Leopold Blue (9 page)

Xanthe was gone, back home for the ten-day September holidays, leaving me in the valley of death. Though I'd have not thought it possible, it was worse than before.

Dad had gone too, into his study, to his other life of paleontological hypotheses and publishing deadlines, his door firmly closed.

Marta had gone, to visit her sister and pick up Simon in Cape Town. Without Marta the house was slowly falling apart. The ironing grew into piles that Mum would stand and look at, and then leave. The kitchen stood empty and quiet. Without the smell of banana bread wafting through the house; without the sound of pots banging and the rhythmic drone of the gospel radio station; without a curry on the stove, it did not seem like our kitchen.

That left Mum and Beth and me. I wandered around the house, picking things up and putting them down again. I sat on the top step of the stoep, looking out over the garden until my bum ached so much on the hard stone that I couldn't bear it anymore. I was once again waiting, waiting away my life. In the empty days my mind kept pouncing on Simon's return. I had to talk myself away from the same panic I felt each time he was due back from school. But this time was different – I had Xanthe. I'd barely notice he was around.

Midway through the week I found Mum in the courtyard, kneeling over her pots of bulbs. For want of anything else to do, I sat down and watched her digging them up, shaking the soil off gently and then laying them down in a growing pile. She spent a ridiculous amount of time on them, when all they did was flower for a few weeks, then she'd pack them away again. She told us stories of the spring bulbs pushing through the hard winter earth in England, first snowdrops and then daffodils and bluebells, how they meant an end to the interminable cold. That world was as unreal to me as the Christmas cards of cheerful robins and snow-dusted windowpanes. Our wild flowers made a mockery of pots and flowerbeds. They burst through pavement cracks in rioting reds and oranges, squeezed out between walls and fence posts and rock face in violets and yellows and blues. They transformed whole valleys into a runaway blaze of colour. Mum's daffodils and irises seemed contrived in comparison, the opposite of what spring was about.

‘Well that's it for this year,' Mum said without looking up. I was surprised; I didn't think she'd noticed me.

‘What?'

‘Spring. Do you know that you get more suicides in spring than any other time of year?'

‘Why wait till spring?'

‘Exactly.' She sat back and looked at me. ‘Pass me that bag, won't you.' She pointed at a Checkers plastic packet lying a few feet in front of me.

I leaned over and chucked it in her direction but it landed in the space between us.

She gave me a withering look.

Making a big show of it, I got up and dropped it next to her, then sat down in a deck chair nearby. ‘I feel pretty suicidal at the thought of many more springs in Leopold.'

Mum laughed. ‘The worst of it is, you're going to look back on this as the best time of your life.'

‘Kill me now.'

Beth appeared wearing one of Mum's oldest dresses – a floor-length 1970s evening gown. The hideous pattern was made up of large swirls of blue and green and mauve paisley.

‘Oh, that dress!' Mum laughed, clapping her hands.

Beth had pinned her hair in a single braid around her head, Heidi-style. She stretched out her arms to show off the enormous blue chiffon bat wings and did a twirl.

‘Going anywhere special?' asked Mum.

‘Might be,' replied Beth as she sat down at the edge of a lounger chair. ‘You never know.'

I snorted.

‘What?' said Beth. ‘You don't know what's going to happen ten minutes from now.'

‘I have a pretty good guess.'

‘You're wrong.'

‘Beth, you look gorgeous. Far better than I looked in it,' Mum cut in.

Mum was right, Beth looked like a seventies pin-up. It made me even crosser.

‘My mother gave that dress to me,' said Mum. As always the words ‘my mother' came out an octave lower, with a little shake of her head. ‘She had it made for my first grown-up dinner party. God, what an awful night.' Mum sucked in her breath at the memory. ‘She spent the evening steering me around the room, introducing me to all the suitable young men, saying: “Have you met my daughter Vivienne?' and then she would smile at them, but it was scary, she'd sort of bare her teeth.'

‘Like this?' Beth mimicked the way Mum smiled at Hannes. Dad called it the ‘Salisbury Rictus', after the day Mum presented him to my English grandmother.

‘Yes!' laughed Mum. ‘How did you know? It wasn't all bad though. That was the night I met Lawrence.'

‘Lawrence! Of like Arabia?' said Beth, wrinkling up her nose with distaste. ‘Who'd call their son Lawrence?'

‘Oh, that was a long time before Dad,' said Mum. She flicked her hair. Unlike Dad's stories that grew more improbable and funnier with each telling, Mum's ‘growing up' stories, about places and friends and family we'd never met, always felt like a betrayal.

‘But look!' Mum stood up, soil raining from her lap. She walked over to Beth and picked up a sleeve. ‘Moths!' The length of the sleeve was pockmarked with holes.

Mum was quiet for a long time, staring at the sleeve in her hand. Beth looked at me. I shrugged. Eventually Mum sighed, the weight of which pulled her whole chest downwards. ‘It's just a dress,' she said softly to herself, and looking up at Beth and me repeated: ‘It's just a dress.'

She let go of the sleeve and sat back into the chair next to me, all the time studying Beth.

‘Do you want me to take it off?' asked Beth.

Mum smiled. ‘No, no! It's lovely to see it again. I don't know why I keep it buried at the back of my wardrobe. I should wear it more often.'

‘Oh dear God,' I said.

From behind the closed study door came the low rumble of Dad clearing his throat. Things weren't yet back to normal between my parents. Dad's continuing quiet made Mum skittish. She found reasons to avoid the shops, but Dad had been right about the talk. After two weeks there was nothing more to be said.

Outside a lorry clattered by on the cement road –
ka-donk, ka-donk, ka-donk
.

‘My girls,' Mum smiled, looking at us. ‘It's moments like these that a mother will never forget. Moments of quiet.' She said it with the tiniest of glances in my direction. She leaned back into the chair and closed her eyes.

Beth jumped up and, cupping her hands together at her chest, like Mimi Coertse, started singing ‘Somewhere over the rainbow', in a falsetto. Mum laughed, still with her eyes closed and said, ‘Let's have tea and cake out here.'

Beth broke off her song. ‘There's no cake, Ma. There's nothing left to eat.'

Mum opened her eyes and sat up. ‘There's always something to eat.' A few minutes later she returned with tea and a box of After Eight dinner mints.

Holding a mug of tea in her hand and with half a mint wafer in her mouth, Mum turned to me: ‘Have you heard from Xanthe?'

‘No.'

‘Why don't you give her a call? Do you have her number?'

‘No.'

‘Was she going away?'

‘I don't know!'

‘She'll be with her Cape Town friends,' said Beth, licking chocolate off her fingers.

‘Don't be cruel, Beth,' said Mum.

‘Why is that cruel?' I snapped. ‘I don't care.'

‘She'll be back soon,' said Mum. Then, after a moment, in her careful voice, she said, ‘She's very lucky to have you as a friend. She gets an awful lot out of this friendship.'

‘What are you talking about?' I felt like a sea anenome when it's poked.

Mum pulled her mouth tight, then speaking slowly and delicately, said, ‘I'm not sure that she gives as much as she takes.'

‘Why do you always have to make everything so heavy?'

‘And she's a troublemaker,' said Beth, pulling at the hem of the dress.

‘Shut up!' I shouted at Beth.

‘OK,' said Mum, holding up her hands. ‘Enough.'

Having to listen to them was like having holes drilled through your eye sockets. I wanted to leave Beth in her ridiculous dress and Mum with her soil-encrusted knees, but I couldn't stand my room any longer, or the sitting room or the garden.

‘Angel came by this morning,' said Mum. She smoothed out the green foil chocolate wrapper on the wooden arm of the chair.

‘Angel?'

‘Yup. Looking for Marta.'

‘But –'

‘I know. Her baby, her child, I mean, is sick. She needed money for the clinic.'

‘What did you do?'

‘I gave her some money and told her to come back next week.' Mum folded the foil in half and half again. ‘But she won't.'

‘Did you give her some condoms too and a pamphlet on sexual health?'

Mum looked up. ‘Not so funny. She looked terrible, too thin.'

Of course she would be sick! In Mum's world Angel could never be healthy and happy and having a good life.

‘Are you going to tell Marta?'

‘I don't know. She's very caught up in Simon's return and what he'll do next.'

‘It's not fair the way Marta's written Angel off,' I said.

Mum raised her eyebrows. ‘The funny thing is that I always thought Angel sharper than Simon. Simon's quick and determined, but Angel – that little girl was something else.'

‘Why would Marta do that then? It's not very Christian.'

‘Perhaps she couldn't bear to watch her daughter end up with exactly the same life as her.'

‘So if I do something you don't like, will you cut me off?'

Mum looked at me. ‘What do you think? I'll make your life a misery, but I'll never let you go. That's what love is about,' she added quietly, looking down at her fingers. ‘At some point we're all going to do something that hurts the people who love us. The more they love us, the more it hurts. It's a fact of life. But love is bigger than actions.'

I knew she was talking about her own mother, far away in a town called Salisbury where it always rained, but even so I felt anger combust in every cell of my body. I dumped my mug on the stone and stood up. ‘That's typical of you!' I said. ‘That's exactly why we don't have any friends in this town, why people see us coming and cross the road. When you love someone, you don't do things that hurt them. You don't!'

I marched away. Safely on the other side of the kitchen swing door, my anger evaporated. I looked back out through the mesh. Mum was sitting perfectly still in the chair, looking down at the tiny square of green foil in her hands.

I sighed. ‘It's not fair,' I said to the empty kitchen, to the space where Marta should have been.

Marta arrived the next morning as we were eating breakfast.

‘Marta!' said Mum. Her cheeks filled with colour that had been missing since the article appeared.

‘Good holiday, Marta?' asked Dad, looking up from his newspaper.

‘Thank you, Mister Tim,' replied Marta. She was carrying a yellow plastic bag with the words ‘Duty Free' in large red writing.

‘Sister well?' continued Dad, returning to his article.

‘As well as can be.' Marta did not think much of her sister's family-in-law. They were Seventh Day Adventists.

‘It's been a long week, Marta,' he said, patting Mum's hand. ‘Do I look thinner? I feel thinner.'

Marta tutted with pleasure.

‘What's in the bag?' asked Beth. ‘Did Simon bring you tonnes of presents?'

Marta looked down at the bag. ‘Stuff and nonsense and Venetian glass.' She shook her head. ‘Now what must I do with it? Imagine if Sister Bertha heard I had Venetian glass in my front room!'

Mum smiled. ‘How is Simon?'

‘He will be down to greet this afternoon.'

‘Plenty of time for that,' said Dad. ‘He probably needs to rest up.'

Marta sniffed. ‘What has he been doing but resting this whole year? The child needs to make himself useful.'

‘Send him to me,' said Dad, scanning the sports section, ‘I'm in dire need of somebody useful.'

Simon sat on the wall of the stoep
in the late afternoon sun, leaning back on his right arm. I froze, and then stepped back into the family room, into the dark shadow cast by the open door.

He twitched, a sensory movement, an intuition. His eyes flickered towards the doorway. I held my breath, but after a second he turned away.

‘There is so much hot air circulating around this country at the moment,' came Dad's voice, ‘I'm surprised we haven't taken off in the breeze.'

I examined this person who had replaced the grasshopper boy I knew, whom only nine months previously had sat on the same spot, mumbling and fidgety the day before he left for overseas. He wore long beige ‘Out of Africa' shorts. Slipslops dangled from his toes. His brown ochre skin had paled away from the African sun. It would be a different colour on the chart now. Muscles moulded his arms where they protruded from his white T-shirt. I didn't remember muscles.

As he took a sip of beer from the Amstel bottle next to him, I noticed a collection of leather bracelets on his wrist. And his hand, holding the green bottle, once too big, seemed to fit him perfectly.

‘It's politics, Tim,' replied Mum. ‘It's what happens in a general election.'

‘Thank goodness for my wife, Simon, or how else would we navigate the modern world?'

I shook my head at my parents. They had entered into a careful truce, most likely for the benefit of Marta and Simon, but at least they were talking.

Simon smiled. His hair was cut very short. His face had changed shape, like silly putty drawn out wider and longer. He put down his beer and scratched his chin. It was stubbly now.

‘Vivienne,' continued Dad, ‘I'm perfectly aware of what happens in a general election, all I'm saying is that it's nonsense. No one is going to deliver on those election promises, not even Mr Mandela. They are turning a vision of the future into an election campaign.'

‘Everything starts as a dream, Timothy,' replied Mum.

‘People wouldn't vote for anything less,' said Simon.

His voice was still soft, but it had lost its apologetic tone. Any trace of Leopold had disappeared somewhere between his white English-speaking school and the rest of the world. It was a nomad's accent.

‘We are impatient, we have waited too long,' he added.

We! I wanted to laugh. You can't do that, Simon, you can't spend five years benefitting from a white education and travel around Europe on a white-sponsored scholarship and call yourself a comrade. As I turned, he stopped talking and looked directly at me. I swallowed, my face burning. He'd known I was there all along.

With no choice, I marched outside.

Mum looked up. ‘Meg! Look who's here!'

‘Do you want a little wine Meggie?' asked Dad, getting up to fetch a glass.

‘Maybe not,' said Mum, ‘it's a school night.'

‘She's not going to drink the whole bottle,' laughed Dad and turned to me, ‘are you?'

‘I don't want any wine,' I snapped. My parents only offered us wine on special occasions. This was not a special occasion.

‘Have you said hello to Simon?' said Mum

I closed my eyes and bit back the desire to scream. After a laboured breath, I opened them again and with a flicker of a glance at him, said, ‘You're back.'

He smiled, leaned his head to one side. ‘You've got so big!'

Oh my dear God. Was that all he could think of to say?

‘You can't tell a girl she's “big”, Simon!' said Mum in her most severe tone. ‘A comment like that will have her eating nothing but lettuce leaves!'

‘No it won't,' I said, pulling a face.

Mum laughed.

‘You're gorgeous, Meg,' said Dad. ‘You'll always be my princess,' he continued, laughing at his own joke, ‘no matter how big you get.'

I couldn't stand it any longer. ‘I'll see you at supper,' I said and fled.

Back in my room, I closed the door and leaned heavily against it. My breath came in gasps. My heart was pushing up at my shoulder blades and my stomach had plummeted, punching down on my sitting bones. Left behind in that space was both a deep hollowness and an intense pressure. Perhaps it was the beginnings of a heart attack, or some kind of seizure. I threw myself onto my bed but caught the wall with the back of my head, which sent a pain as sharp as a knife-edge into my skull, ‘Aargh!' I shouted.

Beth burst through the door. ‘Simon's here!'

I looked away, rubbing my head and blinking away the tears.

‘Why are you crying?'

‘I'm not! I hit my head against the wall.'

‘Only mental people hit their heads against the wall.'

I rolled my eyes and continued rubbing my head.

But Beth wanted a rise. ‘I'm going to tell Simon you've gone mental, and you're sitting in your room banging your head against the wall and crying.'

‘OK, I'm mental. Go away, Beth, I beg you.'

Beth hesitated. ‘Only if I get to sit next to Simon at supper.'

‘Sure,' I muttered, ‘No prob-le-mo.'

On the way to the dining room I found Marta in the kitchen.

‘Why are you still here?' I asked. Marta was usually home by late afternoon.

‘Have you washed your hands?' she asked in reply, a question she'd not asked me in ten years. I stared at her, wondering if perhaps everyone was going mental. Then I remembered – her boy, back from the moon, was sitting outside drinking a beer with my parents. I wasn't the only one feeling uncomfortable that night.

‘Take this.' Marta placed the breadboard with a loaf and the butter into my hands.

‘Marta's still here,' I said accusatorily at Mum as I sat down. Simon sat opposite me, next to Beth. Back in his old place.

Mum, half rising, called: ‘Marta?'

‘On my way, Miss Viv,' Marta appeared in the doorway in her street clothes, clutching her ‘Duty Free' shopping bag.

The next second got stuck on itself, and the perspective in the room blurred so that Marta, standing in the doorway seemed shrunken, much smaller than normal, whereas Simon, looking across the room at his mother from his seat at the table, appeared much too tall. He looked like a man; as though he didn't belong to her. But the moment passed, and time speeded up again to make up for its glitch and Mum said, ‘Why don't you join us for supper, Marta?' and for a moment Marta hesitated, then turned to Mum.

‘Thank you, Miss Viv, but I am expected at the prayer meeting.'

‘If you're sure,' said Mum.

Simon remembered himself, and jumped up, saying: ‘Let me walk you home, Ma,' and reached out to take her bag.

‘Gracious child, don't be silly!' Marta smacked Simon's hand away, although now she had to look up to scold her son. She turned, and raised her hand to the rest of us in greeting. As she disappeared back into the kitchen, she seemed to favour her right hip in a way she hadn't done before.

I watched Mum watching Marta. A shadow of guilt passed across her face.

Dad dished out mutton curry and rice. The table seemed shrunken tonight, making elbows and hands too close together. Under the table I could sense Simon's leg jigging up and down though his face and upper body remained perfectly still.

‘There's no air in this room,' I said, and got up to open the window. The evening outside was a riot of noise – the crickets and cicadas and birds were going wild in response to an electric static in the air. ‘Storm's coming,' I said.

‘What's that?' called Dad.

‘Nothing,' I muttered and returned to my seat.

Mum demanded a blow-by-blow account of Simon's travels. Simon looked at both her and Dad as he spoke, but he was wasting his time – Dad hated Europe. I faced my plate of curry. I was determined to eat everything, despite being so big, but the tender meat scraped and cut into the back of my throat. I was sickened by the way Simon talked as casually about Covent Garden and the Houses of Parliament as I might a visit to the Co Op. And the grimy backpackers he stayed at in Earls Court – could it be the same one that Mum's old Australian boyfriend had stayed in twenty zillion years ago, the one with the green front door? Yes? Hilarious! Simon began to talk about the Eurostar, which was recently finished, and how odd it would be to know you were actually travelling under the sea.

Beth, who had maintained a dignified silence until that point, dropped her fork and squealed, ‘Under the sea?'

‘Imagine!' said Mum.

Simon glanced at me, but I was ready with a look that said, ‘I'm fifteen years old, Simon. I don't care about a shitty little tunnel under the sea.' At least I hope it did.

‘But that's insane!' Beth said, and spurred on by the laughter, continued, ‘It's mental!' and flashed a look at me.

They moved on to Rome and the Vatican City and the plundered treasures of the ancient world, before landing in Paris. Mum had a thing about Paris. She claimed that after Leopold, Paris was her next choice for a home.

Simon took a sip of beer and smiled. ‘I had a moment, as I stared up at the Eiffel Tower. I had woken up that day with the thought, “Today I will see one of the most famous landmarks in the world!” and there it was, exactly the same as in the pictures and the movies,' he laughed, ‘maybe a bit smaller.'

I looked up – that was the first interesting thing he had said.

‘And I thought, why am I spending six months of my life travelling around a few countries, visiting places that I have been taught about, only to say “I've seen it!'' Wouldn't it be better to spend six months exploring somewhere you knew nothing about? Wouldn't you learn so much more?'

Dad grunted.

But Mum wouldn't hear of it: ‘You have to see Paris! You have to feel the
age
of Europe. You don't find that here.'

‘Vivienne!' said Dad.

‘I know this is the cradle of mankind and all that,' said Mum, ‘but Europe is a different kind of old. Pass me some more wine,' she added, a sign she was losing confidence in her own argument.

As Dad passed the wine along the table, she said, ‘You stayed in the Latin Quarter. How did you find your way there?'

‘I had a good  …  guide,' Simon answered with a little laugh.

A clap of laughter from Dad and Mum exclaimed, ‘Simon, you devil!'

‘What?' demanded Beth.

‘Never mind,' said Mum. But Dad leaned over and whispered into her ear.

‘Ooh la la!' shouted Beth and and made kissing noises.

‘Simon, are you blushing?' asked Mum, in her maddening voice.

‘Us coloureds don't blush, you know that!' he smiled.

My fork clattered to the floor. I bent to collect it, cursing my clumsy self. Simon had seemed to pick a new girlfriend each time he came home for the holidays. They'd hang about town looking bored. It annoyed me as I felt stupid walking past them. ‘Why don't you take your girlfriend swimming?' I'd asked him one day.

‘She can't.'

‘So teach her.'

‘Nah,' he replied, bored by the thought, bored by me.

‘You must have done the Louvre?' Mum and Simon were now speaking a language that excluded everyone else at the table.

Simon nodded and smiled. ‘All those pictures of white people in ancient clothes, like one big fancy dress. A big fancy dress party that not one single black person was invited to.'

‘Obviously, ‘ I said, without thinking. ‘It's Europe. What did you expect?'

Simon wiped his mouth with his napkin and looked at me. ‘I suppose what I didn't expect was how insignificant, how expendable Africa was to the rest of the world.'

‘Were there paintings of  … 
Chinese
people in the gallery?' I asked.

‘Ja,' replied Simon.

‘Yes, of course,' said Mum with a glance in my direction, ‘All that wonderful Chinese art.'

How was I supposed to know that?

Dad looked at Simon. ‘Africa wasn't expendable. It was propping up a wealthy Europe with crops and exotic exports and –'

‘Slaves,' said Simon.

There was a pause in the conversation as Simon ate his food. The sharp definition of the muscles on his upper arm made me think that a cross-section of his body would be a perfect example to study in biology.

‘It was an incredible nine months,' he said at last. ‘The culture, hearing French being spoken by French people, seeing Italians riding scooters, ancient ruins in Rome, tasting proper coffee  … '