Yes, Mom, said Shelley again. I cannot believe you didn’t see me. She actually smiled and put one mocking hand on her little girl’s hip.
Janet’s right hand whipped free and for an instant she had struck the smirk from Shelley’s face. Knocked it clean to the other side of the room.
But jumping back from that fork in the road, Janet instead threw her arm around her daughter and pulled her close into a brutal hug. Shelley, she whispered into the damp on the top of her daughter’s head, which was already so close to Janet’s chin. As long as you are here, safe and found.
But you didn’t find me, Shelley’s voice insisted from the painful, towelling embrace. I helped you by coming out. You would never find me. It’s my best place ever.
Where? Where? screamed Pieter and Sylvia took up the chant. Where? Where?
Not telling, murmured Shelley. She smiled as she imagined an eleven-year-old sphinx might smile and repeated, You will never guess.
And so Pieter kicked her. Simply raised his right foot, with the thin scar across the top of his big toe, and kicked her hard on the shin. His toe was hard, but Shelley’s shin was harder. There was an ugly cracking sound and it was Pieter who fell back howling and clutching his foot in agony. Janet and her youngest child gasped but the sphinx barely blinked and then uttered the brightest, most vatic peal of laughter.
It was some time before the troubled waters subsided: before Shelley emerged from her room to which she had been banished, before Pieter’s foot and toe were sufficiently swaddled in bandages to render him silent and satisfied. Sylvia had been gainfully employed with a damp facecloth, which she used to mop Pieter’s brow, much to his and her pleasure and Janet was just about to begin to make Hektor-Jan’s fried breakfast in earnest.
Isn’t this fun, Janet had said as Shelley cracked two eggs into the old saucer and Pieter separated four rashers of bacon.
I want breakfast, Sylvia had countered and the cry had been taken up by the other two, sudden allies in the campaign to eat breakfast with Pappie before he went off into the sunset on his night ships.
The fight quite gone from her heart, Janet relented.
After thirty minutes of domestic carnage which featured broken eggs half-scrambled, half-fried and two rascally rashers of bacon that made a bid for freedom onto the floor, they were ready to eat. There was fried tomato, fried banana, fried bread, and the usual eggs and bacon and toast. Hektor-Jan was summoned and they all sat squashed in the breakfast nook, their plates loaded in front of them.
At last, Janet could sit still. The perpetual motion of motherhood shifted gear and she paused, her food momentarily forgotten. Her thoughts turned to Brigadoon, the forthcoming play, and her role as bonnie Jean. And then, as her family chomped and chewed and idly requested more tomato sauce – of which there was none, but now added to the shopping list for tomorrow – rising up from beneath the mists of Brigadoon, there came the sense of a fissure. In the very fabric of her mind, in the deepest tissue of herself, there came again the ringing sound of concrete splitting and the image of the crack – which lurked like guilt and fear and things forgotten and not yet bought for the pantry – at the bottom of the swimming pool.
Janet blinked and, like her family, tried to lose herself in the swabbing of yellow blood from the haphazardly fried yolks. She clung to half a slice of toast and smeared the bright chaos around her plate. Thank goodness there was no more tomato sauce. The yellow was garish enough. There was almost the sense of her plate shouting at her, so vivid was the yellow yolk and Janet – as ever – tried not to think that they were all eating the brilliant liquid feathers of chicks which had not been born, little chicks that now would never be born owing to the fact that they were eating them for breakfast – at night. Janet lowered her toast in a trembling hand. There, in a long line down some imagined supermarket aisle, there was now added another neat box of a dozen eggs, twelve more chicks that would never cheep endearments to their mother hen. And there was Hektor-Jan wiping the last yellow blotches from his moustache. Janet wanted to spread her wings – her arms – around her little chicks and hold them close. But it was too late. Hektor-Jan was off. He was off to brush his teeth and then he would be heading into the night on his night ships. Little Sylvia was looking sad and the children got up.
Coffee, said Janet, and Hektor-Jan paused in his flight from the table.
Ja, his voice rumbled with pleasure. Ja, of course. He sat down. With a lordly gesture, he spread his arms wide and placed his hands behind his head. His stomach jutted fiercely from his solid frame and he smiled.
Of course, his new shift could be delayed for another minute or two, however long it took her to pour the oily black coffee into a mug and stir in three spoons of sugar so that the white granules were embraced by the black coffee, were forever fused with the black coffee. And then the white milk turning the stark black liquid a beautiful brown. She handed her husband his mug of coffee and turned to face the gun.
There before her stood Pieter pointing a gun.
It was Hektor-Jan’s gun. Heavy and thick and black, it shook in Pieter’s little white hand. Pieter might as well be holding a bomb or a black rat or a crack. And it strained, ready to jump and bite her, ready to explode in her face and in her kitchen, ready to shatter her world to smithereens. Her life stood still – the loaded gun –
Stick ’em up, said Pieter with the curt, hostile enthusiasm of a young boy. Stick ’em up, Mommy. I said, stick ’em up.
It was a filthy imperative in such a small, cherubic mouth.
The gun waved in his hands. It leered drunkenly at her. The little boy could not hold the weight of the gun. It lurched and swung in front of her.
Pieter, she tried to gasp. Pieter, her face twisted as she tried to scream. Pieter! But no sound came. And then there was the laughter of Sylvia as well as Pieter as they watched their mother pulling the funniest face and making the strangest noises. And then there was their father’s laughter. Their Pa, who was always ready for a laugh. How his barrel chest brought forth deep guffaws. They filled the kitchen now, poured like thunderous waves into the kitchen as Janet seemed to drown.
Gulping, the gun, the guffaws, she was at sea in her own little kitchen.
I don’t think Mommy likes that, said Shelley in a soft clear voice. I don’t think –
Bang! yelled Pieter. Bang!
Hierso, seun, said Hektor-Jan in his native Afrikaans. Here, son. Gee my die rewolwer. Give me the gun.
Pieter knew when the game was up. Render unto Caesar – he meekly handed over the gun. From his little hand, the ugly weapon passed into his father’s meaty paw. Hektor-Jan hefted the weapon thoughtfully. He looked at Janet. Her face slowly settled back into her usual features of motherly calm, a special form of stoicism.
Holster, he said to Pieter. Gaan haal hom. Go and get it. And the bullets.
Again Janet’s face twisted as her tiny son returned trailing the dark-brown holster and a fistful of live ammunition. She watched as Pieter handed over one golden bullet after another and his father inserted them into the waiting chamber which he had snapped open from the belly of the gun.
Why this ritual. Why did Hektor-Jan insist on this ridiculous farce every morning – and now, Janet supposed, it would be every night. And she could not stop herself. Each day the shock of the gun. The ghastly paradox of innocent Pieter and the beastly gun. Was it because Hektor-Jan had grown up on the farm with guns and dogs and killing. Hardly a farm. It was more of a smallholding near Springs, further and deeper into the East Rand, past Benoni, further away from the English city of Johannesburg. Hektor-Jan and his rough older brothers had enjoyed free rein of a stretch of veld and scrub and trees, small koppies, little hills and a vlei, a stagnant pool where they shot birds with their .22 rifles, guns that seemed to grow on trees while little birds fell from them. He was only eight for God’s sake. He said he was eight years old when he went off alone with a rifle and killed his first tarentaal, a kind of quail, all by himself. Just
he and about seven brakke, seven mangy inbred dogs that got in the way, but which also got the injured quail that scuttled into the long grass bleeding to death. On the farm, you were self-reliant. On the farm, if you didn’t stand up for yourself your older brothers and their friends would beat you down until you had to stand up for yourself. You grew up quickly: you had to. Was he sad. Was he sad that he missed a childhood of Enid Blyton, of Noddies and Big Earses and Famous Fives. And Hektor-Jan had laughed deeply in her arms and had said, No. He and his brothers were the Famous Four and that they took no kak, no shit, from anyone. And so it seemed natural to join the police after the army. When you were good with guns and used to shooting things and full of camaraderie and excitement, who would not want to join the South African Police Force. And he would like Pieter to get used to handling a gun. So that when it came to shooting a gun he would not shit himself like some Engelse dorpsjapie, like some little English town-boy who could not tell his elbow from his arse, his gun from his bum. Hence the ritual, every day. And every day her shock at the unpalatable heist in her kitchen, held up by her own son every day and every day the jolt got worse, not better. She seemed to shove it deep into some back drawer of her mind with the other cluttered mess of things and so, each day, Pieter and the gun was a shock to be experienced anew. It was something to which she dare not become inured. What would happen if she failed to respond with mordant horror. Janet caught her breath. Sylvia loved the drama but Shelley, older, wiser Shelley, shook her head and tried to be brushing her teeth when it happened. And then Pieter had to be taken down a peg or two once his father left –
Hektor-Jan himself just laughed to see such fun.
Janet’s hands trembled under the cover of the dish-towel. It was done for another day. Time to file it away.
Shelley’s Secret Journal
Word for the day from Granny’s list is INDUBITABLE.
Pieter kicked me and hurt his toe. In some ways God is indubitable but maybe not with animals. We had breakfast for supper as Pappie is starting night shift with no uniform any more. We slept in after a late night. Mommy and Pappie did some skinny-dipping and played in the garden. I watched them but then Pappie carried Mommy into the garage. It was quiet for a long time. Today Mommy fell in the pool. We played Sharky and Marco Polo. It has been sixteen days since Jock was murdered. I shall not forget. I shall not turn the other cheek as they say in church. I shall keep this journal like you asked me, Granny, but I will try to write more neatly. The indubitable blisters on my hands have now peeled leaving skin that is red and lumpy. That makes me remember and I try not to cry. I still do not know why Jock had to die. It was terrible. He kissed Mommy indubitably right near Jock’s grave. Happy New Year. Shelley.
Hektor-Jan lumbered off to do his teeth and to finish getting ready.
When their father returned with clean teeth and his gun snugly secured in his dark-brown holster, they could hug him and hug him. So strange now to have a father no longer in uniform. No longer the crisp, starched sense of their burly father pressed into a uniform with medals and names and a rank on his sleeve. He did not look as if he was going to work. He looked like they should all be going to the drive-in, to see a fliek about The Island at the Top of the World or Escape to Witch Mountain maybe. They should be going with him to have some fun and so they clung to him like human limpets.
Janet tried yet again not to think about her children and the gun, tried to bury the thoughts in that back drawer and to wipe her hands clean of the memory with the rough dish-towel. She did not want to think about her husband and his gun which clung like a misshapen appendage at his waist. Dangled there for all the world to see. Although that was now to change. No more uniform. All plain clothes now and Hektor-Jan was very likely to get a shoulder-holster he said. Something to hide the gun. So that he could slip amongst the bad guys and not be noticed until it was too late. And then he would get the bad guys, just like that, and Hektor-Jan had snapped his fingers like the sound of concrete cracking and Janet had gasped and had almost bitten her tongue.
And then he had hugged her and had told her to finish all her breakfast like a good girl and he had kissed her on the top of her head and he was gone, walking in slow motion like a great ship covered in barnacles. His barnacles emitted high-pitched laughter that Pappie could be so strong and that they could ride on him all the way to the front door. Then Hektor-Jan began the patient process of scraping them off one by one, peeling off their arms and legs and lowering them to the ground and hardly breathing heavily as they attempted to leap back on to him. Then it was final goodbyes and a soft, Look after your Ma now.
The front door closed with a bang and the car went growling into the distance.
The children were mooching around like morose puppies – no more barnacles at all, but puppies abandoned by their father, the one with whom they had such fun.
Cheer up, she had called loudly, staring at her plate across the kitchen. Her hands worked busily beneath the dish-towel.
Go and get your books, she had called again to their silence. Time for some Secret Sevens and Famous Fives. What about The Children of Willow Tree Farm and, Sylvia, I’ll read some Noddy to you.
Pieter poked his head into the kitchen and gave her a withering look. From live ammunition and a real gun to Julian and George and dogs with such stupid names and everything set in some old England somewhere and the pictures of stupid curly-haired children who exclaimed Oh, I say and drank lashings of homemade lemonade. Pieter made some disgruntled remark, but his mother let it go.
And so they lay straggled about the lounge, her litter of puppies, all curled up with Enid Blyton and nice, safe stories where everything worked out in the end and the children triumphed and there was a distinct and pleasant dearth of dangerous weapons.
After she tucked them up in bed – no need to bath after a day spent in the pool – Janet kissed them goodnight: first Sylvia and then Pieter, who said he was sorry that he had frightened her, as he said sorry every night and then did exactly the same terrible thing the next day. He said sorry and asked her to kiss his bandaged toe. She kissed his toe and patted him on his tousled head. Night, night, she said. Then, last of all, her sensible daughter Shelley, who put away whatever she was scribbling on and who held her close and whispered encouragement in her mother’s ear, as though she was the one to look after her poor, dear mother and that, in the final reckoning, it would be all right in this busy house.
And Janet would blow them kisses and switch off their lights as though she was never going to see them again. Such fond nightly farewells! Their little hot bodies shrouded by a thin sheet in the stifling warmth of a midsummer night, and glasses of water in easy reach and the faint incense of mosquito repellent. And she closed the doors to the little crypt chapels, a votive priestess following some sacred rite. Amen, she breathed as her trinity of tiny warm prayers drifted into heavenly slumber. Amen. Amen.
That night, for the first time on 1 January 1976, Janet was alone.
There was no Hektor-Jan. There was no Alice doing the last of the dishes and asking if they wanted a mug of Milo. And there was no Jock with his doggy dreaming and soft farts in this declension of household routine.
Janet stood alone in the lounge. At her feet, the open wings of Enid Blyton’s flights of fancy lay stretched. Janet stood silently for a long while. It seemed that she herself was poised for flight, not ready to rest. She switched off the last of the lights in the house and remained standing in the dark. Her mother’s mind went out to her children, both born and unborn. Almost without knowing it, she made her way into the spare bedroom, into the room already set aside for the new baby. In the darkest womb of the house she stood, feeling the squareness of the house, its brick-and-mortar solidity. She needed to feel such certainty. Maybe it was the hormones, maybe an accumulation of the sudden attacks by Pieter and the gun. She sighed. She did not know. She did not want to know. For a long while she stood there, her hand resting on one smooth wall. She thought of her c
hildren sleeping peacefully. She thought of the baby brooding just below her heart. And she thought of her largest child of all, Hektor-Jan, heading off into the night, into the darkness of the night with his little gun and his tiny bullets and she smiled a soft, small smile. Hektor-Jan tried. For all his shortcomings, he certainly tried. She returned to the previous night and her lips parted as she felt him again. When they were together she knew who she was and what to do. She did not have to think at all. Her skin did not have to think and his hands and body were immediate and unambiguous. Her hands were sure and certain, swift and secure. The precise opposite of her mother. The bulk of Hektor-Jan dispelled the sense of her mother and she sighed a soft sound, a moan of remembered pleasure. All could be well. She moved with the memory of those warm moments.
And before she knew it, Janet found herself outside in the dull brilliance of the back garden. To one side, she could feel the shadowy fronds of the weeping willow. Then across the black grass there came the sound of the chugging Kreepy Krauly busy swallowing the pool, ingesting all that liquid tarmac. Cleaning-cleaning-cleaning, the heartbeat of the night. The scent of the giant pine tree next door, distilled and coaxed into even more intense life in the humid air, came to her and, once again, Janet stood at the edge of the pool.
The dew fell steadily and the sky reeled with stars. Janet tried to lift her head, but she was afraid that she might end up in the black water. Chug-chug-chug went the Kreepy Krauly beneath her feet. Above her the Southern Cross tilted on its silent axis. Hektor-Jan’s belt became Orion’s Belt and it slipped loose. Right across the sky, the stars glistened brightly and Janet swooned.
Catching herself, on an impulse, Janet stepped back and out of her clothes. Inexplicably and with such ease, Janet was cloaked in nothing but the night. The soft, warm Highveld air swaddled her and she stood at the foot of the swimming pool. Yes. It was unmistakable. Running down the length of the pool came the certain crack. For a very long time, Janet stood there not knowing what to do. Her feet shuffled apart. Was she a living dowser, a female divining rod made naked and ready to yield to the subtle, teasing pull of such rhabdomantic forces she neither acknowledged nor understood, unlike the very loquacious man they hired before the borehole was drilled. She felt the gentle air whisper through her hair and from the top of her head down to the skin right at the bottom of her toes of her parted feet Janet felt the ground shift. She knew the certainty, the very fact of the crack. It was as though it had split her clothes from her body and rendered her white skin naked to the African night. She dwelt in possibility. The spreading-wide of her narrow hands to gather – yes, to gather – to gather anything. Anything was possible.
The Crack Page 4