The Enumerations

by Máire Fisher

  ‘Relax, Noah,’ she’s said, over and over. ‘It’ll work like a charm.’ She’s in her usual place, and now she’s talking about the sea and swimming and how once she’s out and home the first thing she’s going to do is go to the beach with Lily and her mom, and this time it’ll be her mother doing the driving. Then she jumps to what they had for lunch and how the menu at Greenhills is so boring. From there she launches into her sessions with Ms Turner and how they’re getting easier. ‘She’s not so bad after all,’ Juliet concedes.

  Her mind is all over the place and she’s more fidgety than normal. She keeps looking down the corridor, then back up at Noah.

  Noah stands up from his desk. He takes Juliet’s mug from its place, just to the left of his row of seven blue ones and switches on the kettle.

  ‘Tea, coffee?’

  As he asks, Sadie and Willa appear, each holding a mug. Each looking like they expect him to say something, but Juliet gets there first.

  ‘I asked them to come, Noah. Is that okay?’

  He waits for a ripple of discomfort, for a waking moan, but there’s nothing. He waits, just to make sure, but all is quiet.

  Sadie looks anxious. ‘We don’t have to stay.’ She looks at the navy blue mug in Noah’s hand and a flush colours her cheeks. ‘I mean, we don’t want to disturb you, or mess with any routine. Only Juliet said—’

  The kettle’s boiling now and Noah switches it off. ‘Sure,’ he says.

  ‘I asked Morné too,’ Juliet says casually, as if his room has suddenly become the Mount Nelson, ‘but he didn’t want to come.’

  ‘We brought our mugs,’ Willa says, raising theirs in the air. It’s purple with a gold rim. ‘I’ve even made my own tea. And, if you’re worried about these: Ta dah!’ They wave a packet of biscuits in the air. ‘Plenty to go around.’

  Juliet slips into his room. ‘Can I lean against your bed, Noah?’

  ‘Umm … sure.’

  ‘You guys sit down here with me.’

  Willa looks at the floor in distaste and stays in the doorway. ‘I’ll stand, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Pass your mug, Sadie.’ Juliet looks up at him. ‘Are you cool with this, Noah? I thought we could all, you know, hang for a while.’ She flashes a smile at Sadie. ‘No need to talk about anything heavy.’

  Sadie’s still anxious. ‘We can go if you want?’

  Noah waits. No reaction. Maybe having so many people in his narrow space has blocked the sound waves.

  He lifts the kettle. Easily enough for four cups without adding more.

  199.

  Once upon a time there was a very large house called Green Hills. No one is entirely sure who built such an expansive home, but the pediment over the door is dated 1853. When the owners moved in, bringing with them their fine furniture, paintings, carpets and hiring a multitude of servants to cook and clean, the lady of the house looked beyond the tall stone walls, designed to keep all the danger out, to the wild untamed countryside where, far in the distance, she could just make out the ocean.

  She pined for the misty hills of home, with their soft and constantly changing hues. So when her husband asked what name they should give their new estate, she smiled sadly and said, ‘Green Hills, my sweet. Green Hills.’

  Over the years, the layout changed. Wings were closed off, rooms were built on and, eventually, a smaller dwelling was constructed to accommodate the lady and her husband when their offspring took over the big house.

  Slowly, Green Hills became Greenhills and then, the family moved on. Perhaps the great-grandmother who could never quite settle in a foreign land eventually went back ‘home’. Who knows?

  For several years Greenhills, a place of towering stone walls but no hills, stood silent and empty, dismissed as a ruin.

  One day, though, its luck changed. A doctor happened to peer through its unlocked gates, push then open and see a house that could be rescued, restored, reinvented as a tranquil refuge for souls in need of a safe haven. For souls who found it too hard to inhabit the world outside its walls.

  He spoke to some more doctors and, working together, they took the old house and carved large rooms into smaller ones: rooms for sleeping, meeting and eating, rooms where people said nothing at all, or spoke about everything they had been guarding for years.

  Eventually the doctors decided that they needed more space and they turned their attention to the smaller house. It too became a refuge, a home, for young people, made up of rooms for sleeping, meeting, eating, rooms where nothing was said, or where everything that had lain hidden could come to light.

  Typically, tales that start with ‘Once upon a time’ end with the words ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’ This will never be entirely true of Greenhills. Many of its stories will never end. Yet in these never-endings there can be new beginnings, new ways of living and new ways of seeing life.

  III

  200.

  Day 70 / 14:27

  ‘Way to go, Noah.’ Juliet was impressed when she heard about Noah and the sprinklers. After a moment’s thought, she added, ‘So if you can break away from your timetable like that, you can do anything.’

  She’d looked so hopeful, filled with hope for him, that he couldn’t remind her that that those cool, soaked moments on the lawn had taken nothing away from his timetable. It was free time, early-waking bonus time put to good use.

  There was something else he couldn’t tell her: The truth. Noah was scared. The more he thought about what they were planning, the more words filled his head.

  This is madness. You say you want out of this place, and now you’re embarking on this … this … lunacy?

  The last word was an angry scream and from then on it felt like the Dark would never let go.

  ‘You can do anything, Noah.’ He’d held tight to Juliet’s words and tapped like crazy, counted like crazy, breathed like crazy, so much so that Ms Turner was worried. ‘What’s happening, Noah? Is there anything you want to tell me?’

  But he couldn’t. All he could do was pull the 5s close, raise his shield and get through the two days until Sunday visiting hours as best he could, telling himself it was okay to be scared. He marked off every hour on a new chart, and then, sooner than he wanted, it was minutes, then seconds before his mother and sister arrived.

  14:29

  Noah sits outside on the bench, looking at his watch, not ready for it to begin, but knowing it has to.

  201.

  Rags to riches. This is the story Dominic never tells, but there are plenty of people at Goodson, Stander & Groome who remember the arrival of a young man in a shiny, ill-fitting suit. Later, after he’s been working there long enough to save some money, he goes to a factory clothing outlet and buys a suit that doesn’t sag at the knees, with trousers and sleeves long enough for his tall body.

  Those first months, all Dominic Groome, junior clerk, does is sit at the desk he shares in an open-plan room. He sits there and eats there and frequently sleeps there. The moment he finishes one task, he’s knocking on the manager’s door and asking for another. He ignores his colleagues’ snubs, can’t be bothered to listen when they talk about him being overly ambitious, heading for a fall.

  He listens and he learns, and when he gets the opportunity, he remarks on the behaviour of certain stocks. He reads the newspapers from cover to cover and broadens his knowledge of world affairs. He studies what happened during the 1973 oil crisis and the ’73–’74 market crash, one of the worst stockmarket downturns in modern history. He looks further back to the sixties, to Nixon and what it cost to fund the war in Vietnam, how much the President had needed to spend to expand Social Security with elections approaching.

  He comes to understand how politics affect business in South Africa and the response of the South African stock market to different exchange rate regimes. He learns the words of the financial world. Before long, Dominic starts to predict how certain stocks will behave and can make informed comments about how the fluctuating price of
gold is affecting the rand and the price of exports sold overseas.

  One day – one fateful day – he stops a partner in the corridor and speaks to him about investing in non-gold mineral exports, putting clients’ money into harbour facilities, railway lines and mines. His suggestion is later discussed in the boardroom, where it is taken seriously, especially as revenues have been increasing at a noteworthy rate.

  Whenever his peers talk about his rapid ascent, how his superiors often call on him to take figures and analyse and compute them, there’s more than a touch of peevish envy in their voices. And on the day when Dominic arrives in the office wearing a suit that comes from one of the better department stores, designed by one of the better fashion houses, teamed with a striped shirt, a dark tie, and highly polished shoes, he hears one of them mutter, ‘Check, it’s rags-to-riches guy.’

  Dominic shows no sign of having heard. He simply takes off his jacket, hangs it over his chair and gets on with his job.

  202.

  Kate notices everything about Mr Bill.

  She is aware of him sitting next to her on the bench, his size, his strength, his quiet gentleness. There’s a faint sheen of perspiration on his face and forearms. Kate’s sweating too, she can feel the moisture under her arms, the dampness on her thighs.

  She blushes as she thinks about how often he’s been in her mind, how glad she is that Dominic isn’t here this afternoon, and that he didn’t come last week either.

  This heat. Searingly hot days, stifling nights when she and Dominic lie on opposite sides of the bed. The moment skin meets skin, the heat in their bed seems to double. Dominic somehow manages to sleep, his breathing deep and regular, while Kate lies awake, her hair damp, her thin cotton t-shirt sticking to her. All she wants is to sleep, to close her eyes and fade out all thoughts of Mr Bill.

  It’s the heat that makes her get out of bed and go to the window and stare out at the garden, walk to the kitchen, get a glass of water and sit there in the dark, thinking about her life: her husband, and why she can’t talk to him any more, what to do about Noah, worrying about Maddie and how she’s coping … These are the thoughts keeping her awake, she tells herself. These are good, wifely worries. These are legitimate concerns. And then, she tells herself, she should think about making a shopping list for tomorrow. Maybe give Monica a call and see if she wants to meet for coffee.

  That’s what I’ll do, Kate tells herself as she sits in her dark kitchen fanning herself with the newspaper Dominic left on the counter, sipping her water, ice cold from the fridge. Dominic’s wife sitting in the house that her husband has paid for with his high-powered job and his long hours at the office. Dominic’s wife, sitting alone in the dark, keeping her mind busy with thoughts of anything and everything – anything but Mr Bill.

  203.

  Once, when Kate was small, Pa took her out on a lake in a rowing boat. Or maybe it was the sea, on a calm day. All Kate really remembers is Ma saying, ‘Etienne, be careful,’ and Pa replying, ‘We’ll be fine, won’t we Katjie-Kat, we’re not going far.’

  And there she was, sitting in a boat on a wooden plank, her pa opposite her, sliding the oars into the rowlocks and pulling away from the bank – it was a lake – where Ma stood waving, waving and getting smaller and smaller. And there they were, out in the middle of the calm green and Pa was saying, ‘This is the life, nè, Katjie-Kat?’

  Kate looked at the water on all sides of her and her pa in his shorts with his strong tanned legs and his strong tanned arms. She closed her eyes and felt the boat rocking her very gently.

  And then, Pa leant forward and pulled back, and leant forward and pulled back, until the side of the lake came closer and closer. Ma was still standing there, trying to put a smile on her worried face, and holding out her arms for her Katjie.

  Then her feet were on the ground and nothing was moving underneath her and Pa took one hand, and Ma took the other, and ‘Ein, twee, drie, oopse daisy’ they went, all the way back to the car.

  That’s what Kate remembers now, how safe she felt with Pa in the boat, how glad Ma was to have her in her arms, how cherished she felt swinging between her parents, one small daisy on a chain of love. How happy she was. The same way she feels now, sitting on a wooden bench, next to Mr Bill and wondering if it’s her imagination telling her that he’s also glad to be there. She looks at him, a quick sideways glance of a look, at the line of his nose, the corner of his mouth. That’s all she dare risk. She can’t turn her face to look straight at him and let him see her longing. Her guilt. How can she be thinking of looking at the full curve of his lips, the slope of his cheekbones, his deep brown eyes? How can she be thinking of Mr Bill when she should be focusing on her son? Noah’s the reason she’s here.

  Noah, sitting on the lawn, barely ten feet away from her, arms locked around his knees, looking at Juliet, his new friend. Listening as she talks, her arms waving, his face breaking into a genuine smile and Juliet smiling back at him. He’s happy here, more so than he ever was at home, and Kate feels the joy of this, and the sorrow.

  There he is, barely ten feet away, but it might as well be ten miles.

  204.

  14:35

  Maddie passes him the keys.

  ‘Thanks, Mads.’ Noah slips them into his pocket.

  Madness. Absolute madness.

  Crazy, madness, insane, lunacy, mental …

  These are its words of the week, but at least Maddie’s here now. Things can start to move.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ she asks.

  ‘You know the guy on the gate, the one who lifts the boom?’ Juliet asks.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve been watching him. He has a pretty regular routine. He’s a smoker, but he’s not allowed to smoke in the guardhouse. So he sneaks off for a cigarette. Usually two an hour. So all we have to do …’

  Noah’s breathing quickens as she speaks and he forces himself to slow it down.

  ‘… is wait for him to leave the guardhouse. We’ll have enough time to get away before he’s back on duty. He stands where he can watch for visitors, so we’ll have to be really quick.’

  ‘Speed is so important, Noah.’ Juliet’s told him this over and over. ‘We can’t afford to spend any time calculating, or timing, or starting over. Do you reckon you can do that? And no counting? At all?’

  ‘I wish I could come,’ Maddie says. ‘Please, Noah?’

  ‘You have to stay, Mads,’ he says. ‘You have to look after Mom. Tell her not to worry, we’ll be back soon.’

  He puts his fingers to his lips, lets them stay there for a moment, then looks at Juliet.

  ‘Ready?’ she asks.

  He nods.

  ‘All right then. Let’s do this.’

  ‘I’ll go first,’ he says, ‘then you, after 2 minutes. Okay?’

  ‘Sure.’ Juliet smiles. ‘Two minutes on the dot.’

  Noah walks up to his mother. She’s laughing at something Mr Bill has said. It’s a good sound, one he hasn’t heard much in the last few years. He hopes this afternoon’s plan won’t change that, won’t stop her laughing.

  ‘Mom?’

  She looks up, then glances at her watch. ‘Yes, sweetheart?’

  ‘I’m just going to get something from my room for Maddie. I promised I’d work through some maths problems for her. Show her all the steps. Can I have a pass, Mr Bill?

  Mr Bill rummages in his pocket and pulls out a laminated yellow card.

  ‘Good for you, Noah,’ Mom says. ‘Is Maddie going with you?’

  ‘Yes.’ He’s just made a decision, faster than he ever has before. ‘Yes. I need to make sure she understands. Ready, Mads?’

  She leaps to her feet. ‘We won’t be long, Mom. See you in a few minutes.’

  205.

  Juliet lies back on the grass, her eyes closed.

  Kate watches her. ‘I can’t fathom that girl,’ she says quietly. ‘Are you sure it’s appropriate that she and Noah spend so much time together?’

>   ‘It’s the best thing that could have happened to either of them,’ says Mr Bill. ‘Noah demands nothing of Juliet and she wants nothing from him. Not often you get a relationship built on such unconditional terms.’

  A sudden burst of adrenaline buzzes through her. What do you want, Mr Bill? she wonders. And what would you give in return?

  206.

  By the time Dominic is twenty-three years old, he’s made his mark. That’s what one of the senior partners of Goodson & Stander says when he calls him in to his office. He wants to talk about Dominic’s future.

  ‘Potential, my boy,’ he booms and his white moustache quivers as if it will never get used to the shock of his loud voice. ‘Potential. I see myself in you. Rags to riches, that’s my story.’

  ‘But sir—’

  ‘No buts, son. No buts. Just one question. Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’

  Dominic looks at the smooth jowls, the silk tie, the well-cut suit of the older man. He knows that the shoes under the desk cost more than his month’s salary. Before he can clamp his mouth shut, he replies, ‘Sitting where you are, sir.’

  The words are out and Dominic can’t take them back. He sits and waits for the axe to fall.

  Instead, there’s another boom, this one of laughter, and the moustache quivers again.

  ‘Quite right, my boy. Quite right.’ He looks at Dominic, his blue eyes shrewd. ‘We can make something of you, Groome. And in return, you can make us money. Lots of it.’

  And so Dominic goes to night school, he enrols at unisa, he translates his shabby matric into one degree and then another. And all the while, slowly and surely, he makes his way up the corporate ladder, first into a corner office in a large open-plan office with a second-floor view of Cape Town harbour, only the tips of the cranes showing and a small sliver of sea. Higher he climbs and higher, until people start greeting him in the corridors, ‘Hello, Mr Groome,’ ‘How are you, Mr Groome?’ ‘Yes sir, Mr Groome.’ Yes sir and no sir and eventually, three years later than his original five-year plan, his former mentor is ready to retire and Dominic Groome is sitting behind his desk. He organises the farewell party, tells his secretary exactly what gift to buy, and takes over the reins.