Long Lies the Shadow (23 page)

“How is she?” asks Michael. They are walking in his back garden, along the stretch of lawn, smoking. The day is settling into evening, the sun has already deserted this part of the house although its warmth remains.

Viv casts a glance to where Gin and Abbie sit inside at the kitchen table, going through Abbie’s cardboard box from Issy. The door is closed, and they cannot hear her conversation, but Viv hesitates nonetheless before replying. “Okay, I think. She slept almost solidly that first week, as if she couldn’t get enough. I think she’s truly exhausted by everything that’s happened over the last year.”

“Only a year,” grimaces Michael. “God.”

“Yes,” says Viv. She stops, strokes the bark of a tall conifer. Nick had loved Michael’s garden, she remembers. She does not want to think of Nick.

It tore into her. What words could fill her emptiness? There were none. Not after Gabe, not since Jonnie. Once, she had thought Nick’s words could.
No one as beautiful as you
, he had said.
Not even close
. But these words in front of her, these words as old as she, had reminded her that words can also tear us apart.

She tells Michael of the day she had taken Gin up to Rhodes memorial.

Michael draws deeply on his cigarette. “She’s not mad,” he says, “just grieving. It’s good she’s telling you these things, starting to get it out. Is she still having the recurring nightmares?”

“I don’t know,” replies Viv, “probably. Sometimes I hear her crying in the night.”

“Yes, that happened to me also in London. Sounds like she’s still having them. Did she tell you about Simon wanting to tell her something, before he died?”

Viv nods. “Yes. I thought I knew what it was.”

He looks at her, surprised. “You did?”

“Nick told me Simon was getting divorced. I thought that maybe it was that – I told Gin.”

“When?”

“But then she said it couldn’t be that, because he said it was
something
he should have told her years ago.”

“Ah, pity,” says Michael. “But still, that must have helped her. To know, I mean.”

Viv shrugs. “Maybe, I’m not sure. It could make it worse, you know, knowing they maybe had a future after all.”

Michael nods. He looks sad.

“But maybe you’re right,” she adds, “I did notice that after that she started wearing a sapphire ring.”

“Yes, I saw it. You know, she wanted me to get rid of that ring when I was in London. I’m glad now I didn’t. It must have helped her, Viv. And hopefully this trip will help her too. It was good of you to come. I take it you had to pull Abbie out of school?”

Viv nods, stubs her cigarette out on the wall. “Yes, but it’s only for a bit. I thought it would do us all good. To see you, get away. For Abbie too.” She tells Michael of their time with Issy.

He listens, smoking quietly. When his cigarette is finished, he lights another one for himself immediately, offers her one. Viv starts to decline, then shrugs, takes another one, lets him light it for her. She inhales, blowing smoke into the air. It seeps into the air, slips away through green fronded branches.

“Abbie’s a lovely girl,” he says. “She looks a lot like –”

“I know,” laughs Viv, “everyone thinks she looks like Gin. So much so, when we’ve been out and about, everyone thinks she’s Gin’s daughter, not mine.”

Michael chews his lip, and suddenly Viv has a sense it was not Gin he thought Abbie resembled. Maybe he was about to say Gabe. She regrets interrupting him.

As if following her train of thought, Michael asks, “Have you been out to the farm yet?”

“No, I thought tomorrow maybe.” Abbie has made progress, she says, telling him of how before the trip she would always refer to Gabe as
my real father
whereas only yesterday she said
my dad
. “I think he feels more real to her now, you know?” She waits a moment before admitting to Michael that it is possibly harder for her to go to the farm than it is for Abbie.

He puts his arm around her shoulders, gives her a quick squeeze. It is so dark in the garden that the light from inside the house is bright. “Shall we go in and see what those two are up to, then?”

Gin looks up as they enter, gives them a small, sad smile. Abbie sits with her face fixed on the table, seemingly uninterested in their entrance. Her mussed hair straggles in front of her face, a hairslide doing little to hold back its thick fall. She is sorting through
photographs
spread out across Michael’s kitchen table. Viv sits down next to her daughter. Things have not been easy between them. Viv had tried to make reparation for that day in the sunroom, but Abbie had remained recalcitrant. Jonnie’s departure meant the girls inevitably spent more time at home. And they were alone more often, given the increasing time Viv had spent with Nick. It had been time she was reluctant to curtail. Until that day in his office.

Again she must turn her thoughts away from Nick. It still hurt. To her credit, Abbie had shown no delight at the break-up. Viv wonders about her and boys. Kayleigh, although younger, is already popular. Already, suspects Viv, a heartbreaker. But Abbie does not talk, does not give up information willingly, and Viv had tried to respect that. If she is honest, she knows she feels uncomfortable with the subject, and it had been easier not to push or pry.

She puts an arm around Abbie, who shifts slightly but does not shrug her off.

They have been talking about Gabe, realises Viv, the reason for the sorrow in Gin’s smile. She wonders what Gin has told her. About his decision to go to the Army, about his decision not to leave? Perhaps it would have been better had Gin left Abbie with what she already knew. Must she subject Gabe’s daughter to what torture he must have endured, enough to make him take his own belt, attach it to the bars of his window, and pull it tight around his own neck? Must Gin tell Abbie how she and Issy had to go and fetch his body from the police? How it had to be released, like an exhibit in a court
of law? Viv had always wondered what had become of the belt, the strip of leather that in desperation had become his release.

Gin leans over to pull her own box forward from beneath the table, tears off the thick tape that Issy had sealed it with. She starts to pick it up.

“Here, Gin,” says Michael, “that’s too heavy for you. Let me get it.”

Gin already has it halfway in the air. As Michael reaches for it, it slips in her hand, and tears, the bottom pulls apart, and its contents spill across the table and the floor. They all start to help pick up the scattered items that Issy had set aside for Gin.

Gin kneels on the floor, files through some envelopes, sorting them into one pile. Michael kneels beside her. One envelope is grubby and stained, with no markings on the outside.

“Gin, what’s this?” he holds it towards her for her consideration.

Gin looks up and her eyes close briefly as if from pain, but when she speaks her voice is steady. “That’s Gabe’s suicide note.” Her eyes meet his directly.

A terrible hush.

Michael’s hand drops and he sits back heavily on the floor. He runs his free hand through his hair. For a long while he and Gin look at each other, saying nothing.

Eventually, Gin speaks. “You can read it if you want, Mikey.”

Viv sits, frozen. Her concern is for Abbie, who is looking at Michael with a weird expression on her face. Michael rubs at his eyes, blinks hard, looks down at the envelope. Gin shuffles over to him on her knees, sits herself next to him and leans against him.

“I miss him,” he says quietly. He looks up at Viv and then back at Gin.

She nods. They both look at the envelope. It shakes slightly in Michael’s hand.

She touches his forearm. “I’ll make us something to drink.”

“I’ll do it,” Viv says, rising from the chair, eager to have
something
to do. “Tea or coffee?”

“Coffee… strong,” says Michael. He stands, leaves the kitchen, taking the letter with him.

Gin stands also. She comes over to Viv, touches her arm. “You can read it too, if you want, Viv. There’s not much to explain it.”

Viv turns to her, and hugs her tightly. For a while they hold each other. I must not cry, thinks Viv, for Abbie’s sake, for Gin’s. I have shed too many tears over Gabe,
I must not cry
.

Viv is scooping rich Brazilian roast into the cafetière when Michael appears at the door of the kitchen. They all look up at him. His face is streaked with anguish, and his eyes narrow against the light in the kitchen. In his hand he clutches the letter.

“What?” says Viv, seeing his expression, the spoon of coffee in the air.

“Gin, Viv… this isn’t – this isn’t what you think it is.”

That day, remember. That day, a Monday. A Monday as blue as his eyes. With the phone down, the silence was as intense as its siren moments before. Moments, long enough to change a life, but not a love. Bring back a love, but not a life. Back into the kitchen, she watched the dinner burning, those moments on. Since then, since him, before those moments. A slow anger began to burn. Burning like the dinner, slowly.

Gabriel.

Wednesday, she sat waiting. Waiting on the hard pine of a police bench. Waiting for her sister Issy to exit the room behind the door in front of her. Beyond its heavy varnish lay the pale body of their brother, dark purple bruises around his neck. Somehow, Gabe, her brother, full of life, was dead. Dead, he could be released. Alive, he had been a prisoner of the State, an Army deserter. A dissident, a dissenter, a disgrace.

The door opened. Isadore stood there, framed in stillness. Ashen, bereft, despite the illusion of calm; long, auburn tresses held in check, with wisps twisting, writhing free to stand out stark, Medusa-like, against the pallor of her face. Gabe had nicknamed their elder sister Isadorable, and she could deny him nothing. Issy it was who had to call, to organise, look after things, cover for their mother’s eternal incapabilities, their father’s devastation. And Issy who must take him home.

Thursday, they sat together on the plane, with no words for each other. They sat, staring ahead, two sisters whose thoughts lay with the coffin below them in the hold. Above the clouds, the sun still shone. They descended through the puffy mist of them, hanging over their
home-town
. From the air it might have been pretty. If passing over, one might
have imagined it peaceful, idyllic even, this untouched town banking up against the dunes, great swathes of sand meeting the tumult of ocean spray. Red rooftops baking on any other given day, heat spilling upward from the tainted tar of roads edged with dust. But not that day. That day it sat cold, bleached of colour, shunned by the sun. As it ought. Fitting that the life be withheld from that airless little cesspool. Fitting that her brother’s death took with it the light.

Friday, his funeral, and she felt grief stir inside her. A chilly Friday morning. The whole town would be there, thought Gin. Scandalised in their small-mindedness. Come ostensibly to grieve, commiserate, but voyeurs all, come to feed like vultures off another’s pain, to add some snippet of delightful gossip, barely masked as shock or sympathy, to their dinner parties on sticky evenings after days unchanged for thirty years. Unheeded, the revolution sat dormant but growing, on their doorstep, feeding off their ignorance and blinkered self-indulgence.

The church on the hill lent no atmosphere. Stark-white, with
standard
spire, it sat apart, opulent with newness. The wind off nearby dunes blew harsh and unforgiving. Below in the damp hollow shrouded by trees, lay her grandfather’s grave. It depressed Gin, the thought of his body lying there, rotting in the moss. They were all alike, the graves. All slabbed with the smooth white pebbles of death, and many adorned with flowers encased bizarrely in round bowls of glass, as if with preservation of the blooms to deny the decay of bodies beneath. All things must of nature change. But here, this town, like so many others, sat, resisting progress or evolution, stubbornly stuck in its way of life. Adventure may have brought their ancestors to that country, that town, yet any lust for change seemed to have been bred out of their blood.

The church was large, yet full. Irrespective of motive, there was a hush to any petty whisperings as they filed in. Gabe had been so young, so full of potential.

Gin watched her mother greet the crowd, like an actress taking an encore. How could she? Rachel McMann was starchedly beautiful, a
dark rose on display, her thick black hair pulled severely off her
forehead
. A fat diamante cross dripped from a necklace. She leant heavily on Jacob’s arm. As always, Jacob, her refuge and her flight from pain.

Gin’s father, stooped, walked behind his wife, with Issy on his arm; his son’s death had aged him in a day. They entered the church ahead of her.

Somehow, she was detached, held from them, outside still. Someone was talking to her now, and she had to be polite. There was a while yet before the service would start, the organ still hummed its mourning drone.

And there he was. Simon.

This was what it took to bring him back to her.

A year, almost a full year of silence.

There must have been rage against him inside her, but she could summon none. He looked thinner, in a suit that would once have shifted unfamiliar on his frame, but he wore it well, used to the big city, the hospital meetings with registrars and consultants. Gin must have stopped to stare. As if he felt her eyes on him, he turned from the two young women at his side. They had been at school with her and Gabe, but their names walked with them into the church. A certain catatonia had hold of her limbs. She looked down at her arms, as if they did not belong to her, willed them to move.

Gabe was dead.

This was Gabe’s funeral.

A scream of denial built in her chest, some kind of truth finding
purchase
on her mind. No dream of horror, no nightmare.

Almost all were in the church; a few late cars rushed up the drive, then halted, driving more slowly at the gate, mindful of the presence of death.

A blonde woman stepped out of a champagne-coloured car, pulling at her skirt. Her skirt too short, her blouse too tight. A man, overweight, followed; he had the look of a businessman, thought Gin. His lips, she
noticed absently, were thick and wet. He licked them, looking pointedly at Gin. Gin was openly staring, and rude with it. She was trying to remember the woman’s name, her mouth moving soundlessly around unknown syllables. They had been in the same school year, she recalled vaguely, but she could not remember her name. The woman gripped Gin’s hand.

“I’m sorry, hey,” she said, with an Eastern Cape accent.

Gin looked at her blankly.

It was Simon who answered, who had come up to them. “Thank you,” with sincerity. It was Simon who shook the man’s hand, steered him in the direction of the church door. They murmured pleasantries in parting. The woman was smiling. She was smiling. Flicking her hair flirtatiously, looking up at Simon, eyelashes thick with mascara. Gabe was dead. And yet she smiled.

It registered suddenly: Sandra de Jongh, the girl who had fallen in the horse manure.

Gabe, thought Gin, would have laughed aloud.

The drone had stopped, the service started.

Gin turned her back on the church. She wished to walk away. The hands that seconds before would not move had now formed themselves into fists. She stared across towards the coastal road, to where it
disappeared
beyond the sand-hills, back to the Cape. Closing her eyes, she lifted her face to the strong breeze. This paltry little church was not worthy of her brother. Gabe’s spirit could not be communicated through, should not be represented by, this blandness. Only the wildness of the wind did him justice that day. Not even the sky could capture the colour of his eyes. The sun could summon not the brightness of his smile. For the first time in her life, she was without him, her twin. The soul that had met this life together with hers had gone. Gone on, alone. And she had failed him on their journey.

Simon reached his arms around her from behind, his cheek rested against her hair, his lips brushed her ear, and she felt his breath on her
face. He held her to him tightly, as if by gathering her up to him he might prevent her falling apart. Her limbs that moments before were rigid were threatening to collapse, so loose and unconnected did they feel. Wordlessly, he took her hand, as so many years later, he would again.

Late, they squeezed into the back pew. The minister blinked his disapproval. Slowly, theatrically, his sermon started. In a high
indignant
monotone, he urged them all to pray for the dear departed soul of Gabriel Alexander McMann. In the manner of his death, in riotous self-annihilation, her brother, it seemed, had denied himself the comfort of eternity and a place at the side of God.

Gin sat, appalled. Her angel Gabriel, fallen. She would never forgive her mother. This was her doing, her religious fervour. Where were the hyped and overblown tenets of forgiveness? Why did they all sit there so silently? In that moment she learned to hate the Church. She wanted to stand and shout, tell them of the man that none defended. He whom they had come to honour, they instead defiled. Where was Viv, whom he would marry? And Hannah, whom he loved? Michael, his best friend? Rage quivered through her system, made her physically shake. She felt Simon’s restraining arm, saw his warning glance. Only that kept her from shouting, screaming, leaving. He had heard it too, the slur, the stain on Gabe’s eternal soul. But it was not his brother, his church, his faith, nor his turn to talk.

After the unforgiving fire of the sermon, dull dirges followed. They filed out. Her mother stood outside, greeting all, the actress still on stage. Gin could not look at her. Her father was shaking hands, intent on thanking those who had come to pay some sort of homage to his son.

Later, at the incongruous party that came with the service of death, she stood dazed amidst them all. Her mother was holding court with the minister, one thin bejewelled hand grasping Viv’s arm.

Viv, suddenly skeletal in a week; her pregnancy accentuated by her thinness. Michael stood to one side, alone, red-eyed, worn. He looked frequently across to Viv, who seemed to avoid his eyes.

Isaac stood with his brother Jacob, Hannah’s father. Gin’s father joined them. No doubt they spoke of patients, golf. A group of women, Jacob’s wife Shirley amongst them, stood nearby. With a start, Gin saw that Hannah was with them. She seemed eerily, icily distant. It was Hannah Gin sorrowed for most. Perhaps Viv deserved it more, who bore Gabe’s child, holding the obvious part of his heart, wearing his ring. Or Michael.

So many people. Everyone had loved Gabe. Teachers, pupils, friends. But Hannah, especially Hannah. Gabe had been one of the boys,
cheerful
, popular. She, Gin, quieter, plainer. People had mused on how unlike they were for twins. And some had thought Hannah his twin, both with their dark hair, white smiles, and so often together. Hannah had seemed special to him. Even when they were younger, with Hannah always lagging behind, it was Gabe who would stop them to wait for her, help her lug her bike over fences, put plasters on her knee, haul her up with a hand, check she was okay, see her home.

Gin was about to move towards Hannah when the minister approached, blocking her path. Unconsciously, Gin felt herself stiffen, her eyes searched the room. Simon stood, head bent low over Issy in the far corner, but as Gin’s gaze reached him, he turned and looked across at her.

“My dear,” crooned the minister, “your mother tells me you need comfort.”

Numbness was replaced by a slow burning sensation to her skin that later she would recognise as rage. Reptile, serpent of lies, she thought.

“Leave me alone,” she whispered hoarsely, words catching in the dryness of her throat. “You dishonoured my brother. My brother. He was a fine man. You. You stay away from me, and go back to your shitty… petty… angry… little… God.”

She spat each word like venom at him, lucid then.

The two girls who had been outside the church were standing nearby with a former teacher; she recognised him as Gabriel’s school athletics
coach. They stopped talking, looked at her. Gin’s hands were shaking, her teacup rattling, china roses wobbling dangerously on the bone saucer. It was Simon who took it from her, who had come up to her again.
Whatever
would pass between them afterwards, for that moment, she would always be grateful.

The minister had recovered, he seemed to bristle, opened his mouth. Simon raised his hand. The minister looked affronted. Gin turned her back on her mother’s man of God. Perhaps, later, in that moment, she would find something with which to forgive herself for her silence in the church. Perhaps she redeemed herself, she thought. Perhaps after all, Gabe, I did not fail you in the end.

She hated them all, felt a baseline anger. Hated her mother for
betraying
her own son. Her father for standing by, knowingly, wittingly, letting her mother hold sway. She hated Hannah for rejecting Gabe, Viv for not making him leave the country. Hated the Church for denying him
salvation
; the Army, for all of it, for driving him to run away. And prison, for driving him to hang himself. And she hated Simon, for the past year. But most of all, Gin realised, she hated herself.

She left, walked out of the church hall. She craved the fresh air, the sanity of aloneness. She needed time to think. She suddenly longed to talk to Jonnie, longed for her own life, the life she had made away from her family, these families, this incestuous town. Cape Town, her home there, seemed clean and far-removed from the weight of it all, the complications.

“Ginny, wait.” It was Simon’s voice. Plea, not command.

She turned. He stood frowning at the door.

“Wait,” he said again, gently.

She watched him turn back inside, through the open door, saw him say something to her father. Her dad turned to look at her, raised his hand in a slight wave, a half-hearted gesture of greeting. But Gin felt her face set, unsmiling, unforgiving. She turned away.

They took her father’s car; he had given Simon the keys. It was sleek
and smooth, her otherwise-spartan father’s only indulgence. It could get her back to Cape Town by the morrow, she thought. But Simon had headed inland, cutting through the mountains of the Fish River valley. She said nothing, tilted her head away from him. Aloes lined the road, flame-haired soldiers, standing to attention as she passed. He drove fast, enjoying the strength of the car, its speed. Cold air cleared the cigarette smoke of the church hall from her lungs, her hair. The sun was setting ahead of them, the shine off the windscreen blinding. The screen was thick with dust and the blood of small insects that had foolishly strayed into its path.