The Crack

by Christopher Radmann

  And as she lay beneath the overwhelming car and its dark engine thundered, Janet knew that she would not have to ask Solomon apologetically to wait outside. She would not have to fight on his behalf. From the emptiness behind her she knew that he was already waiting outside. Her black had gone to wait outside in the bright sunshine and Mr Clutch surely could now let go. And as the colour welled up in her cheeks and her breath returned, she felt her mother’s voice jump-start in her throat and then out it came, as though her lungs had just backfired.

  For goodness’ sake, she shot the remark at Mr Clutch, would you just let go. Let go, for Christ’s sake.

  In the loud bustle of the place with the brash and noisy aftershave and sweat and the radio playing, her shrill voice was lost. Had she merely coughed. Mr Clutch still clutched and stared. The other men did not move. Only the Italian man at the counter responded. Cement, he said, fine washed sand, vinyl paint, your pool is a-white, yes, you have-a a spade, a trowel, a paintbrush.

  Janet looked behind her. Solomon had indeed gone to wait outside. She should join him. They should leave. But the crack. This was the best place to come, her father said so. She must fix the crack, fix the crack at all costs. Solomon would understand. She would explain to him.

  With trembling white hands, she tried to open her bag then her purse. She took out her mother’s money while the Italian man calculated the price with a stub of a pencil on a scrap of paper. She started to count out the green ten-rand notes, each with the face of Jan van Riebeeck on the left-hand side. It was a lot of money. She counted angrily; her face felt hot. She felt the gaze of all the men and beneath her thumb she caught the stare of the Dutch sailor, Jan van Riebeeck. For a moment it was a relief to look into his cool, green face. His neat centre parting, his flowing hair, his high collars. But then she noticed his pursed lips, oddly open. Was he about to whistle. Did he, too, feel stunned. He looked bemused, pensive. Possibly even amazed. His lips were very strange indeed. They made a definite gap in his face, puckered, somehow raised, yet a dark gap nonetheless.

  The Italian man told her the price and she paid. Then she could return several notes and a fistful of coins to her purse and snap her bag closed. The Italian man shouted her order through a doorway behind him. He turned back to Janet.

  You bringa you car to-a the loading zone, he said. We load-a you car. You fix-a that crack.

  Just like that. Janet tried to nod. Tried to nod and say Thank you, yes, I fix-a that crack, but she seemed to have clipped her voice into her bag along with her tight purse. She turned and left the Italian man and Mr Clutch and the staring men. They remained silent behind her, watching her no doubt in the way that men have. She felt her legs and her bottom and her back prickle, just like when Doug peered over the wall. Doug could be very sweet, but it was that look, that male peering that bored through your clothes like black-jacks and crawled into your underwear and made you squirm. Janet squirmed out of the door into the hot light. Solomon was nowhere to be seen. She walked over to her car, key at the ready.

  There he was. Crouched in the shadow of the far side of the car, out of the way.

  Solomon, she said.

  Madam, he said standing up, unfolding his long limbs.

  They stood there with the car between them. Its white surface was luminous with heat and light in the polishing sun. Janet had to squint then look away. I am sorry, Solomon, she said facing back towards the store.

  Solomon stood on the other side of the car.

  Janet wanted to say more. She wanted to describe the underside of that car, which had simply rolled over her. But with Solomon’s deadpan stare and in the gasping heat, she stood there, looking away.

  We fix that crack, came Solomon’s voice.

  Janet tried to nod. She stared fiercely and pathetically at the store. She tried to return the penetrating stare of the men that lurked in there surrounded by tools and screws and metal bits and masculine certainty and –

  Yes, Solomon, she managed at last, and then they got into the car and Janet drove around to the loading zone. There were more black men to help them and Janet and Solomon stood by as a huge bag of cement and two of washed sand were loaded into the boot of the car. The little vehicle hunkered down on its back wheels with the load. Then came the tin of vinyl paint – brilliant white – and the trowel. They did not need a spade. They had a spade, the one Hektor-Jan had used to bury old Jock. Janet signed the order form. They had got what they wanted, got more than they had bargained for.

  Janet climbed slowly into the car. Was it overloaded. Did it have too much to bear. Solomon slipped into the seat beside her. The car felt very low. Janet tried not to breathe.

  Here goes, she whispered and she started the gruff engine. It sounded very throaty. As they inched out, avoiding the dips and bumps in the loading zone, the little car growled with effort and its chassis shuddered as it lurched over the kerb onto the road.

  Damn it! Janet suddenly shouted. Damn it! Her voice finally cracked as they left the hardware store, the little car struggling with its load and the road ahead black with hot tar and the neat dotted line that stretched straight and white ahead of them as far as the eye could see. Damn it, whispered Janet, one hand clutching her stomach and the other attempting to steer.

  Damn it.

  Whilst Hektor-Jan slept, they repaired the pool.

  Solomon changed into his work clothes and Janet put on her oldest dress. It was long and faded and peculiarly workmanlike. She tied up her hair, removed her hot nylon stockings and found some flat shoes. All that she did in the darkness of the room without Hektor-Jan so much as moving a muscle or making a moan. He slept as silent as the dead. He was exhausted, poor man. Janet paused at the bedroom door and looked back at the soundless mound. She thought of Mr Clutch and the big Italian and the other men, and thanked her lucky stars. Men, she whispered to herself and stole outside to Solomon.

  It took a while to drain the pool completely. Water and leaves and dead insects had collected in the corners of the deep end. Solomon had removed his shoes and had climbed into the inverted skull of the pool. He was bailing out the last of its murky thoughts. The scrape and splash, scrape and splash of the bucket and water was profoundly reassuring and Janet watched the remaining liquid disappear.

  She fetched the hosepipe for Solomon to squirt clear the rest of the pool so that it gleamed with light. It could have been a monstrous satellite dish, sunk into the garden and signalling white radiance, such sheer hot brilliance to the heavens. Janet had to go back inside for her sunglasses. Solomon just squinted and whistled under his breath.

  He fetched the old zinc tub, measured out equal quantities of sand and cement, and mixed the two together with great scraping sounds. The metal of the spade struck the metal sides of the tub with a horrible rasping made worse by the gritty sand. Janet stood there holding the hose, her teeth on edge, goose bumps coursing down her arms and back. She shivered.

  Ja, said Solomon pointing to the turgid snake that she held and Janet released the kink in the hosepipe so that water gushed into the tub. Ja, said Solomon more urgently and pushed her hand and the hose aside. That was enough water for now.

  The sound of his spade deepened and the scrapes were undercut by the folding, slapping sound of wet cement. Then they were ready.

  Janet held the bucket as Solomon shovelled some of the mixture into it. It was very heavy. Janet had to put it down with a gasp. Solomon gripped it, hefted it up onto his shoulder and then walked carefully across the crazy paving, down the steps of the baby area and across to the crack where it reached up into the shallow end. Janet watched without breathing as he slowly, carefully poured the mixture into the crack.

  The thin stream of grey was slurped by the jagged gap. It looked as though Solomon was feeding a long and violent mouth which swallowed and swallowed. The bucket-load was finished – the crack could take a whole lot more. As much as they had to give, it would appear. Another bucket of sand and cement disappeared. Then another. />
  Eish, muttered Solomon as he traipsed up the steps for the fourth bucketful.

  Janet lifted her sunglasses onto the top of her head. She stood teetering on the very edge of the pool, peering into the white light with its central black stripe. Where was the grey cement. Only after the seventh bucket did a tongue of grey mixture finally emerge from the lips of the crack. It was a very deep crack indeed.

  Well done, Solomon, Janet called in relief. They were getting somewhere. Thank goodness, they were making progress. For a moment Janet had feared that they might continue pouring cement into the pool for the rest of their lives and that it would make no difference at all. The crack would be there to haunt them for ever. What would she say to the family. The children, Hektor-Jan, her poor father, even her hard, demented mother, it just did not bear thinking about at all. Well done Solomon, she said as the tub was emptied and he mixed up the next round of grey, wet goo.

  Eish, Solomon muttered and he peered up at the hot sky. He wiped his brow then undid the buttons of his overalls. With a neat wriggle he slipped his arms and chest free of the brown cloth. Using the flapping arms of the old, worn material, he tied them around his waist as though his shadow were hugging him, clinging to him in a knotted embrace. He grabbed the spade and his strong arms rippled as he dug into the dry mixture.

  Ja, he said, without looking up. Ja.

  Janet held the hissing hose. She watched his expert use of the spade. So swift and assured. The way the muscles in his shoulders and upper arms bunched with controlled power, and then shot the spade forward, lifting and turning. His body glistened black and silver in the sun.

  Ja, he said again, and then stopped and looked up.

  Janet started. The water. She let go the hose and the water gushed from her little white fingers and fell sparkling into the grey dust. It drilled deep into the heavy tub. For a second, Janet heard Hektor-Jan at the toilet, gushing away, then Solomon repeated his urgent Ja and she stifled the hose with a quick twist.

  A while later, Alice brought them some tea. She handed the little cup on its saucer to Janet and the tin mug to Solomon. Then she looked into the pool.

  She said something in Zulu to Solomon and he straightened his back and made a noncommittal reply.

  It is working, Alice said to Janet and Janet nodded. It is taking a long time, Alice said. I am watching from the house. And Next-door Baas is watching too. She jerked her head in the direction of the van Deventers’. Janet tried not to look, but it was no good. Standing there with the cup and saucer poised at her lips, whilst the hosepipe lay to one side pouring water onto the thirsty lawn, she glanced up.

  Doug was on his ladder and wreathed in rhododendron leaves. As usual, he had some small clippers or shears in his hands. Maybe he had not been peering at Janet and Solomon. Maybe, as he did now, he had been clipping the branches, tidying his side of the wall, manicuring his beloved bushes. Maybe that was what he was doing, but even as Janet wondered at the exaggerated concentration of the man, she knew that it was all a ruse. It was too studied. It was too rehearsed. And did he actually cut a single little branch. She could hear the snip-snip, but did a single leaf fall. She saw again his face in the moonlight. She wondered at his perpetual presence. She heard his strange words which she had tried to forget. Janet glanced at Alice, the teacup remained poised at her lips and the water crept coldly over her burning feet. Janet kicked off her shoes and stood there shivering in the heat from the feet up. Only after a third Ja from Solomon did she gulp the remainder of her tea and hand over the teacup with a sigh. She picked up the hose and directed the water to where Solomon pointed. The snipping shears stopped. No doubt, Desperate Doug was doing what Desperate Doug did best. Janet sighed again. She would have to confront Desperate Doug. She owed it to herself and to her husband. She owed it to Noreen as well. What kind of man –

  Ja, repeated Solomon quite forcefully and she twisted the hose so that the water was stifled. But too much had fountained into the zinc tub. Solomon had to add more sand and more cement. He was humming now, no, singing softly to himself. Janet held the hose tightly and whispered to herself.

  The next few loads went well and the deep crack was reduced to a two-dimensional stripe after several hours of back-breaking work. The dark grey line of cement quickly lightened. In the hot sun, it dried in no time at all.

  I am painting next time, Solomon pointed to an imaginary tomorrow just past his left shoulder. This is drying, one day, then I am painting.

  Thank you, Solomon, said Janet. The hose still throbbed in her aching hand but she felt overcome with gratitude. Thank you.

  Solomon took the hose from her and went to rinse out the tub and the spade behind the huge spray of pampas grass. He sang louder now, relieved probably that the hard work was done. Alice would be bringing him his lunch in a moment. Janet stepped forward over the paving, right to the edge of the pool. She did not slide her sunglasses over her eyes. She let the ringing white of the pool strike her eyes. After all that shimmering water, after the taunting, lurking crack beneath a veil of water, it was such a relief to have it all exposed. It glowed in the light and made her eyes stream. She was very grateful to Solomon, very grateful indeed. And she felt proud of herself. She had not buckled beneath the burden. She had not needed to be told by her mother to get on with it, to stop standing there like a pudding, like a raisin pudding looking for a raison d’être. Janet had never eaten a raisin pudding before and she never wanted to have one. What was it. She had faced up to the crack and no one could deny that. Her mother could not tell her to get a grip. She had got a grip. She sighed and was saddened by the simple irony. She, Janet, the disappointing daughter, had mended the crack in the pool whilst her own mother could do nothing about the fact that she was cracked in the head. No strictures or lectures or sarcasm could alter that fact. Janet, the little lost daughter, had taken charge. She did not have to be marshalled by her mother, browbeaten into a corner. There was no sense of triumph though. How could you celebrate your success over faulty concrete or a tremor in the earth when your own mother sat in a quiet corner of her care-home room peering at her knitting as though it were an obscure text in Sanskrit or a newly discovered set of hieroglyphs. When your blue-stocking mother no longer wore any stockings at all, and her legs were exposed, spindly and naked and with faint hairs that glistened in the morning sunlight. Janet sighed. If it were a triumph over some strange maternal sense of expectation and not just the crack itself, then the victory was decidedly Pyrrhic. Her hands fell to her sides. Her shoulders slackened after the bunched-up tension. Janet sighed.

  The children would be overjoyed to be swimming again, once Solomon had painted the pool the next day. It would not be long now before things got back to normal and, as she thought that, Janet raised both hands to the certainty of her head. She balled her hands into fists and pressed them hard against her eyes, which she closed at last. The darkness was a relief now. Now it could become a refuge once again, unassailed by cracks or thoughts of cracks. She breathed deeply, breathed in the green heat of the garden and tried her best, her very best to ignore the call that came from next door. Then she thought how odd it might look, and she lowered her hands and turned a bright face towards Desperate Douglas van Deventer who was leaning over the garden wall and calling her. There was no sign of Alice with Solomon’s lunch yet and Solomon was still singing behind the huge spray of pampas grass with its razor-sharp leaves. Slowly, Janet walked over to the wall.

  Doug, she made her voice bright and gay. She could have been bonnie Jean. She tried to keep a rather wilful Scottish accent at bay but she did not think she succeeded.

  How are you on this fine day, she said as though there had never been a crack – as though there had never been his – surely – wisecrack about her husband and the maid.

  Desperate Doug scratched his chin with the open points of his shears. Fine, he said, just fine. Absolutely ginger peachy.

  Was that American. Was he picking up on her oddly Scottish acc
ent.

  Janet was about to ask after Noreen and Nesbitt, was about to drag his own family into the foreground of any conversation that might result, but Desperate Doug beat her to it.

  Have you thought about what I said, he asked, rested his chin with disconcerting abandon on the points of his shears.

  All Janet could think about was what would happen if, suddenly, he slipped. What would happen if, right before her, Desperate Doug van Deventer lost his footing on the precarious ladder and drove the twin blades deep into his throat –

  The largest artery, the jugular, was it not, pulsed in his throat, carried bright blood to his brain. If he slipped and the shears plunged into his flesh, he would be dead in seconds. He would spray blood like the garden hose sprayed innocent water and he would drop silently behind the wall, for ever stilled, and his rhododendron bushes would no doubt raise their branches in a leafy cheer, finally free from the tyranny of his constant attention, finally released from the snip-snip-snip. Maybe Nesbitt would lick him. Maybe the red setter would set up a red howl from the pool of Desperate Doug’s blood. Janet felt as though she must lean against the wall and try her best not to rock the cement slabs that nestled one on top of the other between the two pillars that made up that section of the six-foot wall which separated her from Desperate Doug.

  Have you looked after your husband, asked Desperate Doug’s voice and Janet was forced to stand tall and to peer up into her neighbour’s pensive face. She tried to look him in the eye, tried not to be distracted by the artery that shivered beneath the pair of blades.

  She kept her voice light and cheery, as though she were in a Brigadoon rehearsal. Och, she said making a dismissive noise in the back of her throat, Och, I thought you were joking.

  Desperate Doug eyed her strangely. He did insist on leaning on his shears so that little dents appeared in his neck. Was he crazy.

  He smiled.

  I worry, he said. I do worry. You know how I worry.

  Janet looked up at him. She supposed he must worry. Just look at how he worried the life out of his rhododendrons. Just think about how he worried her, always there, always peering, a human mosquito that whined in the background and would not go away. Yes, he worried all right.