Homemaking for the Down-At-Heart

FINUALA DOWLING

Homemaking

for the

Down-at-Heart

KWELA BOOKS

For my mother, Eve Dowling (1921-2010), known to her radio fans as Eve van der Byl, homemaker par excellence.

OCTOBER 2006

Margot stood beside the bed and looked down at her pillow. She was back – oh glory, she was back at the mattress. Time really did pass. It lifted heavy events and moved them away: a kind of temporal soil creep.

Curtis was asleep. He’d folded the blanket so that it covered her side but not his – he needed only a sheet. She still felt astonished by his considerateness. She’d thought all men would turn out to be Leroy eventually. Margot lifted the bedclothes as quietly as she could. Even so, Curtis was immediately awake, reaching for his knife. He saw her and relaxed. Although the room was dark, she knew exactly the expression of self-deprecation on his face, the look that said: Forgive me, you know I am a fool.

Did you have a good show? he asked as he eased back onto the pillow.

The usual, she whispered. The ones who don’t love me always phone first. One guy suggested that I kill myself on air.

I’d like to kill him, the bastard, murmured Curtis. He held her till she was warm, then reluctantly let her go.

She curled up, desperate to hook her sleep onto this last hour of darkness. But the night’s programme insisted on replaying itself in her head. Why had she been so ungracious to her first callers? Why did she stoop to their level? I will if you will – that would come back to her as surely as acid reflux. Why didn’t she take the whole thing slower, easier; trust that Truman and the others would eventually phone in with something comical, absurd or philosophically acute? She was supposed to know how to broadcast, but in truth she felt quite unrelated to each successful programme. The duds, on the other hand, were unquestionably her spawn.

Stop talking about yourself. Why not kill yourself on air? All she’d asked was what they thought it was all about, life. Why do we carry on? It was a valid question. Are we here merely as cheerleaders for our children? Pretending to our sons and daughters that their lives will turn out to be meaningful and satisfying, when in fact they’ll end up wishing their lives away in unrewarding jobs. And then, just when they have some modicum of success, they’ll be obliged to care for us, their parents, now in our dotage and needing our nappies changed, and there will be yet more wishing away of time.

Of course the people who phoned in did not agree. They thought it a privilege to care for their sick and their dying. Daughters looked after their mothers for years and then, when their mothers finally died, their mothers-in-law. They felt bleak, yes, but also righteous.

Driving home from New Century Media on the deserted freeway she’d thought about how – perhaps not in the mansions on the mountain slopes, but down on the vast flats, in the suburbs that clung to the railway line – every second, third or fourth home housed an invalid of some kind. These were modern-day monasteries, with soft-footed carers who sluiced out potties, puréed food and turned the bedridden at appointed hours.

Even Truman, her stalwart, had his father living with him, or rather dying with him – it was bowel cancer, he’d told her tonight. Only dagga helped, said Truman, and I’m not talking about the patient.

She’d thought about what waited for her at home. Even at that pre-dawn hour, her mother might be awake, wandering about the house, seeking the type of care Margot’s callers gave so selflessly. She could not do it. Margot did not have a vocation, and she lacked empathy. If only she could have her old self back, the one who tiptoed namelessly down sloping paths between beach grass, hating no one. Surely she’d had a self like that once? She didn’t want to be this full of spit, hiss and hit. From tomorrow (or rather, later today), she would practise being nice to people; she would speak in the elided language of obituaries. Lovely, she would be lovely.

In the tall, narrow house, pain woke Zoe. It lodged in her hip and shot down her left leg. Bella licked the old woman’s hand sympathetically as she fumbled for the light switch and struggled out of bed. Among the cluttered objects on her bedside table – photographs of Pia and Margot, jars of pills she couldn’t open, her reading glasses – was a silver bell with a wooden handle. She did not know why it was there. She took small steps that propelled her unsteadily towards the door. At least there was not a vast surface area to cover before she reached something she could clasp for support. This bedroom was smaller than the one she’d had before, closer to the bathroom. But it wasn’t the bathroom that she needed; she’d already used her potty. With her palms against the walls, Zoe made her way up to the top landing, past the closed doors of her daughter’s and granddaughter’s bedrooms and into the enclosed balcony that served as TV room and general lookout. Mr Morland was asleep in his La-Z-Boy, an empty bottle of beer and his failed Lotto numbers beside him.

Zoe stood staring over Mr Morland until he started awake. I’m looking for a box of matches, she said.

I don’t think so, said Mr Morland. Probably something else. Tissues? A blanket?

Zoe thought as hard as she could. The thing she wanted was a picture, but the matching word had gone away behind a hedgerow. The vessels in her brain were jammed with backed-up traffic. Some of the highways were narrowed with orange cones; other roads had become sinkholes, and no traffic could pass. But her mind was not easily defeated. It had marshals – disaster-management officers in high-visibility bibs – who redirected Zoe’s thought processes down little-known back roads, scenic detours with backdrops painted by Escher or Dali. These byways took her exhilaratingly close to her destination.

It is a little communion wafer that takes my leg away.

Ah, said Mr Morland. Disprin.

I could take a lot now and kill myself.

I’ll give you one, said Mr Morland.

Will that do the trick?

Maybe, said Mr Morland. Just wait here while I fetch it.

He settled her into his La-Z-Boy and covered her with his blanket.

Mr Morland stared into the bathroom cabinet. He could see people milling about on the other side of a river. They seemed to know Zoe and be ready for her. One of the cohort looked like his own mother. She beckoned Zoe, but then dropped her arm as if she accepted that her old friend was not coming immediately.

He brought Zoe a painkiller.

You’re very kind – who are you? asked Zoe, as Mr Morland handed her a plastic cup.

I’m Percy. Do you remember, your friend Esther’s boy?

Ah. I inherited you. But your name is actually Mr Morland.

Yes, you call me that.

Esther used to wonder why you never married. Do you bat for the other side?

No way! I’d like to marry. Maybe a Chinese girl.

He replaced the CD in his player with Tibetan meditation music and pressed play. Zoe closed her eyes. When she was asleep, he lifted her up and carried her back to her own bed. He was a burly man, and used to this pietà in reverse.

Mr Morland was hungry now. Whenever he came back to his body after an encounter with the spirits, he needed fuel. He padded downstairs to the kitchen, took a wad of bread slices and spread them with butter. He stood in front of the open fridge door for a moment before locating his polony roll. Some with thickly cut polony and some with Marmite. The Marmite jar was down to its last eighth. Mr Morland preferred the look and taste of things in a newly opened jar. He found the new one in the grocery cupboard, unscrewed its lid and stuck his buttery knife into the glossy paste. He was never quite sure what to do with his knife afterwards, so he placed it gently on a clean tea towel that lay folded on the kitchen table.

He liked the way the kitchen table looked now that Curtis had sanded it down and oiled it. He’d watched Curtis using a glass shard to remove the paint. The house had definitely changed for the better in the two years since Margot’s boyfriend moved in. Sash windows, once jammed shut with layers of enamel paint, now slid open with ease. Beetle-eaten cupboard doors had become winter firewood as Curtis slowly fixed the neglected house. But there was always more to do.

The front door is jamming again, he’d said to Curtis recently. We should do something about it. That very evening he’d come home after doing a reading for the wealthy Cleatons and found Curtis with sandpaper in hand.

Margot was more peaceful with Curtis here. She was difficult to live with at the best of times, though; got het up over small things. She complained about his polony roll in the fridge. Why, he did not know. If she would only slow down, sit quietly, then he could put his hand on her shoulder and absorb some of her negative energy into himself. But she walked fast through the house, picking up newspapers and mugs with an aura that said, Don’t touch me.

Mr Morland did not believe that Curtis would stay. He had heard Curtis recite The Song of Wandering Aengus. That was a poem for a man who liked sleeping under the stars. Mr Morland had read Curtis’s palm and had seen its wavering heart line. Curtis had a craftsman’s hands: tanned, calloused, nicked. One of his fingers was lame, its top joint permanently bent down and the nail missing, though not from woodworking gone wrong. An old snake injury, apparently. Mr Morland stretched out his own left hand: it was cool, slender and white, with thin, tapering digits. At this very moment, his index finger was tipped with butter. He wiped it on the tea towel.

Since he was the only one awake in the sleeping house, Mr Morland went into the study to use Margot’s computer. He sucked on a toothpick while he looked up his favourite Internet sites. He liked the thought of an Asian girlfriend. She would understand him, and not mind about wet bath mats or large plastic-wrapped polony rolls. She would hang out the former, and replace the latter with tasty stir-fries. Or, if he didn’t want to give up polony, she would understand. He typed in Thai dating and Google returned hundreds of thousands of results. The girls were pretty; they were innocent-looking but also quite naughty. He watched a clip of two girls massaging each other with oil. He felt that they wanted him to watch, and to derive pleasure from watching, which he did.

Curtis dreamt that cattle thieves crossed the Lesotho border, cut the fence of his father’s farm and stole the Ngunis and the newly arrived dairy cows. He woke in a panic. What if Jacob Zuma became president? Alarm sent his heart sprinting. He wrapped the cuff of his blood pressure monitor around his wrist and pressed start. The reading came up on the digital face – 182/110! Should he ask Mr Morland to drive him to False Bay Hospital? Perhaps not. Last time this happened (199/103), his blood pressure had dropped back close to normal in Mr Morland’s car as they headed towards Outpatients.

Mr Morland had been unaffected by the lateness of the hour, or Curtis’s panic when he shook him awake in his La-Z-Boy. No, man, fine. Of course, he’d said. Mr Morland usually slept in his tracksuit pants and T-shirt, so he’d been ready to go. He’d held the steering wheel lightly with one hand, his relaxed posture emphasised by the slight recline of his driver’s seat. You’re in the departure lounge of life, hoping that your plane will be delayed, he’d joked.

Curtis had laughed and felt healed. Was that all it was? Mr Morland had touched him, too, lightly on the wrist with his long white fingers – hardly a touch even, just letting his fingertips hover over Curtis’s pulse.

It was the farm that was making his heart sprint. He must write to the old man or phone him. He would set out a last-minute plan for the pasture. The lands were brown, only roughly ploughed and still awaiting harrowing, liming, fertilising, seeding. The dairy contract – if his father would only agree to take the cows on – turned on weight gain. But how would the Jersey and Friesian heifers gain weight without pasture? His father would overlook this fact. He would keep spending the notional earnings, living off the happily calculated profit of hundreds of calves at R150 per calf per month. But without pasture, the dairy’s money would have to go on feed purchased from the co-op. Then his father would say, You see, that’s why I prefer a sturdy indigenous breed!

Since he could not sleep, he might as well get up. He slid quietly past the sleeping Margot. The feint-ruled page of his mind listed this day’s tasks: make porridge, contact the old man, work in the garden and, if he only could, make a difference. But first, exercise. He stood on the scale: seventy-five kilograms exactly. It never changed. On his way downstairs he greeted Mr Morland, who was furtively emerging from the study. In the kitchen, Curtis poured himself a cup of water and ate a banana. He placed the younger man’s buttery knife in the sink and the smeared tea towel in the washing machine to await the next load. He laced his running shoes and apologised to Bella: Your turn later, old girl.

Outside it was still dark. The night’s high tide had left a salty film over the foliage and parked cars. Fishing boats were puttering out towards Hangklip and Cape Point, their lights gleaming through the morning mist. An owl hooted sweetly from the chimney top as Curtis stretched his muscles in preparation for his morning run.

Good. If he set out late on a Sunday he was liable to find his path blocked by people who were there for the view, or trying desperately to reduce their weight by lumbering two abreast towards a deli breakfast in Kalk Bay. At this hour he was alone except for an occasional cyclist flashing by in reflective shoes.

Curtis started down the stone steps from the old house. He could not get used to living here, perpendicular to the sea. And the sea itself not a clear view, but criss-crossed with telephone wires and jostling roofs. The farm boy within wanted the open plain and an uninterrupted horizon. He needed an overgrown river bank and, leading to it, the kind of dirt road so remote that passing vehicles halt for a greeting.

He started to run, not too fast though, because this steep downhill section could damage the knees. Because it had won no prizes, Curtis did not rate his body highly. Yet every morning he woke with a sense that his muscles were asking him: What, Curtis, what? Push us. See if you can find our limit. His body was like a tenor who knows he can sing an A above top C, but who’s only asked for top C. Though he was a humble man in most respects, he noticed with something like condescension that other men of his age preferred to sit on benches; that they limped or stayed at home. Six decades on and his heart still keenly pumped extra oxygen and glucose to his thighs and calves; his lungs took in volumes of air without complaint. He moved lightly over the morning pavements.

Six pairs of white bloomers hung on a line on the balcony that overlooked the park. He jogged past the swings and then turned left and down the cobbles past the French bakery. He could smell the artisan bread baking on its racks and see the bakers leaning on the counter, talking over a first cup of coffee. On the kerb at the bottom of Rosmead Road, someone had left out their Monday trash on a Sunday. Dogs or vagrants had strewn the contents. Bad for Jo’s business. Perhaps he could come down later with a pair of rubber gloves. Round the corner, the car park waited quietly for its surfers and Anglicans. Beyond the rusty fence, the sea looked cold and churned up. Two homeless people lay asleep in the doorway of the community centre.

Helga in skintight Lycra swung onto the pavement ahead of him, at the dangerous corner where Quarterdeck Road joins Main. What a treat to have Helga’s bright, blonde ponytail and perfect bottom in front of him! She was so honed – a thoroughly drilled body. He would like to see her naked. His stride was too long: he would have to overtake.

He enquired politely after Helga’s health. When she smiled at him, he felt the old molecular pull on his glands. The vein in his temple pulsed. His body lay in wait for his next thought. Almost certainly, he was about to say something cheeky. Why not? He had made no pledge to Margot. He was free, except that when you have lived for a length of time with someone you are not free. He felt he could not mention Misty’s name at home, for example. But he was free. It was not that he did not adore Margot. It was just that sometimes you met another person, and you were drawn to the new person. He had as good as told her. Right at the beginning, he had given her a greeting card with a picture of a gaucho riding into the sunset. The card was unequivocal in its message. Margot surely understood what he meant by that picture. He still wanted to see other women naked. There were good scientific reasons why men had to be this way, act this way. It was all there in the literature. And here was Helga, as clear as an illustration in a Life Sciences textbook.

You’ve got a smile that would make a guard dog break its chain, he said.

I hope not, said Helga.

They ran on in silence. He would chat if she showed any inclination. But he would not leave her to run on her own. She needed his protection. At Danger Beach, they ducked under the subway arch. A big tide had caused sand to bank up against the railway walls and then collapse. Part of the concrete housing of the mountain-stream outflow pipe had floated away, travelled metres along the beach as if it weighed no more than a cuttlefish. He remarked on this, and added a thought about rising sea levels. Helga said she didn’t believe in global warming. Some people also doubted the moon landings, Margot had told him.

They ran across the grassy outcrop and down between the bathing boxes onto the concrete pathway. Curtis made sure he ran on the inside lane, where the darkened subways opened onto the catwalk. He checked his Bowie knife in its sheath. Make my day, thought Curtis. Let some wasted loser with a tik-infused brain just make my day.

The sun was rising over the sea on the right of the joggers, warming up the night-blue mountain range and its long, cold kloofs. As they rounded the back of Bailey’s Cottage and Muizenberg beach opened before them, Helga mentioned that she and her partner were planning a weekend away at a national park.

Curtis could not understand his surge of jealousy. Who was Helga to him? Why did it matter to him that Helga’s partner was taking her away for a weekend? It must be the old rivalry that he had with all men. You could not trust men – they took women away to national parks. Even Leroy made his hackles rise occasionally. He didn’t like the way Leroy greeted Margot with a kiss. It was insinuating;