A Dry White Season (38 page)

“Will you say grace for us, Father?”

The heads bowed in meek acquiescence to Father-in-law’s interminable prayer: having failed to reach the top in politics his only compensation lies in pouring it all into the patient ear of the Almighty.

There was an unfortunate interruption when, halfway through the prayer, little Hennie escaped from the clutches of his black nanny in the backyard and came running in to express at the top of his voice his need to respond to an urgent call of nature. After a momentary stumble, Father-in-law made an admirable comeback, resuming his prayer over the food which was cooling off in direct proportion to Susan’s rising blood pressure. At last the formalities were over, the crackers cracked and the paper hats donned, the plates filled to capacity and George’s eloquent toast drunk.

A feeling of constrained magnanimity began to spread as, in that sweltering summer heat, stuffed into our Sunday best, we sat sweating and masticating, grimly scooping vast quantities of food into our tortured insides. Susan and I were the only ones not tempted by the cornucopia, she because of the state of her nerves, I because I simply had no appetite.

The plates had just been removed to be replaced by bowls filled with the enormous old-fashioned Christmas pudding Mother-in-law had baked months ago, when there was a loud knock on the front door.

Johan opened.

And suddenly Stanley erupted into the room like a great black bull in white suit and white shoes, brown shirt and scarlet tie, with matching handkerchief protruding from his breast pocket. For a moment he stood swaying in the middle of the floor; it was obvious at a glance that he’d had more than enough to drink.

Then he bellowed: “Lanie!” Followed by a wide gesture that sent a flower arrangement toppling from a tall table, and a greeting in a broad, mock-American accent: “Hi folks!”

It was deadly quiet round the dining table; not even the sound of a spoon clinking against china.

Like a sleepwalker I got up and approached him on the thick, tousled pile of Susan’s nèw carpet. All those eyes following me.

“Stanley! What are you doing here?”

“It’s Christmas, isn’t it? I’ve come to celebrate. Compliments of the season to everybody.” He made another gesture as if to embrace the whole family.

“Is there something you wanted to see me about, Stanley?” I tried to keep my voice down so only he could hear. “Shall we go through to my study?”

“Fuck your study, man!” It reverberated through the room.

I looked round, and turned back to him. “Well, if you prefer to sit down here—?”

“Sure.” He staggered to the nearest arm-chair and lowered his massive body into it, jumping up again with staggering ease to put an arm round my shoulders: “Join the happy family, eh? Who’s this lot?”

“You’ve had too much to drink, Stanley.”

“Of course. Why not? It’s the season of goodwill, isn’t it? Peace on earth and all that crap.”

A sombre black figure rose from the dining table. “Who is this kaffir?” asked Father-in-law.

A moment of total silence. Then Stanley doubled up with laughter. His face purple, Father-in-law came towards us and I had to step in between them.

“Why don’t you tell the
boer
who this kaffir is?” asked Stanley, wiping the tears of hilarity from his face.

“Ben?” said Father-in-law.

“Tell him we’re old pals, lanie.” Once again Stanley put his arm across my shoulders, causing me to stagger under his weight. “Or aren’t we? Hey?”

“Of course we are, Stanley,” I said soothingly. “Father, we can discuss this later. I’ll explain everything.”

In deathly silence Father-in-law looked round. “Mother,” he said, “let’s go. We don’t seem to be welcome here any more.”

All of a sudden there was pandemonium. Susan trying tostop her father and being bitched by Helena. George gently restraining his wife, only to be shouted at by Suzette. Johan turning on his sister. Linda bursting into tears and running into the passage sobbing. A rush for the front door.

Without warning the room was empty around us. Only the angels were still tinkling merrily above their almost burnt-out candles. On the plates lay the remains of Mother-in-law’s Christmas pudding. And in the middle of the floor Stanley was stumbling this way and that, helpless with cascading, bellowing laughter.

“Jeez, lanie!” He was practically sobbing. “Ever in your fucking life seen such a stampede?”

“Maybe you think it’s funny, Stanley. But I don’t. Do you realise what you’ve done?”

“Me? I only came to celebrate, I tell you.” Another fit of laughter.

From the spare room next door came the sounds of Mother-in-law’s sobbing and her husband’s voice, soothing at first, then growing in volume as his annoyance increased.

“Well?” said Stanley, recovered temporarily. “Happy Christmas anyway.” He put out his hand.

I had no wish to take his hand and did so only to humour him.

“Who was that old cunt with the potbelly and black suit, looks like an undertaker?”

“My father-in-law. “Adding deliberately: “M.P.”

“You joking?” I shook my head. He started laughing again. “Jeez, you got all the right connections. And here I fucked it all up for you. Sorry, man.” He didn’t look repentant at all

“Would you like something to eat?”

“You kept the scraps for me?”

That really made me angry. “Now pull yourself together, Stanley! Say what you’ve come to say. Otherwise go to hell.”

His laughter changed into a broad grin. “Right,” he said. “Dead right. Put the kaffir in his place.”

“What’s the matter with you today? I just don’t understand you.”

“Don’t kid yourself, lanie. What the hell do you understand anyway?”

“Did you come here to tell me something or to shout at me?”

“What makes you think there’s anything I’d like to tell you?”

Although I knew how ludicrous it was – Stanley must be twice my size – I grabbed him by the shoulders and started shaking him.

“Are you going to talk?” I said. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Let me go.” Stanley shoved me off, sending me staggering as he stood reeling on his own legs, planted far apart on the shaggy carpet.

“You’re disgraceful,” I said. “Instead of keeping Emily company on a day like this you just make trouble for other people. Don’t you think she needs you?”

Abruptly he stopped swaying, glaring at me with bloodshot eyes, breathing heavily.

“What do you know about Emily?” he sneered.

“Stanley. Please.” I was pleading with him now. “All I’m trying to say—”

“Emily is dead,” said Stanley.

The angels went on spinning, tinkling. But that was the only sound I was aware of, and the only movement, in the house.

“What did you say?”

“You deaf then?”

“What is it? For God’s sake, Stanley, tell me!”

“No. You want to celebrate. “He started singing: “Oh come, all ye faithful—” But he stopped in the middle of a line, staring at me as if he’d forgotten where he was. “Haven’t you heard about Robert?” he asked.

“What Robert?”

“Her son. The one who ran away after Gordon died.”

“What about him?”

“He got shot with two of his friends when they crossed the border from Mozambique yesterday. Carrying guns and stuff. Walked slap-bang into an army patrol.”

“And then?” I felt alone in a great ringing void.

“Heard the news this morning, so I had to go and tell Emily. She was very quiet. No fuss, no tears, no nothing. Then she told me to go. How was I to know? She looked all right to me. And then she—” Suddenly his voice broke.

“What happened, Stanley? Don’t cry. Oh, my God, Stanley, please!”

“She went to the station. Orlando station. All the way on foot. They say she must have sat there for over an hour, because it’s Christmas, there’s only a few trains. And then she jumped in front of it on the tracks. Zap, one time.”

For a moment it seemed as if he was going to burst out laughing again; but this time it was crying. I had to dig my feet into the thick carpet to support that dead weight leaning against me and shaking with sobs.

And I was still standing like that, my arms around him, when the two old people came from the spare room carrying their bags and followed by Susan, going through the front door to their car parked beside the house.

Last night she said: “I asked you once before whether you knew what you were doing, what you’re letting yourself in for?”

I said: “All I know is that it is impossible to stop now. If I can’t go on believing in what I’m doing I’ll go mad.”

“It doesn’t seem to matter to you how many other people you drive mad in the process.”

“Please try.” It was difficult to find words. “I know you’re upset, Susan. But try not to exaggerate.”

“Exaggerate? After what happened today?”

“Stanley didn’t know what he was doing. Emily is dead. Can’t you understand that?”

She inhaled deeply, slowly, and spent a long time rubbing stuff into her cheeks. “Don’t you think enough people have died by now?” she said at last. “Won’t you ever learn?”

I sat staring helplessly at her image in the mirror: “Are you blaming me for their deaths now?”

“I didn’t mean that. But nothing you have done has made any difference. There’s nothing you can hope to do. When are you going to accept it?”

“Never.”

“What about the price you pay for it?”

For a moment I closed my eyes painfully, wearily. “I’ve
got
to, Susan.”

“I don’t think you’re all there any more,” she said in coldstaccato words. “You’ve lost all balance and perspective. You’re blind to everything else in the world.”

I shook my head.

“Shall I tell you why?” she went on.

I made no attempt to answer.

“Because all that matters to you is Ben Du Toit. For a long time now it’s had nothing to do with Gordon or with Jonathan or anybody else. You don’t want to give up, that’s all. You started fighting and now you refuse to admit defeat even though you no longer know who you’re fighting, or why.”

“You don’t understand, Susan.”

“I know very well I don’t understand. I damned well don’t even want to try to understand any longer. All I’m concerned with now is to make sure I won’t be dragged down with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s nothing I can do for you any more, Ben. There’s nothing I can do for our marriage. And God knows it did matter to me once. But now it’s time I looked after myself. To make sure I don’t lose the few scraps that remain after you’ve broken down my last bit of dignity today.”

“Are you going away then?”

“It’s immaterial whether I go or stay,” she said. “If I have to go I’ll go. For the moment I suppose I may just as well stay. But something is over between us, and I want you to know it.”

That stark white face in the mirror. There must have been a time, years ago, when we loved one another. But I can no longer even yearn back for it, because I’ve forgotten what it used to be like.

11

The reopening of the schools seemed to provide a new impetus to events. A new wave of anonymous telephone calls, anothervandalistic attack on his car, the entire front wall of his home sprayed with slogans, coarse insults on his blackboard, at night the sound of footsteps going round the house. Until he, too, accepted the need for a watchdog; but within a fortnight of acquiring one it was poisoned. Susan’s state reached a new and disturbing low; her doctor called Ben for a serious discussion of her condition. And even when nothing specific was happening there was the gnawing awareness of that invisible and shapeless power pursuing him. For the first time in his life he was having trouble getting to sleep at night, lying awake for hours, staring into the dark, wondering, wondering. When would they strike next, and what form would it take this time?

He rose exhausted in the mornings, and came home from school exhausted, went to bed exhausted, only to lie awake again. School imposed a measure of wholesome discipline on his life, but at the same time it was becoming more difficult to cope with, more unmanageable, an anxiety and an irritation, on some days almost anguish. The disapproval of his colleagues. Cloete’s silent antagonism. Carelse’s feeble jokes. And the enthusiastic loyalty of young Viviers sometimes proved even more aggravating than the disdain of the others.

Then there was Stanley, coming and going as before. How on earth he managed to do so unseen and unfollowed was beyond Ben’s comprehension. In terms of any logic he should have been picked up or silenced months before. But Stanley, Ben had to conclude, was an artist of survival; seated behind the wheel of his taxi, the big Dodge, his
etembalami,
closer to him than wife or kin, he went his mysterious way without turning a hair. Christmas day was the only occasion Ben had ever seen him lose control. Never again. And surrounding the highly charged moments he burst into Ben’s life, emerging from the night and dissolving into it again, the complex riddle of his life remained his own.