Long Lies the Shadow (25 page)

Before them the Cape Flats extend till the mountain rises in the distance, unchanged for centuries. It has taken two days of
travelling
from the Eastern to the Western Cape, from the rainforest and grassland of the coast, through inland scrub with its thorn trees and deciduous bush, to the wide savannah and shrub. They drive the straight road into the city, squatter camps spilling from behind thick green bush. Viv stops to pick up Kayleigh from her friend’s house in Wynberg. Her youngest, full of energy and tales and non-stop chatter, changes the subdued energy in the car. By late afternoon, Viv pulls up outside her home, relieved to reach it before nightfall. The last rays of sun finger over the lawn, touching the house with an orange glow.

Kayleigh bounds out the car and she and Abbie, already arguing, slam into the house, traipse upstairs. Viv and Gin stop in the hall. The house has that peculiar bleached-out feel, having lost some of its vitality while unoccupied. She dumps her suitcase down with a sigh and while Gin fetches the rest of the luggage from the car, she rifles through the mail, places it to one side. Nothing urgent that cannot wait till morning. The light on the answer machine is blinking red. Seven messages. Viv switches it on. One from her mother, three from patients, two ring-offs. Gin returns, puts one case down on the tiled floor, takes the other towards the stairs. The last message starts to play. Nick’s voice is husky on the machine. Viv stands rooted, noticing that Gin too, has stopped on the bottom stair, listening. The sound of his voice slams into Viv’s every cell, and every cell is perfused with the memory of him. Please call him. A pause before
clicking off as if perhaps there was something more he wished to say, but had changed his mind.

They are all tired and hungry and Viv orders takeaways. The girls open the boxes eagerly, spreading fish and chips onto plates. Viv opens a Chardonnay for herself and Gin. Her daughters tuck in to their food, but Viv can only pick at hers, and Gin, she notices, barely touches anything. Instead Gin cradles her wine glass, eyes fixed on the heavy curtains drawn against the night.

Kayleigh’s energy is infinite. Her time away from them is
dissected
in detail, her voice animated. Finally she pauses to eat,
stuffing
sloppy chips into her mouth.

Suddenly Gin appears to focus. She puts her wine glass down on the table and leans forward, addressing Kayleigh. “You look like your dad,” she says.

“You know my dad?” exclaims Kayleigh, her intrigue and delight evident.

“Kayleigh,” says Viv, “don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Her youngest chews hard, swallows, and takes a swig of Coke.

Gin sits back, as if bewildered by her own observation. “Yes,” she murmurs, “a long time ago.” Her eyes meet Viv’s across the table.

Viv smiles at her, raises her glass in mock salutation ever so slightly before she puts it to her lips.
Jonnie
.

“Oh my God!” shouts Kayleigh, “I can’t believe I forgot to tell you all.” Her eyes are wide with wonderment. “Dad’s new wife is pregnant!”

Viv and Gin look at each other. This time it is Gin who raises her glass, “Well,” she says to Kayleigh, “I think that deserves a toast, don’t you?”

Something has changed in Gin’s manner, thinks Viv as she lifts her wine. Indeed inside herself something feels different also. She puts her glass down with surprise.
Guilt
, she realises.
There is no guilt. It’s over, it’s finally gone
.

After supper, the girls go to their rooms, and Viv stacks the
dishwasher
before she and Gin move to the lounge. It is a mild night, but the lounge feels oddly cold. Gin takes the armchair at the window and tucks her legs beneath her.

Viv brings the bottle in and refills both their glasses before she slides onto the couch. She sighs with relief. “Long day, long journey. It’s good to be home.”

“Thanks for driving, Viv,” says Gin, “It was wonderful to see Michael again.”

“Yes, wasn’t it. But,” says Viv, thinking of Gabe, “well, all that. Just don’t know what to say, or do.”

“It may turn out to be good for Abbie,” manages Gin,
understanding
what she means. “It may make it easier.” She pauses. “It helped me, I think.”

Viv sips her wine. As yet, she cannot take it in. It is, after all, only an assumption. It will possibly simplify matters for Abbie. Her daughter may make some peace with Gabe’s death. For her, she does not know. Gabe is dead. She will never see him again, never hear his voice or his laugh again, never touch him again. She will live on, skin turning fragile, hair going grey. But Gabe will never age. In the end, she wonders wearily, does it matter how he died?

Inevitably, she thinks of Nick. Nick and his message, short and to the point. She had not heard his voice for so long, she had almost forgotten its effect on her, the controlled heat within its cadence. It must be the wine on a relatively empty stomach, tiredness after the journey, but the thought of Nick sends a sexual shiver through her. She gulps at her wine now. He had wrapped himself about her in this very room. She puts the glass down and takes out a cigarette.

Gin says, “You’re thinking of that Nick Retief now, aren’t you?”

Viv laughs with a mirth she does not feel. Gin knows her too well.

“Abbie said you’d been involved with him, but that you’d broken up,” continues Gin. “She said she felt responsible.”

Viv is astonished. “Abbie said that?” When, she wonders, had her daughter and Gin spoken about this? She shakes her head
vehemently
. “No, no, that’s not true.”

She starts to tell Gin about Nick. The wine lubricates her speech and it spills out. How it had evolved, what he is like, his good company, their walks, his house, the day in the sunroom, but before she can get to the real reason the relationship ended, before she can tell Gin about the files and what she learned that day in Nick’s office, the phone rings. Viv stops, drains her glass, and rises to get it.

Kayleigh yells, “I’ll get it.” Her daughter is already running down the stairs.

Viv sighs, sitting down again and looking at Gin, who shrugs in amusement.

Kayleigh’s muffled greeting can be heard then a pause before she appears in the doorway. Disappointment flattens her voice, “It’s for you, Aunt Gin.”

Gin looks up in surprise, “Me? Who is it?”

“Dunno. Some man.” Kayleigh disappears back into the hall, can be heard labouring up the stairs.

Gin looks at Viv with raised eyebrows and stands, goes into the hall. Viv lights another cigarette, and pours herself another glass of wine. She is exhausted. She cannot make out Gin’s conversation, can only hear the monotone notes of her response.

A few minutes later, Gin reappears at the doorway.

“What?” asks Viv, stabbing out her newly-lit cigarette. “Who was that, Gin? What’s wrong?”

Gin turns her face to where Viv sits but Viv can see her focus is elsewhere. She talks into the space between them, each word
emanating
as if from an abyss inside her.

“Simon’s father is coming to Cape Town. He wants to see me. He says I need to know why Ellie died.”

She had never seen Gabe without his watch. Only at night would he unbuckle the thick tan strap, put it beside the bed. Once showered, on it would go again the following morning. He’d had to replace the strap once where it had weathered, the leather creasing and finally tearing where he fastened it on the second hole.

Viv rubs her thumb over it now, much as he had then. Of course it had stopped, so many years unwound, but as she winds it now, it starts to tick again, the gilt hands moving gracefully around the off-white face of it. The watch had absorbed his very essence, thinks Viv, so much so that she had only finally realised he was dead when Gin had given it to her.

She walks out of the bedroom. It is time to give it to Gabe’s daughter.

Abbie’s eyes widen in initial surprise, then fill with unexpected tears. She takes the watch and stares at it as if it is her father’s face she sees instead of the cream countenance, the worn copper-gold surround. She massages the strap between finger and thumb and then puts it around her left wrist, pulling the strap tightly. Even on
the last bucklehole it still hangs loosely, and the face covers almost the width of her wrist.

“Thanks, Mom,” is all she says.

They set off in sombre mood. The journey will take up most of the day. It is Abbie’s choice, albeit a strange one. Viv herself would have taken Gabe’s ashes inland, to the farm maybe, or the mountains of Zululand that he had so loved. But she respects her daughter’s wish to do what she wants, and in some way she understands that for Abbie, this is perhaps a way of keeping her father’s memory close, here in the Cape.

They take the Ou Kaapse Weg to Noordhoek, turning right onto Main Road at Sun Valley, which will take them to Kommetjie and its surfer’s waves. About five kilometres after Scarborough, Viv turns into Plateau Drive, and after twice that distance, they reach the entrance to the nature reserve with its wild game, its resplendent fynbos. Antelope, baboons, zebra, even ostrich call this park home, but they see only a shy buck peering at them from the bank of forest.

You have to go to the bleak beaches of Cape Agulhas to reach the most southerly tip of Africa, but to Viv, Cape Point always feels like the end of the continent. The rocky promontory set at the end of the Cape peninsula has two other names, each ostensibly from
Bartholomeu
Diaz, the explorer.
Cabo das Tormentas
, Cape of Storms, he called it on his first voyage, trying to open a trade route between east and west. The second, the weather kinder, he dubbed it
Cabo de Boa Esperanto
. The Cape of Good Hope. She wonders what Diaz must have thought as he rounded the point on his third and final voyage. Perhaps his first impression the more accurate, as the storms took his ship down, all hands lost along with him. Perhaps both names are apt. I have known both, thinks Viv. Perhaps it is an apposite setting that Abbie has chosen after all.

The park is relatively quiet, with few tourists, and their path up the steep and windy walk to the top of the cliff is unimpeded. Ahead
is the most powerful lighthouse in the southern hemisphere. A
cormorant
swoops and dips on the air current, its cry carried away on the wind. Abbie walks ahead of them, clasping the urn to her chest.

“It must be hard to let her go,” says Gin, walking beside Viv.

She has echoed her thoughts. “Yes,” mutters Viv. She is mindful that Gin must be thinking of Ellie, who will never grow up. Gin has had to let so many people go.

“You never finished telling me about you and Nick Retief,” says Gin.

Nick
. Viv’s heart lurches at the sound of his name. She sees again the scattered folders on the floor of his office, his stricken look.

I promise never to hurt you, Vivienne
.

But he had. “It’s a long story,” she says, and then remembers Nick saying these exact words to her, that moonlit night at the coast.

“I think,” Gin is saying reflectively, “that whatever happened, you should try to repair it.”

Viv is surprised. Gin had never liked Nick. “Why do you say that?”

The wind is chill, and Gin pulls her cardigan closed, folds her arms across her chest as they walk. “Just because, well,” she stops, starts again, as if the words are forming as she thinks. “There’ve been too many unknowns in our lives. You know, what might have
happened
if Gabe had lived, what could have been had Simon and I not had the –” she exhales, continues, “accident.” She pronounces the word oddly, accented almost. “If Ellie hadn’t died.”

Viv, distracted, stumbles, goes down on one knee.

Gin reaches for her belatedly, grabs her arm. “Are you okay?”

Viv brushes her knee, nods. Abbie, ahead in her own world, does not look back. “Just a graze,” says Viv, but it has already started to throb. Her stocking has laddered, bloodied.

They start up the incline again.

Gin’s lips are pursed, her brow furrowed. After a while, she says,
“You should call him, Viv. See what happens. The thing is, Viv, you don’t want to spend the rest of your life wondering what might have been.”

Abbie has reached the top ahead of them. She stands at the edge before a stone wall. Without looking back at her mother and her aunt, she opens the lid, tips the urn, letting the wind gather up her father’s ashes and whip the grey swirl of them far out over the ocean.

Viv and Gin hang back, letting Abbie have this moment alone. They stand huddled together.

“She chose the windiest spot in the Cape,” says Viv, arms tightly clasped around herself.

“I’m not sure I’d like that,” muses Gin.

“What?” Wondering if Gin too would have chosen elsewhere for her twin.

“I’d have chosen the mountain. It makes me feel safe, its strength, its solidity. I guess the thought of Gabe – oh, I know it’s not him, really – but it kind of bothers me, the thought of him drifting
aimlessly
out there, amongst the sharks and the wrecks and the drowned.”

The drowned. Like Diaz
. Viv contemplates this for a while. Then she links her arm with Gin’s. “The current will bring him in, Gin. Somewhere he’ll land safely on a beach. Up the coast.” She looks far off into the distance as she adds, “Don’t worry, Gin, the sea will bring him home.”

Captain Bernard Strydom is standing in Nick’s office, idly leafing through the folders in the tray marked
Closed
. The filing is behind, the archives stuffed to overflowing, and hindered by the new computer system. Nick is catching up on paperwork. It is his day off, but since Viv, he has had little inclination to spend it alone.

And there is always paperwork.

Suddenly Strydom says, “McMann, that’s a name that brings back bad memories.”

“What do you mean?” Nick stiffens but keeps his voice relaxed, his manner casual. Strydom is a relic, a dinosaur left over from the time of apartheid, kept on in the spirit of reconciliation.
Ubuntu
, thinks Nick. Strydom was not as bad as some of them.

“
Ag, ja
,” sighs Strydom. He rubs at his moustache thoughtfully.

Nick waits, saying nothing, continues writing his report. But he is alert to the older man’s every move.

Eventually Strydom sighs again and says, “
Ja
, man, there was some business back at the TRC.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, thinks Nick, had exposed unimaginable horrors. Tales of torture and miscarriages of justice had made him ashamed of his race and more often of his
profession
. The truth had not set him free, he reflects. He stops writing, sits back in his chair, and looks across at the Captain intently.

Strydom seems barely aware of Nick’s regard. He has folded his arms and is staring off into the distance, remembering. “There was this fellow in the police, worked with me on a few cases, Du Plessis – we called him Doep – he was pulled up in front of the Commission for alleged abuse of prisoners.” He sighs again, as if his own words cause him pain. “
Ja
, anyhow, seems the fellow making the allegations – I forget his name – said that at the same time, there had been a white chap in the cell next door to him. And that Doep had tortured him too. They thought the chap was mentioning him in the hope that they could find the white guy to back up his story.”

Nick feels an old feeling rise inside him. He knows what Strydom is going to say. “And did they?” he asks, although he is sure he knows the answer.

“
Ag
, no,” says Strydom, not looking at him. “The guy was dead. Committed suicide, apparently. But then the chappie complaining to the TRC said that Doep had tortured the white oke as well, that Doep had murdered him, made it look like suicide.”

“And what was the white guy’s name?” he asks, but he knows. He asks only to prolong the interlude of innocence, to delay hearing confirmation of something he already knows.

“
Ja
, that’s the thing,” says Strydom, so quietly it is as if he talks only to himself, “the chap was called McMann.
Ja
, that’s it. Gabriel McMann.”

In the silence that follows, neither man looks at the other. Nick
closes his eyes briefly at the name, opens them to stare down at his unfinished report.

McMann. Gabriel McMann
.

He imagines her chestnut eyes looking up at him as he starts to tell her. And he will have to tell her this now. Even though it is apparent she never wants to see him again, he will have to see her and tell her. He, Nick Retief, will have to watch as his words rupture her world.

“What happened after that?” he asks, eventually, when the silence has solidified, thickened the atmosphere in his office so much he imagines he can taste the acridity of it.

“Well, they couldn’t really take it any further about the McMann boy. Seems his family never knew, I mean, never suspected it may have been anything other than suicide. So no one had come forward to the Commission asking about McMann. Anyhow, they didn’t find any direct relatives.”

Because, thinks Nick, they were either ill, abroad, or dead. And nothing obvious to make the connection with a Vivienne Weetman, a Vivienne Kassan. And, he supposes, little incentive, what with so many cases to pursue. He says nothing.

Strydom is stroking his moustache again. “
Ja
, bad business, that.”

“Did Du Plessis say anything about McMann?” Nick is surprised at the evenness of his own tone.

“
Jussus
, I can’t exactly remember now,” says Strydom. “Not
officially
, no. It was something like he said he hadn’t killed him but he knew there had been some sort of cover-up about the guy’s death. Said it was an accident or something, that in any event there was enough stuff to suggest McMann had killed himself.”

It was incredible that they could sit and talk about this man so dispassionately. A man had been tortured and killed, whether
accident
or murder, yet it had been passed off as suicide, and everyone went back to work the next day as if nothing had happened. He feels
an ancient anger rise in him. He suddenly has a desperate need to walk out of his office, breathe clean air, drive home, run on the sand. He longs also to see Vivienne, take her in his arms one last time, before it will be over between them forever.

But he stays seated in his chair, picks up his pen, turns it slowly in his hands. “And did he name any other men?”

“
Ag
, I can’t remember now. If he did, it would have had to be investigated separately. And you know, it would have depended on other people corroborating the allegations. Don’t know if anything could be proven. And McMann had left a note as I recall.”

“What happened to your colleague, Du Plessis?” he asks Strydom.

“Doep?” says Strydom, with a start. He sighs again, a big hearty outlet of breath. “
Ag
, man. The usual. Acquitted.”