Homemaking for the Down-At-Heart. Finuala Dowling

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СКАЧАТЬ said Pia. “Look, it’s four generations of the same family.”

      “Counting the butternut?” said Margot. Pia hoped for a moment that she might stay. She didn’t have to join the game. She could do a crossword.

      “I think I’ll get a nap in, too,” said Margot. “Or at least just put my feet up and read.”

      Curtis went to the study and found that his father had replied to his mail.

      Dear son,

      You’ve got a damn cheek writing to me telling me my business while you sit there in that resort town doing sweet bugger all. Please do us all a favour and give up this armchair farming. If you want to come here and put in an honest day’s work, I’ll pay you your hire and salary like I would for anyone else.

      The cattle are fine. Some calf deaths, but nothing out of the ordinary.

      Not entering his second childhood

      Dad

      Such fight the old man still had in him. You had to respect him for that. His father knew exactly how to wound him. Any mention of sloth or incompetence riled Curtis. He didn’t see himself as a dreamer exactly, but as someone who spent a fair amount of time in the planning stage.

      As he climbed the wooden staircase which he himself had stripped and sanded, Curtis’s normally broad shoulders drooped. He opened the bedroom door quietly. If he could lie now with Margot, he would feel better. His sense of manhood would return. Sex was something he knew how to do. Or, if Margot were too tired, he could at least massage her knotty shoulders, ease off her clothes. Margot had closed the curtains against the afternoon sun: she slept. There were dark circles around her eyes.

      Curtis left her to her rest. He stood in the top room and looked out over the bay. Here came the chords of Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine. Sadness was so harmonious, the way it arched upwards, and fell so gracefully: it was laughter that broke things apart. Crude laughter cackled and rattled.

      There was so much to do. The garage he hired at Storage City was cluttered with old stuff, much of it needing hard decisions – Hospice? Dustbin? Mills Auctioneers? And if Mills, shouldn’t he fix things up a bit first – like those wooden headboards that he’d carried around for thirty-five years? Or he could prepare something for tomorrow’s session at the Mission School. He could return to the garden and use the newly repaired clippers, with its sharpened blades. There were knives and pairs of scissors all over the house that he could sharpen.

      The harbour was crowded with anglers. Far out to sea, yachts rounded luminous orange racing buoys. People were out there, pursuing their passions. When he’d first come here to live with Margot, he’d imagined that he’d spend his weekends fishing, or maybe volunteer as a deckhand. What had become of those schemes? Why did he fritter his life away?

      Down below in the garden, Pia was hanging over the wooden gate, swinging on it idly. She was wearing her jodhpurs and smart, pointy riding boots. It was already well past three o’clock, but then Leroy was never punctual. What a waste it was for someone like Leroy to have a child whereas he, Curtis, remained childless. Leroy seemed oblivious of his daughter’s inner life and rich talent. He was so narcissistic that he’d even complained to Margot: “Our child should watch me perform more often so that she can know who her father is in this world.” Leroy hadn’t grasped the first rule of childcare: Efface yourself. Give the little person the floor. Soon enough, like any other untamed creature, the child will become curious about you; will want to hear your stories and your opinions. Until then, play alongside him as though you were a child yourself. Draw lines in the sandy ground and say: This is the castle entrance and here is the courtyard with its blacksmith and stables . . . It made his breath tight to watch Pia hang on the gate, waiting for her father.

      Pia liked to meet her father at the gate to soften him up: if the first person Leroy encountered was Margot, there was likely to be an altercation. “Is that all the greeting I get?” he might ask, and the fight would start. You had to keep them apart because they were both too quick with sharp words. “He’s better behaved with me,” Pia told Margot.

      Pia could hear the phone ringing in the house. She dashed up the garden steps to answer it, hoping it wouldn’t wake her mother. She knew it would be Leroy, but she was too late.

      Curtis took the call on the upstairs extension. Leroy was running late. His lunch date was taking much longer than expected. His voice was barely audible above the clatter and shrieking voices of some public place. Would it be alright if he joined them for supper? He probably wouldn’t be very hungry as he was having a world-class lunch. He dropped the names of his lunch companions. Curtis didn’t know much about Cape Town society, and cared less. If it had been up to him, he would have told Leroy that a late visit would be inconvenient. However, he was aware of the household’s complicated mechanisms of placating Leroy and protecting Pia. If Leroy weren’t allowed to visit he might demand to take her overnight, insisting on the stipulations of the divorce agreement.

      Before Curtis could answer, he heard a voice coming from the downstairs telephone extension. It was Zoe. She had staggered up from her chaise longue to answer the phone. “You can come around anytime: I’ll be here,” she said to Leroy.

      “Zoe – how marvellous to hear your voice!”

      Curtis left Leroy sucking up to Margot’s mother. He himself had no verbal falderals.

      “Was that my dad phoning to cancel?” asked Pia, poised between hope and disappointment.

      “He’s joining us for supper. The riding is cancelled. What are you going to do to entertain yourself until then?” He didn’t want her to fret. She lived too much in her head. “Shall we take Bella for a walk on the beach? Ask your mother if she and Granny would like to come too.”

      Margot said she’d stay. She was expecting the carer to stop by and meet her charge. What a breakthrough that had been: discovering that there was an agency you could phone; that there were trained people you could hire. She was not alone – her problem was in fact so common that it was in the Yellow Pages.

      Margot put the kettle on. For some years her mother had favoured a disgusting brew of black tea with apple-cider vinegar and honey. Margot put this on the tray along with her own cup of strong Ceylon with sugar. Zoe was wandering around the front room, the room that had convinced her to buy this house forty years before, as if she were in a completely strange place.

      “I can’t find the door,” she complained. “You mustn’t leave me alone like that.”

      Margot showed her the tall wooden door with its shiny brass handle.

      “Everything is so fuzzy,” said Zoe. “I want to be tested for madness.” She paused and then repeated, “I want to be tested for madness, but I don’t have the right clothes.”

      “You’ve already passed that test,” muttered Margot.

      She set the tea tray on the table between them. Zoe helped herself to Margot’s steaming orange-brown tea, pronouncing it delicious. Margot contemplated the vinegary elixir that remained on the tray and wondered whether she shouldn’t skip tea altogether and pour herself a stiff brandy.

      After all the years when they’d seemed to do nothing but talk, talk, talk, she couldn’t think of anything to say to her mother. Zoe either stared at her without animation, or blocked her tentative ventures into conversation with a gloomy remark. Sometimes she thought how easy it СКАЧАТЬ