Leopold Blue (17 page)

‘There is a list of properties that the new “cabinet”' – Stuart's fingers formed quotation marks –‘have chosen for themselves.'

Alan laughed uproariously. ‘Stuart, you don't seriously believe –'

‘It's true,' Judy cut in. ‘Bishops Court, Constantia: whatever takes their fancy. Soon they'll be slaughtering sheep and brewing beer under our noses.'

Alan sat back in his chair, enjoying himself. Shirley glanced in our direction and mouthed: ‘Plates!' with a jerk of her head towards the kitchen. Xanthe settled deeper into her chair.

‘Have you started stockpiling tins yet, Judith?' Alan asked, leaning forward with an earnest face.

‘Too right.' Judy looked like a ruffled hen. ‘And light bulbs.'

‘Light bulbs!' said Alan. ‘But when the revolution comes there'll be no electricity anyway.'

Judy looked to Stuart. He leaned forward, tapping his finger on the table. ‘When the revolution comes, we're out of here.'

Shirley sat back in protest. Alan smiled and toyed with the saltshaker.

Silence rested on the table. There were no cicadas or crickets or frogs. There wasn't even a moon; it was blocked out by the wide strokes of high-level clouds. A burglar alarm went off nearby, piercing the darkness. ‘Bladdy cat again,' Shirley muttered.

‘You've got to know when to think of yourself. And your family,' Stuart said eventually. ‘You've got to know when to jump.'

Judy nodded in agreement.

‘Oh, for pity's sake!' said Shirley. ‘I am not Australian or Canadian! This is my home – I could never leave. You can for-
get
it.' She smacked the edge of the table.

‘Thirty years ago you were having such a good time in Europe you didn't want to come home!' Alan, softened by the wine, rubbed her arm.

Shirley sniffed. ‘Thirty years ago the rand was as valuable as the pound. Now, we would be poor wherever we went. And what about my garden, my roses? I'm too old to start again.'

‘Speaking of starting again, did you hear about the van Niekerks? Unbelievable. That man couldn't hold onto his money even if it was glued to his body  … ' Alan's voice rumbled on and the conversation changed course. The candles were swimming in their wax, rivulets spilling over the top and down the sides.

As the talk around the table drifted to people and places I knew nothing of, the words became sounds and rhythm and space between sounds, like flat palms on a drum.

I breathed out. In the last few days I had seen and heard so many shocking things that I didn't know what to think. ‘
Not waving, but drowning,
' said Mum's ‘quoting voice' in my head. But what did I feel? I felt like a page divided up into tiny squares and triangles. I was orange and purple and white. I was a light shade of pink and a murky, dirty brown. I was a raw and painful red. I was a silly, spotty, pointless green. I was an infinite blue. As long as I could keep the violent red from soaking through into the ethereal blue, everything would be fine.

I was happy to be home at first. My contentment lasted all the way out the car and in through the front door. But as it swung shut behind me, the shuttered house rubbed itself back into my skin and I yielded to gloom. I couldn't be outside. The light was too bright, the grass underfoot felt serrated. Eating made my jaw ache. My bones didn't fit into their sockets. Mum's eyes followed me, the line of her mouth small and tight. The only bearable place was on my bed, with my body perfectly still so that I could focus my mind into a place of silence. I had climbed inside the heart of misery and, despite Mum's threats, I had no intention of ‘snapping out of it'.

Two days passed as I lay under the disgusting curtains. The careful calm I had maintained throughout the visit to Xanthe was ruined. The spotty green leaked into the pointless pink. The orange and purple muddied the bright white. Soon I was a stagnant brown I could neither shift nor make sense of.

I picked up my setwork book, but it did nothing for my mood.
Emma
deserved a fat slap, the silly bitch. She had everything, yet she spent her time fannying about, interfering with the likes of poor Harriet, who didn't have much going for her. But instead of getting her just deserts, Emma landed the hero, whereas her much-wronged friend ended up with a farmer. I knew this because I'd skipped to the end.

On the evening of the second day I watched the gathering shadows harden into dark. Night soaked through the open curtains and settled in the room. The saccharine theme tune of
Beverly Hills 90210
drifted through the house. It must be nine o'clock.

A gecko appeared on the windowpane. Its tiny intestines made a dark silhouette against its translucent underbelly, like a specimen on a microscope slide. I watched the little sucker feet propelling it upwards and shuddered. Geckos' feet gave me the creeps. One of my greatest fears was waking up in the middle of the night with one crawling over my face.

Then I noticed the moth knocking against the top of the window,
flutter-flutter-bang, flutter-flutter-bang
, consumed in its own stupidity, unaware of the danger creeping closer. I wasn't sure whose side I was on. Did the moth, obsessed only with getting through the impenetrable sheet of glass, deserve to get away? Geckos killed moths – that was the nature of things. Who was I to alter that? All the same, I felt an overwhelming impulse to tap on the glass, to intervene on behalf of the moth. I couldn't watch, knowing what was about to happen.

When I returned from the bathroom, the gecko and moth had been replaced by Mum and Dad.

I retreated to the corner of my bed. Neither of them spoke. The hunch of Dad's shoulders gave away that he was there under duress.

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Can I help you?'

Dad shot me a warning look.

‘What is the matter with you?' Mum's annoyance swirled around my room.

‘Nothing,' I said, looking up at the ceiling. Kirk Cameron's nose was askew.

‘Because from where I'm standing you look like a very spoilt child.'

‘Thanks for sharing,' I said, not quite loud enough for Mum to hear.

‘Look at me when I'm speaking to you!' snapped Mum.

I hoisted myself up, and fixed my eyes on Dad.

‘I don't quite know what you're playing at, young lady, but you are sorely trying my patience,' continued Mum, warming to the sound of her voice.

Xanthe might have thought Mum cool, but she didn't have to put up with this. ‘Am I trying your patience?' I asked Dad.

He sighed and shook his head. I had gone too far; I was on my own.

‘You see, Timothy!' Mum turned to Dad. ‘That's what I'm talking about.' She jabbed her finger at me.

‘That? I asked.

‘Your attitude! Your complete self-involvement. You cannot live your life with such disregard for anyone other than yourself. Every day people are being killed in this country in terrible violence, people who have been fighting all their lives to attain the freedom that you take for granted.'

‘How will my attitude change that?'

‘You're an intelligent person, Meg. You can't simply stand by and watch events unfold – that's how apartheid lasted for forty years! All you care about is your own needs –'

‘I'm a teenager! That's what I'm supposed to do.'

‘I'm not finished!'

‘You're never finished!'

‘How dare you speak to me like that! You are fifteen years old, Margaret, and as long as you are under my roof, you will respect my rules. For the love of God, I don't know what's got in to you! You have a tantrum every time I try to educate people about a disease that will kill them, because it makes you feel a little uneasy. You're so caught up in your little adolescent friendship with Xanthe that you can't be bothered to extend a cordial greeting to Simon.'

‘I have heard enough about Simon!' I screamed back.

Dad turned and left.

‘And what about you?' I launched back at Mum. ‘You'd love me a whole lot more if I got that “A”, if I were more like Simon! Even Beth has to perform for you even though it half kills her.'

‘Rubbish! But I'll tell you something while we're on the subject. Simon's not letting his circumstances hold him back; he's determined to make something of himself. You – on the other hand – mooch around, bored about this, whining about that, letting your life slip between your fingers.'

‘And Marta?'

‘What about Marta?'

‘Do you think she's thanking you and Dad for taking her son, like a laboratory experiment, giving him a first-class education, setting him up in his brilliant new life? Because now she has no one.'

Mum stepped backwards, as though I'd smacked her. ‘You have no idea what you're talking about.'

‘I was there, Mother. We both heard what she said, that Simon has outgrown her. That's your fault!'

‘Simon is more his mother's son than ever.' Mum's voice was quiet. ‘This is my final warning. If I don't see a dramatic improvement in your behaviour, there will be no more trips to see Xanthe in Cape Town.'

‘Fine with me!' I shouted.

She looked at me, startled, but I concentrated on picking at a loose thread on my pillow. It had been a childish response, but would that be such a bad thing? Had I been more miserable before I met Xanthe than I was now? Though I tried to dismiss it, the question hovered at the corners of my mind.

I heard Mum breathe out. ‘Meg,' she paused. Her voice sounded unsure.

Go away! I shouted in my head.

‘You will tell me if there's anything wrong? Something you want to talk –'

‘I don't want to
talk
, I want to be left alone!'

The walls around me felt heavy and old, as though the strain of holding up the roof was becoming too much to bear. From the sitting room came the sound of rock music, squealing and laughing as a bunch of American teenagers had the time of their lives.

Late that night a wind stormed through the valley, a freakish thing for that time of year. I awoke on its approach, as it tore down through the pine and cedar forests, gathering ferocity and speed over the empty fields on the valley floor. The moments before it struck were silent and breathless, as though all the air had been sucked out of town into the approaching fury.

It hit like a Chinese dragon, mutating its form, growing larger and smaller, curling back in on itself, tunnelling down the main street. It twisted up and down lampposts, and sent shop signs spinning. Its fingers tore down every side street, and around the back of dustbins, each new surge and gust its ferocious breath. It howled and raged and tossed things around, driven wild by some jealousy. I lay in bed, in the submissive darkness, identifying each clash and rattle: the steel watering can in the courtyard, the loose shutter outside the sitting room, the window in the bathroom. The plastic chairs skidded about the stoep, colliding with the table and bouncing against the walls.

I snuggled deeper under my duvet. Above me the eaves creaked their disapproval. The wind whipped around the house, mustering pace and ferocity, until it felt strong enough to snatch us out of the ground. After two days of feeling nothing, the wind seemed to jump-start my heart. I understood its anguish and rage. ‘Take me away,' I begged the wind. ‘Take me with you.'

A clap, as loud as a bullet. My heart raced against the top of my skull. An image of the Heidelberg victims flashed through my mind. Another bang followed, and again. I sat up. It was the swing-door outside the kitchen banging shut on itself, but even so I fumbled for my bedside light switch.

‘The electricity is down.'

I jumped. I hadn't spoken. The darkness was absolute. The wind whispered and hissed. Ghosts didn't scare me – in a town like Leopold the number of dead far outweighed the living. And a ghost wouldn't discuss electricity. It was Beth.

I lifted my head.

‘The electricity is often down,' I said, ‘you know that.'

The wind dropped, its silence more eerie than its rage. I could hear Beth breathing across the room. ‘Come here,' I said. A shuffle and a creak and Beth's body shifted in beside me. We lay silent for a moment, getting used to each other. We listened to the wind reorganising itself.

Beth sniffed. ‘Everything's changing.'

‘Like what?'

‘Everything. Soon you're going to leave and I'll be the only one at home with
them
.' She jerked her head backwards on the pillow in the direction of Mum and Dad's room. ‘It was horrible without you.' She shook herself, as though she was expelling a demon.

‘I still have two years at school,' I said, feeling grown up.

‘More, if you fail,' she said.

‘Thanks.' I knocked her elbow gently.

The wind chased itself around the house, growing wilder with each circuit.

‘What about the radical time you had with Simon?' I asked drily.

Beth sighed. ‘He thinks I'm a child.'

I smiled into the black. ‘Don't worry about Simon, he'll be gone soon.' Lying next to Beth felt like finding a long-lost treasure. Yet she had been here all along.

‘I don't want him to go. I want him to stay and you two to be friends, like before.'

‘I don't think it can be like before, Beth.' Again I saw Simon staring out to sea.

Across the courtyard the kitchen swing-door clapped again.

‘So, was your week amazing?' Beth yawned loudly.

I reached my arm behind my head. ‘It was different.'

‘It must be better than Leopold.'

My little sister was changing. Until a week ago, Leopold was the best place on earth. ‘You can't lie in the middle of the Cape Town Main Street on a Sunday afternoon.'

Beth giggled. ‘Or listen to other people's conversations on the party line.' She yawned and then said sleepily, ‘I'm glad you're back.'

Next to me Beth felt like the most comforting thing in the world. I wanted some of her completeness, her sureness of herself. I remembered the ring I'd bought her in Greenmarket Square. ‘Remind me in the morning, I have something for you.'

There was a low murmur from my parents' next-door room. Then came a heavy
tha-donk
and, ‘You bugger!' as Dad tripped over something in the darkness. A few moments later I heard a
clacker-clacker-clacker
of the wooden curtain rings as Dad drew one aside.

‘It's gone,' we heard him say through the wall, and his words reached the furthest corners of the night.

It was true. The storm had rolled itself up and disappeared; silence settled on the battered night. The howling wind was no match for our squat, square house. The metre-thick walls felt for the first time like a bastion against the outside world.