You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town (24 page)

Her mouth purses as she hauls up the old grievances for which I have no new palliatives. Instead I pick up the bunch of proteas that I had dropped with my rucksack against the wall. I hand the flowers to her and wonder how I hid my revulsion when Aunt Cissie presented them to me at the airport.

‘Welcome home to South Africa.' And in my arms the national blooms rested fondly while she turned to the others, the semi-circle of relatives moving closer. ‘From all of us. You see everybody's here to meet the naughty girl.'

‘And Eddie,' I exclaimed awkwardly as I recognised the youngest uncle now pot-bellied and grey.

‘Ag no man, you didn't play marbles together. Don't come here with disrespectful foreign ways. It's your Uncle Eddie,' Aunt Cissie reprimanded. ‘And Eddie,' she added, ‘you must find all the children. They'll be running all over the place like chickens.'

‘Can the new auntie ride in our car?' asked a little girl tugging at Aunt Cissie's skirt.

‘No man, don't be so stupid, she's riding with me and then we all come to my house for something nice to eat. Did your mammie bring some roeties?'

I rubbed the little girl's head but a tough protea had pierced the cellophane and scratched her cheek which she rubbed self-pityingly.

‘Come get your baggage now,' and as we waited Aunt Cissie explained. ‘Your mother's a funny old girl, you know. She just wouldn't come to the airport and I explained to her the whole family must be there. Doesn't want to have anything to do with us now, don't ask me why, jus turned against us jus like that. Doesn't talk, not that she ever said much, but she said, right there at your father's funeral – pity you couldn't get here in time – well, she said, “Now you can all leave me alone,” and when Boeta Danie said, “Ag man sister you musn't talk so, we've all had grief and the Good Lord knows who to take and who to leave,” well you wouldn't guess what she said' . . . and Aunt Cissie's eyes roved incredulously about my person as if a good look would offer an explanation . . . ‘she said plainly, jus like
that, “Danie,” jus dropped the Boeta there and then in front of everybody, she said . . . and I don't know how to say it because I've always had a tender place in my heart for your mother, such a lovely shy girl she was . . .'

‘Really?' I interrupted. I could not imagine her being described as shy.

‘Oh yes, quite shy, a real lady. I remember when your father wrote home to ask for permission to marry, we were so worried. A Griqua girl, you know, and it was such a surprise when he brought your mother, such nice English she spoke and good features and a nice figure also.'

Again her eyes took in my figure so that she was moved to add in parenthesis, ‘I'll get you a nice step-in. We get good ones here with the long leg, you know, gives you a nice firm hip-line. You must look after yourself man; you won't get a husband if you let yourself go like this.'

Distracted from her story she leaned over to examine the large ornate label of a bag bobbing by on the moving belt.

‘That's not mine,' I said.

‘I know. I can mos see it says Mev. H.J. Groenewald,' she retorted. Then, appreciatively as she allowed the bag to carry drunkenly along, ‘But that's now something else hey. Very nice. There's nothing wrong in admiring something nice man. I'm not shy and there's no Apartheid at the airport. You spend all that time overseas and you still afraid of Boers.' She shook her head reproachfully.

‘I must go to the lavatory,' I announced.

‘OK. I'll go with hey.'

And from the next closet her words rose above the sound of abundant pee gushing against the enamel of the bowl, drowning my own failure to produce even a trickle.

‘I made a nice pot of beans and samp, not grand of course but something to remind you you're home. Stamp-en-stoot
we used to call it on the farm,' and her clear nostalgic laughter vibrated against the bowl.

‘Yes,' I shouted, ‘funny, but I could actually smell beans and samp hovering just above the petrol fumes in the streets of London.'

I thought of how you walk along worrying about being late, or early, or wondering where to have lunch, when your nose twitches with a teasing smell and you're transported to a place so specific and the power of the smell summons the light of that day when the folds of a dress draped the brick wall and your hands twisted anxiously, Is she my friend, truly my friend?

While Aunt Cissie chattered about how vile London was, a terrible place where people slept under the arches in newspapers and brushed the pigeonshit off their brows in the mornings. Funny how Europeans could sink so low. And the Coloured people from the West Indies just fighting on the streets, killing each other and still wearing their doekies from back home. Really, as if there weren't hairdressers in London. She had seen it all on TV. Through the door I watched the patent-leather shoes shift under the heaving and struggling of flesh packed into corsets.

‘Do they show the riots here in South Africa on TV?'

‘Ag, don't you start with politics now,' she laughed, ‘but I got a new TV you know.'

We opened our doors simultaneously and with the aid of flushing water she drew me back, ‘Yes, your father's funeral was a business.'

‘What did Mamma say?'

‘Man, you mustn't take notice of what she says. I always say that half the time people don't know what they talking about and blood is thicker than water so you jus do your duty hey.'

‘Of course Auntie. Doing my duty is precisely why I'm here.' It is not often that I can afford the luxury of telling my family the truth.

‘But what did she say?' I persisted.

‘She said she didn't want to see you. That you've caused her enough trouble and you shouldn't bother to go up to Namaqualand to see her. And I said, “Yes Hannah it's no way for a daughter to behave but her place is with you now.”' Biting her lip she added, ‘You mustn't take any notice. I wasn't going to say any of this to you, but seeing that you asked . . . Don't worry man, I'm going with you. We'll drive up tomorrow.'

‘I meant what did she say to Uncle Danie?'

‘Oh, she said to him, “Danie,” jus like that, dropped the Boeta right there in the graveyard in front of everyone, she said, “He's dead now and I'm not your sister so I hope you Shentons will leave me alone.” Man, a person don't know what to do.'

Aunt Cissie frowned.

‘She was always so nice with us you know, such a sweet person, I jus don't understand, unless . . .' and she tapped her temple, ‘unless your father's death jus went to her head. Yes,' she sighed, as I lifted my rucksack from the luggage belt, ‘it never rains but pours; still, every cloud has a silver lining,' and so she dipped liberally into her sack of homilies and sowed them across the arc of attentive relatives.

‘It's in the ears of the young,' she concluded, ‘that these thoughts must sprout.'

She has never seemed more in control than at this moment when she stares deep into the fluffy centres of the proteas on her lap. Then she takes the flowers still in their cellophane wrapping and leans them heads down like a
broom against the chair. She allows her hand to fly to the small of her back where the wood cuts.

‘Shall I get you a comfortable chair? There's a wicker one by the stove which won't cut into your back like this.'

Her eyes rest on the eaves of the house where a swallow circles anxiously.

‘It won't of course look as good here in the red sand amongst the thornbushes,' I persist.

A curt ‘No.' But then the loose skin around her eyes creases into lines of suppressed laughter and she levers herself expertly out of the chair.

‘No, it won't, but it's getting cool and we should go inside. The chair goes on the stoep,' and her overseer's finger points to the place next to a tub of geraniums. The chair is heavy. It is impossible to carry it without bruising the shins. I struggle along to the unpolished square of red stoep that clearly indicates the permanence of its place, and marvel at the extravagance of her gesture.

She moves busily about the kitchen, bringing from the pantry and out of the oven pots in advanced stages of preparation. Only the peas remain to be shelled but I am not allowed to help.

‘So they were all at the airport hey?'

‘Not all, I suppose; really I don't know who some of them are. Neighbours for all I know,' I reply guardedly.

‘No you wouldn't after all these years. I don't suppose you know the young ones at all; but then they probably weren't there. Have better things to do than hang about airports. Your Aunt Cissie wouldn't have said anything about them . . . Hetty and Cheryl and Willie's Clint. They'll be at the political meetings, all UDF people. Playing with fire, that's what they're doing. Don't care a damn about the expensive education their parents have sacrificed for.'

Her words are the ghostly echo of years ago when I stuffed my plaits into my ears and the sour guilt rose dyspeptically in my throat. I swallow, and pressing my back against the cupboard for support I sneer, ‘Such a poor investment children are. No returns, no compound interest, not a cent's worth of gratitude. You'd think gratitude were inversely proportionate to the sacrifice of parents. I can't imagine why people have children.'

She turns from the stove, her hands gripping the handles of a pot, and says slowly, at one with the steam pumping out the truth,

‘My mother said it was a mistake when I brought you up to speak English. Said people spoke English just to be disrespectful to their elders, to You and Your them about. And that is precisely what you do. Now you use the very language against me that I've stubbed my tongue on trying to teach you it. No respect! Use your English as a catapult!'

I fear for her wrists but she places the pot back on the stove and keeps her back turned. I will not be drawn into further battle. For years we have shunted between understanding and failure and I the Caliban will always be at fault. While she stirs ponderously, I say, ‘My stories are going to be published next month. As a book I mean.'

She sinks into the wicker chair, her face red with steam and rage.

‘Stories,' she shouts, ‘you call them stories? I wouldn't spend a second gossiping about things like that. Dreary little things in which nothing happens, except . . . except . . .' and it is the unspeakable which makes her shut her eyes for a moment. Then more calmly, ‘Cheryl sent me the magazine from Joburg, two, three of them. A disgrace. I'm only grateful that it's not a Cape Town book. Not that one could trust Cheryl to keep anything to herself.'

‘But they're only stories. Made up. Everyone knows it's not real, not the truth.'

‘But you've used the real. If I can recognise places and people, so can others, and if you want to play around like that why don't you have the courage to tell the whole truth? Ask me for stories with neat endings and you won't have to invent my death. What do you know about things, about people, this place where you were born? About your ancestors who roamed these hills? You left. Remember?' She drops her head and her voice is barely audible.

‘To write from under your mother's skirts, to shout at the world that it's all right to kill God's unborn child! You've killed me over and over so it was quite unnecessary to invent my death. Do people ever do anything decent with their education?'

Slumped in her chair she ignores the smell of burning food so that I rescue the potatoes and baste the meat.

‘We must eat,' she sighs. ‘Tomorrow will be exhausting. What did you have at Cissie's last night?'

‘Bobotie and sweet potato and stamp-en-stoot. They were trying to watch the television at the same time so I had the watermelon virtually to myself.'

She jumps up to take the wooden spoon from me. We eat in silence the mutton and sousboontjies until she says that she managed to save some prickly pears. I cannot tell whether her voice is tinged with bitterness or pride at her resourcefulness. She has slowed down the ripening by shading the fruit with castor-oil leaves, floppy hats on the warts of great bristling blades. The flesh is nevertheless the colour of burnt earth, a searing sweetness that melts immediately so that the pips are left swirling like gravel in my mouth. I have forgotten how to peel the fruit without perforating my fingers with invisible thorns.

Mamma watches me eat, her own knife and fork long since resting sedately on the plate of opaque white glass. Her finger taps the posy of pink roses on the clean rim and I am reminded of the modesty of her portion.

‘Tomorrow,' she announces, ‘we'll go on a trip to the Gifberge.'

I swallow the mouthful of pips and she says anxiously, ‘You can drive, can't you?' Her eyes are fixed on me, ready to counter the lie that will attempt to thwart her and I think wearily of the long flight, the terrible drive from Cape Town in the heat.

‘Can't we go on Thursday? I'd like to spend a whole day in the house with the blinds drawn against the sun, reading the
Cape Times
.'

‘Plenty of time for that. No, we must go tomorrow. Your father promised, for years he promised, but I suppose he was scared of the pass. Men can't admit that sort of thing, scared of driving in the mountains, but he wouldn't teach me to drive. Always said my chest wasn't good enough. As if you need good lungs to drive.'