Lindi did what she always did when these thoughts came to the surface: she gave herself a gentle ticking off and willed them away. Self-control had always seemed a strength to her but it invariably felt like a dowdy little virtue against the expansive mood that was her family’s natural state. She’d spent so many years being the practical child, the one who injected a note of realism into a conversation, that she could no longer tell whether that was the way she was wired or whether it was merely a reaction to her family. She preferred the latter explanation, but worried the former was more accurate. What if she was always going to be the serious little girl in the photograph, the one who wanted to be spontaneous and free, like her brother, but so often retreated into studied reliability?
A clinking of bottles down in the cellar ended this train of thought.
Harry was dusting off a couple of bottles of his precious Meerlust Rubicon. This choice was a kind of vinic semaphore – it was his way of saying how special this meal was going to be. Every year an old friend in Johannesburg, Marney van Rensburg, would send a case of Rubicon. It was a private joke. Back in the old days, when Harry worked for Marney on the Rand Daily Mail’s special investigations team, a particularly incisive piece of journalism was always celebrated with a bottle of the Meerlust vineyard’s finest. Never mind that it cost a hefty portion of their joint pay-packets – though mostly they found a way of hiding it in their expense claims.
As he brought the first glass to his lips the older man would always lean back in his chair and say, ‘One day, when the revolution comes, Harry, we’ll all be drinking this stuff. But till that day – we mustn’t let the bastards have it all to themselves. Drink up, man.’
The memory always brought a smile to Harry’s lips.
He emerged from the cellar, saw Lindi, and put his arm around her. They stood in silence together, staring at the collection of memories on the wall. He glanced from a childhood photo of Lindi to the woman beside him now. A flick of the eye but a journey across time. Not for the first time he marvelled at the change. When had it happened? He’d seen it all and yet he’d seen nothing. It occurred to him that the change was less to do with individual features and more to do with the way they had accommodated each other. He could remember how, as a child, her ears, her lips, her eyes had all seemed to compete with each other. The ears stood out too much, the lips were too full and the eyes too big. Each seemed to make a claim to be the defining feature. He thought back to the way Lindi used to fold her lips inwards in a self-conscious attempt to hide them. And how those big, staring eyes made her look as if she were in a constant state of shock. Now her features had settled into happy coexistence in a face that had once been round but now resembled a heart. Those large green eyes – ‘At least one of my genes survived,’ Helen would say – were no longer out of proportion; instead they lit her face. And her ears, well, you couldn’t even see them now, buried under a tumbling wave of thick brown hair.
He could never look at her without being overcome with a powerful protective urge. There was something vulnerable about her. In truth, he’d always known what it was. Lindi needed protecting from herself, her self-imposed need to be conscientious, to be productive.
As his mind focused back into the present, Harry wondered how long he had been standing there with Lindi: he hadn’t even noticed that she’d snuggled her head into his shoulder.
‘I’m proud of you, my girl,’ he said leaning down, kissing the top of her head.
It was a chilly September day, one of those that takes everyone by surprise after the gentleness of a wishy-washy British summer, and there was something rather comforting about an oven stuffed with a joint of beef, potatoes and Yorkshire puddings sitting in sizzling hot trays. Besides, a roast lunch had its special place in the Seaton family story. Years ago, when they were trying to persuade their reluctant children that going to England would be fun, Helen and Harry had drawn up a list of all the wonderful things they could look forward to. As time went by and hardly any of it had come to pass Ralph and Lindi would tease their parents. ‘I wonder when we’re going to get to England,’ they’d say.
The parental list of inducements had included snow on Christmas Day (never); a milkman in a striped apron who brought bottles to your door (not where they lived); double-decker buses with conductors who shouted, ‘Hold on tight now’ (they’d all been made redundant); and Concorde streaking across the sky (taken out of service). The only thing from the list that had survived intact was the Sunday roast – and even that hadn’t turned out to be quite the British staple that Harry and Helen had suggested. The Seatons had adopted the ritual of a Sunday lunch with all the vigour of converts, even if most of the locals had moved on to more varied fare.
‘Listen, you must give Marney a call. He’s retired now but I bet he’s still plugged into what’s going on,’ he said to Lindi, handing her a piece of paper with Marney’s address and phone number on it. She glanced at it and saw that he’d moved down to Knysna, a coastal resort in the south of the country. Even with her second-hand knowledge of South Africa she was aware that Knysna was not exactly the place to be to judge the pulse of a nation. Put your ear to the ground in Knysna and all you’d detect would be the sound of a thousand feet shuffling in and out of fish restaurants and curio shops.
Helen had packed a parcel for Maude. ‘It’s just a few goodies,’ she said, pointing to a package in the corner of the dining room.
‘A few goodies! There won’t be space for me to carry anything but a toothbrush if I take that lot,’ she said.
‘You must check out the old house,’ Ralph said. ‘Hey, Dad, I wonder if our goalposts are still there.’
‘Not that you or Kagiso ever managed to hit the ball between them,’ retorted Harry.
The two boys, Ralph and Kagiso, had been an unlikely pairing and not just because one was white and the other black, or because one was the son of a servant and the other the son of the employer. Those things didn’t matter in the Seaton household. No, it was their temperaments that were so different. Ralph was boisterous while Kagiso was solemn; one was loud, the other quiet; one confident, the other diffident. Harry and Helen had often thought Lindi a better playmate for Kagiso. They were both earnest, so neither would dominate the other.
‘Where is Kagiso now?’ asked Ralph. ‘You must try to hook up with him, Lindi.’
‘Maybe he’s moved on,’ she replied. ‘He might not want to be reminded that he was the housemaid’s son.’
‘That’s a bit harsh,’ said Harry, clearly affronted at what Lindi was implying. ‘We treated him exactly the way we treated you two.’
‘The last time Maude talked about him he’d left his government job,’ said Helen. ‘Apparently he’d gone to work for some cooperative or other in the rural areas. He’d told Maude it was real grassroots work. She wasn’t even sure that he was being paid properly. He hadn’t sent her any cash for months and he was always so good about that. Maude was so funny talking about it on the phone.’ Helen now mimicked Maude at her irritable best. ‘I asked him what for he was so worried about grassroots. I told him we are not inkomo pulling grass from the ground. I told him what we need is maize-meal and medicines. I tell you! That boy he likes to dream.’
‘It’s certainly going to take more than dreams to turn things around now,’ said Harry. ‘I’m not sure how you recover from a thing like Lesedi Motlantshe’s murder.’
Harry had known Lesedi’s father. His interview with him had angered the apartheid government of the time. The article had ended with Motlantshe saying he looked forward to the day Harry would interview him in a Pretoria office, and BOSS (the notorious Bureau of State Security) would be protecting him rather than monitoring him. In fact, it was shortly after the double-page spread that the first threats against Harry and the family had begun to drop through his letterbox.
Harry recounted the occasion, then added, ‘Well, he certainly took to life in Pretoria.’
‘And