‘Hello, Stephen.’
‘Hello,’ he says, and at last tears loose from the jamb, comes staggering across the floor towards me. He sits in the chair beside me, his knee bumping against mine. He pulls it away.
Through the five interminable hours of travel, I have thought of a great many things to ask or say. Bitter accusations filled my head. But now I find there is nothing to discuss. Perhaps we are finally tired, he and I, after the tedious months gone by. Perhaps we have realised that words are for the young and eager.
When we do, eventually, talk, it is about matters of no consequence.
‘The drive . . . ?’ he says, staring ahead of him, out of the window.
‘Was fine,’ I say.
‘Not too hot?’
‘Earlier. Earlier it was quite hot. But not later.’
‘Ah,’ he says, musing. Then: ‘David is …?’
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘He looks fine.’
‘Ah. I’m pleased to hear that. I am.’
We look down now at our feet, those interesting objects on the floor. It has become my turn to speak.
‘Who . . . ?’ I begin, but my voice goes out in the darkness like a match.
He clears his throat. ‘Gloria,’ he says. ‘MacIvor. From the school.’
I remember the woman. She is the secretary and has an office next to Stephen’s. Though I’ve seen her no more than a dozen times, she comes vaguely to me now: a plump, floury shape, sticky red hair pinned up behind. A necklace of fake pearls, running across her throat like a zip. Her eyelids are blue.
‘Gloria . . .’ I murmur and, for no reason, laugh.
Stephen is hurt. ‘What’s funny?’
‘Nothing,’ I say, and we sit quietly together again.
We have not been this close since our courtship began. Indeed, it is as if we are younger by eleven years and he is visiting me at home, with my mother in the kitchen next door, making supper. I am tempted to stretch out a hand and touch him on the knee.
Instead I stand up. ‘What now?’ I say, crossing to the window as casually as if we’re discussing the housework. The moon is up, and for a moment I entertain the absurd recognition that it’s the same moon that appears each day, a lifeless white eye watching our lives.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘What now?’
I shrug but I don’t turn round. I’d imagined it would be worse than this, somehow. I’d imagined that ten years would make an awful racket and thunder when they finally tore apart. But it’s not the case at all. They fall from us gently, those years, slipping off our shoulders like sin and melting into the dark.
‘Well,’ I say. ‘The house. Us.’
He also stands and moves beside me. He puts his arm about me. It rests on my shoulders as a heavy weight. Once again there is a silence; and it seems now that the day has passed like this, in gusts of time in which there is no sound.
‘Oh, Stephen,’ I say. ‘How could . . .’
I don’t finish. I don’t have the energy. This is the closest I’ve come to bursting into tears. If I do, I know, I’ll fall into his arms and tear at his face with my nails. There’ll be no stopping me.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘You haven’t been here. The house is so empty, you can see. I don’t know.’
‘Ohh . . .’
‘We can’t seem to agree anymore. On anything. There’s a . . . a disagreement between us.’
I am listening.
‘I need somebody,’ he says. ‘I can’t live alone.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ I say, and it’s true. I have always assumed, I suppose, that Stephen could manage quite well without me. I have regarded myself as an intrusion in his life, though perhaps a necessary one.
I take a breath. ‘Stephen,’ I say. ‘Listen to me. This will be over soon.’ Echoing his words said over and over, too often, to me. ‘And things will be normal again. We’ll all come back to our senses. We haven’t been ourselves, Stephen, this last while.’
He says nothing. My voice tapers off, becomes a whisper.
‘Stephen.’
The moon is inching up the sky. It casts a light into the room in which we stand. I think of her, this Gloria MacIvor, with her pasty skin and her hair dyed red.
Then I stand on tiptoe and kiss Stephen on the cheek, a contact as dry and light as a pressed flower. He doesn’t flinch. I go out the door and across the stoep to the grass. My car is round the corner. As I walk towards it, my mother is there, waving her torch like a demented firefly. ‘Here,’ she hisses. ‘Here, here!’
‘Mother,’ I say. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Be careful,’ she tells me. She draws me close, holding my arm. In the shadow of the house we huddle like assassins.
‘Him,’ she says, pointing back to where Stephen stands, unmoving. ‘He’s trying to poison you.’
I kiss her too, and go to my car. I start up and drive back round the house, headlights jogging on the bumpy lawn. When I come to the gate I have to get out to open it. I leave it open behind me and set out again on the long drive back to the city.
7
It seems our parting is to be a gentle affair. After this we do not speak on the phone every night. Stephen does call from time to time, but only to ask after David. Linda, I think, guesses what has happened, but doesn’t let on. She fusses over me more than ever, plying me with cups of tea and asking if the business at home went well. Yes, I tell her, it all went fine. I leave it at that. But I know even then that I can no longer remain here.
That Friday, shortly before Stephen is due to arrive, I take the plunge. I decide to tell Linda the whole story; there seems no sense in lying. She listens, enthralled, touching at her face now and then with those bloodless nails. When I am done, she begins to cry: a single majestic tear trickles dramatically down her cheek. ‘You poor dear,’ she says, over and over, her high thin voice scratching like an old record. ‘You can’t go. You mustn’t go. It’s he who must go, the bastard . . . bastard . . .’
Her voice sighs out. It’s odd to hear Stephen described that way: a bastard. The name strikes no chords in me. I remove Linda’s hand from my arm, I give her a tissue. My bags are packed; time is short; my mind is made up. I thank them both.
I book in that night at a cheap hotel in town. This, the latest in the series of strange rooms to shelter me, is more depressing than any I have seen. It’s a dark cell, overshadowed by a glass-topped wall too close outside. There is a single bed with a brown cover. The carpet is brown. The curtains are brown.
I want to cry, but can’t. Tears have become more difficult for me of late, requiring too much effort. But a crack has opened in me somewhere as I sit listlessly on the bed and stare, unseeing, at the smoky square of the television set and the figures moving on it. The crack inside me widens. It’s the first night I’ve spent alone, utterly alone, in my life. There are people who spend fifty years in this way. How do they keep on? How do they survive?
In the morning I phone Stephen at Linda’s flat and we agree to meet for coffee nearby. It’s been only a week since I saw him last, but I study him as someone long lost. He’s getting old; there are lines in his skin. At his temples and in his moustache I discover small silver hairs are growing.
We talk. We agree that David must be told and Stephen undertakes to do so. There are, of course, other matters: a course of action must be decided on. I am all for putting this off, however, till things have eased. I see no reason for haste. It is Stephen who’s in a hurry, who wants to talk about moving out of the house.
‘But why?’ I say. ‘Can’t it wait?’
‘I’m afraid it can’t.’ He sounds apologetic. ‘Gloria, you see, she doesn’t want . . .’
At the mention of her name, I feel slightly queasy. He speaks of her with warmth, as one who knows her. I rack my brains for an insight to this woman, some clue to her nature or her mind, but can come up only with that vague external picture I first recalled. Flour and dye. I smile tightly and say, ‘Of course.’
>
He tells me he would like to move his things from the house next week. He and Gloria are moving into a flat in town, close to where he used to stay, would you believe it … He smiles at the thought. I wonder if he ever, when we first met, spoke of me this way. Anger suddenly stabs through me like a knife in the back.
‘How can you be so sure you’re not making a mistake?’
He looks surprised at my snarl. ‘I’m not,’ he says seriously, wiping at his moustache with a serviette. ‘No one can ever be sure they’re not mistaken. That doesn’t stop anyone from acting.’
‘Oh,’ I cry, and the table lurches at my fury. ‘You make me so angry, you do. How can you speak this way? This isn’t you, you don’t think like this …’
‘It’s Gloria,’ he tells me. ‘She’s opened up another side of me –’
I laugh at him, braying in my anguish. People in the coffee-shop are glancing at us from behind their cups. Unabashed, I go on: ‘She has done nothing! If anything has happened to you it’s because of me, do you hear? Me!’
He blinks at me, his mouth open. I shake my head, trying to clear it of the sight of him and to jolt my eyes into focus. There is coffee on the surface of the table, spreading in long ungainly fingers towards him. ‘There’s no need …’ he begins, but trails off in exasperation.
He sighs and reaches for another serviette.
I have surprised myself. I had no idea such forces were in me, such jealousy and desperation. But the truth of my words lingers in my head: I am also, yes, I am also proud to have exacted the passion from this man that has been my due for so long.
It is the last meeting I have with Stephen for some time, having stalked from the coffee-shop while he called after me. It takes me many hours to calm down, but, even then, I retain a kind of residual pride in my solitary state, my drab brown room. I visit the hospital only in the afternoon, when Stephen has been and gone. He has, apparently, discussed the matter with David, who seems unaffected by the news.
‘Will I still see him?’
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Over weekends and for holidays. That sort of thing. He isn’t going far, you know, just into town.’
‘Do you hate him?’
‘Of course not,’ I say. ‘Why should I hate him?’ I wonder whether Stephen has explained to David about Gloria MacIvor, with whom he will be living.
‘It’ll just be us,’ says David, ‘in the whole big house. You and me.’
‘And your grandmother,’ I whisper, seeing, as he does, the deserted homestead and we three wandering in it. I try to laugh.
That night I write a letter to Stephen in which I lay out my demands. What has happened, I assert, is entirely his responsibility and, if he wants a divorce, he must obtain it himself. I don’t care what grounds he finds, but I have no wish to set foot in court. The house is mine, with everything in it that first belonged to me. I expect money from him each month. I want to keep my car. And David, should he live, is to stay with me.
Should he live. I add this, I confess, with deliberate intent, to remind him of what is actually taking place. We have somehow, both of us, forgotten the tragedy unfolding in our midst. It is now only with rage that I am able to think of the part Stephen has had to play.
It is terrible, I know, but I try to win David over. ‘Aren’t you sad,’ I ask him, ‘because he doesn’t visit you?’
‘He does visit.’
‘But when? I’m here every day, in the morning and the afternoon. Doesn’t it make you angry that he comes only for a while every two weeks or so?’
He considers. ‘No.’
‘But you must,’ I persist, ‘you must want to see him more than that.’
‘No,’ he says, plucking at the sheet. He’s uneasy; he can sense that I’m driving at something he doesn’t understand.
‘Does he ever talk to you,’ I want to know, ‘about me?’
‘No.’
‘Never? Does he never mention me? I can’t believe that.’
‘No,’ he says.
I become angry at this stubbornness, but I hold my tongue. There is a great deal more I could say to David, there are many matters on which I could take him up. But I know, even as I question him, that I’m being unfair. It’s not his fault that any of this has happened.
David, it would seem, is responding to the treatment.
During one of the many sessions I have with Professor Terry at this time, he tells me that there has been significant progress in his recovery. For reasons even the professor can’t explain, the extent of the disease has lessened. I understand little of what the professor has to say. All his talk of cell counts is meaningless to me. But there are other signs, small indications of healing that I perceive.
They have removed, for one, the drip from David’s arm. The hole in his throat has closed enough for him to eat solid food. And he is allowed to leave the bed. I must teach him to use his feet. An infant once more, he staggers and reels on thin white legs. I hold his arm. But it’s not long before he can balance without the support of the wall. We walk each day, up and down the passage. As he grows stronger, we go farther afield. I take him downstairs. We stroll in the garden, a bizarre unsuited pair, leaning on each other as people do in age.
Professor Terry is pleased, but he senses my relief and feels obliged to give warning. ‘I don’t want you to expect anything,’ he says.
‘No.’
‘I shall keep you informed.’
We are civil with each other. I know he detects in me the resentment I have for him and his colleagues who have, with their needles, torn open our lives.
That next weekend I again make the long trip home. Stephen has indeed removed from the house all that be -longed to him. I find myself walking through the rooms, my mother at my side, looking over the furniture, the ornaments, the pictures, checking that nothing I own is missing. It is a strange feeling to be conscious of possessions in this way. As we go, my mother keeps an inventory of her own.
‘The small white table,’ she says. ‘The vase on top … The picture of the man . . . The dresser . . . it was terrible,’ she says, dropping her voice. ‘They came, they looked around, they took what they wanted. If it hadn’t been for me, they would’ve taken everything.’
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘It’s all right, my darling. Sammy helped too. He helped me to stop them.’
I worry for her now, this crazy old woman, but it would seem that Stephen continues to do his duty by her: the kitchen is stocked up. There are dirty plates in the sink. Salome and Moses still come in daily: I have explained to them the new state of things. But still I’m troubled by the thought of the house and its lands under the rule of madness. I explain carefully to the servants that they are not to take orders from her, that they are to see to the smooth running of affairs. ‘Soon,’ I tell them, ‘I will be back.’ They stare at me as I speak, watching from beneath their noncommittal eyelids. They do not trade in expression, these two; silent and grim, they go about their business and observe. I wonder if they have seen what I can only imagine: Gloria MacIvor being helped from the car by Stephen, being shown about these now bare rooms over which I once held sway.
As the evening comes on, and the time for my departure with it, I light a fire in the grate and sit with my mother on the floor. The flames colour our faces. This is perhaps the closest and the quietest we have been, she and I, since I was young. Perhaps there have been evenings I can’t remember when we sat this way, mother and daughter, while the darkness gathered outside.
‘Mother,’ I say. ‘Are you happy? In your head, are you happy?’
This is something I truly want to know. In the convoluted speculations that are her version of the world, she may find a kind of peace denied to me. But she doesn’t understand: she nods to herself and laughs.
I leave her then, after putting out the fire: a sad old woman, unaware of sadness and of age, muttering to herself before an ash-choked grate. Once again I must drive back to the city: a road fiv
e hours long, which I am already used to travelling.
(That is our affliction, if you like. There is nothing in the world, nothing at all, which we cannot, in the end, come to accept.)
8
Stephen divorces me a month later in the high court in the city. He comes to the hospital afterwards, where I am reading to David. He stands at the foot of the bed and we all three look questioningly at each other, as if there’s something that must be said. But, in the end, it is only formalities we must dispense with: Stephen gives me his set of keys, which open every door to the property at home. He has given the spare ones, he explains, to Mrs de Jager on the neighbouring farm. She will come in each day to look around and check on my mother. He’ll still go by when he can, but he lives in town now …
I tell him that I understand.
There are one or two other things, he adds, shifting from foot to foot. I wait expectantly, looking at this tall lean man with bristling black moustache to whom, it appears, I was once married. I see in him, more and more, the side to his nature that Gloria MacIvor has indeed brought out, and wonder if I could have loved him this way. He is less of a headmaster now, and more of a magician; but I have no doubt that, in a month or two, the ink will blot the edges of his hands again, the chalk dust will settle in his hair. When he has grown used to his life once more, he will become the kind of man he was. He may even, who knows, miss me from time to time. But Gloria MacIvor, consigned to facelessness by me, will care for him and cater to his needs. He will have what he has always, in his heart, desired: the little flat in town, bridge parties with friends, and a woman who wears colour in her face.
‘You must,’ he says, ‘come and visit us sometime. I would like to give you my address. If I may.’
I say nothing, which he takes to be consent. He hands me a scrap of paper on which he has already printed, in neat black letters, the name of the place in which he lives. I accept this from him. I put it in my bag.
Small Circle of Beings Page 6