Long Lies the Shadow

by Gerda Pearce

  His hand was on her leg, and he slipped it beneath her skirt. Gin held her breath. He was married; she was leaving. But she thought of Jonnie, felt an odd release, a relinquishing of responsibility. The garage offered seclusion.

  “Do you love him?” repeated Simon, “Does he do this to you?” He was angry, jealous.

  She wanted to say yes, that she loved Jonnie, that she loved him with an excitement, a newness. But he was kissing her and she could not speak. And she would have continued, told Simon that whatever she felt for Jonnie, could ever have felt for Jonnie, was nothing. Nothing, compared to the love she felt for him, that ancient knowing inside her soul.

  She was kissing Simon back. Tears burned in the back of her throat.

  Michael is quiet. He does not believe that she’s okay.

  She leans across towards him, takes his hand. Earnestly, “I promise you, Mikey, this time it’s different.”

  10. GIN

  “Did you tell the doctor?” asks Michael, when they are back at the house.

  He has explored the house, unpacked his one leather bag, they have had tea, and he is peering despondently into her fridge.

  “Yes,” answers Gin, but does not elaborate.

  Doctor Oldman had sat, thin-lipped and disapproving, while Gin recounted details of her miscarriage that were no doubt in her notes already. Had said to her, acerbically, that Gin should have told her this before. Gin, chastised, had wanted to apologise. She had felt the need to explain. That she had been young, stupid, but that the loss of his child had eaten at her nonetheless. That she had wanted to laugh when they told her there had probably been something wrong with the fetus she had lost. As if it were symbolic of her relationship with Simon. And she had wanted to tell this stiff woman in front of her that she was afraid. Afraid that there would be something wrong again, afraid that she would lose his child again. Like she lost its father. But the cuff was around Gin’s arm and the doctor was already pumping up the bulb.

  “Gin, there’s absolutely nothing in your fridge. Come on, let’s go out. I’m taking you to get a good breakfast and then we’re going to the market to buy some food for this sad, empty fridge.”

  They are in the cool of the hall when the phone rings.

  “Shall I get it?” asks Michael, already reaching for the receiver before she can say no. As he answers she motions to him that she does not want to talk to anyone. “Miss McMann?” Michael is saying, looking at her questioningly. She shakes her head, mouths at him to take a message. Seamlessly Michael says, “She’s not here right now. Can I tell her who called?” He listens awhile, thanks the caller, puts the phone down.

  Gin opens the front door to the warmth of the day. “Well?” she says when they are outside, “Who was it?” She locks the door.

  “Someone called Nick Retief,” says Michael, affecting a strong South African accent as he says the name. He is expecting her to smile. “He said he’d call back.”

  She starts to shake, so violently does her body jerk that she drops her keys.

  “Gin! Are you okay?” Michael grabs for her.

  She leans into him, steadying herself against his strength, trying to quell the shaking. Beneath the cotton check of his thin shirt, she feels the hardness of his chest muscles as he hugs her closely. She wants to cry, but no tears form.

  Simon, brushing the hair from his eyes. Simon, pulling her to him on the wide white linen sheets.

  “Do you want to go back inside?” asks Michael gently.

  Gin tries to bend down to pick up the keys, but her action is awkward, her belly in the way. He stops her and picks them up, hands them to her.

  “Thanks. No, I’ll be okay. It’ll be good to walk.”

  She tells him briefly about Retief as they take the short cut through Victoria Gardens to Notting Hill Gate. The strange feeling is surfacing again, the feeling of culpability she had felt in the police station. How she felt Retief had almost accused her of causing Simon’s death. How she felt tainted, whorish. But she does not tell Michael this, reports rather on Retief’s visit to Viv. Michael is quiet when she mentions Viv. They walk along the pavement, past the supermarket and the coffee shops and the cinema. It is early, but already the area beside the exit from the underground tube station is thronged. It will be busy at the market later. They cross the road, pass the bookshop and the bank, and enter the café on the corner.

  Michael orders a full English breakfast. “But no bacon,” he says to the waitress. He looks at Gin, a smile forming, “It’s probably Danish,” he says by way of explanation.

  Gin makes a face at him, orders toast and a pot of Earl Grey.

  Over breakfast Michael tells her about Denmark, about how he had tried, faithfully, to fit in. He had learnt Danish, learnt to wrap his tongue around the throaty vowels. “It’s a lot like Afrikaans, Gin,” he explains, between mouthfuls of egg and beans on toast.

  “Do you think you’ll go back?” Oh God, I might as well have added to her, she thinks.

  He puts his fork down, pushes his plate away. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. Anyhow, this new job’s for three months, so I guess I’ll just see how it goes.” He smiles at her. “The school sounds good, and it’s only up the road. And mainly, it allows me some time with you.”

  Michael, her childhood friend and twice now her saviour, sits back in his chair. “It’s been a long time, Gin.”

  Her heart is too full to speak.

  After breakfast they join the tourists heading down Portobello Road. Gin takes his arm. It is a warm day, the sky above so blue it could be Africa. They pass the silver merchants at the top of the road, the china and the antiques, and head down to where the road flattens at the bottom of the hill. Michael buys vegetables in abundance: fat carrots, succulent lettuce, firm peppers, potatoes still ruddy with soil. And fruit: rich red strawberries, spiky pineapple, a curved yellow baseball glove of bananas. Gin feels her appetite return with Michael’s enthusiastic haggling. He barters with the stallholders as if he has never left. They pass outside their old flat. Michael pauses, looks up at the curtained windows.

  “You know,” says Gin, “I think there’s still some of your stuff in the boxes back at the house.”

  He laughs. “Well, I obviously haven’t missed or needed it in all this time.” He tucks her hand under his arm again, and they make their way back up against the wash of people. “Do you ever hear from Hannah?” he asks. His voice sounds suddenly strange.

  “No,” says Gin, a sadness creeping in. She has, for the first time in as long as she can remember, felt happy. Now the strange sullied feeling is back. “She’s in Canada now. Has been for years. About as long as you’ve been in Denmark, I suppose. Three kids, two boys and a girl, I think.”

  “And are they all healthy?”

  Gin looks at him. What an odd question. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  She wants to ask why, but Michael continues. “She married a lawyer or something, didn’t she?”

  They emerge from the worst of the crowds into the clearing at the top of the road. Again, his voice sounds strange to her. Or does she imagine it?

  “Yes, a lawyer. Remember Mikey, I went back for the wedding. That first year in England, you were still technically a refugee. And you couldn’t travel back then.”

  Hannah’s wedding. Seeing Simon.

  She was sitting in the fourth row when their eyes locked. Then she turned away. Alive, suddenly. Suddenly alive now he was there. She looked up at the chuppah, the cream tent of it. White flowers, fringed with green, and trailing gold ribbons wound around the four sturdy pillars. She still sensed his gaze. She examined the walls of the temple. It was a modern shul, pale yellow walls reached up to a sloping roof of glass, at the centre of which was a bright blue Star of David. It tinted the sunlight that cascaded through it. Soon Hannah, her childhood playmate and Simon’s cousin, would walk down the aisle on Jacob’s arm. It should be Gabe marrying Hannah, thought Gin. It should be Gabe marrying his childhood sweetheart. But Gabe
had not been good enough. And now Gabe was dead. The prayers started. Finally she chanced a glance at Simon across the bowed heads, above the closed eyes, to find his eyes still open, still searching her out. I wasn’t good enough for you either, she thought. She wanted to tell him that there had been something wrong with their child. She wanted to tell him it had died inside her.

  “I always thought she and Gabe would get married,” Michael is saying. He sounds sad. “It was a pity. You know, about her and Gabe.”

  Hannah had pushed all of them away at university, even her, even Michael, even Gabe. Between the end of school and the start of university, Hannah had been sent to Israel, to distant cousins in Tel Aviv. Unexpectedly, she had stayed for a year. Hannah had come back changed. She appeared to have embraced her Jewishness, and in the process she rejected them. And especially Gabe. The university was not large, and Hannah had ended up in the same residence as Gin. A year behind now, and separate. Every Friday night Gin would see her leave the residence, those long black curls bouncing in ringlets down her back, off to shul, and afterwards to Friday night dinner, hoping to meet eligible men. Men who were not Gabe.

  They are nearing the house now and Gin is glad. Michael seems so melancholy she feels an almost absurd need to cheer him. “I remember when I first knew there was something between them,” she says, hearing her own voice full of forced brightness. “I came across the two of them together one day. Wouldn’t have thought anything of it, you know, just like they always were, but then they kind of leapt apart, as if they’d been caught doing something wrong. They looked so embarrassed. Hannah went all red, and Gabe just wouldn’t look at me.”

  Michael says nothing. She wonders what he is thinking.

  “You know,” she continues, “my grandfather used to say Hannah and Gabe reminded him of my mom and Hannah’s dad, Jacob, when they were children. He said they were always together, always close.”

  “Isn’t that how your mom met your dad? Through Jacob?” Michael appears to focus again.

  “Yes, Jacob studied surgery here, in Edinburgh, where he met my dad. When they qualified, Jacob invited Dad out to South Africa, and they set up the practice together. So that’s how my parents actually met.”

  “So you kind of owe your life to Jacob then,” says Michael, with a short chuckle.

  “I suppose. I never thought of it like that before.”

  There is a pause before Michael says suddenly, “Until Viv.”

  “What?”

  “Ah, sorry, I was thinking aloud. I was thinking how Gabe suffered over Hannah. Until he met Viv.”

  “Oh, yes,” says Gin. Then, quietly, “No, even after Viv.” She unlocks the door, and Michael brings the bags into the shade of the hall.

  “God, that’s better. It’s so hot out there!” He wipes his brow.

  The display on the answering machine shows one message. Gin switches it on as Michael walks through to the kitchen. Nick Retief’s terse tones invade her home. Gin had not doubted for an instant that the promised callback would come. Only not so soon, mere hours later, when she is not ready. The car, Nick Retief is saying, may have been a white Mercedes. Can she confirm this?

  A white car. A white car.

  “Are you okay?” Michael has come back into the hall. He stops Retief’s message in mid-sentence with a press of the button.

  “Mikey,” she says, and she is shaking again, her voice tremulous, “it was a Mercedes. A white Mercedes.”

  The mountain, tumbling to meet them. Pine trees angled up against the mist over Lion’s Head.

  “Come on,” he leads her into the kitchen, sits her gently at the wooden table at its centre.

  His hands, gripping the wheel.

  “Tea,” says Michael, and fills the kettle.

  “You’d think I’d remember a Mercedes.”

  “Gin, we need tea. Where are the teabags?”

  “I’ve something to tell you, Ginny, something I should have told you years ago.” Simon’s face, serious and sad. But a light in his eyes as he looked at her.

  “Hmm? Teabags… oh, um, in that cupboard over there.” She points across the room.

  Simon’s eyes as they made love. Those same eyes, later. The light in them dying.

  “God, this kitchen’s huge. When did you last see Hannah then?” Michael is clattering cutlery, his head stuck in a cupboard. Gin comes over, reaches past him to the tin of teabags. He pulls a face. “Even the cupboards are too big.”

  The kettle whistles. Steam rises from its spout.

  “Leila.” Like a message.

  “So, when was it?”

  His hand, outstretched to her.

  “What?”

  “When was it you last saw her? Hannah.” Michael is looking at her intently.

  Gin tries to gather herself. “Um, well, her wedding, I guess. And you?”

  His voice has that odd tone again. “That Easter in Cape Town. That Easter with Gabe.”

  11. GIN

  Easter arrived. So soon the year had quartered. Her first year without Simon, her first year in Cape Town. Gin hungered to take the long drive north, to the mine-dump that was Johannesburg. Where Simon had gone.

  After Simon had left, she had left also, drove the rusty Renault south. Left his flat, its walls already echoing, hollowed by his departure. No fixed plans, an internship somewhere. Somewhere, on the edge of Africa. She found herself beckoned by the Cape, the mountain a keloid scar curling protectively around the fragile skin of coast. By rote, by proxy, anything to not completely sever the tie between them. Here were roads that Simon would have walked while studying there.

  Simon. If she arrived on his doorstep, would he let her go again? But while she argued with her pride, Gabe arrived suddenly. Distracted, dishevelled. He seemed so preoccupied, blue eyes troubled. He was loath to talk, yet seemed at the same time to yearn for it.

  Gin had found a yellow house to rent, at the end of a T-junction, with a patch of bare grass at the front and a barren apple tree at the back. The sun poured strong into the kitchen, warming the wooden floors. There was a fireplace of blackened iron and two rooms too many, but a cluster of shops sat cheerily across the bridge and it was close to the children’s hospital, and the work she found within its gate.

  “Gabe,” she asked eventually, “why did you come?”

  He shifted to look at her; they had both been staring in silence at the flames in the grate. The logs burned brightly.

  “Well,” he said at last. “I wanted to see you, and I want to see Han… Hannah.” His voice caught in his throat, and he cleared it.

  Hannah. Always Hannah with him.

  Gin felt irritated with him, but was aware it was her own ire with Hannah also. Hannah was there too, in Cape Town. A year behind, she had chosen a shorter course, and ultimately finished at the same time as Gin. But the years of distancing and disapproval had taken their toll, and Gin saw her rarely. This was how it happened, how you lost the friends you thought would last a lifetime. It had stung, and she had felt each of Hannah’s deliberate snubs. She realised she did not even know if Hannah was in town that long weekend, so seldom had they spoken. It was Passover also, and Hannah might be away or back at home.

  “Where’s Viv?” she asked, and did not know whether she diverted his attention for his sake, or her own.

  His girlfriend, he said, had stayed on the farm, she was tutoring that year, and had marking of assignments to finish. He hesitated. Then he told her he was thinking of quitting his degree, going to the Army.

  He faced the choice of all young white men in this country. In truth, it was no choice at all. Conscription or leave. Here in intolerance there was no room for conscientious objection. They both knew Gabe was more fortunate than most. Through their Scottish father, he had the means to leave, to live elsewhere. But exile was a lonely choice, and long. There was no return. One must leave the land of one’s birth, one’s family and friends, all one held familiar, to face uncertain futures. By virtue of her sex, Gin
was free of this decision. University had allowed Gabe, and Michael, a period of grace, but the Army would not wait forever. She had seen its destructive force, seen it reach out and ruin young men’s minds. Knew the stories of brainwashing, of cruelty. How it broke a sensitivity of spirit, turned it instead to an unfeeling, unquestioning obedience of authority. It perpetuated the system, and only the strong or compliant survived. Simon had told her this, his own term done and served. But he had been luckier, sent to the Navy, and based in the Cape. The Navy and the Air Force were both more sought after than the Army. More lenient, more English. The Afrikaners in their hordes ruled the Army. And they denigrated and humiliated die Engelse, the English speakers, if they could. Irrespective of origin, one was classified by language. Africa, it seemed, this huge and seething land, remained firstly, and foremostly, tribal.

  Michael arrived the next day. He dismissed her surprise. He had changed his mind, he said, decided to join Gabe and see her after all. A simple explanation became fussy, over-elaborate. Gin looked at Gabe; he looked at the floor, and seemed not himself. Her brother was upset at Michael’s presence. Something disturbed these men, these friends.

  It was an awkward weekend. On the Saturday they took the wine route, driving the meandering roads beneath the mountains of Stellenbosch and Paarl, from wine farm to wine farm, from Dutch-gabled homestead to rolling vineyard. Gabe was monosyllabic, his usual cheerfulness absent. Michael and he smoked incessantly, and drank too much. Gin drove, confused by the atmosphere, and resentful of it. It was an odd intrusion after the many months without them. On their return, dusk lengthening shadows, Michael made an unfamiliar gesture. He ruffled Gabe’s hair, and was shaken off with an angry shrug. They drove on in silence.