The Keeper (18 page)

Aletta smiled crookedly, leaning back in her chair, trying to still her anxiety. Her hands were sweating; she felt a faint tremor at her jaw. She could not even look at the scones on the plate.

‘Now,’ said Maisie, settling into a second scone, ‘I think you’d better tell me what’s been going on. We heard about Misklip and the convict. Man, I would never have believed it. But then again, you can never trust a
klonkie,
that’s what I say. It’s in the blood, you know.’ She buttered another piece vigorously, scooping up the jam. ‘Not that I don’t like that old Misklip. He’s very respectful even if he’s always on the lookout for a chance. You know what I mean, hey? It’s just that you are never surprised somehow when things turn around. It just shows – a simple old
skelm
like that and he has the very devil in him after all.’

‘The devil’s not in Misklip – even if he is a
klonkie,
’ said Aletta with a touch of her old sarcasm.

Maisie cocked her head.

‘It’s the lighthouse.’

–
Or Len.

But she did not say it.

Maisie laughed uncomfortably, looked vague, watched the entrance for the next mannequin. She arrived in a bathing suit, letting her beach towel trail behind her provocatively, all legs and innuendo.

It was Maisie – at last – who mentioned Len. She was cautious, afraid of probing. She remarked quietly as she stirred her tea, not looking at Aletta, ‘I am sorry they sent Len Hendricks as relief. That Edna caused such a lot of fuss about Harry going out to replace us you’d think she’d never been in a lighthouse before. I ask you, what does she expect if she marries a keeper? Anyway, I heard Len jumped at the idea.’ She shook her head. ‘Cecil doesn’t think that he’s reliable.’

‘He’s not,’ said Aletta. She did not elaborate.

Maisie took a sip of tea, hovering a little over the rim of her cup. It was strong and hot. The steam was drifting up her face, condensing on her cheeks. ‘By the way, do you know Len bought a sports car and keeps it with a friend somewhere here in town? I wonder where he got the money for that!’

‘How do you know?’ Aletta was immediately alert but she averted her gaze, fiddling with her teaspoon.

‘They told me at The Hill when we had supper there the other night. Apparently, the man Len bought it from came looking for him. He thought he worked there. You know – a lighthouse and all that. Len owes him a lot of money. They say the bloke looked a shifty type. Cecil wasn’t pleased when he heard, I can tell you. It gives the keepers a bad name.’

Aletta was not watching the mannequins. She was looking at Maisie. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Gospel.’

Aletta’s palms were wet. She laid them flat in her lap. There was a hush in this room, despite the scattered applause, the voices murmuring as each new mannequin appeared or disappeared. She looked across at Maisie, clapping her hands together, caught by the inevitable bride at the end of the show.

Maisie turned to her and said, ‘What a lovely frock! Like a big meringue. What do you think, Aletta? What kind of wedding dress did you wear?’

‘It was navy,’ Aletta said. ‘With a jacket.’

Maisie, all confusion, took the lid from the teapot and stirred the leaves vigorously. Of course – Hannes was Aletta’s second husband. How could she have been so crass?

‘More tea?’ Maisie said. ‘I’ll just ask for fresh hot water.’

‘But my
first
wedding dress,’ said Aletta relentlessly, ‘wasn’t white either. It was black. Wartime and all that …’ She looked across at Maisie and held out her cup, saying sweetly, ‘Thanks, Aunty Maisie. I will.’

It was strange making the journey to South End.

Twenty years.

A jumbled jigsaw of images: the small house, the brown picket fence, the great grey gum, the dog. She wondered if the road in which Misklip’s mother lived was the same as the one she’d walked down with Len all those years ago. Or had the place been swept away and redeveloped into government housing?

The bus shelter had been replaced but the buses were the same. Cream and green double-deckers. Aletta boarded one in town and went up the twisted staircase to the upper level. She sat at the front, looking out.

She checked the small scrap of paper that Misklip had given her, the crumpled package he’d thrust into her hand. His mother’s address. She had bought a box of Black Magic chocolates with its dark padded lid and blood-red ribbon. She held them neatly on her lap.

The familiar pale roads, the bleached tar, the harbour on her left, guarded by the campanile, the steep roads on her right, the motley buildings climbing the hill, the serene grey stone of the Feather Market Hall. Queen Victoria on her plinth, sourly crowned with bird lime.

Aletta did not look at the sea as they drove away from town. She kept her eyes ahead, watching for some familiar configuration, some bus stop where she should alight as once she’d boarded long ago.

They passed the turning of the road that led across the hill to the cemetery. There, on the slope, the small minareted mosque, the Indian shop beside it.

She pulled the bell rope and clambered down the stairs, waiting for the bus
to slow, alighting, holding down her dress as the bus left and the draught of its going whipped her skirt around her knees. She crossed, suddenly afraid of cars, as if, in two years, she had forgotten how to judge a distance and a speed. She reached the other side and scratched in her bag for a cigarette. The wind blustered too sharply for her to light it. She went behind a wall and tried again. Then she started up the hill, stopped at a corner and asked a woman with a child if she knew the street.

‘
Daar bo, mevrou.
Turn left. Just further than that big tree, you see?’

She was breathless when she reached the crest. She stood indecisive, the harbour far below her, the mosque a miniature in its cluster of tiny shops. Then she turned and hurried down the road. The tar petered out into a rutted track. The numbers on the houses were sporadic, out of sequence: the detritus of a long-forgotten suburb of wood-and-iron cottages. Every now and then there was an open lot. The houses were sinking into neglect, unhinged from their foundations. Here and there a patch of spindly geraniums grew in a garden; a rash of
gaukums,
sprawling over limestone; a gnome, flaking paint, standing by a tap.

Windows were closed, doors shut. People were at work.

She found the house. It was very small, very old, very rusted. The brown wooden windows had shrugged off their coat of paint in curling shards. A basin stood under a broken gutter to catch the rain.

But here, it seemed, it never rained.

The yard was dry with undernourished weeds. Blackjacks caught Aletta’s stockings as she passed. She stooped to pick them off.

She knocked at the door.

She stood a long time looking out into the road. She gazed at the lone gum tree further down the hill. The Chinese woman’s house had had a gum tree. It had sounded like the sea when the wind blew. She could almost hear the clink of the dog’s chain as it moved about in the shade.

The door opened behind her. A young girl stood there. ‘
Ja?
’

‘
Môre
.’ Aletta held out the scrap of paper, suddenly aware that she did not know the name of Misklip’s mother. ‘
Ek wil die ou dame sien
.’

‘
Sy’s innie bed
.’

‘I have brought something for her. Can I come in?’

The girl hovered, looking doubtful. ‘Are you from the church,
mevrou
?’

‘No. I come from the place where the old lady’s son works.’

The girl gestured with her head. Aletta followed. She was shown into a room so small she could have almost touched the walls on both sides. She sat down on a kitchen chair. She steadied herself as it tilted under her weight.

The girl disappeared. She was back in a moment. ‘
Wag net
,’ she said. ‘
Tannie kom.
’

Aletta looked about her.

There was a fireplace but it was not in use. A cut-out newspaper decoration lined the mantelpiece. On it stood a small clock, a bowl of plastic flowers and a brass Benares teapot from the Indian shop.

The house smelled of cat. It was almost overpowering.

A picture of Jesus – the Sacred Heart – was hung on a chain above the door. There was another picture. A coloured photograph – very old, very foxed. A family standing to attention in a studio.

No one smiled.

The damp had seeped in at a corner and obscured a face.

There was a shuffle and a tapping: slow, small footfalls in the passageway. Through the door came a woman with a walking stick. She wore an ancient turquoise dressing gown and maroon felt slippers. Her small toes had pushed the fabric out, exposing them. Her eyes were enlarged behind the thick pebble lenses of her spectacles. One of the plastic arms was bent up above her ear, bunched round with sticking tape. She wore a pink net scarf on her hair. She was very small, a little sea creature – just like Misklip – mottled like stone. She had no teeth.

‘
Mevrou
?’ she said gravely in a small high voice. ‘
Kom u van die dominee
?’

‘I have come from Misklip,’ said Aletta. ‘I have brought you something from him.’

‘
Misklip
?’ She cocked her head politely.

‘Your son,’ said Aletta, at a loss.

‘I’ve got just one son,’ she said. ‘His name is Dudley Koester.’

‘And he works on an island for the Fisheries?’

‘
Ja,
he works on an island. He was already there thirty-six years in July.’

‘It’s the same man,’ said Aletta.

‘What name did you say?’

‘No, it is Dudley Koester,’ said Aletta, sudden with the shame of condescension, and she delved in her bag and brought out the crumpled brown paper package and gave it to Misklip’s mother. The old woman sat down unsteadily and took it in her hands and looked at it a long time.

‘He’s a good son, Dudley.’

And she said his name again, very softly.
Dudley.

Aletta put the box of chocolates in the old woman’s lap. ‘I hope you like sweets?’

‘
Dis nou ’n mooi ou dosie!
’ she said, caressing the box and the silky tassel.

The same shellfish smile, the vivid little tongue. She struggled with the clasp. The young girl, sitting near, got up and helped her, opening the box, showing the plump silver and gold-wrapped chocolates inside.

Misklip’s mother looked at them critically, touching one or two with her
finger, as if marking them as hers. Then she closed the box. ‘
Dankie, mevrou
,’ and she touched the outer corner of her eye, holding herself very still. She kept the box on her lap, protectively. ‘No one has ever come. Not in all the years.
Niemand
.’

A cat slunk into the room and crouched, frozen, when it saw Aletta. Then it crept, belly down, under an old, wooden-framed settee.

The young girl giggled. ‘The cat has kittens under there,’ she said. ‘
Tannie is baie lief vir katjies
.’

‘Aunty’s son too,’ said Aletta. ‘He has a very old grey cat living in his house.’

His mother pursed her lips, shot an oblique glance at Aletta. ‘He told me, last time,’ she said, ‘that they are not allowed cats.’

‘No,’ Aletta smiled. ‘They are not. But it is our secret.’ She put her finger to her lips. ‘He found it when it was very small down by the harbour. He said he was afraid that rats would eat it if he left it there. They are very good friends.’

‘Dudley has a soft heart,
weet jy
?
Daar was altyd katjies en hondjies en voëltjies en die Here weet wat ookal innie huis.’

Aletta could imagine: Misklip’s waifs. Mismatched and oddly feral like the island cat.

‘And his music,’ his mother said, twisting her hands and looking into the middle distance as if she were recalling sounds, a scene, a time. ‘
Ek het gehoop hy gaan ’n musikant word. Hy’t so mooi gespeel
.’

She was silent, looking down at the chocolate box, fingering the ribbon. ‘But those music people drink too much, you know. They can’t play if they don’t drink.’ She was silent a long time but Aletta did not interrupt her. She knew that she was holding on to tears. Then she looked across at Aletta and said, ‘
Hy’s ’n bruin mens, mevrou
.’ He’s a brown man. ‘Where’s he going to get work with music except in a shebeen? It’s better on the island.
So het ek vir hom gesê
,’ she said firmly. ‘No
skelms
there.’

She took up the package and she tried to open it. Her knobbled fingers wrestled with the knots of string. Again the young girl came forward and took it from her and loosened it. Misklip’s mother all but snatched it back before she could look inside. She peered into it herself.

She extracted a net doily, decorated round the edge with shells.

It was the same one that Misklip had showed so proudly to Aletta.

She remembered holding it up in the wind and hearing the faint shell-music.

–
Bring me small pink ones, just like this.

It had been their bargain. And it had led to this.

The shell lighthouse

The drunken day.

Witbooi’s laugh.

Her presence in this room.

The doily lay in Misklip’s mother’s lap, cupped by her fingers. She said to the young girl, her voice wavering, ‘Dormel,
gaan maak vir die dame ’n koppie tee.
’

She waited until the girl had gone and then she said sharply, ‘Where did he get the money?’

‘His wages?’ Aletta suggested.

‘They pay that in the bank here. Direct,’ she said.

Aletta looked back at her. ‘Is it a lot?’

The old woman put her hand to her mouth, smoothing it, giving Aletta a shrewd glance, her eyes looming at her behind the green-tinged lenses. ‘
Hy’s ’n goeie seun
. He looks after me well. I can’t work any more …’

Aletta smiled: she was close to ninety and she talked of work.

‘I am a dressmaker.
Maar die ou ogies is nou klaar
.’ Pointing to her eyes.

Then she looked down at the cat, which was leaving the room, insinuating itself around the open door. ‘
Sewe katjies! Kan u dit glo?
How am I going to feed them all?’

But she smiled, making a small crooning sound.

‘Your son is just as fond of cats as you,
mevrou Koester.’
Aletta cocked her head at her.

‘I am
juffrou Koester
,’ said the old lady sharply. ‘I was never married.’ She looked rueful, then drew herself up a little. ‘Dudley is my only child. He did not know his father. I did not know him either.
Mense wat rondsluip soos ’n jakkals innie nag.’

Aletta had heard those words before. From Misklip.
Like a jackal in the night.

‘It is better he is on the island,’ Misklip’s mother said again. ‘It is quiet. When it is quiet, God is there. Dudley was always a God-fearing boy.’

Aletta did not contradict her. ‘He said I must ask you to pray for him.’

Again the old woman paused, holding tears. ‘I pray for him,
mevrou. Elke dag
.’

Then she looked across at Aletta. She said, ‘Have you children,
mevrou
?’

‘No.’ And then Aletta said something she had never said before: ‘I lost my only boy.’

In saying it she redefined the child’s whole existence – and its loss.

‘Let us pray for our sons,
mevrou,
’ said the old woman simply. She looked expectantly at Aletta. Then she clasped her hands on the chocolate box and she bowed her head.

She did not pray aloud but Aletta, sitting opposite, in that small room with the stink of cat, the smell of paraffin and of decay, felt a sense of reverence that she had never felt before.

She took it with her when she went out later into the afternoon. She took it with her when she walked down the side road to the well-remembered house beside the gum tree that stood tall and ragged beside the broken picket fence.

Nothing had changed in twenty years. Except the dog was gone.

She took it to the bus stop at the bottom of the hill. She waited for the bus, leaning her head against the wall of the shelter as she once had done, too weary even for tears.

Something still remained. Some tenderness. Even for Len and the long-gone boy in him.

‘It was at the Conference,’ says Hannes to Rika, ‘that I spoke to the Chief Lighthouse Engineer about our future. He was a marvellous man. An artist. A great sculptor.’ He looks at Rika and he smiles. ‘You think we’re all just a bunch of technicians, don’t you? But we’re not.’

‘Do I?’

‘No, perhaps not. But perhaps – yes. That’s what I am, after all. Like an able seaman, just keeping my ship clean and polished, the engine running. So who cares?’