The Shouting in the Dark (24 page)

The next morning Ella borrows Linda's matches on the way into school and burns the air letter in the scummy girls' toilets beyond the science labs, where no one ever goes. Her notebook she leaves in its usual hiding place. She will have to think more carefully about how to deal with it. It'll need a proper fire like her father's to reduce it to ash.

 

The father's bonfire gives Ella the idea to have a clean-up of her own. She will strip away her accumulated stuff around the house, the dusty bits and pieces she no longer has a use for. She asks if Phineas might help her with the job, a half-hour each Saturday for maybe a couple of weeks. She wants to clear out the storage area at the back of the garage, she explains, where the cardboard boxes of unused kitchenware from Holland are stacked, the croquette maker, the Frisian potato masher. First, though, she wants to deal with the thing that takes up the most room, her old doll's house under its dust sheet. She hasn't played with it in years.

The bonfire has brought a new fixed look to her father's eyes, as if the mirage had cooked them. At her question about the doll's house the look briefly sharpens, but still he agrees. Yes, it'll be good to have more room in the garage. Phineas can help her, yes, though not for long. This time of year, with winter coming on, there's a lot of clearing—

Alone with Phineas, she thinks to herself.
Alone
. Between four walls. With her Dad's permission. It's a treat he doesn't even know he's giving. She goes to the garage to take a look at the doll's house.

Years ago, for her eighth birthday, the year after the Remedial Class, the father made her this big single-storey doll's house. He'd spotted a pile of off-cut masonite on sale at Big Dave's, Braemar's hardware shop. It recalled to him that carpentry course he did after the war, during the slow time after demobilization, when there was no work in his fatherland to be had—

The doll's house became his early retirement project. Every feature and detail of the thing he set about designing and then sanding, planing, dovetailing and painting, even the furniture. Using perspex and tiny pulleys he constructed sash windows for the bedrooms. He made a separate bathroom with a wooden bath; he carved a toilet. He used pipe cleaners to make a hatstand, a trouser-press. It was the first trouser-press Ella had ever seen. She had to ask what it was. All the doors he gave handles, round handles to match the handles on the chests of drawers which he also made.

But the best feature he designed, in his view, was the elevation of the house. He called it the perspective. The doll's house was a bungalow, just as all good houses in South Africa were bungalows. Their square Durban bungalow could have been its template. So instead of opening at the front like a cupboard, as in a traditional doll's house, this doll's house opened from the top. The roof lifted right off and was as realistic a roof as could be imagined, with a double chimney and cardboard roof tiles, each separately painted and pasted on in a staggered pattern, as on a proper roof.

On the morning of her eighth birthday the father helped Ella lift first the dust sheet and then the roof off her new doll's house. She stood by speechless, lost for something to say, looking at the tiny, tidy rooms, the perfect miniature furniture. She didn't dare touch. What if she spoiled something by mistake? Her hands were large, clumsy, her arms huge. She might squash the furniture just by holding it.

‘Bend down to it,' the father said at last, ‘And mind I see you play with it. I worked on that more hours than I want to remember. It was a big graft.'

But he hadn't thought that this best-designed of the house's features, the pitched roof, was also the thing that made it most difficult to play with. The pitched roof was too heavy and too wide for Ella easily to lift by herself. Each time she wanted to play with her doll's house she had to ask for help to remove the roof. Before long the roof was never off the house. Then the cover sheet was put back on. The father didn't want to be reminded of his design flaw. ‘Come, let's store the thing in the garage. I don't like to see it staring at me.'

This will be
her
big graft, Ella says to herself, pulling the dust sheet to one side, peering into the small sash windows: the redistribution of the doll's house and its contents so that other children will be able to play with it. She will hand out the furniture in stages, this is her plan, the chests of drawers, wire lamp-stands, bathroom fittings, trouser-press. She has collected used cardboard boxes for the purpose. She will keep the things in their separate room categories. Bit by bit she will take the house apart, see if the walls come away, the sash windows, the doors on their little hinges. She will add the matching walls and windows to each shoebox lot. Then, one by one, this is the second stage of her plan, Phineas will carry the boxes filled with doll's house pieces back to the township. She will ask him to do this. He can't say no to such an excellent idea. She will tell him to hand out the things lot by lot, the bedroom then the kitchen then the living room, share them amongst his family and friends, till everything's given away.

Phineas today is taking his time joining in, however. She asked him to help at least an hour ago; he has only now pitched up. Here he is, standing in the garage entrance blocking out the light. She can hear him shifting his weight from one foot to another, chipping at a mark on the wall with his fingernail. Something doesn't feel right to him, she can tell. The sight of the doll's house with its dust sheet removed seems to put him off. She stops herself from looking round to see his face.

They must lift the roof together, she gestures. It still is awkward for her to lift on her own, not too heavy now but still too wide for her arms. The roof sails through the air. Phineas has got hold of it unassisted, walks outside with it. She hears him lay it on the grass, a soft thump. He's out there a while. She begins to put some of the smaller bits of living room furniture into an empty box, the lamp-stands, the stools made from wooden beads. But her curiosity defeats her. What's he up to out there in the sunshine? She finds him kneeling in the grass beside the doll's house roof, bent over it, no, poring over it, his nose almost stuck to the painted roof tiles.

He holds balanced on a fingertip a tile that has come loose. Your father made these, he paint these? She shrugs a yes. For some reason she can't meet his eye.

In the shady mouth of the garage he rejoins her, his tall shape once again standing against the light. She finishes clearing the living room of furniture, then tests the room's dividing walls. They come away smoothly, which is one obstacle less to deal with. Her father has made them so that they fit into narrow grooves cut into the main frame of the house and this means that dismantling the structure won't damage it. The whole doll's house, or at least the rooms and wall minus the roof, could be folded away like a Jacob's ladder into the pieces of masonite it was originally made of.

Phineas comes closer. He's standing right behind her, still, unmoving. For some reason he doesn't want to help her, that's obvious. Well, she's not going to say anything; she's not going to look up. If he has better things to do he should go and do them. It's his decision. The job's anyway not as big as she'd imagined. And they have next Saturday. Next Saturday they can make a fresh start, work together like before.

Keep them, Phineas suddenly says. He picks up the shoebox standing beside the one she has already filled. So far she has put just a few things in it, the wire-built kitchen sink, the stuck-together matchboxes painted to look like a fridge. He lays the box in her lap, presses down on it. Keep them, your father made them, they're not to give away.

But no one uses them now, no one plays with them. She returns the box to the ground. It's better for them to be played with. See, your father made them, he says again. Is better you keep them. No, no, she tries to laugh it off, is better other children play with them. Children in the township, he shakes his head, when have they seen a house like this, with four rooms, when do they see furniture like this? They don't know what to do with this, don't know how to play with it. Well, they can see it now, enjoy it now, when you give it to them. They can find ways of playing with it. No, no, no, he's shaking his head again. All will be separated. How can any one child enjoy? So it's better here. Keep it together. Your father, he made it, he made everything. Don't give it away.

Ella draws herself up, looks into his face. He looks straight back.

What do you mean my father made it? What's so special? It's years ago now.

Phineas's eyes come in closer. It
is
special, yes, he could not make them now. He's too tired now, he's sick now.

Phineas fits the dividing wall Ella removed back into its groove. Then he goes out to fetch the roof. Without a word he places it back on the house. He shakes out the dust sheet, covers the roof with it. He puts the lids on the two shoeboxes containing furniture. The one with the kitchen fittings he gives back to her. The filled-up box he places beside the school blazer he always leaves lying folded at the garage door. He straightens up, the light in the garage shifts, he is gone.

Ella goes to wash her dusty hands at the kitchen sink. Out of the window she sees Phineas raking dead leaves in the old dahlia patch. The sharp crease in the back of his knees as he bends, how it makes her breath catch in her throat.

The following Saturday Phineas stands waiting for her at the garage door when she comes out of the house. The moment she sees him he begins to walk towards the passageway where he leaves his tools. He looks back once over his shoulder, expecting her to follow. At the storm-water guttering he waits. She comes to stand in front of him and without a word he takes her by the wrist.
Skin on my skin.
She forces her hand to droop, see if his hand will slide downwards, but his grip is too tight for her to nudge him. The sweat in his palm, she feels its wetness, the rub of the dirt on his fingers.

You like me too much, he loud-whispers, glancing over her shoulder towards the house. Don't. Don't keep coming around me, liking me.

What do you mean?

It can't – Not possible. Not good. He glances again.

For me, it's good.

He shakes his head fiercely. No, not good. Y'know what is better, an open fight with a clear enemy.

Better than what?

Than trouble.

What trouble?

We submit or we fight. His chin makes a circle in the direction of the house. For me, I go somewhere away— The township, my people there. We – no good. Your father doesn't like it.

My father doesn't like much. He doesn't much like me.

He is your father. There is work. His hand drops her wrist and suddenly he averts his face. She has to step back. Something about the movement of his head makes her do it. If we— he breaks off, moves into the passageway. I will be in gaol, shot like a dog. I cannot work for my people.

His tools, she suddenly notices, are no longer lined up against the mud-spattered passageway wall as they always were before. In fact they are nowhere to be seen.

 

The father is not very well. It must be so, because for the first time he's saying it. ‘No, I'm not feeling too good,' he says. Most of the time he's bent over in a right-angle, his fingers dug into his groin. According to his doctor, the one he chose years ago for being undemonstrative, ‘minor settlement issues' have belatedly arisen following the prostate operation. The father should make sure to take more exercise, he advises, stretch and ease his lower half. The mother encourages him to go on short walks around Braemar. Ella should go along, keep him company.

The walks are not a success. The father sets out reluctantly, Ella dawdles a short distance behind. If he can't see her, she calculates, he'll be less intent on barking out instructions: Make yourself useful, Pick up those plastic bags.

From the first outing it's clear that the walks are too demanding. Sometimes at the first corner, always by the end of Ridge Road, cramp grips his legs. He bends over, studies the pavement grass in front of his feet, rubs his thighs. But this bent position isn't good for him. Suddenly it's as if he is caught in the clutches of evil urchins. His insides make terrible noises. He holds his backside, moans, twists from side to side. Several times he's taken by such urgency he must drag down his shorts and squat where he stands, as close to a tree or a bush as he can make it. Ella standing sentinel can barely breathe for embarrassment.

Back in their garden, she helps him clean himself up. He stands in his boxer shorts facing the lemon tree in its sheltered sunny corner, turns the garden hose to full strength, hands it to her. It's her job to use the hard adze of its stream to scour the dirt off his purple legs. For good measure she soaks the seat of his boxer shorts also.

She tries to keep her eyes averted but still she can't help noticing how very black the matter is that runs down his legs into the grass, strong-smelling, too, but not in the way you'd expect. More like raw nicotine than anything, a dirty ashtray.

She passes none of this on. If the father wants to complain, that's his business. But he doesn't want to complain. When he hands her the garden hose he puts his finger to his lips.
Shhh
, let's not worry your mother. Ella finds no reason to disagree.

She becomes aware that the mother is often on the telephone in the bedroom, whispering. The bedroom door is closed, the whisper is at a strange high pitch. This isn't as it should be. International telephone calls these days go by satellite but they still cost money. Even local calls cost money. Their telephone isn't used unless absolutely necessary.

Passing the door she hears her mother saying the name Ko. She stops, listens harder. Ko, Ko, Ko, her mother says. This is even less as it should be. Ko is the father's occasional visitor, the long-time, long-distance friend who writes from faraway addresses, Haarlem, Singapore, Perth, Madagascar. Ko doesn't phone, he doesn't talk on the telephone to the mother.