by Gerda Pearce
Abbie’s eyes widen in initial surprise, then fill with unexpected tears. She takes the watch and stares at it as if it is her father’s face she sees instead of the cream countenance, the worn copper-gold surround. She massages the strap between finger and thumb and then puts it around her left wrist, pulling the strap tightly. Even on the last bucklehole it still hangs loosely, and the face covers almost the width of her wrist.
“Thanks, Mom,” is all she says.
They set off in sombre mood. The journey will take up most of the day. It is Abbie’s choice, albeit a strange one. Viv herself would have taken Gabe’s ashes inland, to the farm maybe, or the mountains of Zululand that he had so loved. But she respects her daughter’s wish to do what she wants, and in some way she understands that for Abbie, this is perhaps a way of keeping her father’s memory close, here in the Cape.
They take the Ou Kaapse Weg to Noordhoek, turning right onto Main Road at Sun Valley, which will take them to Kommetjie and its surfer’s waves. About five kilometres after Scarborough, Viv turns into Plateau Drive, and after twice that distance, they reach the entrance to the nature reserve with its wild game, its resplendent fynbos. Antelope, baboons, zebra, even ostrich call this park home, but they see only a shy buck peering at them from the bank of forest.
You have to go to the bleak beaches of Cape Agulhas to reach the most southerly tip of Africa, but to Viv, Cape Point always feels like the end of the continent. The rocky promontory set at the end of the Cape peninsula has two other names, each ostensibly from Bartholomeu Diaz, the explorer. Cabo das Tormentas, Cape of Storms, he called it on his first voyage, trying to open a trade route between east and west. The second, the weather kinder, he dubbed it Cabo de Boa Esperanto. The Cape of Good Hope. She wonders what Diaz must have thought as he rounded the point on his third and final voyage. Perhaps his first impression the more accurate, as the storms took his ship down, all hands lost along with him. Perhaps both names are apt. I have known both, thinks Viv. Perhaps it is an apposite setting that Abbie has chosen after all.
The park is relatively quiet, with few tourists, and their path up the steep and windy walk to the top of the cliff is unimpeded. Ahead is the most powerful lighthouse in the southern hemisphere. A cormorant swoops and dips on the air current, its cry carried away on the wind. Abbie walks ahead of them, clasping the urn to her chest.
“It must be hard to let her go,” says Gin, walking beside Viv.
She has echoed her thoughts. “Yes,” mutters Viv. She is mindful that Gin must be thinking of Ellie, who will never grow up. Gin has had to let so many people go.
“You never finished telling me about you and Nick Retief,” says Gin.
Nick. Viv’s heart lurches at the sound of his name. She sees again the scattered folders on the floor of his office, his stricken look.
I promise never to hurt you, Vivienne.
But he had. “It’s a long story,” she says, and then remembers Nick saying these exact words to her, that moonlit night at the coast.
“I think,” Gin is saying reflectively, “that whatever happened, you should try to repair it.”
Viv is surprised. Gin had never liked Nick. “Why do you say that?”
The wind is chill, and Gin pulls her cardigan closed, folds her arms across her chest as they walk. “Just because, well,” she stops, starts again, as if the words are forming as she thinks. “There’ve been too many unknowns in our lives. You know, what might have happened if Gabe had lived, what could have been had Simon and I not had the –” she exhales, continues, “accident.” She pronounces the word oddly, accented almost. “If Ellie hadn’t died.”
Viv, distracted, stumbles, goes down on one knee.
Gin reaches for her belatedly, grabs her arm. “Are you okay?”
Viv brushes her knee, nods. Abbie, ahead in her own world, does not look back. “Just a graze,” says Viv, but it has already started to throb. Her stocking has laddered, bloodied.
They start up the incline again.
Gin’s lips are pursed, her brow furrowed. After a while, she says, “You should call him, Viv. See what happens. The thing is, Viv, you don’t want to spend the rest of your life wondering what might have been.”
Abbie has reached the top ahead of them. She stands at the edge before a stone wall. Without looking back at her mother and her aunt, she opens the lid, tips the urn, letting the wind gather up her father’s ashes and whip the grey swirl of them far out over the ocean.
Viv and Gin hang back, letting Abbie have this moment alone. They stand huddled together.
“She chose the windiest spot in the Cape,” says Viv, arms tightly clasped around herself.
“I’m not sure I’d like that,” muses Gin.
“What?” Wondering if Gin too would have chosen elsewhere for her twin.
“I’d have chosen the mountain. It makes me feel safe, its strength, its solidity. I guess the thought of Gabe – oh, I know it’s not him, really – but it kind of bothers me, the thought of him drifting aimlessly out there, amongst the sharks and the wrecks and the drowned.”
The drowned. Like Diaz. Viv contemplates this for a while. Then she links her arm with Gin’s. “The current will bring him in, Gin. Somewhere he’ll land safely on a beach. Up the coast.” She looks far off into the distance as she adds, “Don’t worry, Gin, the sea will bring him home.”
54. NICK
Captain Bernard Strydom is standing in Nick’s office, idly leafing through the folders in the tray marked Closed. The filing is behind, the archives stuffed to overflowing, and hindered by the new computer system. Nick is catching up on paperwork. It is his day off, but since Viv, he has had little inclination to spend it alone.
Nick had ordered flowers for Viv, but they were returned, still in the box. He had written, but the letter came back unopened. His phone calls went unanswered. He knew he could check up on her officially but he did not want to hurt her again. He drove to her house one weekend, to find the door locked, the garage empty. The neighbours told him she was gone. A fist clutched around his heart.
“Gone where?” he queried, to be told she was visiting friends, she was out of town.
And there is always paperwork.
Suddenly Strydom says, “McMann, that’s a name that brings back bad memories.”
“What do you mean?” Nick stiffens but keeps his voice relaxed, his manner casual. Strydom is a relic, a dinosaur left over from the time of apartheid, kept on in the spirit of reconciliation. Ubuntu, thinks Nick. Strydom was not as bad as some of them.
“Ag, ja,” sighs Strydom. He rubs at his moustache thoughtfully.
Nick waits, saying nothing, continues writing his report. But he is alert to the older man’s every move.
Eventually Strydom sighs again and says, “Ja, man, there was some business back at the TRC.”
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, thinks Nick, had exposed unimaginable horrors. Tales of torture and miscarriages of justice had made him ashamed of his race and more often of his profession. The truth had not set him free, he reflects. He stops writing, sits back in his chair, and looks across at the Captain intently.
Strydom seems barely aware of Nick’s regard. He has folded his arms and is staring off into the distance, remembering. “There was this fellow in the police, worked with me on a few cases, Du Plessis – we called him Doep – he was pulled up in front of the Commission for alleged abuse of prisoners.” He sighs again, as if his own words cause him pain. “Ja, anyhow, seems the fellow making the allegations – I forget his name – said that at the same time, there had been a white chap in the cell next door to him. And that Doep had tortured him too. They thought the chap was mentioning him in the hope that they could find the white guy to back up his story.”
Nick feels an old feeling rise inside him. He knows what Strydom is going to say. “And did they?” he asks, although he is sure he knows the answer.
“Ag, no,” says Strydom, not looking at him. “The guy was dead.
Committed suicide, apparently. But then the chappie complaining to the TRC said that Doep had tortured the white oke as well, that Doep had murdered him, made it look like suicide.”
“And what was the white guy’s name?” he asks, but he knows. He asks only to prolong the interlude of innocence, to delay hearing confirmation of something he already knows.
“Ja, that’s the thing,” says Strydom, so quietly it is as if he talks only to himself, “the chap was called McMann. Ja, that’s it. Gabriel McMann.”
In the silence that follows, neither man looks at the other. Nick closes his eyes briefly at the name, opens them to stare down at his unfinished report.
McMann. Gabriel McMann.
He imagines her chestnut eyes looking up at him as he starts to tell her. And he will have to tell her this now. Even though it is apparent she never wants to see him again, he will have to see her and tell her. He, Nick Retief, will have to watch as his words rupture her world.
“What happened after that?” he asks, eventually, when the silence has solidified, thickened the atmosphere in his office so much he imagines he can taste the acridity of it.
“Well, they couldn’t really take it any further about the McMann boy. Seems his family never knew, I mean, never suspected it may have been anything other than suicide. So no one had come forward to the Commission asking about McMann. Anyhow, they didn’t find any direct relatives.”
Because, thinks Nick, they were either ill, abroad, or dead. And nothing obvious to make the connection with a Vivienne Weetman, a Vivienne Kassan. And, he supposes, little incentive, what with so many cases to pursue. He says nothing.
Strydom is stroking his moustache again. “Ja, bad business, that.”
“Did Du Plessis say anything about McMann?” Nick is surprised at the evenness of his own tone.
“Jussus, I can’t exactly remember now,” says Strydom. “Not officially, no. It was something like he said he hadn’t killed him but he knew there had been some sort of cover-up about the guy’s death. Said it was an accident or something, that in any event there was enough stuff to suggest McMann had killed himself.”
It was incredible that they could sit and talk about this man so dispassionately. A man had been tortured and killed, whether accident or murder, yet it had been passed off as suicide, and everyone went back to work the next day as if nothing had happened. He feels an ancient anger rise in him. He suddenly has a desperate need to walk out of his office, breathe clean air, drive home, run on the sand. He longs also to see Vivienne, take her in his arms one last time, before it will be over between them forever.
But he stays seated in his chair, picks up his pen, turns it slowly in his hands. “And did he name any other men?”
“Ag, I can’t remember now. If he did, it would have had to be investigated separately. And you know, it would have depended on other people corroborating the allegations. Don’t know if anything could be proven. And McMann had left a note as I recall.”
“What happened to your colleague, Du Plessis?” he asks Strydom.
“Doep?” says Strydom, with a start. He sighs again, a big hearty outlet of breath. “Ag, man. The usual. Acquitted.”
55. GIN
Every night, eyelids sinking into sleep, it has been Simon’s eyes that flashed before her, like a northern aurora across the darkening horizon of night. But it was not Simon she dreamed of last night. Instead she glimpsed her brother’s shadowed form slipping away from her through distant trees.
Gin ran after him but wood had suddenly grown thick and dense around her. She cried his name soundlessly into the approaching night. She knew they hunted him, she knew he was hurt. She saw the blood on the forest floor, mingling with dying leaves. Her damaged, bleeding brother was lost, lost in the wood. Then she heard him calling to her from across a river that led to the sea. She walked towards him, but he was gone.
She knew she must cross the river, but she was afraid of its slow-flowing murkiness, almost stagnant with weeds. Sticks lined the surface, clotted with brown foam. She waded in and suddenly then it was wide, deep, with a strong undertow pulling at her legs. The far bank became a cement wall. Clambering to reach it, she was struck by an overwhelming thirst but heard Gabe’s disembodied voice telling her not to drink the river’s water. Desperately thirsty, she trailed her tongue along its surface. It was clear, sweet and cold.
Gabe knelt on the cement bank opposite, still imploring her not to drink. Eventually she reached the edge, but he was gone. Instead before her was a steep mountain and he sat at its summit, on a white horse; in his hands he held a cup of water for her. But her way up the hill was barred by an iron gate and fence so that she had to hike around. When she finally found herself standing on the mountain, she could no longer see her twin, but she heard him call to her again. She knew he was then far down below on the other side of the mountain, on the beach. At the river’s mouth. She started to run. Then she was there, standing on a black salted rock, staring across the thrashing waves. She called for Gabe, but he did not answer. A wave washed up to the rock and the cup he had been holding was drifting on its swell. Reaching down, Gin picked it up. It was full of seawater but her thirst was such that she drank from it.
Then she shouted into an empty sky, in a voice that exited her lungs only as an undertone: The sea is my blood, these rocks are my bones.
She brakes sharply at a stop sign that looms at her without warning. Cape Town’s roads have become unfamiliar to her.
Isaac is staying with a friend. The flat in Vredehoek is large, plush. The hall opens up to the left, two broad steps take her down to a rectangular lounge, doors leading to a flat patio with a plunge pool. The mountain dips below, riddled with other plush houses, patios, and pools that glimmer in the sun. To the right, a dining room, the table already set for dinner. On top of it, a menorah. Friday night Shabbes. Prayers, gefilte fish, and chollah. She feels the old stab of exclusion in her chest.
Isaac shuffles off to make tea, buying them both time, their roles reversed since their last meeting. When Ellie met her grandfather, without either of them knowing it.
Ellie. My little Ellie.
Gin sits on the edge of a white leather-effect couch, trying not to sink into its softness. The carpet is Persian, red and blue dyes woven into intricate shapes. It is worn slightly in one corner beneath the step. At the end of the lounge is a stone fireplace, filled with a vase of dried proteas instead of a grate. On the wall above it hangs an oblong watercolour. A seascape, with a mottled headland falling into a stormy ocean. It reminds her of the one she had seen at Michael’s. She had felt drawn to it, its isolated feel.
She waits for Isaac to bring her tea she will not drink. She sits, twisting the ring on her finger. And while he talks, the painting will ingrain itself into her soul, the rocks cutting into her as if at her flesh, the sea that batters the headland battering also her bones, and the mist that rises into the overcast sky is the same colour of the cloud that Isaac’s words will cast over her life.
She stares at the painting while he talks, while he tells her the truth of her life.
He stops, his tale finally told.
She looks at him with sudden comprehension.
The old man nods. “Your mother and Jacob came to me when she found out she was pregnant.”
His rheumy eyes stare into space, and Gin imagines he sees in front of him her mother, the fragile Rachel, beautiful and weak.
“Simon and you,” he continues, and his voice cracks with grief. “Simon and you. We thought it wouldn’t last. We thought it best to take its course. You were both so young. It was Gabe and Hannah who worried us all more.”
Gin feels fire in her chest. Of course. Hannah. Gabe’s sister. Her sister.
“Jacob managed that one. Not well, but he managed it nonetheless. Then when Simon came to me, that last year you were together, said he wanted to marry you at the end of university, I had to tell him.”
She stares at him. “Simon knew?”
Isaac nods then sniffs, reaches into his pocket, bringing out a white linen handkerchief to wipe his nose. He puts it back in his pocket. “Simon wouldn’t tell you. He said it wasn’t fair. He knew your relationship with your dad.”
Dad. The man who had raised her.
“Did my father know?” she can barely bring herself to ask.
The old man shakes his head. “I honestly don’t know. Does it make a difference to you? All I can say is, Virginia, knowing your father as I did, I don’t think it would have made any difference to him.”
Dad. Not my real dad.
There is little comfort in the old man’s words. I have done the same, she thinks. Secrets. So many secrets. Secrets and lies. How could I have stopped this man from knowing Ellie? It had been his only chance of knowing Simon’s daughter, his granddaughter. Too late. I am as bad as my mother. My mother kept her secrets, and so have I.
Tears start to course down Isaac’s hollowed cheeks. “Simon thought you would move on, forget him, marry someone else. It almost broke him, Virginia. You didn’t have to watch him as I did. And then, to see you, and know what you thought of him, what he did, what he was, to think perhaps it was because you weren’t Jewish, or good enough for him, in some way.” The handkerchief emerges again. “God knows, I blame myself. You would have all led happier lives. But it was not my secret to tell.”
Isaac’s words come out in short exhalations. “My son,” he says, “my son, he loved you.”
He loved her. Simon had loved her enough not to tell her. He kept the secrets, told the lies. And I have done the same. For I, I am Jacob’s daughter. I am Simon’s cousin.
In these moments, clarity. The dream, a portent. Ellie’s death was no coincidence of random genes. She and Simon shared blood, enough to kill a child.
Simon’s face, serious and sad. I’ve something to tell you, Ginny, something I should have told you years ago.