‘There’s no sugar.’ Yolande keeps her back towards Sam as she lifts the steaming kettle and pours its contents into the flask. Sam can see her elbow shaking as she battles to hold her arm steady.
That was Jem’s flask. He used to use it on mornings when he wanted to get an early start in the garden, or was about to take a drive. Sam can remember Anneke filling it with fresh filter coffee, standing right where Yolande is now, the skin on her misshapen fingers cream and rose against the dull metal.
Yolande closes the top and gives the flask a shake to mix the coffee up. ‘That should keep me awake till Cape Town.’
‘You’re leaving?’
‘Yes.’ Yolande still hasn’t turned around. Sam stares at the points of her mother’s shoulder blades which jut like sharp, stunted wings beneath the fabric of her dirty T-shirt. Then she looks around the kitchen. On the table, beside Sussie’s Christmas card that’s been lying there ever since Sam found it, are Yolande’s bag, and the key to Jem’s bakkie. Sam glances at the shelf to see that Jem’s house keys are still hanging from their hook. All present and correct, minus just that one. The bakkie key looks lonely lying on the table, uncoupled from its fellows after decades jingling beside them. Sam feels unshed tears sting behind her eyes.
‘You’re taking Jem’s bakkie?’
‘Yes.’ Yolande turns around at last, but she doesn’t meet Sam’s gaze. Her eye sockets look like bruises in the waxy yellow of her face, her toothless mouth a puckered scar. ‘And his flask. And my mother’s rings.’ There’s a note of challenge in her tone, as if she’s waiting for Sam to object. ‘I found them in the drawer of her bedside table.’
‘They’ve been there since she died.’ Sam’s voice is flat.
‘That’s all I’m taking.’
‘Is it?’
‘And I’m not coming back.’ Yolande looks up at Sam then, but only for a second. She doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to bear Poppy’s gaze again.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Sam whispers, and Yolande shakes her head.
‘I could’ve stopped him taking you, you know, all those years ago. I could’ve made him give you back, but I didn’t.’ Sam can feel the dark garden pressing in against her back through the open kitchen door. She can smell roses. A cricket chirps from somewhere close by. ‘Instead, I forgot about you. I can do that again.’
Finally, Yolande steps forward and picks up her bag, placing the full flask inside it. She takes the bakkie key, testing its small silver weight in the palm of her hand before sliding it into her pocket, and Sam stands aside from the kitchen door to clear the exit. Yolande pauses. Sam’s mouth goes dry.
‘Sussie,’ Yolande says, and taps the greeting card with a grey-rimmed fingernail. ‘Whatever it is you think you’ve done that’s so terrible, she’ll forgive.’ Sam’s heart starts up again, but she’s still holding her breath. ‘She might be a bossy old bitch, but that woman is all about family. And her family is you.’
Silence.
Yolande shrugs her thin shoulders and then, without once looking at Sam, walks past her and out into the night. The heels of her boots are loud on the slasto of the stoop, and then softer down the steps, and then even fainter on the overgrown path. Sam listens for the rattle of the bolt on the gate and the sound of wood on wood as Yolande closes it behind her.
The bakkie engine turns but doesn’t take. The ignition whines and shudders. Sam closes her eyes, clutches her hands into fists, takes tiny little breaths. Again, it grinds, chokes and stops. Sam’s fingernails dig into the palms of her hands.
And then, the bakkie kicks into life with a glorious roar. The wheels spin and it drives off, the familiar sound of its motor fading until it is swallowed up by the valley.
Taking careful, deliberate steps, Sam walks over to the kitchen door, closes it, locks it, and covers her face with trembling hands.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
IT TAKES HALF the day to do all the laundry. Sam spends the morning hanging it up on the washing line, and then backs of chairs, and then some of the garden shrubs, rotating the pieces when they dry, and folding the clean, sun-smelling cloth to carry inside.
Last night, after Yolande left, she ate a tin of pilchards, standing up at the kitchen counter, and then went to her room and slept through till the morning. Her dreams were jumbled and nonsensical, but she does remember a brown horse standing beside her at one point. She could feel its breath and the heat radiating off its skin.
She woke to the call of the hoepoe, too numb inside to form any useful thoughts about what to do next, so with sleep still crusting the corners of her eyes, she began piling the first load of waiting laundry into the machine.
She’s eaten her milk-less oatmeal, and drunk her sugarless coffee, and scoured the bathroom with vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, and now she stands in the blazing bright garden, with drying clothes flapping on the line and pillowcases spread out behind her, and stares at the rose bed.
Although the clover is littered with fallen leaves, she can see the beginnings of new buds on the ends of some of the bright green stems. Maybe her nocturnal watering has helped. Sam goes to the shed, fetches the secateurs, and begins to clip, cutting away the dead buds and the broken stalks, and tidying up the canes that have grown too wild. Every time she glances at the hill, she feels the edges of a raw, sharp pain that she’s not ready to face. Instead, she folds laundry and sweeps up the plant trimmings and piles them on to the compost heap.
When she’s done with the roses, and is walking back to the shed to put the secateurs away, Sam is startled by a loud, insistent bird call from high up in the oak tree. She stops, listens. There it comes again: koewee. She looks up and shades her eyes, trying to see what creature could be making such a sound. Such a Sussie sound. It is a call that taps right back to a time when Anneke was the one tending the roses, and Sam was not alone. Could it be an oriole? She waits for another call, but none comes. She stares hard at the oak tree, searching, but apart from the movement of leaves up in the high branches, Sam can see nothing.
Whatever it is you think you’ve done that’s so terrible, she’ll forgive.
Sam closes her eyes and then opens them again, and suddenly she knows. She knows that this is finished. There are no more options, no more choices, no more lies.
*
Sussie opens the front door while Sam is still halfway up the path. She darts out onto the porch and then stops. Sussie’s forehead is a crumple of uncertainty, and her mouth quivers, wanting to smile but not sure if it has permission to do so.
‘Aunty Sussie,’ Sam says as she climbs the porch steps. ‘I…’ Sam’s speech deserts her in the face of what she has to tell. She adjusts her grip on the motorcycle helmet and looks down at her feet. Sussie waits. Somewhere in the grounds, a lawnmower starts up, and the sound judders through their silence.
‘Yes, Sam?’ Sussie’s voice is soft, and Sam thinks she can hear tears waiting at the edge of it. Jem always used to say that Sussie was quick to ‘get the mistys’. Sam can remember her grandpa grinning when he used to say it. Grandpa, with his crinkle-cornered eyes and too-big hands whose fingernails were always edged with earth-brown, no matter how much he washed them. Grandpa, with his blue-white rigid face showing above the slipping, mud-covered sheet. In the bottom of a hole.
Sam’s vision blurs, and for a moment, all she can see is a swirl of dusky purple. Sussie’s trousers. Sam realises that she’s been staring at them. They’re immaculately ironed and are the exact colour of dried lavender flowers. Sam tries to force words past the fullness in her throat. They don’t come.
‘It’s all right,’ Sussie murmurs. She steps forward again, but holds herself back from embracing the girl; instead, she clutches the top of Sam’s arms. It’s an awkward gesture, but the two of them seem frozen within it. Sussie smells powdery and clean, with notes of lemon and floral, and with a rush, Sam remembers that Anneke used to smell like that, but with more soil mixed in.
‘Aunty Sussie,’ Sam beg
ins again. She swallows, then clears her throat. Something in her look makes Sussie release her grip and step back a little. Her eyes widen.
‘What is it, my child?’
‘Jem died, Aunty Sussie. He died in the night in the middle of July.’
And then Sam breaks in two.
Sussie catches her as she falls.
PART FIVE
THE KOEWEE-BIRD SINGS
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
‘DID YOU HAVE a good day with Daddy, my love?’
‘Look, Mama, come look. See what he made me!’ Delia grabs Liezette’s hand and pulls her in through the front door of Charlie’s small flat. Charlie nods an awkward ‘hello’ to his wife. He notices that Liezette, in a new dress, looks fresh and immaculate, like a pile of just-laundered linen. She’s wearing less eye make-up than she used to. It suits her.
Charlie wrenches a window open, despite the fact that a vicious south-easter is blowing hot and mad through the streets of the City Bowl, whipping up dust and drinking up all the moisture it can find. Liezette looks so alive, so full of purpose. Is she seeing someone else? A brief scorch of rage, that Charlie knows he has no right to feel, burns through him and out again, leaving a hollow emptiness. Papers he left lying on the coffee table earlier flap and scatter, and deeper inside the apartment, the bathroom door bangs shut with a thump.
‘See, look.’ Delia shows Liezette her brand new, miniature-sized table and chair, all set up in the corner of Charlie’s lounge. ‘It’s a craft table. For making things.’ She shows her mother the tubs of beads and buttons, the piles of coloured paper and the tubes of glue, both glitter and plain. ‘Daddy made it for me special.’
‘It’s lovely, Delia.’ Liezette bends to touch the bright, yellow-painted surface, and shoots Charlie a look that seems to say: This, you can make? Why not anything else? Why not anything that’s been goddam ordered?
‘And this is where Daddy sits when he helps me.’ Delia pushes a short, three-legged stool at Liezette, who runs her fingers along the dimpled timber top. Charlie hunches his shoulders and jams his hands into his pockets. The stool is a replica of the one he once gave the water-eyed girl to sit on, and then wrapped up and sold on without a second thought.
‘Checking my workmanship, are you, Liez?’ When the three of them, still a family, moved back to Cape Town nine months ago, Liezette had promptly organised herself a job at the same furniture shop in De Waterkant that had been so thrilled with Charlie’s Water-Wood Collection. Now, with Delia at day-care, she spends her days scouting for pieces and new artisans, arranging displays, and managing orders. Hunting for a replacement ‘Charlie’, are you? he’d accused her during one of their bitter, pre-trial-separation arguments. Long, aching months had passed since he’d been able to build a single piece of merit. No, I’m not, she’d retorted, I’m trying to earn a bloody living. One of us has to. And now, Liezette is thriving with new-found purpose. It seems she’s found her calling.
When Charlie had then applied for the position of woodwork teacher at a nearby boy’s high school, his new job had only incensed Liezette even further. What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’re just wasting your talent, wasting time. Charlie had tried to explain that he might be able to inspire some boy the way he was redeemed by his own woodwork master in the black, empty hell following his mother’s death. But Liezette had just stared at him, mystified. It’s as if you’re making yourself do penance, Charlie, she’d said, but in all the wrong ways.
Not long after that, Liezette asked Charlie to move out. Just for a while. Just to get some space and perspective. He moved back to his dad’s place first, and then, last month, to this small flat in the heart of the City Bowl. It’s a longer drive to the rented workshop space in Woodstock that he goes to on weekends when he’s not teaching, but that’s just fine by him. The more time it takes to get there, the better. For the most part, it’s war that waits for him on the other side.
‘Right, come, Deelie, say goodbye to Daddy for now. You’ll see him on Friday,’ Liezette says, and then to Charlie, ‘We’re driving to the farm early Saturday morning to see my folks, so please have her back on time.’
‘We’re going to see Rolo,’ Delia says, grinning.
‘That’s nice. Tell the old chap I say hello.’
‘OK. Bye, Daddy.’ Delia’s hug is all clinging arms and legs, making Charlie think of the koala clutching a tree trunk in one of the picture books she likes him to read to her. Charlie, in turn, holds Delia longer than she’s happy with, waiting till she’s squirming and wriggly before letting her go.
He watches his wife and daughter walk down the corridor towards the stairs, and as always, after saying goodbye to Delia, skids into a slump of unnavigable despair. He closes the door and gazes at his little lounge with its one sofa and piles of books with no shelf to sit on (oh, the irony), and Delia’s bright yellow table glowing in the corner. Just temporary, he tells himself for the thousandth time. But as soon as he does, he remembers Liezette’s look of shocked disappointment at the pieces he began, at last, to produce without the water-eyed girl to watch.
You’re like timber yourself, Charlie, she’d accused him on one of the nights they stood in battle in their small, Claremont kitchen, trying to keep their voices down so as not to wake Delia. It’s like you’ve been sawn off from your roots, a dead chunk of wood, and nothing grows or changes unless someone else picks you up and shapes you. Charlie had been unable to meet his wife’s eyes, remembering the water-eyed girl, and how, beneath her cool gaze, the pieces seemed to purr into being beneath his hands.
Charlie remembers the way the girl’s huge, light eyes had looked when he last saw them: cut through with pain. What is she doing now? Has the little garden she planted for him outside the barn died without him there to water it? Her words withered to meaningless stalks?
Alone in his dingy flat, missing his family, and aching for his lost way with the wood that used to want him back, Charlie often wonders what would’ve happened if he’d been less of a coward and climbed the rest of that bloody hill.
CHAPTER FIFTY
‘SEE HERE, THIS is where they can go to fill out the booking form,’ Keegan explains, clicking his mouse on the ‘contact us’ link. ‘It will then get emailed automatically to Gerrie so that he can get in touch with whoever wants to stay.’
‘It’s great,’ Sam says, ‘it really is, Keegan. So professional.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Keegan tries to force his blush back into hiding by scrolling through the image gallery, ‘you’ve got to be, to stay competitive. Practically every second farm out here is offering holiday accommodation and stuff these days.’
‘But none as nice as this.’ Sam stares at the photograph on the screen. It was taken from beneath the lemon tree, facing towards the house, and at the top of the frame, one vivid corner of a lemon peeks into shot. Beyond the fruit, there’s waving lavender and columbine, then the radiant roses, and further off, the dove-grey walls of the old stable itself.
‘I’m thinking we’ll need to add in a 360 degree tour,’ Keegan says, and Sam nods, not really listening, lost in the image on the screen, staring at the play of sunlight on the leaves. She’s sure she can almost feel the breeze tickling her skin. The sudden scent of roses billows up from nowhere, and she sways on her feet. ‘Are you OK?’ Keegan asks with a worried frown. ‘You look weird.’
‘I’m fine.’ Sam steadies herself with a hand on her desk. ‘I was just… can you smell… anything strange?’
‘Nope.’ Keegan hopes his armpits are not taking over the world again. He bends his head to give them a surreptitious sniff. ‘You sure you’re OK?’
‘Yeah.’ The image on the screen dissolves and is replaced by one featuring the pond, looking across the reflective water to the oak tree. In the shade beneath the leaves, Sam can see the faint outline of Sam-the-horse’s new grave marker. She had been weeping as she’d carved out each letter because the smell of wood and the tap of the chisel in the grain had made he
r think of Charlie. With each dig of the spade into the ground to make a hole for the new plank, she’d whispered a goodbye to her wood-man under her breath, and after patting down the soil, she’d walked out of the shade with sore eyes and blisters on her fingers and a fresh empty space inside her which Charlie used to fill.
The website picture doesn’t show it, but Sam made another marker and buried it beneath the bushes near the quince, where once she’d hidden a jar with a spider inside it. This other marker was small, little more than a slender stick with the carved letters running down it, one below the other:
Y
O
L
A
N
D
E
Not the marker for a grave, or a dead person, but for someone gone. For something finished.
As Yolande promised, she’s vanished without a trace. Sam has decided to imagine her in a rehab somewhere, getting clean, starting on a new life. If she’s going to make up stories about her mother’s life, they might as well be good ones.
‘Yo, earth to Sam. What are you thinking about? You look like you’re miles away.’
‘Sorry. I was just wondering… Do you think this whole guest house thing is going to work?’
‘Well, to hear your uncle Gerrie go on about his business plans, this place is going to be marketed so hard it’s not going to know what hit it. Holidaymakers are going to be jammed in there like sardines in a can, if he’s got anything to do with it.’
‘Yeah.’ Or maybe pilchards. Pilchards in a can. Especially for you, Jem.
‘I think it’s cool, but it will probably take a while, Sam. I know you want to use your share of the profits to pay for university next year, but I don’t know… it’s a big ask.’
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