The Crack

by Christopher Radmann

  Then they were home and Alice was being updated by three excited voices and there were requests for a colour TV. In fact, any TV would do. The appeals came flooding from their lips. Ag, please Mommy. I’ll learn all my tables. I’ll be good. Pappie loves cowboy shows!

  And all Janet could do was smile and nod and say, Perhaps one day when they had saved a lot of money. And that they could not spend all of Daddy’s salary on gadgets and toys like Uncle Doug, who did not have any children who needed school uniforms and all sorts of things that cost money – never mind the time spent doing their homework. Now, into bed, chop chop, and yes, Shelley could read for a little bit whilst she settled other two.

  Where’s Pappie’s knife? The red penknife? Pieter was asking, already an Indian sharpening the ends of arrows or a cowboy cutting strips of beef jerky – the biltong – they seemed to chew as they spoke. One of them had thrown a knife and pinned back the arm of a baddy who was about to harm Paw, or was it Li’l Joe?

  No, Janet warned him. Oh, no. And her finger waved in admonishment before his naughty eyes and she reached over and closed them and kissed his eyelids.

  Mommy, he groaned, and she murmured to him and switched off the light.

  In the darkness he complained, but she did not hear him as all the while Doug’s words were whispering in her mind. They were lent an odd weight by the intensity, even the anxiety of his eyes. Look after your husband, he had said. And how is Alice, he had said before repeating, Look after your husband.

  And Janet shook her head to herself and wondered what on earth Doug could mean and why he would choose that moment to impart such heartfelt concerns. As she tucked Sylvia then Pieter into bed and kissed them goodnight, she saw only Doug’s anxious eyes and heard his whispering words, Look – Husband – Alice. How very strange. And she knew that if she went outside later, once Sylvia was settled and the house was quiet with Alice asleep in the kaya, she would feel Nesbitt’s heavy breathing and hear Doug peering out of his ridiculous rhododendrons. She sensed that he was there, now, waiting. Just like she knew what to expect at the bottom of the pool. And she was certain that neither was going to go away. The black crack was lodged deep in the pool and Doug lurked along the fringes of their garden. It was most disconcerting. She was dog tired. After her late and disturbed night, she longed to be able to sink back into bed, and not to feel this buzzing behind her eyes, this buzzing inside her head, as though a horrible, hairy fly had somehow managed to squeeze in through her ears or into her throat whilst she had snored on her back with her mouth open the previous night. She should never have slept on her back, she knew that now, knew it always when it was too late.

  Salary comes from the word salt, Shelley’s voice said behind her and Janet jumped. And television is made up of words from different languages, said Shelley. One meaning far and one meaning to see. It means far-seer. We did it in school today. The tall girl clutched her Enid Blyton close to her chest and looked fixedly at her mother. Janet swatted the air in front of her and frowned. Then she smiled at her elder daughter.

  That’s just the sort of thing your grandmother would say, Janet said to Shelley.

  Television? said Shelley sounding surprised.

  No, things about words, said Janet. Your grandmother knew a lot about words and writers, you know. She liked to use words, she said vaguely.

  How? said Shelley in her persistent way that did not mean to be persistent. We all use words. Even Nesbitt knows some words: sit, stay, she qualified unhelpfully. Jock used to know what chocolate meant.

  So he did, said Janet. The thought of Jock and her mother and Nesbitt made her even more tired. She frowned down the dimly lit passage.

  How? repeated Shelley.

  How, said Janet.

  How does Granny use words? said Shelley shifting the Enid Blyton from one hand to the other as though to wave words at her mother, her slow mother.

  Prickly, said Janet with some feeling as the fly disappeared. Your grandmother liked to make words very prickly.

  Shelley stared at her. Was there a ghost of a smile. Prickly.

  I mean that your grandmother tended to use sharp words, sharpen even the softest words to make them like black-jacks that would stick in your socks and scratch your skin and you would do your best to try to forget them, but then you would finally have to take off your socks and put on new ones with no black-jacks. That’s what she did.

  Janet was suddenly breathless.

  Black-jacks, said Shelley seeming to savour the sharp rhyme and completely miss the point concerning her grandmother. Black-jacks. Indubitable, interminable, inviolable black-jacks.

  Janet tried to smile. She grasped her eldest child by the shoulders, gently. She peered at Shelley and wondered if her mind was now running along black-jack-strewn paths, whether she now had stuck in her mind the thought or the sound of black-jacks and whether she was going to pursue that thought and its associations to the end of the path no matter how far it took her. Just like her grandmother.

  Time for bed, said Janet.

  Shelley shifted the book to her left hand. What did Uncle Doug want? she asked quietly.

  Uncle Doug, said Janet.

  She looked sharply at Shelley. Why was her daughter so full of awkward questions this night.

  When we left, said Shelley. He looked like he wanted to tell you something very important.

  Black-jacks, said Janet.

  Was this even vaguely related to her daughter’s question – or to her grandmother. Were they talking about the same thing. Words, grandmother, black-jacks, Uncle Doug.

  Then the lie came easily as though she were slipping out of a pair of prickly socks.

  He wanted to warn me about black-jacks in the back garden, said Janet feeling bad, but relieved when her daughter smiled and gave her a good-night kiss.

  Don’t forget to brush your teeth, Janet said softly and Shelley vanished into the bathroom. She was left standing in the long passageway with her skin itching.

  They had been talking about the same thing. Those things all made Janet feel as though she was very small and did not quite grasp what was happening. It was a powerful, unpleasant sensation. She was a small, lost child. It was terrible that she could feel like that in an instant. She blamed her mother. She cursed herself.

  Shelley’s Secret Journal

  Today’s word from Granny’s list is INDEFINITE.

  Why is Mommy so indefinite? Last night she was bare again. It was the storm this time. Poor Alice had to go and fetch her. I told Sylvia and Pieter that Mommy was checking that Jock was fine. I was as indefinite as I could be but I made them swear on Jock’s grave not to say anything otherwise we will never get a television. Uncle Doug has the best television. I wish we had a television. Sometimes books are not enough. Did you use sharp words? Mommy says that you did and I don’t know if that is another one of her ideas. How young can you be to get old timers disease? (I know its not really called old timers.) I worry indubitably interminably. Last night Pieter had a nightmare in the storm. Mommy was in bed but Pieter was screaming in the passage that the blacks were coming to get him and he needed the knife. He wanted to run and tell Mommy but I stopped him. I think his screaming was involuntary but I had to push him down and then we fought and he ran into Alice as she was coming out of Mommy’s room. And he held on to her and cried and cried that the blacks were coming to get him. Alice hugged him and told him that the news on the radio was not good. But Pieter just screamed about the blacks the blacks the bloody blacks. I was going to get the soap but Pieter would not let go of Alice and Alice put Pieter to bed because Pappie is on night shift and Mommy was naked and in bed. I asked Alice about the news on the radio but she shook her head and put her finger on her lips and made me go to bed. I covered my ears so that I could indubitably not hear Pieter or the storm or Alice’s radio. I also just hoped Mommy would stay in bed indefinitely. I hope tonight is a better night. Love, Shelley.

  Janet sent Alice back to her kaya for an early
night and for a long time she wandered the house in the dark. She listened at her children’s doors and tried to breathe in time to their peaceful inhalations and exhalations. All the lights were off. The house was a lung, humid and dark in the deep-breathing night and Janet tried not to hold her breath but to breathe gently, keep breathing normally.

  The back door was locked and she resisted the pull of the pool. She could not face the thought of standing there whilst to her right lurked desperate Doug with his disquieting perceptions and his strange, intense ways. Janet listened, rather, to the rhythmical sleep of her children. As she breathed and they breathed, she found that she had wandered over to Hektor-Jan’s side of the bed, and had slid open his bedside drawer to reveal the old Bible and, buried in its pages, his Swiss Army knife – blood-red with its golden cross. Pieter had not taken it. It was safe and hidden. Her breathing was deep, as deep as her children’s breathing and, after a long time she, too, was sinking into bed and into a heavy slumber. But her skin itched the entire night as every black-jack in the entire world seemed spitefully to nip and bite at her legs and ankles – and the sharp penknife prodded and poked, just out of sight.

  She was up before the dawn and was ready to receive Hektor-Jan. She showered and gently soaped her raw legs where she had scratched them in her sleep. She dressed whilst running through more of her lines for bonnie Jean. She found herself whispering the word Brigadoon – emphasising the long final syllable perhaps as a soft antidote to the harsh black-jacks that had plagued her dreams. Brigadoon. There may be picturesque thistles in Brigadoon but there were certainly no black-jacks. Of that she was certain. Black-jacks seemed to be a peculiarly South African experience.

  Hektor-Jan was home slightly earlier than usual. He came into the house quietly and urgently, and then into her in the same intense manner. As Janet held her heaving man and rolled with him, she tried to forgive his desperate way with her. She tried to understand that there must be black-jacks that pricked his soul at work, that a new job, new routines, new ways of doing things would make strenuous demands, would no doubt scratch at his self-confidence. Black-jacks, black-jacks, she found herself repeating in the poke and thrust of his love. And then it was one silly step to thinking about that prodding part of his person as a pink black-jack, spiking, scratching away at her innermoist, most tender self. And then, with conscious effort, she found refuge in the softer, rounder thoughts of Brigadoon once again. Come home, come home, come home to bonnie Jean, she heard the Highland chorus calling from afar with such misty longing, so gentle and yearning, and she mouthed the secret words into Hektor-Jan’s neck where his hair grew down in thick curls if he forgot to shave it. And as Hektor-Jan flooded her, so she was filled with the famous song and she lay there, the lyrics welling up and sure to overwhelm her, pour out of her, drown them both. And Charlie’s smooth tenor subsided just as Hektor-Jan panted into her ear and whispered desperate endearments. And before she could reply, there came the answering call of the assembled townsfolk. Three times they urged him to go home with his bonnie Jean. Then twice more, just in case he even thought about hesitating. With double reassurance they sang on about going home with bonnie Jean. And as Janet pillowed the full weight of her husband like a living mattress, again she heard Charlie’s excited declaration of love and domestic intent. And his song flowed on, unstoppable, leaping over a series of exclamations and rhyming on about the romantic setting – the glen at ten – and linking bonnie Jean with the village green. And Janet made a throaty, chuckling sound at the silly lyrics, the childish rhymes, but before she knew it, she was mouthing the chorus again, like the jubilant townsfolk, repeatedly urging Charlie to go home to bonnie Jean. And Charlie responded so promptly with his fervent desire to do just that, to abandon all the married men and their lovely wives, to forsake all those lovely women and to go home with bonnie Jean, just bonnie Jean, safe in the knowledge that with her his days would fly by till the day he would die – and again came the exclamations, and the simple rhymes of indeed and need, fly and die, green and bonnie Jean! And Janet wondered how green was that green, and how anyone could fly anywhere when their large powerful husband lay at full stretch on top of them as though felled like a giant pine tree of passion. She was finding it difficult to breathe now, but there was something almost comforting in her helplessness. She could do nothing, not move a limb, only blink and whisper, and her entire self seemed to be expressed now in her writhing lips that mouthed the urgent chorus with Charlie, repeating the happy injunction about going home, home, home, to be with bonnie Jean, Jean, Jean! And, as those words and Hektor-Jan’s semen whispered out of her, she found that she had no more strength to inhale or to close her legs. Hektor-Jan was home, was he not; she was bonnie Jean, wasn’t she. Janet had been compressed to Jean and it was most bonnie. But the spell was broken, the enchantment ended as Hektor-Jan jerked in query.

  Wat sê jy, he said in startled Afrikaans. His head lifted from the pillow and he arched himself to peer at Janet in the deep gloaming of the room. What are you saying, he asked again.

  Janet took a long shuddering inhalation as her chest was freed. For a moment, tartan spots danced before her eyes and she could not be sure what was Brigadoon and what was Benoni. But then she peered up into her husband’s face.

  Darling, she said with her first free breath.

  You said something, said Hektor-Jan. You were saying something.

  Was I, asked Janet, and then she said declaratively, I was.

  Pressing down with his hips, Hektor-Jan waited. Janet realised by his silence and his stare that he was waiting.

  What should she say. That she was singing with Charlie and the cast of phantom Scottish Highlanders about love, about hearts and hearths. About the silly iniquities and attractions of the village green and of a woman called Jean. And how she had wondered if rhododendrons flowered on the edges of the village green, and if black-jacks might spear the odd sporran and how they would meet every night at ten. But most of all, she wondered if she could ever confess that the life of bonnie Jean sounded so very inviting and that if she had the chance, if anyone gave her the chance, it would be so very easy to say, yes, I’ll head home with bonnie Jean, for I am bonnie Jean.

  I am bonnie Jean, she whispered and smiled into his face.

  He squirmed inside her but the rest of him did not move.

  You are bonnie Jean, his deep voice felt its way around and into the consonants and vowels of the sentence, as though plumbing it, mining it for meaning. The process transformed her hopeful declaration into much more of an interrogative. You are bonnie Jean. You are bonnie Jean. You are bonnie Jean. You are bonnie Jean.

  Janet blinked. The warm tickle, the trickle between her legs had become a gush.

  The bed, she whispered. We’re messing on the bonnie bed, and Hektor-Jan rolled away from his surprised query and clutched at himself and felt for his underpants. And bonnie Janet stretched back, able to breathe freely at last and smile. She laid a hand on Hektor-Jan as he pawed at himself and dabbed at the bed. The bed could wait. She just wanted to lie back and grin. Hektor-Jan would not mind. He would surely misattribute that satisfied smile and think that her languid pose was a direct result of his husbandly ministrations, and, for the most part, he would be right. Janet did feel refreshed. Her ankles had stopped itching, but at the thought of her ankles she frowned. Hektor-Jan sat dozily on the bed. Maybe he was watching her. Tracing her nakedness in the dark as she lay back, seeking out the darker patches of her body, between her legs and the circles of her nipples. Those familiar parts of her that he treasured, that comforted him so marvellous much.

  Bonnie Jean, he murmured, running a huge hand along her thigh and hip.

  Alice, said Janet and she started at the sound of her own voice, and at the word. Where did that come from – her raw ankles perhaps.

  Too early, Hektor-Jan replied. Alice will be in in ten minutes.

  Alice, said Janet again and she felt the word well up, as she opened her mouth. A-li
ce.

  Hektor-Jan kept stroking her. Ten minutes, he repeated as his hand hovered close to her pelvis and its quiet expanse of hair.

  And she said the name again. Named the maid, made the name in the dark as she breathed in the A and breathed out the -liss. What was going on: A-lice.

  I am going to shower, Hektor-Jan stood up abruptly and was gone. The doorway glimmered as he opened and closed the bathroom door and then there was the hiss of water after the gush of the loo.

  Janet lay there trying to recover the last strains of Brigadoon but all the while breathing the disyllabic A-lice, A-lice, A-lice. It was most trying.

  Janet felt better after a shower, and even better when Hektor-Jan was safely tucked up in bed and the children delivered to school and nursery school.

  Alice was busy ironing the bed linen in the laundry room with her radio going crazy with voices – if it was news, it sounded dramatic, if it was a drama, it sounded like the news. Solomon had the day off, so Janet had the garden to herself. She had gone shopping after the school run and the house was freshly stocked. That was one worry fewer. She wondered if at this stage of her life, she was going to have to get used to surviving a catalogue of concerns, that as a mother and a wife, never mind as a woman, one simply survived a series of never-ending anxieties. There was Pieter’s birthday coming up on Saturday. He would almost be turning double figures, he kept reminding them by waving all but one of his fingers and thumbs at them, and they had been invited to the farm, to Hektor-Jan’s dreadful family, as it was Pieter, the only grandson, who was going to verjaar, as they put it. And all he wanted was another Jock. As though they could pull a puppy out of the air and make it just like old Jock. Hektor-Jan had said not to worry, that he had a plan, and that made her worry all the more.

  Janet looked out of the kitchen window at the pull of the willow tree. It gleamed with green gold in the morning sunshine and the deep shade looked lovely and cool beneath it, within its simple heart. It would be so easy to lie back in its healing shade and forget the silly hints, the silly business with Desperate Doug and Alice and Hektor-Jan, and forget the crack in the pool and simply go over her words for Brigadoon. It was Noreen who had said that there was actually a tiny town in the Eastern Cape called Brigadoon. Who would have thought that in South Africa, as far away from the Scottish Highlands as you could possibly get, there would be a dear little Brigadoon. Maybe they could go there one day. Maybe when the pool was fixed –