He lingered indecisively in the passage leading to her room. Her weekend bag was standing in the passage and her door was ajar. He wouldn’t do it normally, but he went up to the half-open door. He knocked gently, called her name. No reply. He knocked again, more loudly. No reply. He pushed the door open further and peered into the room.
The curtains were drawn. Charelle was lying on the floor, on her stomach, her head turned awry, her cheek to the floor. ‘My God, Charelle,’ he exclaimed, and went on his haunches next to her, ‘what happened?!’ She opened her eyes slightly. A smear of bloody spittle dribbled from her mouth. She groaned. No blood on the floor or on her clothes, as far as he could see. She was wearing pyjamas, one leg had shifted up to her knee (delicate ankle and calf). No sign of any external injury. He didn’t know what to do. He cautiously touched her upper arm. ‘Charelle,’ he said. She opened her eyes a bit wider this time. She didn’t seem to recognise him. Should he phone an ambulance? She seemed to be breathing normally.
Very cautiously he tried at least to turn her on her back. He placed a pillow under her head. Apart from the blood-flecked foam in the corners of her mouth she seemed unharmed. She tried to sit up. He helped her up carefully, so that she could sit on the chair. Her hair frizzed up wild and dusty around her head. The wooden floor had left an imprint on her cheek. She still seemed not to recognise him.
‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘Did somebody hurt you?’ She licked her dry lips. ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘I’ll fetch you some water.’ His hands trembled as he held the glass to her mouth. Her gaze was slow, as if she could not register him. She frowned slightly, her eyes oddly sleepy and unfocused, and then apparently all at once she recognised him.
‘What happened, Charelle?’ he asked, once she’d taken a sip of water. ‘Are you okay?’
‘A fit,’ she said. ‘I suffer from epilepsy.’
‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘And you were at home alone.’
‘It’s okay,’ she said. She spoke slowly, as if her tongue were an encumbrance in her mouth.
‘Should I take you to the doctor?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s okay.’
‘I’ll make us some tea,’ he said, ‘for the shock.’
She nodded.
His hands were still trembling as he made the tea. Tea with lots of sugar for both of them. He’d had a fright. He knew nothing about epilepsy. Should she sleep, should he try to keep her awake? What if she went into a coma?
He sat by her. They drank their tea. When she’d finished, she said she was tired, she was going to bed. She always slept after a seizure. He wanted to help her to lie down on the bed, but she said it was okay, she was used to it, she’d manage.
He went and lay on his bed. Uncertain what to do. Perhaps she shouldn’t be left on her own after a fit.
That evening he heard her in the kitchen. She was wearing a dressing gown, she was moving slowly, a bit unsteadily, as if not quite trusting the ground under her feet. He forestalled her; I’m making us some tea, he said, sit down. She obeyed. They sat together at the kitchen table having their tea. For the second time today, he thought. At first they’d hardly seen each other, now they were taking tea together for the second time in a day. Her face was sleepy, her eyes still slightly unfocused, she looked as if she hadn’t entirely recovered her wits. There was a bruise on her right cheekbone and her lower lip was swollen. Her hair was still curling wildly around her head.
‘Is there anything in particular that causes such a fit?’ he asked.
At first she just shrugged; anything, she said. Then she said, stress. Then she said: ‘There’s somebody after me. I think he was here this afternoon.’
‘Who is it?’ he exclaimed, shocked.
‘Somebody,’ she said. ‘Somebody who can’t take no for an answer. He was here with his friends.’
‘In a black car with tinted windows?!’ he asked.
She shook her head. She didn’t know. She hadn’t really noticed. He’d been at the gate. She didn’t want to let them in. She’d had enough of his nonsense. Then he’d threatened her. Then they’d cleared out.
What time was that?
She didn’t know. She hadn’t noticed. Round about four o’clock. She’d only just arrived home. Desirée had dropped her here. She’d just dumped her stuff. Seen Nick wasn’t here.
And when did she have the fit?
A while later. Five o’clock or thereabouts.
Chances were good, he thought, that the same fuckers who’d pestered her had sworn at him. They might think she was living with him, that they were lovers or something.
She’d started feeling odd on Saturday already, she said, but she hadn’t really taken any notice of it, because she hadn’t had a fit for a long time, and she was enjoying the weekend.
Who is Desirée? he asked.
She was a friend of her older sister. She’d known her all her life. They came from the same town. She was teaching at the university, gender studies.
And the man who was after her?
Oh, he was just a nuisance guy. It was someone who’d fancied her for ever, from schooldays. But she’d never wanted to have anything to do with him.
He wasn’t part of a gang or something, was he?
Maybe. She didn’t know. She thought his friends might be skollies. Tik-heads, some of them.
Skollies, gangsters, tik-heads, what’s the difference, he thought. All of them spelt trouble. For her, and perhaps for him as well.
‘You must be careful,’ he said.
She nodded.
At first she’d been just a girl renting a room from him, and now he felt – against his will – responsible for her safety.
Six
Two days a week Nick taught at a small private art school just outside Stellenbosch. He was substituting for one of the lecturers, a woman who’d suddenly had to take sick leave. He could have stayed on in the Stellenbosch house after he and Isabel split up, but he’d found the house and the town claustrophobic. There was nothing to keep him there any longer. The house had been sold. He’d bought the house in Cape Town; Isabel had gone her way. They were childless.
The students were mainly children of well-to-do parents. He didn’t expect much of them; it was rare for a student to surprise him. This was just a temporary job he was doing. His heart was hardly in it.
The day was oppressive. It was hot. The heat had persisted without a break for four days now. In the last few days there’d been fierce mountain fires around Stellenbosch and in the Franschhoek valley. No wonder that tempers were getting frayed: the terrible heat, the wind, the strikes everywhere, bloody confrontations with the police, public unrest.
Today he had to discuss his students’ projects with them. His first appointment was with one of the few students whose work interested him. The young man sat hunched up in his chair facing him, gazing fixedly at a point on the carpet. Spoke in a monotone. Long silences. He didn’t like talking about his past, he said. Spent a lot of time on the streets. What he wanted to evoke was his happy childhood. He wanted to work in a variety of media: painting, drawing, sculpting, text and film. He slowly edged a file across the desk to Nick. Nick paged through it: images of headless seagulls, hotels with broken windows, a deserted sanatorium. A photo of a small wax figurine of a child, his eyes sealed with pins. (If these were memories of a happy childhood, he didn’t want to know what the contrary would