‘Muu-huulke!’
‘Eh?’ said Muulke.
‘Muu-huulke?’ the hedge said again.
‘Eh?’ said I.
‘Hell’s bells!’ shouted Muulke.
His face was much thinner and even more wrinkled than the last time we had seen him – as white as a candle, but smeared with brown-green streaks. His hair cut so short you could see his scalp. And then there was the beard – that wild, reddish-grey, tufty beard, hiding his chin, the chin he used to call ‘smooth as a pebble from the river, just have a feel’.
But his voice hadn’t changed.
‘Oompah Hatsi?’ Muulke exclaimed.
Oompah Hatsi, the old button-chewer, was staring out through the window, and we were staring in.
‘What are you doing? What’s the matter?’ Jess called to us from behind the hedge, panicky. If she saw Oompah in this state, she would have nightmares for the rest of her life.
‘Nothing. Just wait by the gate,’ I called back, surprised at how calm my voice sounded. ‘We’ll be there right away.’
‘When?’
‘Right away.’
‘Five minutes?’
‘Okay.’
Oompah beckoned. His arm, the arm Muulke had bitten, was bleeding.
‘What does he want?’ I asked.
‘He wants us to come in, iepekriet,’ she said. As if Oompah wasn’t a madman from the asylum, but a prim and proper aunt you could visit on a Sunday. As if he wasn’t sitting inside a hedge (a hedge!), but in a house.
‘Sorry, Oompah,’ I said as politely as I could. ‘But we have an awful lot of things to do. Another time, perhaps.’ I turned to Muulke and whispered, ‘He might be really dangerous.’
‘Sjiethoes!’ said Muulke. ‘This is Oompah Hatsi, the button king. Can’t you see?’
‘The button-chewer! Have you forgotten he was in the asylum?’
‘But not anymore.’
‘We’re going,’ I said.
‘In a minute.’
‘Now.’
‘In a minute.’
‘Oma Mei will be back any moment,’ I said. ‘I think I can hear her.’
Oompah looked from me to Muulke. He wiped his face with his arm, leaving a smear of blood behind on his cheek.
‘Now we’re going,’ I grumbled. ‘Now!’
‘Who were you talking to?’ Jess asked, back on the other side of the hedge.
‘Nobody,’ said Muulke.
‘Was it that dead person?’
‘Jess,’ I said. ‘There isn’t a dead person.’
‘I saw a dead person.’ Jess’s lip started to tremble again.
I looked to Muulke, who was angrily shaking her head.
‘That wasn’t a dead person,’ I said. ‘It was only Oompah Hatsi.’
With hindsight, I can see it would have been better if I’d said we were talking to a thousand dead people. That they’d thrown us into a cauldron and boiled us alive. Jess turned so pale that I half-expected her to faint.
‘You’re not to tell anybody. It’s our secret,’ said Muulke.
‘Kwatsj!’ I said. Nonsense.
‘He’s going to gobble us up,’ Jess sobbed.
Muulke angrily clicked her tongue. ‘Oompah Hatsi? Ha!’
‘He’s crazy,’ said Jess.
‘No crazier than you.’
‘Oh no?’
‘No!’
‘Blabbermouth!’
‘Sjiethoes!
’ ‘Prune-face!’
‘Scaredy-cat!’
‘And now I’m absolutely going to tell,’ screamed Jess.
‘They may be searching for him,’ I said. ‘We can’t keep this secret.’
Muulke looked at me furiously. ‘Goody-goody!’
I shrugged.
Muulke the soldier changed into Muulke the general then. A cunning look came over her face. She crossed her arms.
‘Do you want me to tell Oma Mei that you let Jess pull the cart with the water tubs?’ she asked me. And, turning to Jess, ‘And do you want me to tell Oma Mei that you secretly loosen your straps?’
‘What?’ I gasped.
‘That’s mean!’ Jess shouted. Her face turned scarlet.
I grabbed her and could immediately feel that there was movement in the stays. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘You say yourself that Oma Mei exaggerates.’
‘Exaggerates, yes. But not that she lies. Do you want to be as crooked as a letter C?’
‘I am already,’ Jess snapped.
‘Nonsense!’ I snapped back.
‘Jess will tighten them up,’ Muulke said soothingly. ‘And you won’t say anything. Oompah is our secret. That’s best for everyone. Isn’t it?’
‘Why can’t we say anything?’
Muulke shrugged. ‘If Oma Mei keeps secrets from us, we can keep secrets from her. Fair’s fair.’
‘Secrets? What secrets?’ Jess wanted to know.
‘Nothing,’ Muulke and I said together.
I gave in to Muulke. Not just because I was scared stiff she would tell Oma Mei what I’d let Jess do, but because it wasn’t a secret that would be kept anyway. Oompah Hatsi was going to give himself away in no time at all. Nobody could live in a hedge, barely fifty metres away from our house, without giving himself away. And certainly not anywhere near Oma Mei. Or so I thought.
When we got home we found we had a visitor. Nol was sitting in the kitchen, nervously tapping on the table with a spoon. Muulke nudged me and pointed. He was wearing odd shoes.
‘Not a problem,’ said the Dad.
We looked at each other.
‘What’s not a problem?’ Muulke asked.
The Dad was pouring fresh hot water into the coffeepot. The water spilled over, but he didn’t notice.
‘Let me,’ I said.
The Dad gave me a grateful look. He sat down next to Nol, patted him awkwardly on the back and started drumming on the table with his fingers, in time with Nol. Two grown-up men, and they suddenly looked younger than us.
‘Oma Mei is going to stay overnight at Nol and Nettie’s for a while,’ the Dad said.
‘Why?’ Jess asked.
‘Uh . . . ’ He blushed.
‘Why?’ Jess repeated.
‘You’re too young for that,’ said Muulke.
‘I know perfectly well that the stork doesn’t exist,’ Jess said fiercely. ‘And all I want to know is why.’
‘Because sometimes the new baby doesn’t want to come,’ I said. I had heard Oma Mei say this to Fie’s parents before. And also that Nol’s Nettie didn’t have her babies easily. Two had already died at birth.
And that was why Nol was sitting there now wearing odd shoes and tapping away as if he was sending a telegram to God.
‘This new baby really isn’t going to die,’ Muulke said soothingly.
Nol turned even paler than he already had been.
And so it wasn’t Oma Mei but the Dad who did the rounds that evening. He tucked us in very carefully.
‘Tighter,’ said Muulke.
He tightened the blankets a little.
‘Tighter than that,’ said Muulke. ‘Oma Mei always makes it so tight you can hardly breathe. And Jess has to lie on her back. You have to tell her she has to lie on her back.’
‘No, you have to tell Muulke not to snitch,’ said Jess.
The Dad duly repeated everything. We all got a prickly, absent-minded kiss, and then we heard him shuffle down the passage. It was strange – he was so much nicer than our grandmother, but we already missed her.
We twisted and turned and blamed each other for the blankets riding up and leaving our feet bare.
‘Why did you undo the straps?’ I asked when we were finally comfortable.
I felt Jess shrug.
‘Well?’ I asked.
‘The thing doesn’t squeak-creak so much that way.’
‘But your wreckbone could slip, you know that.’
‘Nothing has happened.’
‘Nothing?�
��
‘Nothing.’
But when she shifted, I could hear her groaning softly.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t lie.’
‘I’m not lying.’
‘You groaned.’
‘You groan all the time yourself.’ She turned her head away.
In the middle of the night we were woken by her crying.
Ten minutes later, the Dad was out in the pitch-dark, running to the doctor’s.
waiting for pigs to fly
I said I was staying right there, that I wouldn’t even think about it, but when Muulke, without so much as glancing back, squatted down and disappeared into the hedge, my feet suddenly developed a will of their own. Complaining loudly, I crawled after her.
Oompah Hatsi the button-chewer’s house had a secret entrance. If you didn’t know it, you’d never find it. It was hidden in the untidy gap in the hedge that we used to enter the cemetery. To find the entrance, you had to take two steps in, so you were standing exactly halfway between Sjlammbams Sahara and the cemetery. There, the hedge looked as solid as a concrete wall, but if you squatted down and pushed with your hand, the branches gave way. It was Muulke who had discovered this.
She started to shuffle into the entranceway on her hands and knees. Her body was exactly halfway through when she stopped. ‘Ouch, my hair! Fing, my hair!’
Very carefully, I poked my hands into the hole. It felt dry and prickly. After a lot of effort, I managed to get Muulke’s hair untangled.
‘Keep your hands around your head,’ I said. ‘And come back carefully.’
‘I think not,’ said Muulke and disappeared.
Keeping my head as low as I could, I crawled through the hidden entrance. Behind the branches that hid it lay a low, narrow passage, with a ceiling of brown dry twigs and small dots of light, and with a carpet of more dry twigs. In the spots on the side or above where the green was less dense, the branches had been tied together with string, forming an arch and making the tunnel more solid.
Something sharp pricked my bare knee. I felt something else prickling my neck.
‘I hate you, Muulke Boon.’
‘Of course you do,’ said Muulke. ‘But without me you would have such a boring life that one day you’d drop dead. Dying of boredom really happens. I’ve heard the doctor say so.’
I didn’t want to think of Jess. Didn’t want to remember how I’d felt when the doctor had come downstairs that morning. Even though he’d said it wasn’t too bad this time. ‘A couple of weeks at the most,’ he’d said.
‘It’s my fault,’ I said to Muulke.
‘Of course it isn’t,’ said Muulke. ‘She undid the straightener herself, didn’t she? You weren’t to know. And anyway, I did know, so it’s just as much my fault.’
But no matter what Muulke said, I knew I should have looked after Jess more carefully.
At the end of the tunnel hung a green velvet curtain, and when we pushed that aside, we both stopped for a minute. Before us lay a cave – a surprisingly large cave. You could almost stand up straight in it, and you could only touch both walls at once if you stretched your arms really wide. Here, too, the branches above me had been tied together with string. Now that I looked around, I suddenly understood why the hedge was so wide. Muulke realised this at the same time as I did.
‘It isn’t just one hedge at all,’ she said in surprise. ‘There are two of them.’
So we discovered that there was not a single row of conifers, but two, planted close to each other. Over the years they had grown together, but because the hedge was always pruned to be like one very straight wall, we had never noticed before.The hollow space had been made by cutting off the inside branches and leaving the outside ones.
‘Did you make this, Oompah?’ Muulke asked.
Oompah was sitting on the dusty ground. He was wearing a brass-band uniform jacket with dented buttons and sleeves that were too short. On his head perched a battered straw hat. He looked at us and made a grumbling noise.
‘All of this?’ Muulke asked again.
She looked at the branches above our heads. She tested the strings. She patted an old blanket lying in a corner and sat down on it.
‘Come and join me,’ she said to me.
I wouldn’t have dreamed of it. God only knew how many lice and fleas were hiding there. I stood with my head bent, and the only thing I kept on thinking was, I’m inside the hedge. I’m inside the hedge. I’m actually inside the hedge.
‘Were you really in the madhouse, Oompah?’ Muulke asked.
‘You shouldn’t ask things like that,’ I said.
‘Why not?’
Oompah stared from Muulke to me and back again.
‘Were you really there?’ Muulke asked again.
He was silent.
‘He doesn’t want to talk about it, can’t you understand that?’ I said.
The light coming in was dim. Everything in here turned green: our clothes, our hair, the few specks of sunlight.
The little cut-out window with the curtain was like one of the picture frames Oompah had hung up in our street a very long time ago. Only the view now was not of a crack in the wall, but of a grassy field and a part of the grave without a name.
‘He still has to get used to it here,’ said Muulke. ‘Don’t you, Oompah?’
The old button-chewer got a small pair of scissors from his jacket pocket and started snipping leaves and twigs above his head. The sleeves of his jacket creaked fearsomely when he stretched his arm.
‘How did he get hold of those clothes?’ I asked softly. I didn’t know anything about madhouses, but I didn’t think that everyone in there walked about in brass-band uniform jackets and straw hats.
‘Pinched, of course,’ said Muulke. ‘Like those.’
She pointed at the upturned wooden crate next to Oompah.
On top of it, in a little tin dish, they lay: the better-luck-next-time cigars. Or what was left of them. Three miserable little stumps. One had burst; the other two were not much more than ash.
We didn’t often have to run to school anymore. We knew Sjlammbams Sahara like the back of our hands by now. For a headwind, I allowed an extra five minutes. For sandstorms or mud pools, a quarter of an hour. The only thing to have made us leave half an hour early so far had been a heavy snowstorm during winter. With summer coming, Muulke was the only catastrophe I had to take into account. She forgot the bread for the baker, she lost her shoes or her hair ribbon. Now, the first day Jess had been allowed back to school, Muulke hadn’t combed her hair. It stuck up wildly in all directions.
‘What on earth have you done to it?’ I asked.
‘How should I know?’ said Muulke.
I took the hairbrush with me, and while we were walking I tried to straighten out her hair. Sister Theodora, who took Muulke’s class, detested girls who were sloppy about their appearance. There were rumours that she had once cut off a girl’s uncombed hair with the hedge-clippers.
‘Ouch! Not so hard,’ Muulke complained.
But I had no time for sympathy. ‘Jess, keep walking!’
Jess sighed.
The hedge was straight and solid as always. Nothing betrayed its secret: the hollow in its centre and the vagabond who lived there.
‘Breathe,’ I said when we’d reached the spot where we always caught our breath.
‘I’m really squeak-creaking,’ said Jess.
‘Breathe.’
She breathed.
‘Is that all?’ I said when I heard the awful noise. ‘Is that all you were carrying on about?’
‘Get lost!’
After school, Oma Mei was waiting for us. She stood by the school gate with Nettie’s bicycle. There was a wooden box with shopping in it on the luggage carrier. She looked as if this was the most normal thing in the world, but we knew how special it must be for her. She had always wanted a bicycle.
And even though her mouth looked as fierce as always (‘
Look out! Muulke, don’t lean against the bike. Jess, stand up straight. Do you want to grow as crooked . . . ’), I knew she was delighted to see us and that she missed us as much as we missed her.
‘How is Aunt Nettie?’ we asked.
Oma Mei nodded, and that would have to do. She was wearing a hat with a rose, and a tuft of white-grey hair had escaped from under it and was swaying a bit in the wind. For one long moment, I wanted to spread my arms wide and throw them around her and breathe in her scent.
‘Is it going to take much longer?’ Muulke enquired.
‘As long as God wills,’ Oma Mei replied curtly. She lifted the box from the luggage carrier and handed it to Muulke and me. ‘And straight home, do you hear? And stay together. Jess, up straight. Fing, make sure she walks straight up. And don’t forget to tell the Dad that Knoops has wire netting for the flyscreens. You hear, Fing?’
Meanwhile, she got the bike moving and slid onto the saddle. She straightened her back, and slowly the bike wobbled away over the cobblestones. The hat with the rose teetered on her head.
Behind us we heard laughter.
It was Fat Tonnie and her group.
‘Bloody hell,’ they said. ‘There’s bloody Jess with her bloody back.’
‘Ignore,’ said Muulke. ‘Just ignore.’
We walked past the market, through Put Street, under Putse Gate.
‘Why doesn’t Fie ever wait for us anymore?’ I asked. ‘We never see her these days.’
‘No idea,’ said Jess.
‘But you were talking to her yesterday, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Didn’t she say anything?’
‘No.’
‘Change hands,’ said Muulke.
We changed hands and walked on.
‘Shall we play Threatened Treasure this afternoon?’ I asked.
Jess shrugged.
‘You can be the threat,’ I said. For a moment she looked brighter, but then her eyes went dull again.
‘No need.’
We had only just come home when Muulke wanted to go out again.
‘Just to have a quick look,’ she whispered.
‘We have to do the dishes first.’
Nine Open Arms Page 8