by Gerda Pearce
Ah, she thinks, the money for the townhouse explained. He makes it sound so simple, but she suspects a deeper history. “Just like that?”
“Um-hm. Just like that.”
“And girls? No one to leave behind?”
“Still on about that?” His amusement is evident.
“Seriously, there must have been someone.” Viv is determined.
He sobers, is silent for a while, as if deciding something. “All right, there was. A long time ago now.”
She waits. She feels his eyes on her in the darkness.
“But she wouldn’t have me.” A lighter tone again that she does not believe. Even in the poor light, she can see his face enough to see a sorrow settle there. A regret.
“Who would?” Viv teases back quickly, with a joviality she does not feel.
That night she lies awake listening. Listening to Nick’s even breathing beside her. Listening to the surf thundering outside, beating away at the shifting dunes, moulding them into shapes that will be changed again by tomorrow’s rasping wind, as air and water battle each other continually for control of the earth. Even now the air is restless, and the branches scratch repetitively at the window, emaciated fingers trying to get inside. Nick’s hidden history has left her with a sense that he too had suffered, has left her with a sadness she cannot shake.
She wakes to an empty bed the next morning. The day is already dazzling. Viv takes her tea and toast outside. Nick is walking back from the beach, bare-chested, wet-haired. He kisses her and she tastes salt. He grabs a bite of her toast.
“Did you know you talk in your sleep?” he asks, affectionately.
She feels herself blush, wondering what she had said, what secret thoughts she has divulged to him now. “Is it safe here?” she deflects.
“To what? To live?” He moves inside to the kitchen, puts two slices of bread in the toaster and pours himself some tea from the pot she has made.
She stands in the front room. “To swim.” To be with you.
“There’s a bit of an undertow, but it’s fine if you’re careful. We’re safe here otherwise. The fence is electric.”
It disturbs Viv that the presence of an electric fence is necessary, and disturbs her further that she feels safer for it.
“So it’s only me you have to worry about,” smiles Nick, coming back into the front room with his mug of tea. He puts it down, reaches for her. The toaster pings, and is ignored.
They swim in the afternoon. The beach is deserted, the water cold. Nick tries to get her to venture further than waist-deep. He treads water further out, then swims to her, circles her. “What are you afraid of?”
“I don’t know. Sharks. Drowning.”
“It’s only a rogue shark that’ll actively go for you. Most bites are mistakes, or curiosity.”
“That’s comforting.” Sarcastically.
He laughs, flicks his wet hair back from his face with a shake of his head. “And you won’t drown,” he pulls her to him, holds her, moves until they are chest-deep.
Viv looks nervously at the water. She was raised inland and, although now she loves the sight and sound of it, the sea has always been a stranger. Nick takes them even further out until the sandy bottom falls away beneath her feet. She inhales sharply.
“Just hold onto me.” He keeps one arm around her, the other spread out across the surface. “The water holds you up if you let it.”
Viv exhales and lets him guide her out. It is an eerie feeling, to be in deep water, and far from the comfortable safety of the beach. She is not sure she likes it, but when they reach the shore again, she finds she is exhilarated.
That evening he starts the fire for a braai. He covers it with the grill and they leave it to burn down to orange charcoal. They walk on the beach into a glow of sunset. The sand is warm silk beneath their bare feet. Nick is visibly relaxed, his jeans rolled up. The day has done them both good and her limbs feel tired but invigorated from the swim.
“Have you never feared the sea?” she asks.
He looks out at the ocean in question. “I’ve always loved it, but I respect it too,” he replies. “You know, I was swept out once.”
“Swept out?”
Nick leans down to pick up a stone, stands, rubs it absently between his fingers.
“What happened? How old were you?”
He plays with the stone. “Fourteen. I was at the Wild Coast, with family and some friends.” He pauses. “Mdumbi beach. It’s this lovely stretch of beach set below headlands. I went too far out, basically.” He tells her how he had swum beyond the waves that swelled and rolled and crashed, and swelled and rolled and crashed again. To where the gulls cried and swooped for food. “I stopped swimming, found I couldn’t touch the bottom. The beach was way back, farther than I thought.” Nick stares out across the waves as he talks. “It looked a bit like a mirage, shimmering in the distance.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Not at first. I’m a strong swimmer. It was only when I turned back that I felt the current against me, tugging at my legs. It had taken me out.” His first instinct, he tells her, was to try to swim against it. “But then I remembered my dad telling me that that’s what exhausts you, tires you out. And you drown.”
“And then?”
“I was floating, treading water. I could see my dad on the beach. He’d realised what was happening, was heading for the boathouse. But up on the headland above the beach I saw a group of Thembu women. I was far out, but I could see them swaying, and I could hear them singing.”
“Singing?”
He nods. “I couldn’t hear the words. The wind swept them away, but I could make out the music of their voices. Afterwards, I asked my dad what they were doing, what they were singing. And he told me they were singing to the sea. Asking the sea to bring me back.” He looks at her, drops the stone. “And it did,” he says, “a bit farther down the beach, the current brought me in.”
Nick takes her hand, and they turn back towards the house. “You see, Vivienne, you don’t have to be afraid. And you don’t have to fight it. The sea will always bring you home.”
37. GIN
Jonnie visits her once a week, ostensibly to check on Ellie, although Gin suspects it is to check on her as well. But she is pleased for his company, and it allays her worries about her daughter. They walk with Ellie down the lenient slope to Holland Park, and Jonnie wheels the pram along the barren ground as they weave beneath the trees that are all mottled bark and naked branches. He helps with Ellie and Gin feels both grateful for, and yet resentful of, his obvious expertise with children. He stays late sometimes. He brings with him a laughter and an irreverence; it is a feeling she has missed.
He does not mention Ellie’s father again and Gin tells him only that he was killed in the same accident in which she had hurt her leg. They mention neither Viv nor his new wife. On the odd late evening when he stays to share some wine, Gin wonders what he tells his wife, or whether he still flouts his religion by drinking wine at home, but she does not feel inclined to ask. In fact, she does not care. Jonnie talks of work, of patients, of how he is finding this new country. He speaks often of home. Politics is a frequent topic of debate. Their conversations alternately exhaust and enliven her.
It is his effect on Ellie she notices most. Ellie, who seems to have an earnest temperament not unlike her father, brightens in Jonnie’s presence. She gurgles with delight at his appearance, and in turn Jonnie seems inexplicably drawn to this child. Tiny fingers curl around his with steady hold, while she stares at him with eyes that could penetrate one’s soul.
One evening he arrives with bagfuls of ingredients for supper, “Courtesy of your market,” he says, “for a proper chicken curry. And because,” he adds, “you don’t eat enough.”
Gin, bemused, sits at the table and watches while he unpacks chicken pieces, rice, tomatoes, an onion, yoghurt, spices, and a single, vibrantly green lime.
“You’ve got oil?” he opens cupboards without wa
iting for her reply.
“In the one above the kettle.”
Jonnie takes out the bottle and switches on the kettle. He grabs a frying pan from the drying rack and puts it on the stove, adding some oil. Gin has to help him light the gas with matches. He takes a sharp knife and pierces the skin of each tomato, pours boiling water over them. Their skins curl back from their scalding, and peel away easily. Jonnie chops the flesh of them, piling it all on a plate. He pulls a match out of the box and starts to chew on it. Gin’s look is quizzical.
“It stops your eyes watering,” he explains, dicing onion. He tosses the pieces into the pan, and it spits. “See, no tears,” he says, discarding the match. Ginger, garlic, and chillies get chopped and added to the sizzling pan. Spices are next, coriander, cumin, turmeric, stirring all the time to stop them sticking. A dash of salt, freshly ground black pepper and the tomatoes follow. “I tried to teach the girls. Kayleigh would be quite a good cook if she could pay attention long enough.” He laughs. The sauce boils and he turns the heat down to let it simmer.
Gin takes this apparently unguarded comment as a cue to ask him about her niece. “What’s Abbie like, Jonnie?”
He responds by looking at her briefly, eyes narrowed. “She’s lovely.” He pauses, smiles at her. “You know Gin, she looks a lot like you.”
Gin feels afresh the old guilt. Her lack of contact with Gabe’s daughter had always bothered her. But the circumstances were such that she had felt no contact was better than some. And Abbie had been so young when Gin had left, she was sure she would not remember her. But her sister had kept in contact, albeit irregular.
“I know Issy kept in touch.”
“Yes, I remember. We met her a few times. She always sent Abbie presents on her birthday. Made Kayleigh quite jealous.” Jonnie reminds her that Abbie had spent some holidays with her grandparents. “Less so after your mom died, but your dad, well, he adored her.” Her dad, he says, had also commented on Abbie’s resemblance to her aunt.
Dad. Gin cannot speak, seeing her father’s face in front of her again.
Jonnie adds the chicken pieces to the sauce. “Good, we’ll leave that for a half hour or so.” As he cleans and tidies, washing bowls, stacking the drainer, he talks more of the girls, telling Gin about their schooling, their favourite subjects, and more of what they are like. They are good students. Abbie excels at languages, Kayleigh at mathematics and biology.
It is apparent to Gin that he misses them more than he cares to admit.
“You like children, don’t you, Jonnie?” she observes. “You’re very good with them.” She cannot bring herself to say he is good with Ellie. It is too close, too much a reminder of her own failings as a mother.
Jonnie checks on the simmering curry. “Yes,” he says, covering the pan again, “I do like children. I’m not sure I’m that good with them, though.” Steam volcanoes out of the pot of rice and he adjusts the heat.
Gin wonders if he and his wife are still trying to conceive, but keeps her curiosity to herself. Instead she asks, “Did you and Viv want more kids?” It is the first time she has mentioned Viv’s name openly like this.
He shrugs as he adds the yoghurt into the saucepan. “We had problems in our marriage by then.” The sauce bubbles gently and Jonnie scoops some up in a teaspoon, blows it cool, tastes it. He cuts the lime in half and squeezes it one-fisted into the pan. The juice dribbles over his hand.
“Well, you must have been a good father. You raised Abbie as your own.”
He smiles, chops fresh coriander leaves. “That was easy. She’s easy to love.” His smile widens then and his tone turns playful. “She’s like you in temperament too, you see…”
Gin laughs despite herself. She brings out a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc while he serves up the curry, sprinkled with the chopped coriander. They sit in the kitchen to eat. The room is warm from his cooking and the air still fragrant with spice. The flavours hit her tongue and burn her mouth. Hotter than she remembers.
“You adopted Abbie, didn’t you, Jonnie? So she’s Abbie Kassan now?”
Jonnie nods as he swallows. He takes a slow sip from his wine glass. When he speaks, his tone has lost its humour, and he is reflective. “I may have been a good father, but I make a crap husband.”
She does not miss his use of the present tense.
38. GIN
It is Jonnie who makes the effort to decorate her home for Christmas. Gin teases him about his obvious enjoyment of the process, but nothing she says shifts his determination. Late December, he hauls in a tree one morning, leaving a trail of pine needles in the hall, and stands it in a corner of the lounge.
“It’s her first Christmas, Gin, you have to.”
Jonnie’s enthusiasm is catching, and they spend the rest of the morning hanging baubles and trailing tinsel on the pungent branches. Ellie is captivated by the glitter and the rustle of the tree. Come the afternoon, Jonnie takes Ellie out for a walk. Picking up Gin’s keys from the table in the hall, he leaves, telling Gin to rest. She looks in the mirror after he has gone, sees for herself the face etched with fatigue that must have prompted his instruction. She feels like a fraud. Her nights are disturbed not by Ellie, but by the unrelenting dreams of Simon.
She runs a hot bath, heaps in a turquoise mix of rosemary and sage bath foam, and soaks in the bubbles. Her exhaustion ebbs out with the bathwater. She wraps herself in a towel, squeezes water out of her hair. Then she cleans out the bath, and rinses it.
Laughing, window open, sea-breeze strong, Simon’s sure hands on the wheel.
Then it blanks again, car towards car, the curve undone. Why can she not remember? She can remember his hands. Those long fingers and tender hands. Remembers them on the wheel, remembers the sweep of road that took them up and over the hill. Remembers those hands on her body, touching her. She can see Simon’s dead face, his shining eyes lost to life, dull in death. They were stuck open, fixed in their last unyielding stare. She cannot bear to think of his pain. She remembers them wheeling her away, her consciousness slipping. In her vague and unfinished memory of the crash, she knows there was a time before he died that she had watched him struggle to focus through the pain. She knows he fought against death, he would not have let himself slip away without a fight. And he was trying to tell her something, but her memory fails again, blurs into a red mist, like blood, tainting clarity, as her own injuries drew her away from him, as he struggled for every breath. As he fought.
“Leila.” Like a message. His hand, outstretched to her.
Gin dresses, makes tea, watches the afternoon creep towards an early dusk. The doorbell rings. It is too soon to expect them back and anyhow, Jonnie took her keys. She opens the door to a ghost.
In the years since she last saw him, Simon’s father Isaac has aged. His face, never young, has creased. The hair, never thick, has thinned. He wears it combed over his head, parting low over his left ear. Oiled strips plastered over his shiny scalp reach the other ear, ending in curls, whiter than the preceding streaks of grey. Tendrils pull out above the rest, wave helplessly atop his head. Isaac was always taller than his brother Jacob, but now he seems bent, shrivelled. There exists no sign of robust health.
Stunned, Gin invites him in, gives him a hasty embrace. She is thankful for Ellie’s absence and now in dread of Jonnie’s imminent return with Isaac’s granddaughter. It is possible, though unlikely, that Isaac has heard about Ellie. Gin has contacted no one, only her sister and Michael, and she hopes, albeit vainly, that he knows nothing.
Isaac walks stooped, his left shoulder lists off lower than the right. He is apologising to her, apologising for arriving like this. Unannounced.
Gin barely listens, surreptitiously checking the room for signs of a child, for signs of Ellie. None are obvious in the large lounge and she seats him there, beside the gaudy Christmas tree, offers him tea or coffee in a voice that does not sound like her own. Stalling for time to gather her thoughts, she brings tea, apologises for no biscuits or cake.
No, no, he insists, it is he who should apologise.
They circle each other with polite talk. She asks after Isaac’s wife and then feels the horror of having to ask about Simon’s wife, Simon’s sons. She stumbles over the words, falls mute. Isaac saves her, launching into how everyone is. His niece Hannah – you remember Jacob’s daughter? Simon’s cousin? – is home for the holiday season. She is taking Simon’s son to have a look around Rhodes University, he says. Simon’s son is keen to read his degree there, the year after next.
Gin swallows hard and then sips her tea. She does not know how to respond. She searches for the flint that burned once in Isaac’s eyes, the ever-present hint of a smile on his lips, a readiness to laugh heartily and often. There is none. His eyes look dulled and crescented with grey. Simon’s death, no doubt, has robbed them of their light.
Eventually they exhaust the family news. Gin stands and turns on a side lamp to throw light into the darkened room. Where is Jonnie? Surely he will be back any minute. Gin prays he is delayed.
“Virginia, my dear,” says the old man sitting in her lounge.
She turns slowly to face him, cold seeping into her body as she does so. Her arms and legs start to freeze, stripping her of feeling, numbing her till there is only the core of her left. Her heart, still beating.
His hand, outstretched to her.
“I expect you’re wondering why I’m here.”
This she had not expected. She had thought it obvious. Surely he wanted to ask about Simon, about his son, about Cape Town, about the accident?
“Gin,” he had gasped, like a lover, like when making love to her. His hand, outstretched to her.
Isaac puts his cup down with some force, sits forward in the leather armchair. “I’m here,” he says, with obvious effort, “about Simon’s will.”
“His will?” The words are out before she can help it. “His will?” she repeats, more calmly. Then she asks quietly, “What has that got to do with me?”