me. Please.”
“Leave me alone. Just . . . leave me.”
I barged through the front door and my legs started sprinting up the drive. I couldn’t stop, turning left and pounding the strip road like the day the men by the statue had come after me.
I ran as much of the kilometer to the cemetery as possible. It was easy to spot her grave, the one that was too fresh to have a headstone, and I went right up to her. Of all things, I was surprised at how much the earth had gone down and by the thick grass that was already growing over her.
I heaved agonized breaths. The clouds above were tight and heavy. I stood staring at her because I still couldn’t find any words.
Then the rains broke. Huge, fat drops that pelted noisily to the ground. Only a few at first, then the downpour came. The pine trees hissed and swayed.
I swayed with them.
All I wanted was to be angry. I was angry. Not only about this, it was everything, there was so much that I didn’t know where to begin, but most of all I just wanted her here so I could say it.
Thunder crashed. Beneath it I heard faint laughter and saw three piccanins sheltering, each perhaps six or seven and pointing at me as they flashed their white smiles.
“What?” I yelled, my voice drowning in the storm. Rivers streamed down my face and I couldn’t be certain it was the rain. “Why are you lot always grinning? What’s so bloody funny?”
I went to hurl a stone and they cleared off, but I fired it anyway because I needed to throw it at somebody.
By the time I left, the clouds had finished and rolled clear. I was exhausted and ready to go home.
As I turned into our drive, I spotted my old man pacing up and down outside the house. His steps were anxious and short, and he held himself with his arms and muttered words over and over. His head shook and looked like a skull on a stick, his legs like fleshless pins falling out of his shorts. Where had he gone?
I was all he had now, I realized. I couldn’t abandon him.
I moved forward, but as I returned to the only family I had left, Matilda appeared, despite the fact she didn’t work on weekends, and she went to my old man and motioned for him to calm down. He did. She rubbed his forearms. Then she held him and kissed him in a way that was completely wrong and he let it happen. Nothing about it was right; it made my stomach churn.
I stopped again. My old man saw me and leaped back like he’d been given a shock.
He may have called out, he may even have come after me. I just started running again, the other way now, and toward town. I didn’t know where to go or what to do.
So I called Ivan.
TWENTY
Ivan was lucky because he’d turned sixteen and got his license straightaway, and his old man let him drive one of the farm pickups like it was his own. True to his word, he pulled up outside the hotel an hour later and hooted for me. I’d been in the bar ordering beers and smoking.
“Can I stay over?” I put my feet on the dash.
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Just drive,” I told him.
“You’re the boss.”
That was one of the things I liked about him.
He said he’d been going to Berg anyway that day to meet Pitters and Klompie at the movies. Now it was cool because we could all go together.
We met them outside the Kine 300 where Beverly Hills Cop was showing. It was the film everyone had been talking about, although I didn’t know who the hell Eddie Murphy was, and then the stupid nanny in the kiosk screwed up and gave me a seat on the other side of the cinema even though it was obvious we were together, and I had to go and sit right in the middle of a row of blacks.
“See you later, Jacko,” Pittman teased. “Better not share your popcorn. You never know what you might catch.”
The film was good but I got more and more pissed off with how all the blacks in the audience kept cheering and clapping whenever something big happened, like when there was a fight scene or when Axel Foley made the supervisor in the warehouse give him some cooperation. I didn’t understand why they did that. Why couldn’t they just watch like normal people?
Patti LaBelle had barely started to “Stir It Up” to the end credits and I was getting out of there.
Pittman and Klompie came out with tears in their eyes.
“That was an A movie, man.” Pittman punched the air. “Haven’t laughed so much in my life.”
Klompie also punched the air even though he looked stupid when he did it.
“And I tell you, when we head home, ‘we’re not going to fall for a banana in the tailpipe.’ ”
“ ‘So my advice to you is,’ ”—Pittman breathed all over my face—“ ‘why don’t you crawl back to your little stone in Detroit before you get squashed.’ ”
Something snapped and I pushed him to the ground. Coins and Madisons flew out of his pockets and he jumped right back, nostrils flared.
“Hey!” Ivan got between us straightaway. “What’s your problem?”
“I don’t know.” Pittman rubbed his elbow and his ego. “Ask him.”
“Jacko?”
I huffed. “It was a shit movie.”
“Why? What was wrong with it?”
“I thought it was a stupid idea with a load of stupid yanks, and I didn’t like the way that Axel Foley kept eyeing up the white chicks. Okay?” Ivan stared at me. From nowhere, I added, “Mr. van Hout would say the same.”
Ivan rolled it around his mouth before giving me a firm nod. He ruffled my hair, almost fatherly.
“Ja, you’re right—kak movie.” He jabbed Pittman, but because it was Ivan it was okay and we were all friends again.
I gave in and called my old man to tell him I wasn’t coming back for a few days. He sounded relieved, but then started stammering an explanation, and how sorry he was for everything, and where was I staying? I didn’t know how to feel anymore and was tired of trying to work it out, and about halfway through it dawned on me I could easily make it all go away and put the phone down.
On Sundays the Hascotts went to the Country Club. Ivan was getting excited because he knew Adele Cairns would be there and he was definitely going to ask her out, and if she said yes then he was in with a chance of finally checking out those nyombies.
“I swear, they’re huge,” he said as we drove in convoy behind his old man. “She’s an absolute babe in a swimsuit.”
It was a hot day, and most of the kids were out by the pool while the mothers played tennis and the men sat around the bar. Adele was easy to spot. She was beautiful. She was in a red bikini, rubbing in oil and watching over her little brother messing about in the water, and I thought she was amazing. Not perfect, but that made her far better than the waxlike babes I’d checked in any edition of Scope because she was real. She wasn’t tall and she wasn’t short, and she had freckly pale skin and long brown hair, which she combed with her fingers. She kept her arms self-consciously close to her chest, but if anything that just made her more alluring. Above all that, she looked kind, not barbed like so many other girls I’d met who thought they were pretty.
I felt a small stab in my chest—I was envious. I wanted someone like that. I only hoped Ivan wouldn’t be able to tell.
He played it cool at first. We went to the bar and got Cokes, but as soon as we’d finished we were in the pool making a load of noise and splashing the laaities. Ivan made two of them cry, then play-fought me and ducked me for almost a minute, and when he finally let me up, spluttering like an arse, he was already off to make his move.
After a few minutes chatting they went inside and I was on my own.
I tried pretending I didn’t mind and swam a bit more, then stood around the pool to dry off, but I didn’t know anyone so I walked around the garden. In
the end I just sat on the grass at the side of the Club where the workers were barbecuing steaks. One of them began talking to me, and when he asked about my mother and father I shut him up by getting him to kife me a free beer from the bar.
Ivan came back with a huge grin on his face.
“That chick gives.” He grabbed my beer and took a swig, although I didn’t believe him because, from what I’d seen of her, I didn’t think Adele Cairns seemed the kind of girl who gave quite so easily.
He looked about before taking out a Madison.
“Your old man’s just there,” I warned. The men had been drawn by the smell of cooking meat.
“My old man’s half cut,” he dismissed, but thirty seconds later he was thrusting the gwaai into my hand. “Say it’s yours, he won’t do anything to you.”
As it happened, Pa Hascott wasn’t interested in anything except getting away.
“There’s trouble on the farm.” His voice was strained.
Ivan checked around for Adele.
“But—”
“Don’t just stand there, man, get your truck.” He turned to his wife, who was swinging as fast as she could on her crutches. “Get a bloody move on, Gwyneth.”
We sped dangerously along the dirt road, Ivan just managing to keep on it as we slew around corners. I had to clutch onto the side of the door. At one stage his old man’s brake lights came on but Ivan didn’t see them and almost charged into the back of him—he’d been watching the tail of smoke rising in the distance.
“Jesus on a swing, they better not have done.” He gripped the wheel tightly while the dust cleared. “I swear to God.”
But they had, whoever “they” were.
We tore over the farm boundary. Ivan didn’t care now, his foot was to the floor. He even caught his old man, and then overtook him when Pa Hascott slowed at the security fence to their house, where a mob of about thirty black men were singing and doing a menacing dance that involved jabbing axes and machetes into the air. The dogs were going nuts on the other side of the wire.
The gate didn’t look as though it had been breached, but Ivan knew by then that the smoke was coming from the workers’ village. He sped on.
Out of Shadows Page 12
