Leopold Blue

by Rosie Rowell

  Mum couldn’t let that lie, though.

  ‘But how is it for you, Marta, having a child back at home?’ she asked.

  I had brought my homework to the kitchen table. In the silence of my bedroom my mind kept jumping back to the river and the bankie sitting under the stone behind the chicken coop and the way Simon had leaned towards me and said karraboosh.

  Marta humphed.

  Mum took off her glasses and folded them on the table. ‘Have you heard from Angel?’

  I abandoned any pretence of studying.

  ‘Why, Miss Viv?’ replied Marta after a pause.

  ‘Her daughter must be getting big,’ Mum persisted. She leaned across the table with a querying look. Mum’s nosiness was up against Marta’s refusal to be drawn. The silent tussle continued until the hall clock struck a half-hour chime. Mum sat back in her chair.

  I smiled.

  But Mum was not finished. ‘You should enjoy Simon’s success, Marta. He’s a credit to you.’

  It seemed that Marta had not heard until she turned around. ‘What is there of me in that child?’ She pulled a yellow hankie from the pocket of her apron. ‘I thought it was the right thing to send him away, and Mister Tim so kind with the school fees and goeters[*].’ She shook her head. ‘My son has outgrown me. He is uncomfortable in his own home.’ She dabbed at her eyes. ‘I’ve lost my son as well as my daughter.’

  ‘No, Marta!’ Mum looked stricken. ‘You’re the reason Simon’s achieved what he has. Our children have to leave us behind. But nothing replaces a home. Soon enough, if we let them, they come back.’

  ‘Not me!’ I said. ‘When I leave Leopold I’m never coming back.’

  Mum smiled. Marta adjusted her doek[**], and stuffed her hankie back into her sleeve.

  ‘Simon could give you a hand with your studying,’ Mum said, ruining the pleasure I felt at making her laugh.

  ‘I’m perfectly capable of studying on my own, thank you very much.’

  ‘He could help you get that elusive “A”.’

  ‘The only reason I don’t get the “elusive A” is because you want it so badly,’ I snapped.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Mum.

  Mrs Franklin wanted to see me. Her office was situated in the original school building, the most attractive part of the school. It was separated from the secretaries’ office by a wide, sunny foyer. A pane of glass, the width of the wall, afforded the secretaries a clear view of anyone who entered Mrs Franklin’s office, but frustratingly for them, Mrs Franklin preferred them to keep their door shut.

  The foyer was cut off from the rest of the school by thick glass double doors. Girls weren’t allowed there unless summoned.

  Three armchairs hovered on the edges of a neat rug in the middle of the foyer. The chairs were tightly sprung and designed so that the backs were higher than the tallest father. I stood near the chairs, ignoring the secretaries’ curious glances. Perched above Mrs Franklin’s door was an owl, carved out of local sandstone. Its wings were raised, ready to swoop, its claws curled around a piece of cedar wood that bore the inscription: Vincit qui patitur – he who perseveres, conquers. On the opposite wall was a dark wooden board engraved in gold lettering with the names of the previous head girls, dating back to 1933. For a moment I saw a new line at the bottom: ‘1995 – Margaret Bergman’. That would shut Mum up. Simon had only been a prefect. But head girls’ fathers were elders in the church. Their mothers were tuck shop volunteers, not the local troublemaker.

  The clip-clip-clip of Mrs Franklin’s heels snapped me back to the present. ‘A word,’ she said without stopping. Her office was large and meticulously neat. In the sash windows wooden slatted blinds were drawn against the midday sun.

  As she closed the door and turned, I realised why I was here. She knew about the dagga! Had Miggie told her? The thought made me so weak that I sank on to the edge of one of the two chairs in front of her desk. Did my parents know? Would I be expelled? I smoothed my palms over the skirt of my dress.

  Mrs Franklin sat down. For a wild moment I thought about telling her everything – the drugs, the river, the growing uneasiness I could not name. It was the same rush I felt standing too close to the edge on one of Dad’s mountain hikes.

  ‘You look ready to confess, though as far as I know you’ve not done anything wrong.’ She looked closely at me. ‘But with a face as expressive as yours, I’m not sure you’re cut out for the life of crime.’

  I had no answer.

  Eventually she said, ‘This is merely a caution. You’re a clever girl, Margaret. I have high hopes for you. I think you could be a bit of a star.’ A little laugh. She sat back into her chair. ‘Xanthe isn’t interested in being a star, Margaret. Be prudent with your choice of friends.’

  I found Xanthe lying under the oak tree next to the lower playing field.

  She yawned by way of greeting. ‘I’ve been thinking.’ When I didn’t reply, she said: ‘Don’t you want to know what about?’

  ‘Not really,’ I replied. I was thinking of Mrs Franklin’s words. The relief at not being found out had quickly turned into annoyance. Three months ago she had asked me to look after Xanthe, now she was warning me against her. If she was so sure Xanthe was a troublemaker, why had she offered her a place here? What did she mean by ‘high hopes’ for me? Why had I not heard about them before?

  Xanthe sat up and leaned back on her hands. Since our conversation on Park Road, she seemed to have forgotten about the exams. I didn’t want to ask whether she was studying for fear of what her answer would be. A squirrel shot past us and up the tree trunk. Xanthe laughed. ‘Wouldn’t it be great to be a squirrel? Racing up and down trees all day.’

  ‘You’d be a crap squirrel,’ I said, ‘You don’t eat nuts.’

  ‘I’d be a hungry squirrel, not necessarily a crap one.’ She looked sideways at me.

  A short way off Elmarie was kneeling behind Esna, bending over her as she plaited her hair. I loved the feeling of someone playing with my hair. It made my scalp tingle and my vision blurry. It was the closest feeling to human purring.

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ Xanthe shuddered, ‘touching someone else’s hair like that. It’s like brushing their teeth.’

  I lay back. The grass was dry and spiky.

  After a moment Xanthe joined me. ‘I’ve been thinking about Simon.’

  ‘For God’s sake, what is the matter with you all?’ I banged my hand on the ground.

  She rolled over onto her side and faced me, her head resting in her hand. ‘You like him, don’t you?’

  ‘No!’ I shouted, screwing up my face at the thought. ‘He’s … like a brother … ’

  ‘So then.’ Her eyes were narrow slits.

  ‘Xanthe,’ I said, plucking at the yellowed blades of grass. ‘You wouldn’t –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be right.’

  ‘What wouldn’t be right?’ She looked amused.

  ‘You know.’ The thought of her and Simon together made me panic. It wasn’t so much the scandal it would cause as the feeling that I was six years old again, watching Dad and Simon drive away.

  ‘Are you a racist?’

  I sighed. She was being deliberately dense. ‘It would cause too much trouble.’

  She looked at me with a small smile.

  ‘Please,’ I said.

  ‘OK, OK,’ she muttered and looked away.

  Despite all the talk and fuss over Simon that would not go away, I had not seen him since the day at the show grounds. It was inevitable that at some point I would look around to find him watching me. All the same, the sight of him made me jump. We faced each other across a table of books.

  Dad’s study was my secret hideaway. I spent hours there when he wasn’t around. It smelled of typewriter ink and old books. I liked the rhythmic click of the overhead fan. I liked the collection of fossils he kept in a glass display cabinet along the front wall, and the way each piece of rock was meticulously labelled on pieces of white card
in his spidery scrawl. His books were stacked in horizontal piles across the bookshelves that lined the wall, as though he’d recently unpacked them, not had them that way for twenty-five years. Most of all I liked his chair. It was a swivel chair, covered in faded red leather. It was wide and deep and so old that it had moulded perfectly to the shape of his body. Sitting in it was like sitting on his lap.

  That’s where Simon found me, sitting in my bikini. Skin against skin. The bikini was new. It was turquoise with a white piping all along the edges. The top was nothing more than two blue triangles on a white cord. The same white piping ended in little bows at the top of each leg. Earlier, I’d paraded around the house feeling sophisticated, like a character from a Danielle Steel novel. Now I felt ridiculous.

  Simon leaned against the doorframe, his hands resting inside his shorts pockets. His navy T-shirt said MATRIC ’92 in US army-style lettering. I swivelled away, so that he could not see me blush.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘I was trying to make the chair rotate at exactly the same speed as the overhead fan.’ I said.

  ‘Trickier than it looks?’ he asked.

  Instead of answering, I stabbed my pencil into my notebook until the nib broke off.

  ‘Can I have a go?’

  ‘No.’ I looked down. All I could see was pale flesh. I lifted my legs so that my thighs didn’t spread across the chair, I sucked in my belly. It made no difference. If I got up and left I’d have to walk past him and I was practically naked.

  ‘I came to see your dad.’

  ‘He’s not here,’ I said, paddling my foot until I could see him partially from behind the chair. ‘You missed him.’

  He stepped into the room and picked up a book from the table. He flipped through a few pages and then put it back down. The Simon that I knew was now pumped up and puffed out and possessed by a different person. Do I look different? I wanted to ask him, because I can’t seem to find the old you.

  He looked up, as if in reply. ‘When I was in France we went to the Lascaux caves. The caves have some of the earliest examples of rock art in Europe. It was amazing. Their paintings are similar to ours, but these covered the walls and ceilings. In some places it felt as though you were walking through a herd of bison.’

  He stepped closer and leaned against the table while still managing to appear upright. A movement without a movement. A hunter’s trick.

  ‘The funny thing was that we didn’t actually go into the caves. We walked through an exact replica. The French place such importance on their history that only very specialised geologists or archeologists will ever see inside the real paintings.’ He sank into the memory. ‘I felt horribly homesick that day. I longed for the smell of heat and dust. For the taste of one of my ma’s curries, for a game of soccer in the street.’ He reached up and batted the overhead fan’s cord so that it swung back and forth. ‘I even missed you.’

  This was the most Simon had said to me in five years. It felt strange but also effortless. At the same time all I could think about was that even if I went to all the places he’d seen, he’d have done something else by then. I’d never catch up. I’d always feel the way I felt now – a silly little girl.

  ‘Sold any more drugs recently?’ I said at last.

  He moved over to Dad’s fossil cabinet. ‘Your friend is something else,’ he said. Across the back of his T-shirt were the words THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN! and underneath that the imprint of a pair of full female lips. He edged over the far right of the cabinet – he recognised immediately Dad’s latest additions.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I demanded.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Simon –’

  He spun around. There was the boy I knew, that intense, inquisitive gaze, the way his neck came forward. In that moment of mutual recognition, he smiled his old lopsided ‘knock-knock-who’s-there’ smile. I almost smiled back, I wanted to, but then I remembered Xanthe’s comments under the tree, and a cold hand clamped around my heart.

  I looked away. ‘I’ve got work to do. We’re not all straight-A students.’

  He shrugged and left without a word.

  *. Things

  **. Headscarf

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The next weekend was a mini-break. It was known in our family as ‘Dad’s Weekend’. He didn’t get to dictate much in our house, being outnumbered and out-willed most of the time, but every year the camping weekend was his from beginning to end.

  The preparation was as important for Dad as the weekend. It began with the tent. Dad laid it out on the grass and counted all the poles and pegs. Not for him the new lightweight pop-up tents – ours could have been used in the Second World War. Once the tent was in the boot of the car – a measure adopted after a disastrous year – he went to the garage to fill up the gas canisters; another lesson learnt. Next to the canisters went the crates labelled ‘Camping’, containing pots and a kettle, the braai grid, aluminium plates and bowls and cups, crockery, matches, tin foil, mosquito repellent, tarpaulins, sleeping bags, camping stretchers, aluminium folding chairs and four fishing rods, although it was only him that fished. On Thursday evening Mum produced the food, so that Dad could pack the car. ‘Packing the car’ had to happen on a Thursday evening because we left before dawn on Friday morning. There was no reason for the rush – our destination was a bug-infested riverbank. Dad insisted on the early departure so that we could get through the tunnel and have breakfast at the Wellington Wimpy. The full fry-up at the Wellington Wimpy made him very happy.

  We sat in the same red booth each year. The restaurant was deserted but for two truck drivers sitting in the far corner. Two waitresses were part of the very loud conversation taking place behind the swing door to the kitchen. Beth slurped her strawberry milkshake while Dad, swimming in saturated fats, hummed happily. He was dressed for the occasion in his navy rugby shorts and ‘Boland 10km run’ T-shirt. He’d not actually run the race but Dad couldn’t resist a freebie.

  He sat up. ‘The chops, Vivvie, did you remember the chops?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mum answered in a bored tone. Dad had been checking her packing at regular intervals since we set off.

  A few minutes later: ‘What about the matches?’

  ‘No! We agreed last year that matches were on your list. Remember? Remember, girls?’ She turned to us, her eyes wild.

  ‘You two have this conversation every year,’ said Beth. ‘When are you going to grow up?’

  Dad’s chuckle rose out of his shoulders. Grey hairs had colonised his side burns. I realised I was happy to be spending a weekend with him and his stupid jokes.

  Beth had been watching me all morning with a smug expression. No amount of my scowling or face-pulling shifted the little smile.

  She held out until we were back in the car. ‘Dad,’ she said, as she flipped over a page of the Archie comic. ‘What’s dagga?’

  I stared down at my lap. We were hours away from Leopold, and still I couldn’t escape it! Where was the bankie? Behind the chicken coop, surely, under the big stone. Or had I left it in my room? ‘Think, Meg!’ I commanded myself, but any thought was drowned out by a hysterical voice that kept shouting, ‘She’s found the bankie! She knows! She’s got it!’

  ‘It’s a plant, Bethie,’ said Dad in a distracted voice. He was trying to overtake a long-haul lorry on a narrow, single carriageway. He manouevred the car into the middle of the road, but another truck was coming towards us.

  Mum sucked in her breath but managed to stay quiet.

  ‘People smoke it as a drug,’ added Dad, back behind the truck.

  Despite the grip around my heart, I felt like shaking him. How could he think she wouldn’t know what dagga was?

  ‘It’s medically proven to fry your brain,’ said Mum.

  ‘That‘s right,’ agreed Dad, moving the car back into the middle of the road. He pressed his foot flat on the accelerator. The car muttered and jumped forward.

  Once we were safely in
front of the truck, Mum turned around. ‘Not to mention the fact that it’s illegal.’

  Dad looked back at us in the rearview mirror. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just curious,’ said Beth lightly.

  ‘Don’t be,’ snapped Mum.

  I didn’t give Beth the satisfaction of raising my head. I could picture the triumphant smirk on her face.

  After an hour of bumping around on a gravel track, we arrived at the deserted river.

  Dad jumped out and stretched his arms over his head. ‘Who needs Sun City!’

  While my parents argued over the position of the tent, I cornered Beth. ‘Give it to me!’ I gripped her arm, ready to twist it into a Chinese bangle.

  Beth laughed.

  ‘Come on, Bethie,’ I dropped my voice, into something resembling a wobbly plea, ‘Come on, now.’

  ‘No!’ she yanked her arm free. ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Because you’re a lovely person.’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘OK, so what do you want?’ I began to negotiate. What did she most covet? ‘My Kylie Minogue tape?’

  She laughed, ‘Nope.’

  ‘My tortoiseshell sunglasses.’

  She shook her head, that stupid little smile stuck on her face. Too late I noticed the bulge in her pocket. Her hand clamped over it. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. ‘My A-Ha T-shirt!’ I almost shouted.

  She hesitated. I knew she loved it. I’d brought it along this weekend, though I hardly wore it anymore. Xanthe said they were crap. But from the disdain in her eyes I knew she’d never give up. I lunged at her, moments too late. She darted away and started across the campsite.

  ‘Girls!’ Mum’s voice followed us but we kept running, past the loos and the outside washbasin, past the ‘communal’ braai area that was always exclusively ours, until we got to the long grass, where the thought of snakes stopped us both.