‘Chrissie, where are you?’
‘I’m safe. I’m hiding.’
‘You ran away.’ It was said as if this was a discovery. I heard no accusation in it. ‘The police will catch you.’
‘Mister Harvey’s helping me too.’
‘He’s a good man.’ Then she was crying. It was only years later that Michie told me that Ruthie said she had not cried till that moment.
‘Don’t cry,’ I said. ‘Please stop. Don’t cry. Try to stop.’
It went on for so long that I realised that she had to be alone in the house. When she was finally able to speak again, she gasped, ‘It’s so horrible. It’s so horrible what they do.’
‘Did they do bad things to you?’ I asked.
‘Everything is so horrible.’
Of course it was, I thought. I hated them for what they had done to her, or what the policeman had told me they were going to do to her. I hated Auntie Pearl’s panic. I hated Uncle William’s empty house. I hated my father’s certainty that his son had done nothing wrong. And I hated how tired Mama had looked when I last saw her through the kitchen window.
But, most of all, I hated myself for having brought this on Ruthie. And I hated myself for running. I hated myself for having disappointed Mama and my father so. I hated what I had done to Auntie Pearl. And I hated myself for being safe or reasonably safe in Hollywood Heights while the police knew where to find her and could go round and pick her up any time. ‘We can’t speak like this,’ I said. ‘Can you come to our place?’
‘Our place by the sugar cane?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now?’
‘Yes, now. Can you come?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Please come. We can talk.’
‘I dunno. If my ma finds out, she’ll die.’
On other days she would have said, if my ma finds out she’ll kill me. ‘Will you come?’
‘And the police?’
‘They’re not interested any more. Mister Harvey … Will you come?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you come now?’
‘Yes, I will. I’m coming. I’m coming now.’
Going down the stairs, I met one of the security men on the way up. ‘There was a sound from the telephone,’ he said.
I continued past him towards the front door. ‘I heard nothing,’ I said.
The distance from Uncle William’s house to our place in the sugar cane would usually have taken perhaps fifteen minutes, but that day it seemed to take longer. It was uphill all the way, steep in some places and a stiff bergwind was blowing.
She was not there when I arrived. Usually, when I got there before her, I would sit down on the grass to wait, out of sight of the road at the place where the firebreak thickened. This time I paced up and down, staying out in the open where I would be able to see her coming.
Mister Harvey had told me that I could be an independent minor. If I could, so could she. As soon as I was making decent money, she could join me. We could both be independent. Mister Harvey would help us. Everything did not have to be horrible. I would show her that. I had not worked it all out yet, but I would.
And the police, what could they do? We were minors. Mister Harvey had explained it all.
One way or another, I would make things work out. I know I can, I told myself. I’ll make things work out for me and for Ruthie.
Something had moved on the firebreak, down towards the road. I was on my toes, trying to get a view of her. I had watched her approaching this place so often before, swaying from side to side as she avoided the potholes and tufts of grass. But the firebreak was not straight and she had disappeared from view. Or had I imagined the movement? For the moment there was only the cane rustling in the bergwind. But no, what I had seen was more than swaying cane. She would be coming up the incline, the wind in her face, slowing her down.
Something flashed among the cane, the briefest reflection. The cane swayed in the wind and whatever it was, had disappeared.
I had been mistaken, I told myself. There was nothing. Someone had come home as she was leaving and they had stopped her. Perhaps her bike would be locked away by now, the way my father had locked my motorbike away.
Then, in a moment, I saw the movement again and now I could see the cause of it clearly. It was Auntie Pearl’s new car. Was Auntie Pearl bringing her? I hoped not. That would ruin everything. Perhaps Johnny was driving.
The car bumped to a stop thirty or forty paces from me. I started towards it, but Auntie Pearl had come out awkwardly from the driver’s side. She landed on her knees in the dust, seeming to have tripped on the door frame. The door on the passenger side had not opened. As far as I could see, there was no one else in the car. Auntie Pearl scrambled to her feet. She had raised both hands, the palms facing me. Her head was turned partly to the side. ‘Ruthie?’ I tried to ask, but my voice was little more than a grunt.
‘Stay there. Stay where you are.’ Her voice had the same brittleness I had heard in the café, but also a shrillness that was not there before. Her beautiful long black hair did not seem to have been combed since I last saw her. Her eyes were red and swollen. ‘Don’t come closer. You don’t come closer to me.’
‘Where’s Ruthie?’
‘What do you want with Ruthie?’ If anything, the intensity and the shrillness had increased. ‘You stay away from her. Haven’t you done enough to us already? What do you want with us? Aren’t you finished with us yet? Do you want to destroy what little remains?’
But where was Ruthie? Why had Ruthie not come? I wanted to say that I had spoken to her and that she had said she would come. Instead, I took another a step towards Auntie Pearl, but her hands were lifted to protect herself from me. ‘Auntie Pearl,’ I tried to say.
‘Don’t talk to me. Don’t talk to any of us. Ruthie doesn’t want you. We don’t want you. Go back to the people where you belong. Don’t pretend you’re one of us. Leave my niece alone.’ She stopped for a moment, her chest rising and falling. ‘What more can we give you? Aren’t you satisfied with what you’ve done to my brother? Aren’t you satisfied with what you’ve done to my niece? And me and my marriage? Go, just go. We’ve worked so hard. And you have come and—’ She lost the words for a moment. ‘Go, just go and leave us alone.’
She scrambled back into her car and turned it round furiously, twice releasing the clutch too fast and choking off the engine. She drove away, tyres spinning on the dusty surface of the firebreak.
fifty-four
The security man in Mister Harvey’s building did not object when I brought my bike into the foyer. This time Jane looked at me seriously before directing me to the door of his office. ‘Good luck, Chris,’ I heard her say.
Mister Harvey did not even look surprised when I threw open the door and stumbled in. My new friend was close behind. ‘Mister Harvey, you said for Chris to come straight in—’ But he waved her away. He was unsmiling and, to my eyes, he seemed paler than before. He remained seated while he held out a hand for me to shake.
‘I’m glad you’re here, Chris. I was going to ask you to come in when you phoned this afternoon.’ He pointed absently at a chair. ‘Sit down, please.’ Anticipating what was to come was impossible. Whatever had happened, Mister Harvey seemed as calm as ever, but far more serious. ‘You are now an independent minor,’ he told me at last. ‘Your father signed a document that he would allow you your freedom. It has to be rubber-stamped in court, but that will be a formality. On the matter of you and Ruthie, the police dockets have been destroyed. There will be no prosecution.’
This was good news. But what could be the reason for Ruthie’s weeping? And her aunt’s hysteria? This was a cause for celebration. ‘How? I don’t understand.’ I had thought there would at least be a court case. Ruthie and I would stand together in the dock, holding hands. Mister Harvey would be down in front, talking passionately on our behalf. Perhaps not passionately
. He would more likely defend clients in his quiet, reasonable way. ‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘It was not dealt with in a legal way. I discussed the matter with the local leader of your father’s party. He agreed with me that, your father being what he is, the matter would be an embarrassment for them. He dealt with both the police and your father. As you probably know, your father’s party has more influence with the police than I do.’ While he was speaking, Mister Harvey had been watching me carefully.
‘Ruthie? They will not touch Ruthie?’
‘Ruthie is at home. She is free.’
‘And she’s all right?’
‘A bit shaken up, but she’s fine.’
‘And I am free?’
‘Yes.’
But he was wiping a long-fingered hand across his forehead, his eyes cast down now, examining the surface of his desk. ‘Your father and one of his colleagues have let you go free and he has let Ruthie free, but he has not let the Petersons go free.’
I knew that he was about to tell me what Auntie Pearl had not told me.
‘You father has had his people examine their family. I think you know Pearl Infantino …’
‘Auntie Pearl.’
‘Yes, Auntie Pearl. Apparently at her place of work they thought she was a white person. She was fired this morning, I am told. Her employers could not countenance a coloured woman occupying a supervisory position. I saw her briefly a few days ago. She is both a very attractive and a very intelligent woman. I’m sure that her position of seniority was well earned. When I saw her, she was shocked by all that had happened.’ Mister Harvey was speaking slowly, without raising or lowering his voice, without any obvious emotion. ‘When I met her, she didn’t yet know that her employers had been informed of her racial status and that her growing seniority in the company had been destroyed. That came later.’
I could do nothing but listen to Mister Harvey, the beautiful speaking voice, the care given to every word, the apparent calm. Little signs gave him away though. He was looking past me and his forehead and the area around his mouth were gleaming with the lightest film of sweat. ‘There is also William Peterson. You may know him too.’ I was nodding. I knew Uncle William all right. ‘I gather he was not too close to the rest of the family. The link between him and the Greenwood Park Petersons was apparently an embarrassment to him. It was discovered by a colleague of your father by the name of Wilson.’
‘Snake Wilson?’
‘Exactly, Snake Wilson. According to Pearl, her husband, Courtleigh Infantino, was interrogated by Snake Wilson. Infantino told Wilson everything about the Peterson family. He had probably been threatened by Wilson.’
For almost half an hour, Mister Harvey spoke without any interruptions from me. He had been very busy on my behalf. He told me that he had discovered how, until the day before, Uncle William had been manager of the Umhlanga Surf Hotel. As far as his employer was concerned, he had the same problem as Pearl, but a more complex range of problems in other areas. Uncle William’s employer was one of the country’s larger hotel groups and Mister Harvey had spoken to the human resources director shortly after Uncle William had been dismissed. ‘I told him that I doubted that the country’s laws prevented them from keeping William Peterson in that position, but he said that he didn’t know what the legal position was, but that didn’t interest him.’
What did interest him was that they had customers of every political persuasion and a coloured manager was bound to hurt their business. Mister Harvey had discovered that Uncle William was also a director of the company and, of course, he had lost that too. On top of that his house in a white group area was owned illegally and my father’s people had told him to vacate it immediately.
At one point Mister Harvey read me a few lines from the official correspondence, signed by my father, that was hand delivered to Uncle William at the hotel. ‘You are accepted as a coloured by all members of your family, you have the appearance of a coloured and you associate with coloureds. Most of your ancestors are coloureds.’ He lay the letter down again and looked at me. ‘That’s all there is to it as far as they are concerned.’
I think the growing horror inside me must have been visible on my face, because Mister Harvey lifted both hands. I was reminded of Auntie Pearl just half an hour before. This time the gesture was intended to have a calming effect. ‘None of this is your fault, Chris. In any normal society, what you did would not have caused all this. The laws of the country are at fault. It’s not you or Ruthie who are to blame.’ He stopped for a moment. ‘William Peterson’s marriage to a white woman is also void. His wife has left him and taken the children. Pearl says that she has taken a flight out of the country. Apparently, her departure was not for political reasons. She seems to have been motivated by the desire to get away from the father of her children, whom she had been led to believe was a white man. I understand she holds a passport of some European country. It seems that Pearl’s marriage is also over. Infantino has fled. I gather he doesn’t have the courage to face his wife and her family.’
He stopped speaking and the room was silent. No doubt there were the usual sounds of traffic from the street and human voices from the other offices, but I heard none of them. Eventually, I was the one to break the silence. ‘Is there anything else?’
‘Isn’t that enough?’
fifty-five
It was too much, far too much. On reflection, I knew that my father was responsible for what had happened to the Petersons, but when I left Mister Harvey’s office, bounding down the stairs two at a time and grabbing up my bike so that the wheels spun, I could see only Snake Wilson through the scorching anger behind my eyes.
If I had ridden hard to get from Uncle William’s house to the place in the sugar cane, it was nothing compared to my desperate charge up hills to Westville and Snake Wilson’s home. For most of the ride, I could feel my tears running in streaks that were almost horizontal with the wind of my passage. I had no plan, except the need to attack him, perhaps to kill him, if that were possible. He could do what he liked to other people, it was nothing to me. He could destroy whatever lives were vulnerable to him: all that was meaningless. But he would pay for what he had done to the Petersons.
It was well after five and Snake should have been home. It was half an hour’s ride from Durban North and there were steep hills along the way, but none of that was important. If ordinarily my legs and lungs would have felt the effort I was demanding of them, on this day there was no pain or tiredness, only the inner fury that overwhelmed everything else. I do not remember stopping either for traffic lights or stop signs. Enough sanity remained for me to brake at such times, slowing enough to avoid being run down by something coming at me through an intersection. But otherwise there was only the headlong charge to Westville where I would find Snake Wilson.
The house was small for a property of that size and the garden was not one of the elegantly manicured types that surrounded it. A few trees and poorly edged lawns in front gave way to a tangle of bushes and weeds around the back. The wire mesh motor gate that reached up to my chest was padlocked. I dropped my bike, letting it lie where it fell in front of the gate. As I vaulted over the gate, I felt a tear as an item of clothing caught. Running up the path to the house was like the bicycle ride or my wild dash in the rugby match against Durban Boys’ High, a blur of movement in which all the distinguishing characteristics of everything around me disappeared.
The front door was unlocked and I remember it banging hard against the wall as I threw it open. I was in a short hallway and Snake Wilson, his eyes wide with surprise and something that looked like terror, was in front of me. ‘You bastard,’ I heard a voice, that may have been mine, screaming at him. ‘You fucking cunt.’ I was only fifteen, but I was a rugby-fit fifteen and I had the advantage of surprise. My first punch landed against his chest and he stumbled backward. We were in the kitchen and a steel saucepan had come to hand. I was swinging it and Snake was stumbling away from me around th
e table, his right hand holding his left shoulder and his face twisted with pain. He tried to block the wildly swinging pan, but he took blows on his hands and arms and after that they were no good to him. He was down on his hands and knees, trying to crawl under the table. I was swinging the saucepan and hearing the metallic clanging it made, as it bounced off furniture and any part of him that presented itself as a target. ‘You fucking swine. I’m going to kill you, you bastard.’
A female voice was screaming. ‘Who is this boy? Who is this boy?’
Snake was under the table and the saucepan had fallen, clattering across the kitchen floor. I was kicking at him, but I could get no leverage. He had managed to crawl in too deep.
‘Who is this boy? Why is he doing this?’ She was older than Snake, perhaps in her fifties, and she was wearing an apron. Her hair hung in untidy wisps around her face. She brought a picture of utter domestication to the chaos around her. For the first time, she directed a question to me. ‘Why are you doing this to him?’
And then it was over. I turned and walked away, through the hallway and down the front steps. When I reached the path, I broke into a slow jog. This time it took me longer to get over the gate. My bike was where I had left it. I got onto it and freewheeled down the hill. I glanced back only once. The door was open as I had left it, but there was no sign of either Snake or the woman.
The urgency that had driven me in my ride to Snake’s house had disappeared without a trace. He was still alive and perhaps I still hated him as deeply, but the fury was gone.
Before I left Westville, I sat down on the grass verge and allowed an emotion that I could not name and did not understand to drain away. The anger had already left me. It had been expended in a few frantic moments in the kitchen of Snake’s cottage. Now I only felt tired.
It was perhaps an hour later that I was coasting down the long slope past Tollgate when I noticed the police van. I knew immediately that they were looking for me. Snake must have been on the phone before I left the street in which he lived. Before the policeman even waved for me to stop, I was slowing. I coasted gently up to him. I was not going to run from anything, not ever again.
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