Bloodlines (48 page)

In truth I was far from fine. My back and shoulders hurt from the effort it had taken to raise aloft and crash down the frying pan, and I was filled with guilt, unable to reconcile what I had done with who I was. I had staged my own rape and lied about it, and yet the pain and anguish I felt belonged to a woman who had actually undergone the experience of being forcibly penetrated. The irony was that my violation was self-inflicted.

I got through those early days one moment at a time, reminding myself constantly that there had been reason and purpose behind my actions. And I held my breath whenever the phone rang, or I heard a car approach, waiting for the announcement of an inquiry into the death; waiting to hear that the police had questions because the medical examiner had found no sign of seminal or vaginal fluids on the corpse, and no indication of sexual activity.

But it was all in my imagination. As far as the police were concerned, it was an open and shut case. I was a convincing and sympathetic victim and they accepted my story at face value. As a result of the report they filed, there were no questions raised about what had happened. I don’t think the medical examiner even looked at the body, and there was no inquiry of any kind into Brian McWilliams’ death.

I insisted upon maintaining my daily routine, and each morning Solomon came by to collect me and we went on our rounds. At first he did his best to distract me, but as the days passed he became increasingly distant and silent. We walked silently side by side, speaking only when the subject was cattle, feed, crops, fences or machinery. He said nothing about what had occurred and he asked me no questions, but I was aware that he was unable to meet my eye.

On the day Brian McWilliams was buried, I returned from my walk with Solomon to find Anna McWilliams sitting ramrod straight on my verandah. She had come straight from the funeral in her darkest jacket and skirt, and she wore a little grey hat to which was attached a veil that she raised as I arrived.

Selina had offered her a cup of tea, and was just placing a tray loaded with a pot of brewing tea, two cups, and a platter of shortbread biscuits on the table. I had not seen Anna for weeks, and although she looked drawn and weary, there was about her a kind of energy that surprised me. She seemed not quite as dowdy as I remembered her, and she was confident and well put together, her hair clean and combed, her eyes bright. I had been dreading this meeting, expecting a tearful and resentful widow, and after my initial reaction at seeing her, which was to turn and run in the opposite direction, I was relieved to see that she was so composed. It was almost as if in some way, Anna McWilliams had been freed by her husband’s death.

“Hello Grace,” she said calmly, looking up at me. “You don’t mind, do you, if I call you Grace?”

I had deprived her of her husband and her children of their father, and taken from them what little comfort they might have had from knowing that he died a good man. I had no idea how to treat this bereaved woman.

“No,” I said, “of course not.”

“That’s good,” she said, “because I’m not sure how to address the woman who killed my husband.” Her lips parted in a brittle smile. “Whatever he did or didn’t do to you, the result of your action is that I have no husband. Worse, my children have no father.” She leaned forward in her chair and reached out to the teapot. “May I pour you a cup of tea?” she asked.

I nodded, forced myself to sit down beside her. I had imagined being in complete control during this meeting, having to tone myself down, to be gentle and calming. Instead I found myself at a loss.

“Milk?” she asked, and I nodded. She poured a thin stream of milk into my cup, added tea, and handed it to me as if this were her garden party and I a guest. I don’t recall whether she actually was, but she might as well have been wearing white gloves. She picked up her own cup and leaned back in her chair. Slowly she took a sip, and sighed.

“Such a lovely morning,” she said. “I sent the children back with the nanny—I just couldn’t bear to go right back to the house after burying Brian, and everyone I know was at the funeral. Except you, of course. So I thought, why not pay you a visit?”

“I’m glad you did,” I said. “I wanted to speak to you, but I didn’t know how. There’s no protocol in this situation, is there?”

I sipped my tea, wondering what she was doing in my home. From the way she was acting, she felt she held all the cards. But what were the cards? Did she know something with which she could blackmail me? It hit me that perhaps her husband had known about us—that he had been spying around the house previously, managed to see inside, heard us talking, and that he had told her. But then I remembered his reaction when he saw Khabazela in my bedroom.

“What are you doing here, Anna?” I asked as gently as I could.

She feigned surprise. “Doing?” she said. “What do you mean? We’re having tea together on your verandah.” She took a bite of Selina’s shortbread and a delicate sip of tea, and placed her cup and saucer on the wrought iron table. Then she leaned back, crossed her ankles, and laced her fingers on her lap. “We need to make some plans. I have four children, Grace, and now it’s only me. I’m going to need some help.”

Money, I thought with relief. What she wants is money, and then she’ll go away.

“I’m sure you’re going to need help,” I said. “If you need staples just come to the farm. And if you run short and need cash to tide you over—you know, until you decide where you’re going to go—please, just ask me. I don’t want this to be any more difficult for you than it needs to be.”

She shook her head. “Sounds very generous, Grace, but I’m not going to make it that easy for you.” She smiled. “I think it’s about time we learned about each other. All I know about you is that when your husband died, you sold your farm up north and bought this one. You have money. You’re educated.”

She paused.

“You don’t know much about me, either, but I’m going to tell you a few things. I grew up fifty miles from here, in farming country. We were poor white—and that means very poor. My father did odd jobs for the smaller farmers, and most often he was paid in livestock and food. Brian McWilliams was the way out of my father’s house. Turned out he wasn’t much of an escape—all I did was exchange one hell for another. By the time I realized what I’d done, it was too late. Now he’s gone. All I have is four children to raise, the furniture that sits in the foreman’s cottage on your farm, and a collection of half empty liquor bottles hidden all over the house. Whatever savings we might have had, he just drank away,” she said simply. “He left me nothing, and now I have to go to work.”

I calculated in my mind how big a check I could write her, and whether it would be big enough to purge my guilt. I wanted her off the farm—and I didn’t want her around when my child was born.

“How much do you need, Anna?” I asked.

“You don’t know me,” she said again, the quiet smile still on her lips. “You think if you pay me enough I’ll take my children and go away. But I don’t want money. And I’m not going anywhere.”

I felt my heart sinking at her words, and it must have shown in my face.

“I don’t want to make trouble for you, either,” she said quickly, as if she had been waiting to say the words before I refused her. “But I want something I never had. I know I have to work—but I want a job that gives me a chance to be someone, to do something useful. I need a decent place to live with my children. And I want a good life for them, with schooling, and music, and to be around educated people.”

“You’re living a fantasy, Anna,” I said. “I don’t have that kind of life myself. How could I possibly provide it for you?”

“I’m not living a fantasy,” she said, rising from her chair and looking down at me. She reached up and lowered the veil. She was smiling, a serene expression on her face, and she was suddenly, surprisingly, beautiful. “You’re the kind of people I want my children to be around,” she said, “but I’m not sure how to make it happen. We should talk again in a few weeks, after we’ve both had a chance to think about it.”

She leaned across the table, emptied the tray of shortbread into her open serviette, folded it over neatly, and dropped it into her bag. “For the children,” she said. “Thanks for the tea, Grace. I’ll get the serviette washed and returned. Goodbye.”

I watched her walk down the driveway past my standing roses, bag over her shoulder, hips swaying gently inside her dark skirt, grey hat on a head held tall. Where the garden stopped and the fields began, she turned, and then disappeared behind the tall
mielie
plants that towered above her on both sides of the road.

What she wanted I didn’t know, but I was full of admiration for her courage and her audacity, and I fully supported her desire to get the best deal she could for her children and for herself. What I didn’t know was what it would cost me, and I was completely unable to penetrate her agenda.

She came to mind often in the next few weeks, but fleetingly. I was busy with the farm; watching and feeling my belly grow, remembering what it was like to be pregnant. It was an emotionally rich time, full of expectation and dreaming. But it was also filled with uncertainty and fear of what the future might bring, and loneliness, and with the ache of absence. My parents were gone; Khabazela was somewhere in hiding or playing out roles in his life from which I was excluded. And being pregnant again reminded me of the first time, of my joy and pride when you were born, of how much I missed you.

Several weeks after Anna appeared for her impromptu tea party, I ran into her at the general store. I was about three months pregnant, just beginning to show, and when she greeted me briefly, she glanced at my belly. The sudden surprise on her face disappeared quickly, and she said nothing. Before we parted she asked whether she could drop by the farmhouse that afternoon, and we agreed that she would come around teatime.

She walked briskly down the road between the
mielies
, and up the driveway, at precisely 4:00pm. I was reading the newspaper. When she appeared I had just glanced through the glass table top and noticed that I was tapping my foot nervously. She walked onto the verandah and sat opposite me.

“What a lovely day,” she said.

“Hello, Anna,” I answered. “I was just about to pour myself some tea. Would you like a cup?”

She nodded and I poured us both tea as she sat with her face raised to the sun, eyes closed, as if our being together was the most natural thing in the world.

“I’m glad to see that you’re so relaxed,” I said, placing her cup on the table. The sarcasm in my voice was unmistakable, but the only acknowledgement she made was to sit up straight, place her cup and saucer onto the wide armrest of her chair, and slowly take a sip of tea. Then she smiled, the same serene, knowing smile she wore on our previous meeting, and again I was struck by how beautiful it was on her pinched face.

“We all have secrets, Grace,” she said, “and since we’re on the way to being friends, I’m going to share one of my secrets with you. It’s something I would never have told you while Brian was alive, but now that he’s gone I have nothing to lose. And I think you’ll find this interesting.” She sipped her tea. “Brian and I didn’t have much in common, but we were young and we had a lot of energy, and we loved sex. When he was sober, we were wonderful in bed.”

“I don’t need to know this, Anna,” I interrupted.

“Oh, yes,” she said fiercely, glaring at me. “You absolutely do. Just be quiet and listen.”

“All right,” I said, taken aback. “I’m listening.”

“Even if we’d wanted to,” she continued calmly, “we didn’t know enough to prevent pregnancy. But for four years I didn’t get pregnant. We couldn’t understand it, and the sadder I got, the angrier he became. That’s when I discovered how nasty he could be when he was drunk. Swore at me. Called me liar, fraud, sterile bitch. He knocked me around and then the next morning he would be all tears and repentance. I stopped loving him. One weekend when he was off hunting, I ran into a boy I’d been friendly with. We had a beer together and ended up in his car. Then we were out on a blanket in the middle of a field, under a big moon. Within weeks I knew I was pregnant.”

She leaned forward, elbows on the table, and looked at me.

“Getting pregnant was the easiest thing I ever did. It happened four times, whenever I slept with someone else. Like clockwork. Brian came to my bed several times a week, also like clockwork. But he never gave me a child. We had four children; none of them are his. He could knock me around, but he never knocked me up.”

She smiled brightly over her teacup. “He may have been weak, Grace, and a bully, and he was violent when he was drunk. But he loved to fuck, and he was good at it because despite everything, he actually liked women. Even at his worst I doubt he could have raped anyone. And the closest he ever came to fertilizing anything was when he told your Zulus to spread cowshit on the fields. Yet here you are, fucked and fertilized—and, you say, forced.” She held her arms out, as if in surprise, and said, “I just don’t know what to make of it all.”

Then she slumped back against her chair as if she had no bones, rolled her eyes, and exhaled loudly. At the corners of her mouth she wore the hint of a smile, and around her crinkled eyes there was a mischievous expression.