Leopold Blue (4 page)

Xanthe stood at the front of the classroom, satchel hanging off her left hand. In those first moments it wasn't her pale, long, skinny legs that caught my attention, or the way the blue school shift hung from her like a tent, as though her body had rejected it as it would an invasion of foreign cells. It wasn't her sharp pixie hairstyle, or its aggressively black colour that struck me, or even her arctic-blue eyes – what impressed me about this girl, standing alone at the front of the class, was her lack of interest in her surroundings. She stared ahead; her eyes were fixed on the wall behind Juffrou.

‘Bye, then, darling, bye!' called a motherly voice from the corridor. It sounded twinkly and bright, like a mum in a washing powder advert. The girl turned briefly but made no reply. Juffrou eyed her for a moment, not bothering to disguise her thoughts, then clapped her hands, shooing her towards the desk.

Elmarie swung around, delighted that I had been dumped with this odd-looking girl. I flicked the top of my third finger against my thumb at her. I didn't want her ruining what had turned into an interesting afternoon. As the girl sat down, I shifted away, to give her space. When she didn't say anything, or even return my smile, I had a horrible feeling that I had moved too far. I had been rude. I moved back, but now I was almost on top of her. Red-faced and hot, I sat in the middle of my seat, determined not to move for the rest of the lesson.

Juffrou du Plessis made her bark of a cough to bring the class back to order then fixed her eyes on the new girl: ‘Well, now, Santie, welcome to our class. Let's add you to our register,' she said opening the wide book; ‘So that's s - a - n?' she raised an eyebrow.

‘X.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘X - a - n - t - h - e.' The girl spelled her name with an admirable slowness. It stopped a shadow short of being rude. Her accent sounded virtually foreign. That would make her from Cape Town. They often did that.

Juffrou frowned in confusion. ‘Really?' Her heavy Afrikaans accent lingered on the vowel sounds.

‘Yes.'

Juffrou did not approve of outlandish names. A few years back there had been a Hermione. Juffrou had called her Hester. She raised her eyebrows as she entered the name on the register. ‘I've never heard of that name myself. But then one learns something new every day, don't you think, Sonia?' The last sentence was delivered in a loud voice and accompanied by a small piece of chalk that landed inches from Sonia's left hand. Juffrou waited for silence. ‘Of course the local indigenous people, the Xhosa,' she rested on the ‘osa' and took a breath, ‘use all their “x”s to make a click sound, so why not use an “s” for a “z” sound instead,' she said with a little laugh.

We stared back.

Another cough. ‘Exercise five. Sonia, seeing you have so much to say today, why don't you proceed.'

Xanthe unzipped her Tipp-Ex-graphitised pencil case. Her fingernails were filed into a square shape. A couple of pencils spilled out of the case. She reached in and pulled out a thick silver fountain pen. It looked old and heavy. The lid was bordered at the top and bottom with a gold rim. Midway up the brushed silver base was an inscription. She stared at it for a moment and then put it back in the pencil case and took out a black ballpoint pen.

What was a smart pen doing in a scruffy pencil case? It was the most beautiful pen I'd ever seen. It was the first time I'd considered that a pen could be beautiful.

A few minutes before the end of the lesson Juffrou left again. As the door shut Elmarie and Esna swung around. Elmarie frowned at Xanthe before saying in Afrikaans: ‘What happened to your hair?'

Esna clapped her hands to her mouth and giggled.

Xanthe lifted her gaze to Elmarie, then closed her eyes.

I smiled. Elmarie had no choice but to swivel back in her seat.

‘Did you see her eyes?' Elmarie said loudly in Afrikaans. ‘Like a witch.'

‘Don't witches have yellow eyes? Like werewolves? Her eyes were icy blue,' replied Esna.

Elmarie clicked her tongue. ‘It was her expression, then. But there was definitely something witch-like about her.'

‘I thought she looked more like a cat,' replied Esna.

‘Why are you two being so rude?' I said, purposefully in English, sounding too much like Mum. ‘She's not stupid, you know. She understands everything you're saying.'

Dad called the local white community's attitude ‘frontier philosophy'. ‘When you're the obvious minority,' he'd explained to Mum many times, ‘your existence is constantly under threat. There is no room for diversity.'

‘Actually, I try not to understand anything in that language,' said Xanthe, the first words she'd spoken.

They swivelled back. ‘You will have a very bad time in Leopold, then,' said Esna in her severe English.

‘Not long before it's bye-bye Santie,' added Elmarie.

‘Let's hope so,' said Xanthe. ‘And don't ever call me Santie again – it's a
zuh
sound – as in xenophobia.'

I laughed at the blank expression on their faces. ‘
Zuh
as in zulu.'

‘OK, Santie,' Esna said, getting up as the bell rang.

We were the last two left in the classroom. After my bizarre behaviour ealier, I wanted to start again. Xanthe stuffed her notepad and pencil case into her satchel and picked up a printed map of the school. She looked up at me and smiled. Or maybe she didn't, and I assumed she had, and I rushed in with, ‘Hi! I'm Margaret!'

At the same time she said: ‘Uh – where is the secretaries' office?'

I smiled, too brightly. ‘Straight down the passage.'

‘Thanks,' she said, walking out the classroom.

‘Hang on, I'll show you!' I called, grabbing my bag.

But she was gone.

I slumped into the desk. I had not met many people before – everyone I knew had been here forever, occupying their place on the canvas of our town, moving in and out of focus as they became more or less relevant to me. Sometimes, out of boredom, Simon and I used to assign each other characters for the day, but that wasn't the same. Simon could never be anyone but himself. The first time Mum saw Dad she had apparently walked up to him and started talking, as if they had been in the middle of a conversation five minutes previously. Mum said she was so nervous that she had to pretend they were already friends. Dad said he felt hypnotised, like a helpless chicken, and by the time he came to, a strange woman had taken control of his life.

What did this girl Xanthe think of me? What would I think of me on first meeting? A freckly girl with honey-brown (not ‘mousy', as Beth claimed) hair; tall but podgy (‘puppy fat,' Mum insisted) with a permanent frown. I kicked the seat in front of me so that it clattered down on its hinges. At the front of the room, Juffrou's handwriting,
warm, warmer, die warmste,
looped its way across the blackboard.
Boring, more boring, the most boring
, said a voice in my head. Even Esna left an impression. Xanthe had forgotten me before she'd even left the classroom. Worse than that, it was if she hadn't registered me at all.

The voice in my head spoke again, with such cold, clear force that I gripped the edge of the desk: maybe it wasn't this town that was the problem. Maybe it was me.

I left the classroom, dragging my despondency behind me. At the front of the building I paused. All that was waiting for me at home was my black mood, skulking about my bedroom. I could afford to take my time.

From the steps you could see the whole valley. Today Bosmansberg looked like a cardboard cut-out against the sharp sky. A few waterfalls remained from the recent rains. They leaked down the creases of the rocky hillside like silver tendrils.

At the foot of Bosmansberg was the clump of factory-like buildings of the agricultural college and its surrounding fields, separated from the town by the river. Its fat green banks snaked up the valley floor like a lazy boomslang
^[*]
, all the way to the
pine and cedar forests in the distance.

Leopold's three longest roads, Main Street, De Wet Street and Voortrekker Street, ran parallel to the river. Nobody knew who De Wet was or why he had a street named after him. A fire in the town hall in the early 1900s had destroyed all the original town records.

The streets, like stripes across the town, made me think of my English grandmother who'd told me, on her only visit to South Africa, that one should never wear horizontal stripes as they made one look fat.

This had made Mum very angry. ‘Why do you say these things?'

‘
Somebody
needs to,' my grandmother replied, fixing her eyes on Mum. ‘These are things your children need to know.'

‘No they don't! Outside your tiny world, Mother, is another one where people are not judged solely by their appearance.'

‘Tosh!' had been my grandmother's response. I'd never decided whether she was dismissing Mum or the idea.

Leopold's horizontal roads didn't make the town look fatter; from my position above they seemed to squash the town into the narrow valley bed.

Inside the school a door slammed shut. A few moments later came the sound of Buddy, the school janitor, whistling and jangling his keys. As I turned around Juffrou du Plessis emered from the gloom. I sank to my haunches and rummaged around in my satchel, pretending to have lost something.

Juffrou stopped next to me and looked out over the valley. ‘Pragtig
^[*]
,' she murmured, admiring the view. ‘“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”'

I stood up and stared across at Bosmansberg, silently begging any form of help to make her leave. Eventually she turned to me, opened her mouth to say something, but decided against it. As she started down the stairs, she muttered, ‘Poor child.'

Juffrou took a while to shrink. I watched her lumber down the hill. In a bigger world my problems would be far smaller – Juffrou would be nothing more than a grumpy teacher; Mum an average freak. When Xanthe walked into the classroom, she'd stepped out of a world that was everything I had been longing for. I wanted to be part of that world so much that it ached.

The steeples of Leopold's churches formed a triangle above the tree line. The largest was the face brick clock tower of the new Dutch Reformed church. At the bottom end of the Main Street was the gothic-shaped steeple of the old Dutch Reformed church, at the top end the sandstone Anglican church.

The new Dutch Reformed church, set in the heart of the well-to-do properties with their arched gables and front rose gardens, was designed to be the single most important building in town. The clock tower steeple could be seen from any position. Its 1950s face brick design was windowless apart from a row of square panes along the top. Mum called it ‘the bunker'.

The Anglican church had been built by the English missionaries. As Mum was the only white member of the congregation, Father Basil held services in the community hall in the Camp. The church was unused except for weddings and funerals.

I cut through its churchyard on my way down to the Main Street. In the far corner of the graveyeard, near the cluster of children's gravestones, was the bent figure of Witbooi, the self-appointed verger. He had always looked 150 years old. Even in the hottest weather he wore the same brown nylon trouser suit over a threadbare blue V-neck jersey. Dad called him ‘Meneer
^[*]
Professor' despite the fact that Witbooi was illiterate. He claimed that Witbooi carried in his head an uninterrupted history of the region for the last hundred years. More than that, Dad said he was a ‘seer'. I tried to avoid the tiny, age-stiff man with his toothless smile and creased face, in case he might see too far into me.

He straightened up as I passed and beckoned me over. On the ground in front of him was a bird's nest with three tiny Francolin chicks inside. The mauled mother lay to the side of the tree. I pulled the sleeve of my jersey over my hand and covered my nose.

‘Devil dog,' he breathed and inclined his head towards the police station. His voice was whispery, like tissue paper. ‘Take them.' He picked up the nest and put it inside an old cardboard Castle beer crate.

‘What? No.' I looked around. ‘I don't think they will survive, Witbooi. They're tiny.'

‘Take them to Marta,' he insisted.

The balls of brown fluff looked blindly upwards, mewling for their mother. They would continue to do that until they were too weak to hold their necks up any longer. Beth and I had rescued enough baby birds to know that these ones had very little chance. But Beth had a rule that if you didn't try and save something you were complicit with its death.

‘Alright, then,' I said and took the cardboard box.

At home I went in search of Marta. ‘A present from Witbooi,' I said, placing the box on the kitchen counter.

‘Silly old fool.' She peered at the nest and shook her head. ‘They won't survive the night. No doubt full of fleas.'

‘You know the rules, Marta,' said Beth, who had come to have a look at the chicks. ‘Are you happy to have their blood on your hands?'

‘That's not rules, that's nonsense!' said Marta but she abandoned the ironing, set about mixing up a bowl of milky Pronutro and found me a syringe.

That evening I stood next to Dad and peered down at the birds, a sense of responsibility tugging at me. Marta had transferred them to a Wilson's tennis shoebox padded with an old towel and shredded newspaper. The box, under the desk lamp in Dad's study, was a makeshift incubator.

‘Poor little buggers, not likely to survive the night,' said Dad.

‘They enjoyed the Pronutro,' I said.

Dad shook his head. ‘Why do people think birds like Pronutro?'

‘What else would you feed them?'

He frowned at me. ‘Regurgitated worms.'

‘Be my guest!' I lingered over the box. Dad's study always made me feel better. It felt safe to be surrounded by stacks of his notebooks full of his neat spidery cursive. His handwriting was contained and measured. Mum's handwriting was so erratic that sometimes even she couldn't read it.

‘There was a new girl at school today,' I said, thinking back to Xanthe's pencil case and the beautiful pen.

‘Nice?'

I wrinkled up my nose. ‘Can weird be nice?'

He looked up. ‘You're nice.'

I smacked his arm. ‘Maybe not weird, exactly. Different, I suppose.'

‘Well now, different is always nice, especially around these parts.'

‘Ja,
right,' I said, thinking of Esna and Elmarie
and
Juffrou's
reaction to my very different mother. ‘Dad, you have to talk to Mum.'

‘Do you think so? I said hello to her just last week.'

‘You're not funny,' I scolded. ‘Juffrou had a go at me at school today. She says Mum's a troublemaker and  …  she could get arrested,' I finished weakly.

Dad frowned. ‘She's educating people about a disease. She's saving the farmers a lot of time and money.'

‘But standing in front of the clinic with a bucket of condoms?'

He chuckled.

I stamped my foot. ‘You need to stop her, Dad.'

‘Shhh, you're upsetting the chicks. They're fighting for their lives, they don't care about condoms.'

I left him at his desk. He was no help. He didn't have to put up with Juffrou and Elmarie and Esna. At any sign of trouble he disappeared behind his books and his rocks like a dassie
^[*]
darting out of sight.

I woke the next morning thinking of the chicks. As I reached over the box and picked up the nearest one, I held my breath. Its tiny claws tickled my palm. Its racing heartbeat pulsed into my carefully closed hand and up my arm.

‘Well, I never,' said Dad, peering over my shoulder.

‘Isn't it amazing,' I whispered.

‘Not sure I'm
amazed
,' replied Dad.

I was in awe. They had survived! It was a sign – from God – that life had taken a dramatic turn for the better. Perhaps they would grow up and live in the courtyard and every time I passed they would fly down and perch on my shoulder. At the very least, it meant that Xanthe would be my friend.

‘They're still more likely to die than not,' added Dad.

I couldn't wait to get to school. It was as though a suffocating cloak had been lifted from my shoulders.

‘What's the matter with you?' asked Elmarie halfway through Afrikaans.

‘What do you mean?'

‘You're different today.'

‘This is the way I always am!' I said, laughing loudly. I stole a glance at Xanthe, but she hadn't been listening. It didn't matter. I didn't mind when later in the day she chose to sit at another pair of empty desks rather than next to me. Everything would work out – it was all a matter of time.

At home, Marta had made banana bread. Banana bread was delicious at any time of year. In winter it was comforting and wholesome. In summer, when Marta kept it in the fridge and served it with a thick smear of butter, it was cool and moist. Today, when spring sunshine mingled with the sweet oozing fruit and hovered in the kitchen, it was sublime.

Mum and Beth were at the table. I sat down and cut a large slice.

Beth was talking at Mum with her mouth full. ‘It was so unfair on the Romanovs, don't you think?'

The loaf was still warm from the oven. It fell apart exquisitely in my mouth.

‘Don't you think, Mum?' repeated Beth.

‘Hmm?' said Mum without looking up. It was her standard ‘Shhh! I'm busy,' reply. She sat at the far end of the table, letters and newspapers spread out around her, her reading glasses balanced at a ridiculous angle on her nose. Behind her Marta leaned against the sink, examining a piece of paper in her hands.

‘You're a mother,' continued Beth. ‘Imagine what the poor Tsarina felt, seeing her children herded off to that grotty holding house, when they'd never before left a palace in their lives. And the boys were haemophiliacs, you know. And then,' Beth looked around the table, ‘they shot them!'

Marta clicked her tongue. ‘The acts of evil men.' She shared Beth's love of a good drama.

Mum took off her glasses and looked up. ‘It wasn't that simple.'

‘Complicated murder is OK,' I said, cutting another slice of bread.

‘No,' said Mum, drawing out the ‘o' sound. Her tone suggested she was talking to a very stupid and potentially dangerous person. ‘There is no excuse for killing, but you must understand it in the context of revolution and war. Change is painful,' she added, looking meaningfully at me.

‘What?' I said. ‘Do you think I don't like change?'

The smallest inclination of her head. A raised eyebrow.

‘Are you joking?' I said. ‘I'm dying for a bit of change around here.'

‘Ha, ha,' said Mum severely.

‘Those men were evil!' said Beth loudly, annoyed by the deviation. ‘That poor Romanov family. Did you know, Marta, that they sewed their rubies and diamonds and tiaras into their coats? I wonder whether the Tsarina knew they were going to die, but made them do it to keep the childrens' hopes up.' Beth fell into a reflective silence, before saying, ‘Thank goodness Anastasia survived!'

‘Praise God!' said Marta.

‘What?' said Mum.

‘She got away! She ran away from the men with guns!' Beth paused for a sip of water. ‘Do you know that after all she went through some people doubted that she was in fact Anastasia. But it was obvious – she had absolutely no idea what money was!' Beth shook her head in wonderment. ‘I'm going to call my daughter Anastasia.'

I turned to Mum. Four years ago I had brought home the same story. She threatened to call the Cape Provincial Education Department. When I begged her not to, she'd shouted: ‘But it's not true! How can they teach you things that aren't true?'

But she appeared to be softening with age. Or perhaps it was Beth. She leaned towards Beth. ‘Do you remember old Mrs Schultz?' she said in a low voice. ‘She was a Russian émigré. She arrived here in 1920 without any money. Perhaps Anastasia ended up
here
.'

Beth narrowed her eyes at Mum, then returned to her banana bread. ‘Don't be pathetic.'

Marta had been fiddling with the letter all through Beth's anti-Bolshevik rant. Twice she had been about to say something, but each time turned back to the sink. It must be important.

I kicked Mum's foot under the table and motioned towards Marta.

Mum looked up. ‘Marta?'

‘Miss Viv?'

Mum looked back at me.

I mouthed, ‘The letter!'

She shot me an exasperated look and then said, ‘What's in the letter, Marta?'

Marta picked up a washed pot, and put it back down. ‘It's Simon,' she said. She turned and studied Simon's photo on the fridge.

‘Anything the matter?' Mum's voice was unnaturally bright. Beth forgot about her dead Russians. I felt my wonderful day begin to lose definition and dissolve, like heat rising off tarmac.

‘He will be back in a few weeks. He's coming home,' said Marta quietly.

‘But he was supposed to be away the whole year. It's only August!' I burst out. I felt Mum's eyes on me.

‘It will be September by the time he's back,' said Marta. ‘Anyway, it's time he came home and made himself useful. All this nonsense travelling the world, and with Mister Tim paying so much money  …  The child needs to get a job.'

‘Nonsense,' said Mum. ‘He's a star and we are so proud of him.'

Blood thumped against my skull. Of course you are, Mother! I thought. You can't wait to have him back, never mind your own children!

Then I looked up to see the smile that Marta couldn't hide and felt bad. I knew Marta missed her son, but I didn't want him home. It was easy for Beth, with her dyslexia. All she had to do was bring home a pass and be showered with a gruff ‘That's my girl!' from Dad and a wobbly smile from Mum. Yet my ‘B' aggregates infuriated Mum. Her mouth would set, even if I was one of the top five girls in the class. ‘You're not up against your
class
, Margaret,' she'd say in an intense whisper that was supposed to inspire, ‘you're up against yourself.' As far as she was concerned, not ‘reaching your potential' was worse than lazy. It was unethical. But if you already knew you could do something, what was the point? What sense of personal achievement was there to be gained from that?

That night I couldn't sleep. I checked on the chicks, I sang them a song. I lay on my side, I flopped over onto my tummy. I curled myself into a small ball, I spread myself out like a starfish. I focused on a pure green light between my eyes. It was hopeless. The only sound was the intermittent chime of the grandfather clock in the hall, wheezing its way through the night: 11.30, 12 o'clock. 12.30. My back hurt, my eyes ached. My skin itched as though insects were crawling all over me. I searched my sheets. I changed my nightie. Nothing. Nothing but this endless night.

It was Simon, of course. It was the news that Simon was coming home.

Once upon a time I'd thought Simon the smartest person in the world. After Dad. And MacGyver. But that was when he had grasshopper legs and his ears stood out at forty-five degrees and it looked as though he had slipped on an extra-large pair of hands over his own.

‘
Karraboosh
,' I said to the dark night.

Karraboosh
was Simon's word. In a house that buzzed with what Dad called the ‘unfathomable female disposition', Simon commanded attention by being silent. Hours passed without him saying a word. Then he'd tell a screamingly naughty joke or he'd start talking, very quickly, about a jumble of topics: a story he'd heard at school or the names and order of the planets or the gestational period of an elephant cow. Often he'd simply say ‘
karraboosh
.'

It made Marta furious. ‘For God's sake, Simon, stop that nonsense!' she'd scold. ‘It's not even a word!'