It would not be long before there were tears. Van lekker lag kom lekker huil, Hektor-Jan would always warn. Lovely laughter brings lovely tears, the Afrikaans saying put it well. There were always tears.
Janet thought to escape to the en suite bathroom to fetch another towel as the children renewed their assault on their naked father. Hektor-Jan slept naked. In 1976, Janet did not know of many men who slept stark naked, but Hektor-Jan certainly did. He radiated warmth and hair and manly fumes. She was always aware of his hair. It ran in dark seams across his body. Under his arms, between his legs, up to his belly button, along his spine, across his chest and arms and legs. Lately, even his nostrils and ears had sprouted hair. He was a very hairy man. She grabbed a fresh towel and clung to its clean, dry expanse.
He was also a beautiful man. His strength and his dark good looks. Sometimes she would reach out to touch him as he slept, as though to make sure that this handsome man was indeed hers. And almost to ask the question with her hands, the soft, uncertain tips of her fingers – could this dear man, this dark, handsome man indeed be hers. She who was so ordinary and nondescript. Her figure was fine, of that she was sure. Her face was clear and her eyes – maybe her eyes were too intent. They were light brown, like her mousy hair, nothing to write home about. Not quite hazel eyes, too light for hazel and too penetrating in their utter fixity. That is what her own mother had said. No doubt when Mrs Amelia Ward had performed or uttered something typically outrageous in front of the family and Janet had bitten her tongue, and stared and stared at her bold mother, that had prompted the astringent remark: Child, your eyes. That look. Your funny little eyes so, so penetrating in their utter fixity. Those were her mother’s exact words. They cut through time to be as fresh and sharp as when they were first spoken. Maybe her mother had a point. Why, sometimes she felt as though she had to remember to blink. She would gaze unblinking at the beautiful man who was her husband as he slept beside her. Even as that beauty began to be shrouded in more and more brown-black hair. She never recalled him being that hairy.
The children did not seem to mind his hair. For a moment she caught herself fearing that they might get lost in his hair, that they might vanish into all that hair, but then she smiled. Pieter was sitting on his father’s head and the girls had got their father’s limbs under control. He was trapped. He rumbled beneath his son. The children squealed. They had him now. But then, like a manly and rather hirsute volcano, he erupted in a thunder of ha-has and ho-hos. His children scattered across the bed shrieking with joy and Janet had to escape to the bathroom.
She slipped through the door into the bright light, then shut it. Like turning a page. Suddenly, there was peace and quiet. The peace and quiet so beloved of mothers when their children and their hairy husband were cavorting and when trouble loomed like a pram at the top of a horrible flight of steps. It nudged closer and closer and no one seemed to notice or to care. The baby inside chortled in his glee just as the front wheels tested gravity. The wheels whispered over the top before bumping, bumping down the entire flight of concrete steps. Sheer horror.
Janet sat on the side of the bath and tried to compose herself. Her damp clothes caused her to shiver, even though it was more than thirty degrees out there. The bathroom, with its soft light at the side of the house, was soothing and cool.
She placed an anxious hand on her belly.
Next door, the chaos continued. She could see it happening. Little Pieter caught in the face by a jerking elbow, Hektor-Jan’s most likely, his nose blooming with blood. Shelley flying back and bumping her head, breaking her crown. And all fall down: tiny Sylvia shrieking off the edge of the bed like the baby in the pram. Falling through space before lying broken and twisted on the carpet far, far below.
Was he doing this intentionally.
There was a shriek. Then there was silence. Dear God.
Hektor-Jan opened the door of the bathroom and... and evolved into the room. He was a naked chimp. Janet looked up in surprise as he loped in. Then, before her very eyes, he lifted the lid of the loo and sat down. At least he had the nous in the house to sit down. For once.
The children, she whispered. The children.
The silence next door was ominous. Were they all dead. Had he smothered them with his father’s love. Had they drowned in his hair and disappeared.
They’re hiding, he whispered too, conspiratorially. Like a mocking clown.
Janet opened her mouth.
Hektor-Jan started to gush.
She closed her mouth and squirmed in her makeshift seat.
Hektor-Jan winked at her.
The towel slid from her grasp and pooled at her feet. She could only stare at her hairy husband astride the porcelain throne. Right before her in the bathroom with one hand delving between his legs as he sat there and gushed fulsomely.
Hiding, she said faintly.
Hektor-Jan nodded vaguely. His eyes seemed to turn inward as he strained.
No. He was not going to. Surely not.
It’s a new game, Hektor-Jan’s voice strained into her loo, which could do with a clean. Alice would be back the following day, thank goodness.
Janet leapt to attention. A new game. Not Marco Polo or Sharky inside the house.
Relax, said Hektor-Jan.
He reached for a strip of toilet paper.
Janet sprinted for the door, except her legs failed to move. She never made it.
Right before her, in the cool depths of her bathroom, Hektor-Jan leaned forward. Dear God. First the gulped milk and now this. Long gone were the days of little ankles pinned in the air by a motherly hand and the careful wiping, such careful wiping, of chubby pink cheeks as Shelley then Pieter then Sylvia cooed. Gone were the buckets of Steri-nappy and the broadsheets of cloth nappies hanging on the line like warning flags. Or a whole series of surrenders. White flags symbolising the sacrifices of body, mind and soul to her three offspring who had used her like a launching pad and had sprung free. Now they were birds flitting through the house. She clutched at her stomach and Hektor-Jan tore yet another strip of toilet paper. Janet mumbled something and again Hektor-Jan winked like it was a big joke. Then he flushed, gave a shocking squirt of air freshener and came over to where she stood, like a bedraggled butterfly – no, a moth – about to take flight.
The sun had turned his skin dark and bronzed. With all his hair and his summer skin he could be a different species. Even a different racial classification in this South Africa obsessed with racial classification. Obsessed like children colouring in with different shades of black, white, yellow and brown. Or kids messing around with pastels labelled white and non-white, blankes and nie-blankes. Or poo and nappies. Crisp white towelling blowing in the breeze or poo on toilet paper or nappies stuck bleaching in a bucket of Steri-nappy. Did that make sense. Goosebumps pricked her flesh and Hektor-Jan knelt before her and placed his warm hands around her back and pulled her towards him. Last night –
The towel lay crumpled on the floor and he pulled her close so that his cheek rested against her belly as he knelt there like a subservient ape, her very own Hektor-Jan, her husband who was about to go on night shift. She could smell him, as though he were turning lavender at the edges, and now his warm face pressed close to her belly through her damp, cool dress, and she stopped standing there like a startled bird and began to stroke his head. There, beneath her fingers, was the one place on his body where there was supposed to be hair and there was now less and less hair. Her Hektor-Jan was growing bald despite the recent sprouting from nose and ears, or perhaps because of it. A sudden shift in the balance of hair.
The new job will help, he said from the depths of her stomach and for a moment she thought that it would help him grow hair. That the new job under the cover of night, his promotion, would somehow promote the growth of hair on the top of his head. Top secret could become toupee secret.
He chuckled as though sensing her confusion. His naked flesh wobbled beneath her and he held her more tightly.
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br /> Just over seven months to go, he rumbled below her.
She nodded, which he could not hear. Yes, she said softly, which he did not hear.
What would you like, he said. A boy or another girl.
You just never know, she said.
What’s that, he asked.
Just seven months to go, she said. Aren’t you glad I kept all those nappies.
He did not move. Just knelt there warm and close as her hand fondled the hair on his thinning scalp. She could not bring herself to mention the crack. Not there. Not then. Not whilst her beautiful grown man knelt like a little lost boy before her and the children were mercifully though suspiciously quiet somewhere in the house. But then she was gripped by fear and a dread of lavender. It was like a sharp screwdriver of scented lavender had been driven between them and she was wedged apart from him. She needed to let go this hairy man no matter how handsome he was. She had to remove the cloying dress that trapped her in its damp folds. For a moment, again, her arms were wings and she had to fly free. She managed not to emit a loud squawk. That would have startled Hektor-Jan. It might have bowled him over or made him instantly bald. You never knew with shock. You just never knew. And she blamed the crack. She feared for her husband and she could not burden him with the crack. She did not want him to get how he got. She would speak to Solomon, see what he said.
Gently but firmly, she extricated herself from his grasp. His warmth peeled away and she was free. Free to escape to the bedroom whilst he knelt there beside the bath, his back to the loo.
The curtains were still closed in the bedroom and the house was in a state of warm hush. If she closed her eyes she could sense her children hiding. They formed part of the fabric of the hot afternoon as Shelley, Pieter and Sylvia fused with the cloth of heavy curtains – hid in the hanging folds – or insinuated themselves under chairs and behind the opacity of doors. Janet was tight-lipped in the gloom.
Whilst Hektor-Jan knelt in silence in the bathroom, she slipped out of the clasp of her dress and quickly freed herself from the moist clutches of her bra and panties. The smell of chlorine suddenly rose from her skin, and she patted her damp flesh that, in the sudden chill of nakedness, did not feel like her skin. It could well be the flesh – goosed, cold, oddly lifeless – of another, as though she inhabited the body of a stranger.
Janet patted her arms and her belly just to make sure, to instil a sense of life, but her hands, too, were cold. She would have to go back into the bathroom where her husband still knelt. Would he remain there until it was time to start work.
Janet crept to the door, slipped in and ran a quick hand to the peg on the other side of the door. Then she was back in the safe gloom, pulling the white towelling gown over her skin so sticky with cold and goosebumps. For a moment she felt as though she were pulling on a large nappy, such was the texture of the gown. She stood, then sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped like a large white present, a baby-adult, in white towelling that scratched with the precise texture of new babies’ nappies. More Christmas presents to themselves. A His and Hers towelling robe for moments just like this. Beautifully scratchy and stark white with a firm towelling cord to tie around your belly and keep you safe and secure. Beneath the tight circumference of the belt that kept her together, Janet felt the new life within her begin to move. It was early days yet, she knew, but she fancied that she could feel him move. And she knew, just knew, that it was a he, a boy-child. Sometimes, she pictured him climbing around inside her like his father, a little hairless version of his father, a tiny monkey with precious limbs, and she beamed as he swung from the liana of his umbilical cord and she felt him dangle within her. She smiled to herself and patted her precious cargo beneath the firm belt. Hektor-Jan in the bathroom, and Hektor-Jan inside her. A world of Hektor-Jans. One hairy but going bald, the other bald but soon to grow hair. She held her breath and from deep within her came a tremulous scream. It wavered and warbled. Come and get me, it screamed with a ghoulish voice and she realised that it was Shelley or Pieter, probably, and that they were growing impatient. They expected her to come and get them and, once again, she had confused herself with her house. God knows, she had lived here long enough. But her children were deep within the house, not her. The scream came from them, not from her womb.
Tying her hair back, Janet pulled her face into shape and with a brave mother’s smile she pantomimed the exaggerated steps of the huntress. Into the passage she went. I am coming to get you, she called with an actress’s voice. She brightened considerably. This could be good practice for the show. When was the first rehearsal. She would need to check the schedule clamped to the fridge door by the magnets Pieter had given her for Christmas. A cluster of metal miracles that clung to the fridge like desperate children – a whole coloured alphabet of scrambled letters that currently spelled words like YEAR, HAPPY, NEW and GOD on the great white coral reef of the fridge. That was Shelley, mocking her little brother’s not-so-subtle hints for a DOG. It was his birthday soon. He himself was almost a Christmas present eight years ago. Now he was turning nine and the only thing his little heart desired was a DOG. Some furry puppy to replace old Jock. Jock who had suddenly died the week before Christmas and who was still keenly missed. That was why Shelley was so bitter. How could one replace Jock with another dog – which Pieter, with profound originality, wanted to call Jock – and why did GOD kill their DOG? Did GOD move in mysterious ways? Or was it just like Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny? Someone else all along? Shelley was insistent. There came that look in her eyes, which could be described only as a look of utter fixity. She was too angry to cry. Speak to your father, Janet had said, but Shelley would not speak to her father. Not on that subject. She pestered her mother.
Janet smiled as she crept down the passage that ran like a rich, deep vein through the house, the conduit of all domestic traffic. She felt again the crisp towelling scratch her skin beautifully and she held the simultaneous thoughts of puppy and fridge and Shelley and God and the play and Jock and Pieter in her mother’s mind. Anything to escape the sound of smearing excrement and the deeper sense of the crack at the bottom of the pool. Coming to get you, she boomed in her most resonant, theatrical voice and Sylvia squealed away her position under the dining-room table. Comin’ ta get ya, Janet put on an American accent, and then an Irish accent. And then she whispered the words, a chilling psychopath.
Gently, she patrolled the perimeter of the table pretending not to hear the tiny squeals of excitement that semaphored Sylvia’s position. Where can Sylvia be, she mused aloud like Donald Duck, prompting further smug hilarity whilst Pieter shouted, Come and get me! from behind the lounge door. It was only her older daughter who had the good sense to secrete herself with silence into some dark space. For a shiver of a second, Janet worried that Shelley might have pushed the boundaries of the game and had perhaps gone to the pool and lay hidden in the crevices of the crack. Quickly, she pulled Sylvia from under the table and exposed Pieter in a flash. Aw, man, he squawked his disgust at being the second one to be found yet again – always the second one – and Janet hurried through the rest of the rooms in search of her eldest child. Where could she be.
Shelley! Janet called. Can we have a clue.
Pieter muttered under his breath about his stupid sister always stealing the best spot, and Sylvia giggled uncontrollably. Janet rounded on them. Where is she. She gripped their arms and pulled them close. Where is she. Tell me where she is hiding.
Pieter, it turned out, did not know, and Sylvia was simply giggling because it was just so funny. Crossly, Janet let them go and plunged back into the dining room. This was not good. This was not fun. First Pieter being sick, then the crack, then nosy neighbours, then the milk and now this. What more could go wrong on 1 January 1976. Why couldn’t she and her strong husband still be in the intimate garage on the stroke of midnight. If only Alice were back now, instead of the day after tomorrow –
Shelley! Her voice screeched like chalk against the board of
the house. Sylvia put her hands to her ears and Pieter chortled all the louder. Why did little boys find maternal distress such fun, Janet wondered for the umpteenth time and thought about the ridiculous calm that Hektor-Jan always displayed when she was at her most fraught, when the situation actually demanded emotion. When Jock choked that time on the bone and almost died. When the dirty sparrow fell down the chimney and squirted distress all over the lounge and it took Janet’s piercing scream to drive it out into the entrance hall and then right out through the front door. That time when Pieter stubbed his toe beside the pool and cried himself senseless as the top of his toe flapped loose and leaked dark streams of blood.
Shelley! Janet’s voice seemed to want to pierce the walls of the house and prise her loose. Shelley! Each exclamation was a detonation. From room to urgent room, shadowed all the while by a merry Pieter and his paralytic little sister.
Shelley!
And then she was there. Right in front of her. As though she had been standing there all along and saying, Yes, Mom, as cool and insouciant as you like and Janet feeling the palm of her right hand itch and having consciously to restrain her right hand with her left hand as though she was made up of two separate mothers: one wanting to hug her daughter who was safe and sound and found, the other about to knock her cheeky block off.
Instead, Janet stood there in a tangled limbo, and tried very brightly to say, Shelley!
The Crack Page 3