by Gerda Pearce
Abbie nods, mumbles something barely intelligible; she rakes a hand through her hair in an ineffectual attempt to push its tangles aside.
“Oh, well, we’ll be off then, girls.” Viv’s voice sounds false to herself. “I have my cellphone. Be good. Bye.” She moves towards the still-open door.
In the early morning shadow, the mountain’s surface looks dark and cold, thin mist haunts its crevices. Nick says goodbye to the girls and follows her out. Kayleigh holds the door open, watching them walk down the cement path.
“Mom!”
Viv half-turns. It was Kayleigh who called, but it is Abbie who has exited behind them. Nick opens the gate, hooks it, and moves towards the car. Manyanga’s head lolls out the window. The dog barks with joy at Nick’s return.
“What is it, sweetie?” asks Viv, walking back to where her eldest daughter has stopped, her shoulders curved forward, and her finger in her mouth as she bites on a nail.
“Nothing, Mom,” she says.
Viv smiles at her, reaches out to push her daughter’s hair behind one shoulder.
Abbie suddenly reaches her arms around Viv and hugs her quickly. “Have a nice time, Mom,” she whispers. She glances quickly at Retief, her eyes narrowed, and then turns and hurries back into the house.
“Ja,” shouts Kayleigh, not to be outdone, “have a lekker jol, Ma! Bye!” The heavy door swings shut.
Viv apologises to Nick for her daughter’s behaviour as she buckles her belt. Manyanga’s hot breath is on her neck as the dog strains to greet her.
“No need,” he says, and orders his dog to sit down. Manyanga obeys, shifting her bulk onto the back seat, her huge brown eyes meek with chastisement.
They drive out to Hout Bay, the curve of beach sheltered by the mountains on one side, and by the peak of the Sentinel on the other. It is suitably named, sitting strong and silent, steadfastly staring out to sea. Sunlight blurs behind its buttressed bulk, waiting for the lengthening of day that will allow it to slip past the watch of the motionless sentry and seep along the shore.
“She must look like her dad,” says Nick, once they are on the sand. He throws a stick for Manyanga, who speeds away from them, her paws spitting sand.
“Yes,” says Viv, “she does.” People always take an interest in Kayleigh, her brown skin. These years on, after the ostensible end of apartheid, a mixed-race child with a white mother is still an oddity to some. It is Kayleigh’s age more than anything; at times Viv can almost see their small minds calculating the year of her daughter’s conception. She wonders what Nick is thinking. Manyanga runs back to them, eagerly drops the wet stick in front of Nick, pants in anticipation. He picks it up and hurls it ahead of them on the deserted beach. They are still in the shadow of the mountains. The dog runs off again, her fur rippling.
“Ja,” he says, brushing sand from his hand, “it’s quite uncanny.”
Viv sighs with barely concealed irritation. Surely it is not that big a deal to him? He hadn’t seemed bothered by the fact she had been married to an Indian. Once it was legal to do so, of course. Apartheid laws had taken time to catch up with each other’s demise; at one point it was legal to marry outside one’s race, but still illegal to live together in the same area. Viv smiles grimly at the stupidity; she had been officially re-classified as Indian.
Nick pulls something from his pocket. “This was in Doctor Gold’s – Simon’s – wallet,” he says, handing her a small photograph.
Viv gasps softly as she looks at the aged, faded picture. It is a photograph of a young woman, squinting slightly into sunlight, her mouth slightly open as if saying something to the photographer. She stands on a beach, with her hand raised to sweep her long blonde hair away from her face, blown as it is about in the invisible wind.
Viv stares at the face. Now she understands.
Nick was talking about Abbie.
Her daughter, Gabe’s daughter, is the image of the girl in the photo, the photo of Gin.
18. VIVIENNE
The sea is stone-grey in the winter light. White waves whip to choppy peaks and then curl to the soft swish of their demise. Long licks of water eddy up the beach; sighing as they are pulled back along the smooth sand, swept back into the depths. Viv gazes out to where the light shifts pink and gold upon the slow swell of ocean beyond the Sentinel. She fingers the edge of the photo. Manyanga has returned, panting, with her stick-offering to Nick, who throws it again into the strong wind. It arcs and slices, bouncing and cartwheeling haphazardly further up the beach. The dog barks after it.
“Why are you giving this to me? To give to Gin?” she asks, finally. “Shouldn’t it stay with his wallet? Isn’t it evidence of sorts?”
His mouth twitches slightly in a corner, as if amused. But his voice is serious when he answers. “Well, Gold’s personal belongings were all returned to his family last week. I saw no reason for them to have this.”
Viv draws her thin jersey around her shoulders. Nick seems to have a singular ability to tug at her emotions. She swallows. “That was kind of you.” He looks at her and she cannot read the expression in his eyes. They are as grey as the sea, and as dark. It makes her feel uncomfortable and she is not sure why. “Is the insurance all sorted out now?” asks Viv, looking away from him again. She is aware she is making conversation.
He does not answer immediately. “Only that one claim is outstanding.”
“Still?” Viv’s voice lifts in surprise. “You mean, they won’t pay out because they still doubt it was an accident?” Viv crosses her arms. The wind has picked up; her hair billows out about her face.
Nick shakes his head, then says, “Why do you ask?”
She is taken aback by his tone. As if he is questioning her. She looks directly at him. “What do you mean? You told me about it. Why shouldn’t I ask?” Abrasively. How dare he question her? He was the one to produce the photograph, talk again of Gin and Simon. The picture must have been taken not long before Gabe’s funeral, she figures.
The funeral, the first time she had seen Gin. Her face had seemed a pale reflection of Gabe’s, Viv had thought impassively at the time. And Simon, a dark blur amidst the others at the church hall. She tries to remember his face, but she can only see him older, the features of the man who had helped her so many years later. That awful day of the funeral, all she could think about was holding herself upright, and trying not to vomit with morning sickness. And grief. And no one to help her. Gabe’s mother clawing at her arm, presenting her to everyone like some sort of bizarre consolation.
Gin had disappeared from the hall, followed shortly afterwards by Simon. And in the corner, watching them leave, Viv had seen Hannah. Simon’s cousin. Hannah’s face remained the only vivid imprint of that day, framed by her mahogany hair cascading in curls down her back. Even as the image forms, Viv feels a wave of nausea pass over her. She stops, inhales deeply.
Nick comes up to stand beside her. “Vivienne,” he asks, his voice low, “why didn’t you tell me Gin was Abbie’s aunt? Why didn’t you tell me about Gabriel McMann?”
Gabe’s name sounds odd on his tongue. She finds herself resentful of him saying it, but the question confuses her. “Why should it make a difference? Does it matter how I know Gin? So, she’s Abbie’s aunt. So, Gin is – was – Gabe’s…” she finds herself stumbling over his name, and repeats it, mockingly, the way he had said it, “Gabriel McMann’s twin sister.” Acid rises. “And Abbie looks like her. Hardly surprising, then. So what?” She says this sharply, angry with him, for saying Gabe’s name, for bringing him between them again.
Since that night he left her at her front door, Nick has made no attempt to touch her, to kiss her. She shivers.
Nick is pulling off his jumper. He holds it out to her. Viv shakes her head, but he takes her hand and puts the still-warm jersey in it.
“Put it on before you freeze. Come on,” he says.
She relents, lets him help her pull the thick wool of it over her head. She shivers again. It falls too long over her hands but sh
e tucks the ends of it around her frozen fingers. “What about you?” she asks, her teeth chattering now. She makes a conscious effort to relax into the warmth of the jumper.
He smiles at her. He is wearing a thick long-sleeved shirt. “I came prepared.”
Manyanga has been gone for some time. Nick whistles, and the dog emerges from behind a rack of rock. She races up to them, her snout sandy, and bounds around them in circles. Nick grabs her collar, and brings the dog to heel.
He turns back to Viv, “Come, it’s cold, let’s get some tea or coffee.”
They walk slowly back along the length of beach to the dockside where he has parked his car.
“I mean it, Nick,” she says, her voice as icy as the wind, “why does it make a difference?”
He sighs, as if he regrets the conversation. Instead he stops walking, answering with another question, look at her directly, asks evenly, “Vivienne, why didn’t you tell me how Gabriel died?”
She blinks, looks away from him. The nausea has returned.
Nothing was ever going to be the same again. Gabe was dead. They had caught him, not the Army, but the South African Police, picked him up off the street like a thief, or a murderer. Slammed him into a cell. No contact with his family, and certainly none with her, or Michael.
And Gabe had hanged himself with his own belt.
Viv closes her eyes. She feels a kind of revulsion at herself, for being able to be here, to be walking on the beach with Nick.
Gabe’s face swims before her; Gabe laughing, that deep honest laugh of his, running his hand through his dark hair, but as he pulls his hand away, his face changes, mutates. And it is Hannah’s face that stares at her, dark blue eyes boring into her.
Viv’s eyes flick open. Nick is looking at her. He looks sad.
“There are two reasons why the insurance company is making such a fuss. Firstly, the policy I told you about… Simon Gold took it out about twenty years ago and never stopped paying it, so it’s a huge amount. So of course they are being careful about it, about the circumstances surrounding his death. And secondly, the beneficiary of the policy…” He rubs his forehead, leaving small grains of sand at his temple, “you see, Vivienne, the beneficiary is Gin.”
Viv brings a hand to her mouth. “So of course – oh, Nick, that’s so silly! What? They’re suspicious of Gin? Because she was with him?” She laughs, shortly, harshly. “I guarantee you, Nick, Gin doesn’t even know about any stupid policy, and if she did, she probably wouldn’t care. She loved Simon Gold.”
She looks at him, relieved that the tension between them has diminished. She thinks perhaps she ought to tell him about Gin’s pregnancy.
“Ja, I know that. And yes, it appears she didn’t know about the policy.”
“But then why are they still suspicious? It’s so ridiculous, Gin was in the car herself, for goodness’ sake. She was hurt herself, remember!” Viv is incredulous.
She feels the tension between them return, and she feels sick again.
Nick looks out toward the sea. A ship glides on the horizon, a silver mirage.
“Because, Vivienne, you see, it’s not that they think she was trying to murder Simon for money, or anything that melodramatic. But they do think there’s something odd about it all. That maybe Simon was suicidal, or that Gin caused the accident, you know, grabbed the wheel or something.”
“But the other car…” stammers Viv, uncomprehending, “you’ve got those witnesses…”
“Ja,” Nick turns back to her. “But there has been some suggestion that their car, the one Gin and Simon Gold were in, may have been the one to swerve. They may have caused the accident.”
Viv is shaking her head. “I don’t believe it.”
“Witnesses get things wrong, you know, mixed up,” says Nick. He sounds as if he is trying not to distress her. “You see, Vivienne, it’s to do with Gin’s family. The insurance company investigators think she’s unstable.”
Viv is sure she is going to vomit now.
Nick pauses. Then he says, and his voice is hard, “They think she may have been trying to kill herself. Like her brother. Like Gabriel.”
19. GIN
Simon is saying something to her. His mouth opens to form words but instead the side of his mouth spills out red. She sees the blood run out of his mouth but it runs upwards, trickles up towards his open eyes. His eyes that are open but that can no longer see. Yet still his mouth moves. Slowly, he speaks, but in a strange voice, a voice not his, but Michael’s.
“Gin, it’s almost seven,” repeats Michael gently, “wake up.”
She stirs, opens her eyes. He puts a hot mug of tea on her bedside table. Light silts onto the pine floor beneath the window. Michael sits down on the edge of the bed, cradling his own mug in his hands.
She sits up, pulling the pillow behind her head. “Morning,” she says, and hears her own voice croak with sleep.
“Morning,” he says, “sorry to wake you, but we’ve got the scan later.”
Gin nods, glad he has woken her from yet another nightmare. Since Michael arrived, she has slept later, deeper. But the nightmares have not ceased. Every night she sees Simon’s dead face, his hollow eyes, his hand reaching out to her. On the worst nights, his hand becomes a claw, tearing at her, into her even. As if he is trying to reach his unborn child. Some nights she feels him breathing next to her, and hears him whisper: I’ve something to tell you. But she wakes to find the bed empty, the house cold and dark and silent. In other dreams her world spins and all she is left with is the imprint, over and over. 1989. 1989.
She takes a sip of her tea. It is sweet. Michael has put sugar in it. She looks at him. He knows she does not take sugar. “Are you trying to fatten me up?” she asks, stretching her hand out to him, and he takes it. His hand is warm from the heat of his mug.
He grins at her. “It’s honey, a super-food. It’s good for you. Come on Gin, let’s get going.”
They wait for over an hour to be seen. Michael is infinitely patient, thinks Gin, although she herself has become inured to waiting. There is something soothing about sitting on the hard-backed chair and watching the hospital move around them. She finds it comforting, and familiar, the bustling business that is England’s National Health Service. She had spent her life in hospitals, around them. With her father, or Jacob. With Jonnie.
And with Simon.
Simon had taken a locum in the Okavango, during the long summer months of her university vacation. An outpost, along the Caprivi strip, that jutted into the heart of Africa, to the point where four countries met. How she had loved the sunsets then, the burning orb sinking beyond the river, bringing the blackest nights she had ever experienced, a luminescence of stars she had not seen since. Given the dearth of doctors, they had travelled between ten mission hospitals. While he examined and treated, easing the burden of the Finnish nuns who ran the clinics, Gin had sorted, labelled, unpacked, and re-arranged their medical supplies and medicines. Pitifully short-supplied, they used all they had, whether expired or not. They had driven close to the border. So close, mere hours away from Victoria Falls, they had tried to cross into Zimbabwe. But without their passports, they had failed to impress the guards.
That night, lying hot beneath mosquito nets, a sheen of sweat between their bodies, she could smell the paraffin of the lamps and hear the cicadas, the constant shrill backdrop of the African night. Then the rain had started, the hard, warm rain with the biggest drops she had ever seen.
Her name is called, and she clutches at Michael’s arm. Wordlessly, without hesitation, he stands, walks with her into the bland, square room. The doctor who sees them talks to them as if they are a couple, as if Michael is the father of her child. To Gin it is a relief. The scanner, cold with gel, moves heavily over her stomach. She closes her eyes briefly. Fragments of her dream wash over her. It has summoned odd feelings, which she cannot name, and they swirl about her like a mist.
Simon’s face looks back at her, he mouths the same meani
ngless words, “Nineteen eighty-nine.”
Her eyes flit open. The consultant is pointing at an image on the screen, talking to Michael, who nods. If they notice her lack of interest, they do not comment.
They drive back slowly through the traffic. A horn blares. People crowd the pavements. The heat is oppressive.
“Well, that was good news, hey, Gin?” says Michael, as they wait at red traffic lights.
She looks blankly at him.
“The scan, I mean. You know, all fine.”
Gin watches a bicycle fly through the red light, swerving around a pedestrian.
“What do you want for lunch?” asks Michael.
“Pineapple,” she replies immediately and does not know where the answer comes from.
He smiles at her. “That’s better. I felt you going off somewhere while we were in there.”
Nineteen eighty-nine.
Gin looks out the window. Roadworks clog the street. A bus negotiates the narrow middle pathway, while another idles, waiting for it to pass. She stares out at the shimmering coal tarmac. Will his image never fade? She does not know what his words mean, if anything, although the thought that he is trying to tell her something persists.
“After lunch,” says Michael, as they finally pass the bottleneck, “we’ll tackle those boxes.” He speeds up slightly to catch the amber of the next traffic light, turning right to take the less congested route back, over the bridge onto the highway that junctions with Harrow Road.
Gin looks into office buildings made of glass, sees people working at their desks. Below stretches the canal, straight, deep, and dark.
“Nineteen eighty-nine,” says Simon’s dead mouth to her, bleeding upwards.
Gin shivers despite the heat.
20. MICHAEL
Michael grills steak and serves it with her requested pineapple, but he notices that Gin leaves the meat untouched and eats only the fruit. They eat in the kitchen. He drinks two glasses of chilled white wine and watches her pick at her plate. It is mid-afternoon before they can face the descent to the basement, to where box upon box is stacked, possessions from their old flat. Michael brings the open bottle of wine down with him. Gin sits cross-legged on the one piece of furniture, an old Persian rug, skinny and bleached with wear. The air is blissfully cold compared to the muggy cloak of summer outside.