Indeed, replies Nora. He has an artistic bent. And Halley intimates that this is a statement about character.
For sure, Uncle Byron’s often more than mellow, ever a drink in hand. And when he’s had a few, he does get crude. Always telling one of his children to fetch him another pint, and when they’re too slow, he shouts jokingly they must hurry up, It’s like a drought in Zululand here, I’m pissing talcum powder.
Most vividly, Halley remembers the months of the perimeter wall. Each visit, however many weeks had passed, Mark and the children arrived to find Byron still shirtless, his shoulders oiled to teak, standing in his faded black boxers on the ladder, his monumentally slow progress strewn around him.
Her father went Howzit B and after Sokay boet he and Jen went inside, but Halley stayed to watch. Section by section, her uncle had been building the plywood formwork around reinforcing mesh, sipping from the beer bottle balanced on the painter’s step of the ladder. Now, he poured in a layer of slurry, packing it down but also leaving . . . why was he leaving those shoddy gaps? He saw her sharp face eyeing his work critically, and told her about expansion joints. So it won’t crack. She nodded, pretending indifference, as if she were actually worlds away, and this wasn’t the most interesting thing she’d seen in a long time.
On impulse, it seemed, he’d pull a bottle from his nearby sack and stick the empty in the mixture, neck towards the house, rounded base facing the road. Then he’d top this with more cement, hugging the glass in place. It was a long job. Slow. And it had to dry slowly, and be kept damp, curing into its best strength. And never mix more than you can use in an hour! That’s what he said.
When he’d done the basics on a section, he added shaped concrete flourishes, tapering cusps and towers which peaked and troughed at irregular intervals, the ridges stuck with shards of broken bottle glass – clear, green, a few brilliant blues she recognised from Vicks and milk of magnesia, and curved heels of hard brown.
If they stay late at the house, the girls, which isn’t usual, in the waning afternoon, before the sun sinks down completely into the Cato Manor bush, the rays rub the glass into a fireful flame of intense colour. For a few minutes, then, the reflective bottle bases pushed into the wall become shining animal eyes, but after, they turn back again, just into what they are.
Intimations
You always asked your mother about what came first. What was before. And she told you some, but always with such exaggeration that you knew she was leaving big gaps.
The story started with sand, she said, though you thought that unlikely.But that’s the start of a diamond, she explained, so then you listened.
Because how fun it was to imagine a scene where you were a child in the olden days before the Big Hole was so big and empty and when everything was still possible without complicated machinery and maybe you were just walking down the dirt road as usual and you stubbed your toe on a rock and when you looked down there it was a diamond in the rough the biggest diamond the world had ever seen and you were famous and you made your family so rich that your mother didn’t ever have to work again and you gave some to the poor children because that was the right thing to do.
Though your mother’s diamond story is first about beach sand and how people never think of it, or if they do, they think it’s just always there. Constant, she murmurs as if it means something, constantly there.
Halley listens. Hears how the sand she saw just yesterday is never the sand she might see tomorrow; not exactly. How sands can shift.
So if we sat over there, last time at the beach, near the trampolines? Nora reminds her, the stripy towel spread over the soft golden sand . . .
Well, twice a day the tide turned, making that sand afresh, churning and dredging, mixing it all up. Sand is always on the move, says Nora, shiftless, and there’s no guarantee that a beach is forever.
Where you sat, it could be scooped away, hurled into a hull of exposed rock. And only a fool would deny the force of water on brick and concrete when the twisted remains of a pier are exposed on a gutted, concave beach.
It was very difficult to understand her mother’s tale when everything was only sand and rock and water. Jen was sleepily bored, which Halley supposed did serve the purpose of a bedtime story, but Halley waited for people to arrive in the picture, which would make it more interesting. That’s where a story really started, she believed; the rest was just setting the scene.
Once upon a time, Nora began, There was a boy from a poor family. She looked across at Halley and Jen, all playful.
Not only was he poor, worse, he was unlucky. In love, and generally. He had half a mind to call it quits and light out to sea, never to return.
Poor, poor chap, she played the line, larking about in language, For all we know, he had bad breath, two left feet, was all thumbs and not much else. The works.
Yet he was a nice young man, their mother continued, And deserving of more than he’d been given. One evening at dusk, the lovelorn youth was mooning along the Golden Mile wondering how he could come upon the money to marry his girlfriend, who of course was expecting.
Although the lad was stout of heart, he found himself close to tears at the narrow range of options that presented themselves, which was exactly none. When wragtig! his eyes spied a faint gleam. Was it . . . ? It was not a glinting bottle top embedded in the sand, but a ring, and in the glow of the lamplight it shone and beckoned like a fallen star.
Ay yai yai yai! Nora exclaimed.
Si si señora! Halley sang in refrain, happy to have her mother acting up.
Now this was a lucky strike, and the youth knew it. He was smart enough and enough in love to know exactly what to do. On foot, despite the distance and the late hour, he covered the miles, made his way straight to the home of his lady love. Her parents’ house. Rapped sharply on the door with his special knock – nok, nokkie nok nok – and when it opened said Good evening and Very sorry, Sir to her father, but a man’s gotta do, and when he saw his sleepy lovey even in her old dressing gown and rag curlers come looking over her father’s grumpy shoulder, he went down on his one knee, holding out his glinting, sparkling, magical finger.
He begged her to love him, to have him, as he loved and would have her.
Had had her. Had she been had? Would she be had?
Halley’s mind was reeling at her mother’s spinning tongue, all these confusing possibilities cast out upon the waters.
The suitor offered the ring as evidence. Of his true love, her mother said, her eyebrows twitching, because what else could it be?
And the ring worked. It wove its enchanting spell and the girl was persuaded, imagined that she saw in the unbroken circle the very hold of undying love.
Though she wasn’t actually that much of a romantic, Nora tossed in. Life had taught her to be realistic, and in the jeweller’s scale she’d weighed up in her mind – Nora’s fingers delicately indicating the minute balance – against her big belly – hands round and full – against the leaky heart – palms sweeping away – against the pressure of the times – fingers clawed into a clutch – the suit of her suitor.
And so because it suited her, she said Yes. That’s all she said, and that was all it took. Meaning I do.
Something like love and luck, my darling, said Nora to her fascinated little girl, tucking the blanket in, and patting the other, sleeping child, these were held in a ring that the couple liked to think was magic, though they did not rely on this obliging circle to provide the happily ever after. Not them. It was only a ring, after all, not a genie.
So you want something? Nora said they would one day ask their children, You want something big and you want it badly enough, the only hope is you must go out and make it happen for yourselves.
The end, said Halley, sighing back a laugh as her mother turned out the light.
So