Long Lies the Shadow (3 page)

Nick Retief, it appears, has not finished with Gin. He is waiting one day when they return from a drive into the centre of the city.

Gin had taken to accompanying Viv on her daily routine, waiting in the car while she made her rounds. Often Viv’s patients had become her friends, and she their unofficial counsellor after she had ceased to be their social worker. Sometimes on these journeys, Viv and Gin talked, sometimes not. Mostly Gin appeared content to see the city pass her by. The constant motion seemed to soothe her, like a child rocked to and fro. Viv had consciously avoided Kloofnek and the scene of the accident, although she knew Simon’s car would have since been towed away. Only in the city did wrecks get moved. Outside, alongside the open roads of this country they remained, rusty reminders of a turn too sharp, a tyre too smooth, a driver too careless.

But this day, they had been talking, exchanging fast chatter, until Viv had turned into the bottom of that hill. As Gin’s speech had trawled to a stop, Viv had realised.

“Oh, Gin, I’m sorry,” she said, checking her rear-view, signalling, making ready to turn off into one of the steep, narrow roads that fall away from the climb of the Kloof.

“No, Viv, it’s okay. It doesn’t matter.” Then Gin laughed. A strange gurgling sound in her throat, a foreign sound.

Viv was horrified. But then she realised nothing could ever erase that day for Gin. It did not matter whether she drove up that hill again or not. Simon’s blood would have faded from the tar, would
have been washed away down storm drains, but the dark stain of that day had set itself inside Gin’s soul.

“It doesn’t matter,” repeated Gin, her laughter turning to hiccoughs.

So Viv laughed then too, a tiny tinkling laugh. They drove home, taking the long route, talking about the recent rains, wondering at the ridiculous Anglicisation of Afrikaans names around the peninsula.

And there is Retief, waiting, just when they had been planning on opening a Cabernet and toasting their lives. Their lives, so full of sorrow, so full of pain.

Viv opens a bottle anyway, once they are inside. Once Gin, suddenly weary, has slumped into her favoured armchair near the window. The imminent night casts her into shadow. And neither Viv nor Nick Retief, standing near the lit kitchen, can see whether her eyes are open or closed.

Nick watches Viv pour the rich red into rounded glasses. She is tall, almost as tall as he, slim, and definitely attractive. In fact, you could say the woman was beautiful. She hands him a glass without ceremony but when he sips it she looks at him, amusement in her deep brown eyes. He judges her to be about the same age as her friend Gin, and some years older than himself. Nick likes the warmth in her voice, the russet swing of her hair, the palest hint of freckles on her fair skin. On any other day, he might find himself lingering, spending time with her. But it is Virginia McMann who must interest him for now, the quiet woman who sits in the chair near the window, possibly asleep, but just as possibly not.

Nick has seen Gin sleep.

“More wine, Mr Retief?” asks Viv, and he is surprised to find he has drained his glass.

“My name’s Nick,” he says.

She swirls the neck expertly as she pours generously.

Suddenly, from the darkness, Gin asks, “Why are you here, Mr Retief? I’ve told you all I can remember.” Her tone, if not for its fragility, would be hostile.

“Well, Miss McMann,” he starts, and then, glancing at the woman alongside, “Mrs Kassan…” He stops. He wants to acknowledge this woman, to include her, elicit her help even, in the hope she will draw out lucid details from her recalcitrant friend. He remembers noting Kassan as an Indian surname, noticing that the address Virginia McMann had given him was in Kenwyn, in the predominantly mixed-race area of Cape Town. But this woman is white. For a moment he wonders if she really is Mrs Kassan. Then he finds himself wondering where her husband is. Viv is leaning against the sideboard, glass of wine in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Watching him.

“I go by my maiden name now,” she says, “Weetman. But call me Vivienne, please.” She waves her cigarette at him, a dismissive gesture.

Again the hidden laugh in her brown eyes. Again he feels in some way mocked.

“Vivienne…” he says, turning back to talk into the lounge. He likes the sound of it. And he likes the fact that she uses her maiden name. He can no longer even make out Gin’s silhouette in the gloom. “Miss McMann,” he starts again, louder, assertively.

But Virginia McMann interrupts him. “Mr Retief, what happened to the other car, the other driver?”

“Well,
ja
, that’s the thing,” says Nick, slightly frustrated. “The other driver fled the scene. We have a couple of witnesses, you see.”

“Do you mean two, Mr Retief, as they do in England, or a few, as is the colloquialism here?”

If Gin is mocking him also, he does not know. Her voice is without emotion. He ignores the question and continues, “Apparently the car came out of one of the side roads then headed straight
for your vehicle.” Nick stops and clears his throat. “And another witness says the other driver may have been a woman.” He takes a sip of wine. “Your car swerved,” he continues, “but glanced off the other car. Your car rolled. Caught fire.” He stops, glances at Viv, then back to the dark interior where Gin sits. “The other car, according to the witness, stopped for a moment. Then it sped off again, turned down into Oranjezicht.”

Viv breaks the silence that follows. “You mean it was a hit-and-run?”

“Well,
ja
, Mrs… Vivienne.” Her slight frown does not mar her beauty. He turns back towards Gin. “There’s another thing. What was Doctor Gold’s state of mind?”

Gin’s voice sounds strained. “Simon? What do you mean?”

“How was he? Did you know he was seeing a psychiatrist? That he took antidepressants for some years?”

“Simon?” she says again. After a slight pause, her voice flat, she says quietly, “Simon was Simon. He was…”

He waits.

“Greyer,” says Gin finally. Then she is silent.

Viv moves closer to him. Her voice is quiet, meant for him alone. “Are you suggesting it wasn’t an accident?”

Nick turns to her, takes another sip of wine. “It’s possible, yes.”

Doctor Oldman, who is neither old nor a man, peers at her through thick-lensed spectacles. “You’re pregnant.”

Gin stares at her. The lenses have the odd effect of making the doctor’s pupils small and far away. “I can’t be,” she stutters. The doctor squints sceptically at her, and her glasses slip down her nose. “I mean –,” says Gin, “I thought –”. She does not finish.

Simon’s child.

Doctor Oldman shifts the black rims back up her thin nose. “About twelve weeks.”

Twelve weeks. Is it only twelve weeks since Simon took himself from her life as suddenly as he had re-entered it?

A white car, heading directly at them.

Gin had returned to England duty-bound, for want of purpose. The faintness in her head as the plane lifted from a tarmac rippled with heat, a nausea only now equated with something other than grief.

His hands, gripping the wheel.

She continues to stare at her General Practitioner. Doctor Oldman is new to the practice. In some ways she reminds Gin of Nick Retief, hiding behind the authority of her position. Perhaps from embarrassment, perhaps out of confusion at Gin’s silence, the doctor has started talking at her rapidly, writing notes, making arrangements for regular check-ups, midwife appointments, further tests.

His hand, outstretched to her.

This has been her journey back to London. Dirty, crowded, desperate London. Squashed tubes, uncaring commuters, angry cabs,
politics and rhetoric, repressed rage. Lonely London. But dear London, dependable London. Home all the same. Home. She had breathed a sigh of relief to escape her other home, the claustrophobia of Africa’s south. The air less free there, polluted with its past. Somehow England’s stains have bled with time into the very walls. Somehow they wound her less, somehow she feels less raw. Something endures here. Walking past the sturdy fragility of Parliament, the black majestic statues of Empire, the winter sun is a hazy shimmer of assurance on the other side. Over the bridge, the river beneath is a sheen of rippled glass. Watching the tiny white specks of seagulls soar above the polished gold Westminster spires. But lonely still. And grey, cold London. February, mercifully short given its infinite nights, mercifully gone before her return. March. She walked a lot, hoping Simon’s eyes would fade from her mind. The faintness and the nausea ever-present. Simon’s death, her father’s, these things have changed her.

She had sat, irretrievably distant, as her colleagues lectured at her after her absence. She had looked at them, once her friends, seen them hardened by avarice and changed by commerce. She had enough money to live on, albeit simply; she could survive. Her silence had elicited shock, her resignation recrimination.

Gin leaves the doctor’s surgery in a daze, starts the half-mile back up the Portobello Road, past the market stalls, back up to the Gate. The market is busy despite the damp, overcast afternoon. Lights are strung from stall to stall, looped against the dimness. April and its promise of spring. The daffodils have fought their bright and yellow way through the ground, pushing stiff green stems through wet earth with that unknown life force. The same life force as that within her.

Twelve weeks.

The days are longer and lighter now, though still grey. London has a thousand shades of grey. Green-grey, brown-grey, blue-grey; river, houses, sky.

Simon’s child. From his last two days of life.

“Can I help you with anything?” says a woman’s voice.

Gin, stopped at a bookstall, is staring sightlessly at the hard spines of children’s books. She focuses.
Peter Pan, The Famous Five, Nancy Drew, Grimm’s Fairytales
. Books from her own childhood, which her dad had read to her and her twin brother before bedtime. Back in the big house, upstairs. And she had always been afraid of the giants and the witches, of the
tokoloshe
, the long-tailed bogeyman that Evelyn their nanny had told them about. The
tokoloshe
was the reason Evelyn put her bed on bricks, as if on stilts. This, she had confided to Gin and a wide-eyed Gabe, was to fool the
tokoloshe
, as he was short. Shorter than them, even, she said. This way he could not reach Evelyn to play his evil tricks on her. They, of course, he could reach, and easily, and Evelyn never ceased to threaten them with the dreaded
tokoloshe
if in any way Gin or Gabriel irked her.

“That’s a lovely edition,” says the voice again. The stallholder is peering at her, much as Doctor Oldman had.

Gin pulls out the pale blue Barrie, pays for it, continues up the slope. She does not know why she bought the book; on a whim, for her child, but she had always hated Pan, its story sad to her and silly. But Gabe had loved it, had always wanted to play Peter with his swashbuckling adventures, swinging from tree to tree outside the house, outside Dad’s surgery, the one their father shared with his partner Jacob.

Gabe, always the leader. And she and their friends, Michael and Hannah, had to join in. Hannah, Jacob’s daughter. Michael, from down the road. And Gabe would make Hannah play Wendy while Gin and Michael would be lost boys. How apt, thinks Gin. As if Gabe knew. Knew he would never grow old. Knew Hannah, all grown-up, would marry, have children. Knew she and Michael would be lost, still lost.

The sky has started to spit, and Gin hastens. She is at the top of the hill, the market behind her, where the street turns into Pembridge Road, and soon she will be home. Home, her new house, into which she has yet to move properly. With her father’s death, she has inherited the building on Ladbroke Road. It has stood empty for a month now. Her father’s estate had been soon settled, his affairs as expected in impeccable order. But Gin has yet to haul her belongings from her rented flat above the music store on Lancaster Road. It is not far, and she has few possessions, but it is the flat she had shared with Michael, and somehow she is loath to leave it.

She misses Michael suddenly, misses his humour and his warmth. It must be thirteen years since he left London for Denmark. Michael, part of her life, always there. Michael to whom she had run when all fell apart, when Africa became intolerable those sixteen years back.

After Simon, Jonnie had saved her. But after Jonnie, it was Michael who had been her refuge. Michael the reason she is in London. London, the natural place to run.

Gin opens the door to the house. It opens into a tiled hall that
feels chilly at the afternoon’s end. Straight through from here is the huge kitchen with its original Butler sink, its new Aga. To the right is the lounge. She likes this room; it is cosy and has an open fireplace, a rarity in London now. To her left, the stairs mount immediately to the three bedrooms and two bathrooms set over the upper two floors. Below the kitchen is a big, empty basement. A house too large for one, thinks Gin. And then remembers.

Twelve weeks.

Simon’s child.

As once before.

She had not told the doctor.

Twelve weeks.

Gin feels a tightness clamp her head, her throat. Oh, God, she had not told the doctor. She moves fretfully from room to room, opening doors, switching on lights, pulling covers off furniture. When she is back in the lounge, she draws the thick damson curtains against the gathering dusk. Gin stacks the grate with paper, cones, and kindling, lights the fire. It smokes and falters but the chimney, recently swept, pulls the ash-grey surge of it upwards. Slowly life seeps into the grate, and with it the house starts to warm, to breathe. I can be happy here, thinks Gin. She remembers her father talking of the place with affection. His summers in Scotland, his school terms here. She feels warmer now, the fire has dispelled the cold if not the fear. She wishes her mother were alive still. Her mother, who would have loved to be a grandmother; her mother, who would have helped.

She wants to speak to Michael. Michael who will understand. Michael who had held her head while she vomited, Michael who had put her in the cab and taken her to the hospital, Michael who had cleaned up the blood and tidied the flat while she was gone. Michael who had brought her back, sat up beside her, and Michael who had lain in the narrow bed holding her to him all night.

But it is not Michael who answers the extended Danish ring. Instead it is his wife Kristina. Kristina who had married him, and Kristina who had taken him away. She never recognises my voice, thinks Gin, going through the motions, asking Kristina how she is. She waits for the woman to clip her usual false pleasantries in reply. No doubt for Michael’s sake, thinks Gin. Instead Kristina’s tone is brittle.

“Michael’s not here.” A beat. “I thought you’d be the first to know.”

“I’ve been… away,” starts Gin. Her thoughts catch up. Know what? Where is Michael? She feels her breath quicken, shallow. “Know what?”

Another pause. “Try his mobile.”

“I don’t have it.”

Everything smashed or burned in the crash, her own mobile included. She manages to tell Kristina she has lost it, writes Michael’s number down with a trembling hand. She repeats it to Kristina.

“Yes.”

“Thank you.” But the line is already dead.

“Gin!” says Michael, his baritone warm, unchanged. “How are you? Where are you? I’ve been trying to get you for ages. Did you get my text? I’ve been a bit worried, actually.”

“My mobile. Was. Broken,” she says. Then, “Michael, where are
you
? Kristina, Kristina said –”. What had she said? Kristina had only given her his number.

“I’ve moved from Praesto, Gin. I’m teaching in Naestved.”

“Teaching? Since when do you teach?”

He laughs. “Since I did a teaching qualification. It’s a temporary job. I’m here till June. In fact, I’ve applied for a post in London after this.”

She cannot find her voice. She is longing to see him, to talk with him face to face. Hope is an emotion almost too much to bear.

“Gin? Are you still there?”

She makes a sound like
Yes
.

“How was home?” He sounds concerned now, perhaps remembering her dad.

No one will even have told him about Simon, Gin realises. A desperate loneliness takes hold. “Michael,” she says, and it is like a sob. “Michael, I’m pregnant. Mikey, I need you. Please come to London.”