Leopold Blue

by Rosie Rowell

  ‘I do too!’ protested Judy. ‘Tonight she’s at the McCullams’ house. You went to school with Pete McCullam, Stu. You’ve known that family forever.’

  ‘Piet Skiet McCullam!’ laughed Alan from the far side of the Weber braai where he was tending a thick slab of fillet steak. ‘Shot the maid, when he was a boy,’ he said, I assumed for my benefit.

  ‘It was a mistake!’ Judy cried.

  ‘He was cleaning his hunting rifle,’ said Shirley, straightening a knife as she cast a last eye over the supper table, ‘and it was only her toe.’

  ‘Never could bowl a cricket ball either,’ said Alan.

  ‘He’s done very well for himself, thank you very much,’ said Judy. ‘Big house in Constantia, pool, tennis court. All his kids in private school. Went to Italy on holiday last year –’ she took a sip of wine – ‘even took the kids.’

  ‘After April there’ll be no more overseas trips for anyone,’ said Stuart.

  Alan grunted.

  Shirley dispatched Xanthe and me to the kitchen to fetch the salads, curried eggs and potato bake. As we returned I stopped in the light that splashed over the edge of the porch. The night was warm. The memory of a sea breeze hung through the air. Lights shone out from hiding places tucked away inside the beds that lined the perimeter of the property, illuminating the deep greens and purples of the dark garden. Alan was at the head of the table, his large frame stooped as he carved the meat. Stuart sat opposite him. Shirley and Judy were each settled to the right of their husbands. The flickering light from two fat church candles in the middle of the table shimmered in the tall wine glasses and bounced off their animated faces. As if on cue, the conversation erupted into a shout of raucous laughter. Mum and Dad had never had an evening like this; they had no shared friends who knew them inside out. I wondered how different they would be, how different our life would be, if they did.

  By the time I sat down the conversation had taken a more serious turn.

  ‘It’s too close now,’ Judy said. ‘Six months ago they burst in on a church full of people and randomly opened fire, and now its a tavern of young folk. And not only whites – there were coloureds and blacks there too. Those were innocent people minding their own business, thank you very much. What right do they have? That’s not “freedom fighting”, as they like to call it. I don’t care what you say, they’re bladdy terrorists.’

  We waited as Judy wiped her eyes. Stuart leaned over and rubbed her back. After a moment she sat up with a resolute sniff and continued, ‘Karen doesn’t even know where the Heidelberg is, thank God, it’s not her kind of a place, but where will it be next time? How do you protect your family from these people? What kind of a life is it when you don’t feel safe going to church anymore?’

  ‘It’s a big bloody mess,’ said Alan, standing up to pass the platter of thinly sliced steak to Shirley. ‘If Mandela thinks he has the skills to sort it out after splitting open rocks on Robben Island for twenty-seven years, I say good luck to him.’

  ‘Please, Alan, no politics tonight.’

  But Shirley was drowned out by Stuart. ‘I don’t agree. We don’t stand an arsehole’s chance with a black government.’ His glass landed heavily on the table.

  Shirley looked nervously at Alan.

  ‘I’m a businessman, Stu, I don’t care who is in charge of the country – black, white – whatever. I care about my assets and I care about being allowed to get on with what it is that I want to do.’

  ‘And you care about your family,’ said Shirley.

  ‘You’re my biggest asset!’ said Alan, winking at her.

  ‘Don’t be so rude!’ shrieked Shirley.

  Stuart shook his head. ‘It’s not that simple. Everything we have built up, everything our parents worked for – will be lost overnight. And it doesn’t stop there. One day they’re in charge of the country, the next thing your daughter will be marrying one of them.

  ‘Stuart!’ said Shirley.

  ‘Why not? Isn’t it every woman’s fantasy?’

  I spluttered on a mouthful of Coke, sending painful bubbles up the back of my nose.

  ‘Stuart, please!’ Judy glanced in my direction, ‘That’s not nice talk!’

  ‘What do you think, Xanthe?’ Stuart bulldozed on.

  I looked at Xanthe. Yes, I thought, what do you think? And what do you think your parents and their friends would say if they knew what you were up to last night?

  ‘I don’t see why not. Half the Afrikaner nation is mixed blood as it is.’

  Alan chuckled and winked at Xanthe.

  But Stuart didn’t appreciate Xanthe’s answer. ‘I, for one, will not be allowing Karen to run off with the first Sipho[*] she comes across.’

  Xanthe’s smile was unreadable.

  ‘Have some more wine, Stu.’ Alan stretched across the table with a full bottle. Shirley turned her back on Stuart and made frantic ‘time-out’ signals at Alan. I was unutterably grateful Mum was not here. It made me shudder to think what she’d make of Stuart. It was too easy in Leopold to label Afrikaans and racist together. But here were English-speaking people, as well educated and well travelled as Mum, saying things that surely belonged to ‘the enemy’.

  ‘There is a list of properties that the new “cabinet”’ – Stuart’s fingers formed quotation marks –‘have chosen for themselves.’

  Alan laughed uproariously. ‘Stuart, you don’t seriously believe –’

  ‘It’s true,’ Judy cut in. ‘Bishops Court, Constantia: whatever takes their fancy. Soon they’ll be slaughtering sheep and brewing beer under our noses.’

  Alan sat back in his chair, enjoying himself. Shirley glanced in our direction and mouthed: ‘Plates!’ with a jerk of her head towards the kitchen. Xanthe settled deeper into her chair.

  ‘Have you started stockpiling tins yet, Judith?’ Alan asked, leaning forward with an earnest face.

  ‘Too right.’ Judy looked like a ruffled hen. ‘And light bulbs.’

  ‘Light bulbs!’ said Alan. ‘But when the revolution comes there’ll be no electricity anyway.’

  Judy looked to Stuart. He leaned forward, tapping his finger on the table. ‘When the revolution comes, we’re out of here.’

  Shirley sat back in protest. Alan smiled and toyed with the saltshaker.

  Silence rested on the table. There were no cicadas or crickets or frogs. There wasn’t even a moon; it was blocked out by the wide strokes of high-level clouds. A burglar alarm went off nearby, piercing the darkness. ‘Bladdy cat again,’ Shirley muttered.

  ‘You’ve got to know when to think of yourself. And your family,’ Stuart said eventually. ‘You’ve got to know when to jump.’

  Judy nodded in agreement.

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ said Shirley. ‘I am not Australian or Canadian! This is my home – I could never leave. You can for-get it.’ She smacked the edge of the table.

  ‘Thirty years ago you were having such a good time in Europe you didn’t want to come home!’ Alan, softened by the wine, rubbed her arm.

  Shirley sniffed. ‘Thirty years ago the rand was as valuable as the pound. Now, we would be poor wherever we went. And what about my garden, my roses? I’m too old to start again.’

  ‘Speaking of starting again, did you hear about the van Niekerks? Unbelievable. That man couldn’t hold onto his money even if it was glued to his body … ’ Alan’s voice rumbled on and the conversation changed course. The candles were swimming in their wax, rivulets spilling over the top and down the sides.

  As the talk around the table drifted to people and places I knew nothing of, the words became sounds and rhythm and space between sounds, like flat palms on a drum.

  I breathed out. In the last few days I had seen and heard so many shocking things that I didn’t know what to think. ‘Not waving, but drowning,’ said Mum’s ‘quoting voice’ in my head. But what did I feel? I felt like a page divided up into tiny squares and triangles. I was orange and purple and white. I was a light shade of pink and
a murky, dirty brown. I was a raw and painful red. I was a silly, spotty, pointless green. I was an infinite blue. As long as I could keep the violent red from soaking through into the ethereal blue, everything would be fine.

  *. Plettenberg Bay, a popular seaside town

  *. A Xhosa boys’ name

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I was happy to be home at first. My contentment lasted all the way out the car and in through the front door. But as it swung shut behind me, the shuttered house rubbed itself back into my skin and I yielded to gloom. I couldn’t be outside. The light was too bright, the grass underfoot felt serrated. Eating made my jaw ache. My bones didn’t fit into their sockets. Mum’s eyes followed me, the line of her mouth small and tight. The only bearable place was on my bed, with my body perfectly still so that I could focus my mind into a place of silence. I had climbed inside the heart of misery and, despite Mum’s threats, I had no intention of ‘snapping out of it’.

  Two days passed as I lay under the disgusting curtains. The careful calm I had maintained throughout the visit to Xanthe was ruined. The spotty green leaked into the pointless pink. The orange and purple muddied the bright white. Soon I was a stagnant brown I could neither shift nor make sense of.

  I picked up my setwork book, but it did nothing for my mood. Emma deserved a fat slap, the silly bitch. She had everything, yet she spent her time fannying about, interfering with the likes of poor Harriet, who didn’t have much going for her. But instead of getting her just deserts, Emma landed the hero, whereas her much-wronged friend ended up with a farmer. I knew this because I’d skipped to the end.

  On the evening of the second day I watched the gathering shadows harden into dark. Night soaked through the open curtains and settled in the room. The saccharine theme tune of Beverly Hills 90210 drifted through the house. It must be nine o’clock.

  A gecko appeared on the windowpane. Its tiny intestines made a dark silhouette against its translucent underbelly, like a specimen on a microscope slide. I watched the little sucker feet propelling it upwards and shuddered. Geckos’ feet gave me the creeps. One of my greatest fears was waking up in the middle of the night with one crawling over my face.

  Then I noticed the moth knocking against the top of the window, flutter-flutter-bang, flutter-flutter-bang, consumed in its own stupidity, unaware of the danger creeping closer. I wasn’t sure whose side I was on. Did the moth, obsessed only with getting through the impenetrable sheet of glass, deserve to get away? Geckos killed moths – that was the nature of things. Who was I to alter that? All the same, I felt an overwhelming impulse to tap on the glass, to intervene on behalf of the moth. I couldn’t watch, knowing what was about to happen.

  When I returned from the bathroom, the gecko and moth had been replaced by Mum and Dad.

  I retreated to the corner of my bed. Neither of them spoke. The hunch of Dad’s shoulders gave away that he was there under duress.

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘Can I help you?’

  Dad shot me a warning look.

  ‘What is the matter with you?’ Mum’s annoyance swirled around my room.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, looking up at the ceiling. Kirk Cameron’s nose was askew.

  ‘Because from where I’m standing you look like a very spoilt child.’

  ‘Thanks for sharing,’ I said, not quite loud enough for Mum to hear.

  ‘Look at me when I’m speaking to you!’ snapped Mum.

  I hoisted myself up, and fixed my eyes on Dad.

  ‘I don’t quite know what you’re playing at, young lady, but you are sorely trying my patience,’ continued Mum, warming to the sound of her voice.

  Xanthe might have thought Mum cool, but she didn’t have to put up with this. ‘Am I trying your patience?’ I asked Dad.

  He sighed and shook his head. I had gone too far; I was on my own.

  ‘You see, Timothy!’ Mum turned to Dad. ‘That’s what I’m talking about.’ She jabbed her finger at me.

  ‘That? I asked.

  ‘Your attitude! Your complete self-involvement. You cannot live your life with such disregard for anyone other than yourself. Every day people are being killed in this country in terrible violence, people who have been fighting all their lives to attain the freedom that you take for granted.’

  ‘How will my attitude change that?’

  ‘You’re an intelligent person, Meg. You can’t simply stand by and watch events unfold – that’s how apartheid lasted for forty years! All you care about is your own needs –’

  ‘I’m a teenager! That’s what I’m supposed to do.’

  ‘I’m not finished!’

  ‘You’re never finished!’

  ‘How dare you speak to me like that! You are fifteen years old, Margaret, and as long as you are under my roof, you will respect my rules. For the love of God, I don’t know what’s got in to you! You have a tantrum every time I try to educate people about a disease that will kill them, because it makes you feel a little uneasy. You’re so caught up in your little adolescent friendship with Xanthe that you can’t be bothered to extend a cordial greeting to Simon.’

  ‘I have heard enough about Simon!’ I screamed back.

  Dad turned and left.

  ‘And what about you?’ I launched back at Mum. ‘You’d love me a whole lot more if I got that “A”, if I were more like Simon! Even Beth has to perform for you even though it half kills her.’

  ‘Rubbish! But I’ll tell you something while we’re on the subject. Simon’s not letting his circumstances hold him back; he’s determined to make something of himself. You – on the other hand – mooch around, bored about this, whining about that, letting your life slip between your fingers.’

  ‘And Marta?’

  ‘What about Marta?’

  ‘Do you think she’s thanking you and Dad for taking her son, like a laboratory experiment, giving him a first-class education, setting him up in his brilliant new life? Because now she has no one.’

  Mum stepped backwards, as though I’d smacked her. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I was there, Mother. We both heard what she said, that Simon has outgrown her. That’s your fault!’

  ‘Simon is more his mother’s son than ever.’ Mum’s voice was quiet. ‘This is my final warning. If I don’t see a dramatic improvement in your behaviour, there will be no more trips to see Xanthe in Cape Town.’

  ‘Fine with me!’ I shouted.

  She looked at me, startled, but I concentrated on picking at a loose thread on my pillow. It had been a childish response, but would that be such a bad thing? Had I been more miserable before I met Xanthe than I was now? Though I tried to dismiss it, the question hovered at the corners of my mind.

  I heard Mum breathe out. ‘Meg,’ she paused. Her voice sounded unsure.

  Go away! I shouted in my head.

  ‘You will tell me if there’s anything wrong? Something you want to talk –’

  ‘I don’t want to talk, I want to be left alone!’

  The walls around me felt heavy and old, as though the strain of holding up the roof was becoming too much to bear. From the sitting room came the sound of rock music, squealing and laughing as a bunch of American teenagers had the time of their lives.

  Late that night a wind stormed through the valley, a freakish thing for that time of year. I awoke on its approach, as it tore down through the pine and cedar forests, gathering ferocity and speed over the empty fields on the valley floor. The moments before it struck were silent and breathless, as though all the air had been sucked out of town into the approaching fury.

  It hit like a Chinese dragon, mutating its form, growing larger and smaller, curling back in on itself, tunnelling down the main street. It twisted up and down lampposts, and sent shop signs spinning. Its fingers tore down every side street, and around the back of dustbins, each new surge and gust its ferocious breath. It howled and raged and tossed things around, driven wild by some jealousy. I lay in bed, in the submiss
ive darkness, identifying each clash and rattle: the steel watering can in the courtyard, the loose shutter outside the sitting room, the window in the bathroom. The plastic chairs skidded about the stoep, colliding with the table and bouncing against the walls.

  I snuggled deeper under my duvet. Above me the eaves creaked their disapproval. The wind whipped around the house, mustering pace and ferocity, until it felt strong enough to snatch us out of the ground. After two days of feeling nothing, the wind seemed to jump-start my heart. I understood its anguish and rage. ‘Take me away,’ I begged the wind. ‘Take me with you.’

  A clap, as loud as a bullet. My heart raced against the top of my skull. An image of the Heidelberg victims flashed through my mind. Another bang followed, and again. I sat up. It was the swing-door outside the kitchen banging shut on itself, but even so I fumbled for my bedside light switch.

  ‘The electricity is down.’

  I jumped. I hadn’t spoken. The darkness was absolute. The wind whispered and hissed. Ghosts didn’t scare me – in a town like Leopold the number of dead far outweighed the living. And a ghost wouldn’t discuss electricity. It was Beth.

  I lifted my head.

  ‘The electricity is often down,’ I said, ‘you know that.’

  The wind dropped, its silence more eerie than its rage. I could hear Beth breathing across the room. ‘Come here,’ I said. A shuffle and a creak and Beth’s body shifted in beside me. We lay silent for a moment, getting used to each other. We listened to the wind reorganising itself.

  Beth sniffed. ‘Everything’s changing.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Everything. Soon you’re going to leave and I’ll be the only one at home with them.’ She jerked her head backwards on the pillow in the direction of Mum and Dad’s room. ‘It was horrible without you.’ She shook herself, as though she was expelling a demon.

  ‘I still have two years at school,’ I said, feeling grown up.

  ‘More, if you fail,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks.’ I knocked her elbow gently.

  The wind chased itself around the house, growing wilder with each circuit.