Long Lies the Shadow (27 page)

He crouches over her, trying to stem the bleeding.

“Gabe,” says Gin, and her lips, dry with effort, form a faint smile. Her breath comes in short gasps. Then her eyes widen and leaning in close, Nick can hear her whisper, “Leila.”

Like a message
.

He turns swiftly, sees the woman behind him. His left arm is raised against her as he tries to stand. The knife slices across the back of his forearm, and he stumbles back, losing his balance on the
slippery
floor. Leila’s scream is a lost wail. His elbow smashes down on the tiled kitchen floor, pain shoots into his right shoulder, his right clavicle.

Afterwards he will wonder why Manyanga disobeyed his order to sit, to stay. He will never know what made his dog leave her post outside, what made her race through the open back door, attacking his attacker.

Down on the floor, he watches Manyanga leap, teeth bared in a snarl, for Leila’s right arm. She turns as the dog jumps, the knife held straight in front of her, stiffly, and Nick hears his own shout as the blade slices across his dog’s chest, the fur splitting in a thin red line. Manyanga’s snarl becomes a howl, yet her trajectory is such that her open jaws clamp down, not on Leila’s arm now, but her throat.

Woman and dog fall together to the floor and he cannot
distinguish
one’s rasping breath from the other.

He tries to rise, his shoulder searing in agony, but his feet slip again on the pink foam that has spewed from Gin’s lung and he
lands on his side, beside her. Gin’s eyes are closed now. She looks asleep, he thinks distractedly.

He manages to get to his knees. Holding his right arm with his left hand, bleeding copiously from the flesh wound on his forearm, he shuffles over to where Leila and Manyanga lie entangled on the floor.

Leila is dead. He can see the woman’s vacant eyes fixed on a point beyond the room.

Manyanga whimpers as he reaches her, she pants rapidly.

He sits on the kitchen floor. On tiles stained red with blood. He sits on the floor and cradles his dying dog in his arms.
Manyanga. Manyanga, my beautiful girl
.

Sunlight slices through slatted blinds.

Kneeling on the cold grass, Viv tips the box of ashes onto the ground. She stares at them for a moment, watches the breeze start to touch them, lift them. Suddenly she wants to sob, to lay her cheek against the hard soil and feel the bristle of grass scrape against her face. Instead she sinks her hands into the ash, expecting it to feel grittier than it does. She feels only the soft disintegration beneath her fingers as she mixes it into the dusty earth, as she rubs the blood and bone of her friend back into the land.

You’re safe now Gin, the mountain will hold you. I have put you safely here in its arms and it will watch over you forever.

Hot tears drop onto her hands as she works. Finally, she sits back, looks at her dirtied hands, wipes them on the moist grass, the brown rock.
You’re home now, Gin.

She takes out her cigarettes and lights one. She looks out across to Robben Island, watches a yacht on the horizon, white sails flung to the wind.

Later, she thinks, she will drive past vibrant Greenpoint, into Seapoint, through its somewhat dishevelled façade, its high
European
buildings, its necessarily narrow lanes, hugging the rugged coast, until the bay opens up before her, palm trees lining the
promenade
, until the road swings up and out towards his house. She will drive towards his house on the steep cliffs above the African ocean.

I will go and see Nick, Gin, and whatever happens, I promise you I will not wonder what might have been.

The end of her cigarette glows the same colour as the sunset. The
peach sky has ruddied to a bruised and bloodied crimson,
sedimenting
slowly to the sea.

Viv draws on her cigarette. She tucks her jersey around her
shoulders
, sits back cross-legged on the mountain.

Watching the sun ebb away.

Waiting for the long shadows to journey into night.

Sincerest thanks to the following people:

This novel was written over a number of years while attending the Complete Creative Writing Course in London. The insight, inspiration, enthusiasm, guidance, feedback, and faith of the tutors and fellow students proved invaluable.

GERDA PEARCE
was born in Mthatha, South Africa, at the edge of the Drakensberg mountains. Much of her childhood was spent on the Transkei’s Wild Coast. She was educated in the Eastern Cape, and at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, graduating in Pharmacy. Work at a children’s hospital in Cape Town was followed by time at mission hospitals in Rundu and elsewhere along the Caprivi in the Okavango, Namibia. Not wishing to live under the apartheid regime, she emigrated to Britain. She studied and then practised as an osteopath in London before becoming a writer and editor. She lives in Notting Hill with an Englishman and two cats.
Long Lies the Shadow
is her first novel.