by Gerda Pearce
“My good fortune then. Good one, Nick,” says Michael.
Nick nods his acknowledgement.
It must be difficult for him to sit and listen to her and Michael catching up, but he shows no signs of impatience or boredom. In fact, he seems quite comfortable in the chair opposite her, leaning back with his legs stretched out.
Viv holds her cup out for a refill. Michael pours from a china pot adorned with a pink Chinese pattern. “And Gin? How is she?” she asks.
“Yes, didn’t she tell you? She had a baby girl in October.”
Viv looks quickly at Nick, but his face betrays nothing.
Michael continues to fill her in. “I suppose she wants to keep news of Ellie quiet. I gathered she doesn’t want Simon’s family to know.” His obvious concern for Gin’s health gives his voice an edge. “Frankly, I’m worried about her, Viv. Do you know while I was there she insisted we put her bed on stilts? Something about being afraid of the tokoloshe. And she has these recurrent nightmares of Simon. She says his face is almost always distorted and bleeding.”
Viv has been aware of Nick’s aroused interest and it has distracted her. She wants to hear about Gin, to take in all the details, but she finds it hard to concentrate on Michael’s words. She wishes now she had told him about Nick, about how they had met.
Michael is still talking. “She says he keeps saying the same thing over and over again in the dreams.”
It is Nick who asks, “What does he say?”
Michael looks at him. “It’s a number, or a year. Nineteen eighty-nine. Over and over, apparently.”
“And she has no idea what it means?”
Michael shakes his head. “No. Other than it was the year she left. I suggested hypnotherapy. It can help in cases like this.”
“Cases like what?” Viv finds her voice.
“I think Gin is suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Because of the accident. I think she’s stuck in some kind of limbo state.” Michael’s face sets in a frown. “You know, Viv, she hasn’t grieved properly. Not even for her dad. And certainly not for Simon.”
Viv stays quiet now, willing him to change the topic of conversation. She feels uncomfortable talking with Michael about Gin in front of Nick.
“What do you mean?” asks Nick.
Still gathering information, still investigating. Viv resents him asking these questions.
“Well, it’s just that she hasn’t grieved at all. I mean, not once has she even cried. It’s like it’s all bottled up inside her still.”
Michael offers them more tea, or something stronger, says he hopes they are staying for lunch. “A beer maybe?” he suggests, looking at Nick, who declines as he is driving.
“You’re welcome to stay the night,” offers Michael.
Nick looks at her, letting her decide. Viv refuses politely. They must head off after lunch. She doesn’t want to travel in the dusk. Michael rises, gives them a choice of lunch in town, on him, or his own paltry efforts.
Viv teases him, insists on the meagre option, but as expected, it is more sumptuous than promised. They sit in the oblong dining room that opens out from the lounge, and Michael serves cold meats, salad, fresh bread, a selection of cheese, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and ripe avocados. He apologises to Nick for hogging Viv and the exclusive conversation. Nick merely smiles and shrugs slightly.
“So where did you study, Nick?”
Viv is about to intervene, to tell Michael that Nick is a policeman. She worries that Nick will be embarrassed by the question. Instead Nick’s mild answer astonishes her.
“I came here,” he says.
She cannot help herself. “You did?” She stares at him, becomes aware of Michael staring at her in turn. How little she knows about Nick.
“You did?” echoes Michael, “what did you study?”
Viv is grateful he does not ask Nick when. She calculates she must have been in Cape Town, perhaps pregnant with Kayleigh, by the time Nick would have been studying.
“Botany. And some Marine Biology.” Nick looks at Viv apologetically.
Or does she imagine it? Should she know this, she asks herself. Should he have told her? Should she have asked?
“Ah, one of the Port Alfred surfers,” Michael is saying, handing out more bread. “The marine biologists to a man were always surfing while ostensibly studying.”
Both men laugh.
“I’m not too bad on a surfboard,” says Nick, “for an inland boy from the Transkei.”
Viv listens as the two men chat. She is still reeling from Nick’s revelation and it has made her feel excluded from his life.
“So is that what you do in Cape Town?”
The inevitable questions, thinks Viv.
“No,” replies Nick easily, “I’m a policeman.”
Michael’s look is contemplative and not, as Viv would have expected, one of surprise.
Nick is looking at her now. He smiles with affection. Viv feels her cheeks redden. She dreads the talk returning to Gin, but instead Nick reveals he had studied psychology in his freshman year and the two men reminisce about various lecturers. Viv’s attention drifts and she studies the painting behind Michael. The other walls are bare, as are those of the lounge. It is a striking portrait of a stormy sea. In the right upper quadrant, a headland. White waves pound at its base. Mist rises above the crash of surf. A bank of rocks cuts across the foreground. There is nothing but the sea. No people, no ships, no birds in the overcast sky. She finds it vaguely depressing.
“So you’re happy to be back?” asks Nick. “That’s a long time to be away. You must find the country very changed.”
“Yes,” agrees Michael. “For the better. I feel I missed out on the transition. But there’s still a lot of divisive issues here.”
“Like what?” asks Viv, intrigued now, and tired of looking at the painting.
“Well, there’s a lot of talk about changing Grahamstown’s name, for one,” answers Michael. “I gather some people don’t like the idea.”
“Well, I think it would be a shame,” says Viv. “The Settlers contributed to this country too. Name changes risk alienating white people.”
“Well, there’s something very symbolic about it,” muses Michael, “but perhaps it’s a bit late, I agree. Perhaps the time for that was at the end of apartheid when people were ready for change.”
“We can’t change history,” interjects Nick, “We inherit the good, the bad. We can only try to move forward now in the spirit of ubuntu.”
Ubuntu. The essence of humanity. Central to the concept of forgiveness in the new South Africa, the knowledge that oppression diminishes us all, that we are all inter-connected. Viv thinks of Jonnie, of Abbie, and wonders how people can achieve this with strangers when they so rarely can achieve it with those they know, with those they love.
“Maybe something neutral will be least inflammatory,” she suggests, “isn’t Grahamstown also called the City of Saints?”
“Yes,” chuckles Michael, “There’s something like forty religious buildings. In a town this size!”
They all laugh.
“You know,” says Nick, “there’s another story as to how it got that name.” Apparently, he tells them, in the mid eighteen hundreds, a group of Royal Engineers stationed here were in need of supplies. “So they cabled the Cape. The message read: Send Vice. A cable came back, saying: Obtain vice locally. That prompted another cable to Cape Town that read: No vice in Grahamstown.”
They all laugh again.
“So,” says Michael, changing the subject, “You’ll be up again with Abbie. She’s thinking of studying here then?”
“Um-hm,” nods Viv, her mouth full. She swallows hard. “Yes. Not sure it’s the best place.”
“Why not?” asks Nick. “It’ll be good for her to be away from home. Find that first independence.”
Viv looks at him. Part of her wants to tell him to mind his own business, that this is between her and Abbie, while another
part has to acknowledge the truth of his words. She has to let Abbie go, let her find her own way. Viv only wishes it could be somewhere else, somewhere that does not hold for her an agonising mix of happiness and pain.
Lunch ends on lighter matters, and they take their leave.
Michael hugs her again and shakes Nick’s hand. “Good to finally meet you, Nick Retief,” he says, adding with a nod at Viv. “Look after her.”
Viv pulls a face at him.
Nick laughs. “I think she looks after herself pretty well.”
“I know,” replies Michael, looking at her, “but still.”
A rush of tenderness for Michael fills her. Once, long ago, he had been infatuated with her, and she knew it had been hard for him to see her with Gabe. In time, she had come to realise that perhaps Gabe’s death had hit him harder for it. She turns back to give Michael another hug. Over his shoulder, she can see the flat at the end of the courtyard, the one that Gin had lived in. It looks empty, forlorn even. Do the places we live in hold a remnant of our lives, she wonders.
Michael waves as they drive away.
“I always thought it was a shame that Gin and Michael never got together,” she muses, buckling her belt. “They would have been well-suited.”
“Maybe it was because of Gabriel,” says Nick, turning into the main road. “It’s hard to date the sister of your best friend.”
She studies his profile. How astute he is. Although something in the way he has spoken makes her suspect he speaks from experience.
She watches the town pass by. I don’t know how Michael can stay here, she thinks. “I admire him for coming back,” she tells Nick.
“I think he admires you for staying.”
Nick thinks she means Michael’s return to the country, realises Viv.
“I mean to Grahamstown,” she says quietly, “I couldn’t live here again.” She stops herself from adding: Among the ghosts.
36. VIVIENNE
They drive the stretch of road that sweeps up and out of the town, leaving behind Grahamstown, the City of Saints. The City, thinks Viv, of Sorrow. The day is hot and she winds down the window, letting the air rush in and lift her hair, cool her neck. She glances at Nick, who drives on in silence, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. They are high on the hills now, the tar thin. The road is in bad condition and he has to concentrate so as not to hit the frayed edges.
They reach the turnoff. In the distance she sees the giant pineapple, constructed out of fibreglass, steel and concrete. The ground floor is a gift shop selling home-made jams and chutneys, local pottery and T-shirts for the tourists, and the top is an observation deck with views over farmlands that roll all the way to the Indian Ocean. It is also a landmark, how the students learn the way to the coast. The road is better here, but Nick is still quiet. She is sure she knows why. He had known nothing of Gin’s pregnancy. Again, she had kept him out of her life.
“I didn’t know she’d had her baby,” she offers, and is immediately cross with herself. Why should she have told him? What does it matter? And what of his secrets, his past?
He looks at her briefly, a swift appraisal. A quick shake of his head before he turns his attention back to the road. “It doesn’t matter. It has no bearing on the case. It’s all been settled, now. The insurance has paid out.”
“And you? What do you think?” Viv remembers his conviction that the car crash was no accident.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” he says bluntly. “It’s done.”
There is a note of finality in his voice, and Viv supposes there are plenty worse crimes for him to deal with.
The land is parched dry and brown. Viv’s mouth feels edged with the dust of it. Endless sky ahead, blue and cloudless. Torrid sun with no hope of rain. Settler’s country. How alienated they must have felt, she thinks. There had been evident nostalgia in the names they gave their towns. She thinks again of Michael saying they might re-name Grahamstown. It makes her sad, not hopeful. There are more important things to deal with still, she thinks, like homes and jobs, than worrying about what to call a town.
They reach Port Alfred as the sun sinks. Nick crosses the new bridge, turns left and drives along the river canalways to reach the beachfront, the rolling sand dunes brushed with grass. The sea looks deceptively flat. She knows the waves are bigger than they look, the rocks not as smooth. They simmer in the day’s remaining heat, beneath calm shallows. The tide is out. The tides, she knows, are treacherous, the slick dangerous pull that can suck you out in a minute, drawing you out into the depths.
Nick threads his way through coastal bungalows, over roads that deteriorate with their distance from the town. He swerves to avoid a pothole, bumps over a short cement bridge onto a dirt track, lined on both sides with thick vegetation. He turns the car sharply, stops in front of a steel gate, initially hidden by the bush. He winds down his window and taps a code into a square box attached to a pole. The gate slides open, metal grating against metal, and closes behind them automatically.
The thick forest alongside casts the car in shadow. Half a mile down the track, the road ends, widening into a clearing where Nick parks. On the left, tucked amid the milkwood trees and indigenous sea bush is a low-slung cottage. It gleams yellow in the dying sunlight. Crickets scream at the encroaching night. On the side of the house is a round water tank, covered with a roof of corrugated iron. Moss grows around its damp base. Viv can smell the sea and hear the surf. Nick leads her around the front of the house and there, a short distance from the verandah is a path snaking through low dunes, straight to the beach.
Inside, the cottage is crudely but comfortably furnished. Off the sitting room is a narrow kitchen. Open shelves are stacked with tinned food, candles, candlesticks, soap, matches, some paraffin, paraffin lamps, and a torch. But there is electricity, an oven and a fridge. Next to this is a bathroom with a frosted window set high into the wall. She finds this mildly amusing. There is no one around for miles, they are surrounded by a high steel fence, and even if the window were clear-paned and low-set, the bathroom would still be private. The bath is shallow, water is a scarcity. No shower. There are three bedrooms, two large, one small. Viv walks into the largest one that faces the beach, stands at the window, looking out over the dunes. She feels extraordinarily nervous for some reason.
She turns as Nick enters the room, sits on the bed, kicks off his shoes.
He grins at her. “Come over here,” he says, patting the bed beside him.
Viv does not move. I know almost nothing about him, she reminds herself. His whole revelation about Rhodes, about studying there, had upset her more than she would care to admit. What else of his past does she not know? He talks little of it, has never mentioned women, and there must be some, he must have had girlfriends. He is too accomplished a lover for there not to have been, she thinks with some amusement.
Viv puts her hands on the windowsill behind her, leans back slightly. He has shifted to sit up on the bed, propped against the wall, his long legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles. His arms are folded and he is still smiling at her.
“So,” she says thoughtfully, “you studied at Rhodes.”
“Ja.”
“Botany.” She nods her head as she says this.
“Ja,” he repeats. “Come over here. Please.”
“Why botany?”
He sighs in mock frustration. “I was still considering the farm then. You know, agriculture.”
“And a bit of zoology, marine biology?”
His look is questioning and his smile has faded. “Ja, why?”
“So that means you must have spent a lot of time down here, at the sea?”
“Yes. If I answer all these questions, will you come over here?”
She moves two steps towards him, but stays out of his reach. His grin returns.
“So did you bring girls here?”
“Yes,” his smile broadens, “You owe me another step.”
Viv takes a short step closer. His arms
are still folded but were he to stretch, she is within his reach now. “Were there many?”
“Yes,” he says, mock serious. “Lots. Several. Sometimes all at once.”
Viv stifles a laugh.
Nick continues in a rueful tone, “In fact, this was my den.” He gestures around the room. “A positive lair of lechery, and the seduction of innocents…” His arm swings back and he is up, grabs Viv to him, falls back with her onto the bed. “Got you.”
She bursts out laughing. He has her pinned under him.
He lifts his head back to look at her properly. His eyes are blue and direct, his voice tender. “But none of them were as beautiful as you.”
She does not know what to say, her throat feels full.
He strokes her hair away from her face. “None of them even came close.”
Later, he is hungry and unpacks food she had not even noticed he had brought. They sit out on the verandah, side by side in pastel-green Adirondack chairs, eating cheese on toast washed down with beer. Under the white orb of African moon, she can make out the roll of the dunes and beyond a black strip that is the sea. Stars radiate across an infinite heaven. Nick’s hand rests on her forearm, his thumb trails rhythmically along her skin, but she can tell his mind is elsewhere. He sips his beer and stares out into the night.
Her curiosity resurfaces. “So if you went travelling after studying,” she says, “that would mean you only joined the police after the change of government?”
There is a pause before his answer. “Yes.”
“Why did you become a policeman?”
Another pause. Then he says, “It’s a long story. I suppose by then I knew I wasn’t going to farm, Mandela was a man to believe in, get behind, and I knew the country was going to need a new police force, forward-thinking, you know, someone to keep law and order.” He takes a sip of beer.
“And you were that someone?”
Another sip. “Yes.” It is said self-deprecatingly. Another sip. “So I sold the farm, came to Cape Town, bought the townhouse, joined the force.”