Small Circle of Beings (8 page)

We talk. We agree that David must be told and Stephen undertakes to do so. There are, of course, other matters: a course of action must be decided on. I am all for putting this off, however,
till things have eased. I see no reason for haste. It is Stephen who’s in a hurry, who wants to talk about moving out of the house.

‘But why?’ I say. ‘Can’t it wait?’

‘I’m afraid it can’t.’ He sounds apologetic. ‘Gloria, you see, she doesn’t want . . .’

At the mention of her name, I feel slightly queasy. He speaks of her with warmth, as one who knows her. I rack my brains for an insight to this woman, some clue to her nature or her mind, but
can come up only with that vague external picture I first recalled. Flour and dye. I smile tightly and say, ‘Of course.’

He tells me he would like to move his things from the house next week. He and Gloria are moving into a flat in town, close to where he used to stay, would you believe it … He smiles at
the thought. I wonder if he ever, when we first met, spoke of me this way. Anger suddenly stabs through me like a knife in the back.

‘How can you be so sure you’re not making a mistake?’

He looks surprised at my snarl. ‘I’m not,’ he says seriously, wiping at his moustache with a serviette. ‘No one can ever be sure they’re not mistaken. That
doesn’t stop anyone from acting.’

‘Oh,’ I cry, and the table lurches at my fury. ‘You make me so angry, you do. How can you speak this way? This isn’t you, you don’t think like this
…’

‘It’s Gloria,’ he tells me. ‘She’s opened up another side of me –’

I laugh at him, braying in my anguish. People in the coffee-shop are glancing at us from behind their cups. Unabashed, I go on: ‘She has done nothing! If anything has happened to you
it’s because of me, do you hear? Me!’

He blinks at me, his mouth open. I shake my head, trying to clear it of the sight of him and to jolt my eyes into focus. There is coffee on the surface of the table, spreading in long ungainly
fingers towards him. ‘There’s no need …’ he begins, but trails off in exasperation.

He sighs and reaches for another serviette.

I have surprised myself. I had no idea such forces were in me, such jealousy and desperation. But the truth of my words lingers in my head: I am also, yes, I am also proud to have exacted the
passion from this man that has been my due for so long.

It is the last meeting I have with Stephen for some time, having stalked from the coffee-shop while he called after me. It takes me many hours to calm down, but, even then, I retain a kind of
residual pride in my solitary state, my drab brown room. I visit the hospital only in the afternoon, when Stephen has been and gone. He has, apparently, discussed the matter with David, who seems
unaffected by the news.

‘Will I still see him?’

‘Of course,’ I say. ‘Over weekends and for holidays. That sort of thing. He isn’t going far, you know, just into town.’

‘Do you hate him?’

‘Of course not,’ I say. ‘Why should I hate him?’ I wonder whether Stephen has explained to David about Gloria MacIvor, with whom he will be living.

‘It’ll just be us,’ says David, ‘in the whole big house. You and me.’

‘And your grandmother,’ I whisper, seeing, as he does, the deserted homestead and we three wandering in it. I try to laugh.

That night I write a letter to Stephen in which I lay out my demands. What has happened, I assert, is entirely his responsibility and, if he wants a divorce, he must obtain it himself. I
don’t care what grounds he finds, but I have no wish to set foot in court. The house is mine, with everything in it that first belonged to me. I expect money from him each month. I want to
keep my car. And David, should he live, is to stay with me.

Should he live
. I add this, I confess, with deliberate intent, to remind him of what is actually taking place. We have somehow, both of us, forgotten the tragedy unfolding in our midst.
It is now only with rage that I am able to think of the part Stephen has had to play.

It is terrible, I know, but I try to win David over. ‘Aren’t you sad,’ I ask him, ‘because he doesn’t visit you?’

‘He does visit.’

‘But when? I’m here every day, in the morning and the afternoon. Doesn’t it make you angry that he comes only for a while every two weeks or so?’

He considers. ‘No.’

‘But you must,’ I persist, ‘you must want to see him more than that.’

‘No,’ he says, plucking at the sheet. He’s uneasy; he can sense that I’m driving at something he doesn’t understand.

‘Does he ever talk to you,’ I want to know, ‘about me?’

‘No.’

‘Never? Does he never mention me? I can’t believe that.’

‘No,’ he says.

I become angry at this stubbornness, but I hold my tongue. There is a great deal more I could say to David, there are many matters on which I could take him up. But I know, even as I question
him, that I’m being unfair. It’s not his fault that any of this has happened.

David, it would seem, is responding to the treatment.

During one of the many sessions I have with Professor Terry at this time, he tells me that there has been significant progress in his recovery. For reasons even the professor can’t
explain, the extent of the disease has lessened. I understand little of what the professor has to say. All his talk of cell counts is meaningless to me. But there are other signs, small indications
of healing that I perceive.

They have removed, for one, the drip from David’s arm. The hole in his throat has closed enough for him to eat solid food. And he is allowed to leave the bed. I must teach him to use his
feet. An infant once more, he staggers and reels on thin white legs. I hold his arm. But it’s not long before he can balance without the support of the wall. We walk each day, up and down the
passage. As he grows stronger, we go farther afield. I take him downstairs. We stroll in the garden, a bizarre unsuited pair, leaning on each other as people do in age.

Professor Terry is pleased, but he senses my relief and feels obliged to give warning. ‘I don’t want you to expect anything,’ he says.

‘No.’

‘I shall keep you informed.’

We are civil with each other. I know he detects in me the resentment I have for him and his colleagues who have, with their needles, torn open our lives.

That next weekend I again make the long trip home. Stephen has indeed removed from the house all that be -longed to him. I find myself walking through the rooms, my mother at my side, looking
over the furniture, the ornaments, the pictures, checking that nothing I own is missing. It is a strange feeling to be conscious of possessions in this way. As we go, my mother keeps an inventory
of her own.

‘The small white table,’ she says. ‘The vase on top … The picture of the man . . . The dresser . . . it was terrible,’ she says, dropping her voice. ‘They
came, they looked around, they took what they wanted. If it hadn’t been for me, they would’ve taken everything.’

‘Thank you,’ I say.

‘It’s all right, my darling. Sammy helped too. He helped me to stop them.’

I worry for her now, this crazy old woman, but it would seem that Stephen continues to do his duty by her: the kitchen is stocked up. There are dirty plates in the sink. Salome and Moses still
come in daily: I have explained to them the new state of things. But still I’m troubled by the thought of the house and its lands under the rule of madness. I explain carefully to the
servants that they are not to take orders from her, that they are to see to the smooth running of affairs. ‘Soon,’ I tell them, ‘I will be back.’ They stare at me as I
speak, watching from beneath their noncommittal eyelids. They do not trade in expression, these two; silent and grim, they go about their business and observe. I wonder if they have seen what I can
only imagine: Gloria MacIvor being helped from the car by Stephen, being shown about these now bare rooms over which I once held sway.

As the evening comes on, and the time for my departure with it, I light a fire in the grate and sit with my mother on the floor. The flames colour our faces. This is perhaps the closest and the
quietest we have been, she and I, since I was young. Perhaps there have been evenings I can’t remember when we sat this way, mother and daughter, while the darkness gathered outside.

‘Mother,’ I say. ‘Are you happy? In your head, are you happy?’

This is something I truly want to know. In the convoluted speculations that are her version of the world, she may find a kind of peace denied to me. But she doesn’t understand: she nods to
herself and laughs.

I leave her then, after putting out the fire: a sad old woman, unaware of sadness and of age, muttering to herself before an ash-choked grate. Once again I must drive back to the city: a road
five hours long, which I am already used to travelling.

(That is our affliction, if you like. There is nothing in the world, nothing at all, which we cannot, in the end, come to accept.)

Stephen divorces me a month later in the high court in the city. He comes to the hospital afterwards, where I am reading to David. He stands at the foot of the bed and we all
three look questioningly at each other, as if there’s something that must be said. But, in the end, it is only formalities we must dispense with: Stephen gives me his set of keys, which open
every door to the property at home. He has given the spare ones, he explains, to Mrs de Jager on the neighbouring farm. She will come in each day to look around and check on my mother. He’ll
still go by when he can, but he lives in town now …

I tell him that I understand.

There are one or two other things, he adds, shifting from foot to foot. I wait expectantly, looking at this tall lean man with bristling black moustache to whom, it appears, I was once married.
I see in him, more and more, the side to his nature that Gloria MacIvor has indeed brought out, and wonder if I could have loved him this way. He is less of a headmaster now, and more of a
magician; but I have no doubt that, in a month or two, the ink will blot the edges of his hands again, the chalk dust will settle in his hair. When he has grown used to his life once more, he will
become the kind of man he was. He may even, who knows, miss me from time to time. But Gloria MacIvor, consigned to facelessness by me, will care for him and cater to his needs. He will have what he
has always, in his heart, desired: the little flat in town, bridge parties with friends, and a woman who wears colour in her face.

‘You must,’ he says, ‘come and visit us sometime. I would like to give you my address. If I may.’

I say nothing, which he takes to be consent. He hands me a scrap of paper on which he has already printed, in neat black letters, the name of the place in which he lives. I accept this from him.
I put it in my bag.

‘I mean it,’ he says, as if I have laughed.

‘Thank you,’ I say gravely.

There then follows another of the silences with which this last exchange began. He sucks at his moustache. He rattles the bottom of the bed and gives, unexpectedly, a smile.
‘Goodbye,’ he says. ‘Big boy.’

‘Bye,’ says David.

‘See you next weekend.’

‘Okay.’

I continue to sit, smiling slightly to myself, as if I have a secret to keep, as Stephen leaves. I listen to the retreat of his footsteps on the tiles.

‘Do you want to cry?’ David asks.

‘No.’

‘I thought you said you didn’t hate him.’

We look at each other, blinking.

On one of the days that follows, as the afternoon draws on, Jason dies in his room at the end of the passage. The sound of screaming is what draws us all; I run from
David’s room in fright. It’s his mother, the woman named Sarah, who asked me so long ago to have tea with her: I catch a glimpse as, thrashing from side to side, two nurses grapple her
to the floor. Her mouth is open on a huge and spastic o, giving voice to a cry that we can no longer hear. I back away from her as from a vision of myself. Sightless, dizzy, I push past oncoming
bodies till I reach the safety of David’s room once more. It’s a long time before I have calmed enough to stand again.

But David, he doesn’t die.

I reach my decision. On a day like any other – which is, after all, the way he fell ill – I decide he has recovered. I enter his room and stand in the doorway. ‘David,’ I
tell him. ‘We’re going home.’

He looks at me, intrigued. ‘Are we allowed to go?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Of course.’

I realise this is true.

For a long time afterwards, David must be given most special care. He sits out on the back stoep during the day, reading or thinking. He is joined there often by my mother, who
perches on the low wall, facing him, and talks. I don’t know what it is that they discuss, but she makes David laugh and that is heartening to see.

He has changed, this boy, in deep unreachable ways. He is more of a child than before. He cries without warning or reason. He whines when he wants things. His silliness angers me sometimes and I
shout:

‘What is the matter with you?’ I say. ‘Pull yourself together,’ I say. ‘Be like other children, for God’s sake!’

But we know, both of us, that he will never be like other children again.

These thoughts trouble me, but there is much to be seen to. There is the house, for one, to distract me. In the time that I have been away, all has fallen into disrepair. I summon Salome and
Moses from their little cluster of huts, where, it seems, they have grown accustomed to spending their days. They are surprised at my return. ‘Yes,’ I shout. ‘It’s me! I am
back, as I told you I would be!’ Stupidly, they stand before me, their faces blank.

I set them to work. Dirt has laid siege to every corner of the house. Insects, too, have taken to living in our cupboards and cracks. There is dusting to be done, and sweeping too. The silver
which I used to polish each day has become frosted over and tarnished. Moses, for the first time in his life, is brought into the house to work.

Grumbling and muttering, he scrubs the floors, casting stormy backward glances at me as he does. I don’t care. They have neglected their duties, this slothful pair, and it is with
vindictive pleasure that I take command again. But there is more to it than this. It is necessary for me to work too. With the hard bristles of brushes, the surfaces of brooms, I hope to erase
Stephen’s footprints from the floor for ever.