Even though I was only five, I remember a particular holiday Robbie did manage, in the earlier years, when our family had its closest stab at normalcy: 1970 somewhere near Knysna. Rising early every day, Robbie, who was nine, and I would walk to the beach, our reluctant dad in tow. He never was a morning person, and Mother needed time to titivate, as he called it. She’d join us later, her make-up perfect, her face protected under a huge sun hat, giant sunglasses shading her eyes.
It was only on holiday that Mother relaxed enough not to criticise our every move. In fact, on some days she was quite transformed, picking up the Frisbee and tossing it with practised strokes that had us ducking, diving and exhausted within half an hour. She even dived after the Frisbee into the water once, sending Robbie and me into peals of laughter when her fancy pink hat flopped over her face. The hat dried all wonky, so after that Mother only wore it in the garden when she was killing those yellow-and-black rose beetles by dropping them into methylated spirits.
Those beetles came back every year, and Robbie always refused to have anything to do with the extermination. So I’d go get the tightly closed meths bottle and the jars from the garage, and Mother and I bonded in our killing fields with our own brand of Agent Orange – except ours was purple.
Robbie adored teasing Mother, and sometimes he had her giggling like a girl. She would ruffle her hands across his head, and comment on how well he was catching a ball or writing or building his LEGO. But I liked being at the beach with her more than anything else. She was very concerned about my skin, and would rub sun cream over the parts of my body not covered by my swimming costume. I loved the touch of her hands on those days; gentle, yet thorough. It made me feel cared for, loved.
Dad would sit on his towel with the day’s paper – he was a bit of a news addict. “Not sure what that Ringo Starr is going to do now the Beatles have disbanded,” he’d say, or, “Does Vorster seriously think this Bantustan thing is going to work?”
He wouldn’t expect an answer, but sometimes Mother would smile at him and say something surprising like, “Ringo was a star drummer before he even became part of the Beatles. He wrote ‘Octopus’s Garden’, you know.” Where Mother got titbits like that I never knew, but she was an avid reader, something she passed on to Robbie but not to me. I could never sit still long enough to bother. Besides, I just liked the sound of her voice as we sat on either side of her for our bedtime story. She could make her voice boom like she was talking down an amplifier, or go soft and silky like a snake. Robbie, always more affectionate, would throw his arms around Mother and kiss her on the cheek.
“I love you overcountable to infinity,” he would tell her.
“You too, kiddo,” she said back.
Every afternoon on our holiday, Mother would disappear for a few hours. At first we looked forward to it, because we knew Dad would sneak us an ice cream, despite the fact that we were supposed to be on a special diet that Mother’s cancer support group had recommended for Robbie.
When it came to being ill, Robbie wasn’t like me. He submitted to Mother’s care with a patience I longed for. He seemed able to do things for the simple reason that it made others happy. And Robbie made me happy like nobody else ever would or could.
The holiday seemed to make Robbie stronger. He didn’t tan as easily as I did, but within a week his body was browner and less ghostly. He made enough friends for both of us. I trailed behind him like a spoilt pet, joining in volleyball and Frisbee games with the big kids, when Robbie could manage them.
At night we shared a room in the self-catering unit our parents had rented, and Robbie would read to me by torchlight or scare me with ghost stories, setting my imagination racing with images of blood, guts and gore. Together we created a fantasy world entirely obscure to my parents, which delighted us all the more.
Yet despite these pockets of joy, there remained a tension we couldn’t escape. My mother couldn’t keep her eyes off Robbie, so concerned that he would tire or hurt himself. And when my dad eventually lugged a deck chair down to the beach for her, she couldn’t relax, was constantly reaching for the sunscreen, and sipping obsessively from a large bottle of water. In the afternoons, she ordered us off the beach to rest.
And she prayed. A lot. Perhaps even on the beach. We said grace before every meal: Thank you for the delicious food. May it bring good health to Robbie and help him through his recovery. Amen. I didn’t resent the lack of a mention for the rest of the family: it seemed right that God’s attention should be on my brother. But it also seemed that Mother was spending a great deal more time with God than with Robbie. She would walk or drive to the nearest Catholic church for confession every afternoon, returning hours later – cheeks red, eyes bloodshot – to help herself to a whiskey. Dad would open a bottle of wine for dinner and she’d drink a lot more of it than he did. Thinking about it now – and I have enough time to do that – I wonder if those copious amounts of water and the lie-ins on that holiday were the after-effects of an almost constant hangover. Ironically, this only continued while Robbie was alive and it didn’t seem to affect her management of our household.
It took my dad’s heart attack to change that.
*
At school I had one special friend.
Annie was the purest sunshine. She was blonde, and pale, with sparkling white teeth, and thick glasses that perched on her nose so she looked constantly curious. Though she wasn’t beautiful, she drew people to her like gravity. For reasons I never understood, she locked onto me. She didn’t care about my constant need to impress everybody: the best Barbie, the most books, the prettiest clothes. At thirteen, I would be the first person in our class to lose her virginity – and to a boy three years older than me, who went to Bishops, and whose parents had three BMWs and a palace just next to Kirstenbosch.
Annie was captain of the netball team and a provincial swimmer. Most of the time she had a salmon-pink slice off the skin of her nose, and freckles from spending too much time in the sun. She wore her socks rolled into sausages over her ankles, and sewed up the hem of her skirt so it just covered her bum. Annie organised sleepovers and could cook the meanest Thai curry – with prawns!
She is also the person who introduced me to my first husband, Rajit – perhaps one of the only things about our friendship I truly regret. Of course, Sanusha would resent my saying that, for obvious reasons. Sanusha can bristle even at the slightest comment; she’s always been so touchy.
As far as I recall, Rajit and Annie knew each other from some inter-schools debate on whether the British Royal Family were entitled to privacy since the recent birth of Prince William. They were on opposing teams. Annie’s team won (of course), but he took the beating so well that she invited him to a party that weekend at her house in Rondebosch. It went without saying that I would be there. One look at Rajit and I thought I was in love. He was a delicious boy, even then – dense eyelashes, almond-pool eyes, and taller than me, which in those days was unusual. His skin didn’t have a trace of acne, and he already had wide shoulders, a perfect narrow waist and a voice for radio. Later, when we were first married, we would lie in bed and I would listen to the rumbling of his deep baritone. Just that voice alone could make my stomach twist tighter than a French braid.
That night, Rajit noticed me immediately, just as Annie had expected him to. Annie liked to matchmake and the fact that he was Indian attending a party in the less-than-liberal Southern Suburbs made it even more exciting. My parents hated the very idea of him immediately; my friends thought I was daring as hell.
“It’s not that I’m racist, darling,” Mother said, “but just think of the cultural differences! What about Christmas?”
My dad said less, which meant more. It wasn’t like him to be so silent on this sort of issue, especially when it was clear he agreed with Mother. Actually, it wasn’t so long afterwards that he dropped down dead on the contour path near Rhodes Memorial. He’d been training for the Argus with his mate Denzel, who then told me I was the death of my dad, with my wild ways, terrible marks, and cavorting with that “curry muncher”.