LITMIR.BIZ

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relationship was going or if it was going anywhere at all. Ian didn’t really want to talk about things like that, and being apart took a huge toll on his studies, so I stopped asking. There was nothing either of us could do about it. After a while we just grew up. I for one started feeling so stupid waiting for a man who’d be so different when he returned – that’s if he ever did. He’d be a doctor and I’d be a teacher, you know? Things were changing drastically. Apartheid seemed suddenly on its last legs and us ‘non-whites’ were going to have so many new opportunities. But at the end of the day, he’d still be a doctor and I’d be a teacher. I started thinking . . .”

      You thought his mother was right.

      “Maybe his mother had a point, much as I hated to admit it. And you know what men are like when they’re far away. Who knows what they’re doing? I was so young, and if I didn’t move on my whole life would pass me by. So . . .”

      Adele shrugged, a world of history in her shoulders. She’d done what she had to, and damned if she didn’t look ashamed and apologetic about it. Her demeanour spoke of a woman who believed, to her own bewilderment, in one true love for a person in their lifetime.

      “We fell out of touch eventually, and that made it easier. There were other men. Some were wonderful, and I tried to take the relationship seriously. But . . . have you ever been in love?”

      Vee looked at the floor.

      “Then you know what I mean. Sometimes you pretend to get over someone so well you start to believe it. You remember all the history, everything they put you through, and tell yourself you’ll never get past it. Then you plan this new life that doesn’t include them any more. And all the time you’re doing it, something inside you knows you’re completely full of shit.”

      Vee fidgeted a little, unprepared for such honesty and vulnerability so early in the interview. There would never be a time when she would get completely used to the raw glare of heartache, no matter how many hard-luck tales she heard. Distraught mothers didn’t normally allow strange journalists into their homes and let their hearts bleed all over the floor.

      “What happened when Ian finally came home?”

      Adele shrugged again, only this time it was more a lazy lifting and resigned dropping of the shoulders. As if gravity was too strong to encourage more.

      “What I expected to happen happened. We didn’t just pick up where we left off; too much time had passed for that. Actually we danced around the issue for quite a while. I heard talk in the old neighbourhood that he was home for good, but over a year passed before we saw each other again. Cape Town’s not that big, but you can avoid people if you want to. We finally ran into each other at a party at a mutual friend’s place. He looked so much the same. Only difference was he was married.”

      She looked over as if expecting reproach. Vee stayed impassive.

      “I knew about it – of course I knew. His wife wasn’t with him that night. She was very pregnant then, about to have their first child. I only saw her in passing over the years, and not very often. We got to meet properly much later on.”

      “What was she like? When you finally did meet?”

      “We didn’t talk much that night. Both of us wanted to pretend for a while,” Adele ignored the question and ploughed on as if reminiscing alone in her sitting room. “That’s what grown-ups are supposed to do, keep face and moralise until they’re not fooling anyone any more. At first we just met up for drinks, to catch up. But it never stays at just that, not with a man you have a past with. We shared all the old stories from back in the day and laughed . . . It became a routine. We’d meet up for some made-up reason, or one of us would pretend to be ‘in the neighbourhood’, until . . .”

      She turned away, her expression filled with a tempest of too many emotions for Vee to untangle.

      “After Jacqui disappeared . . . I started thinking maybe it was God’s way of punishing me, or both of us, for the way we conducted ourselves. I know it’s so unhealthy thinking that way, that a child’s life needs to be sacrificed to set things right again. But I can’t help feeling if we’d been more careful and she’d never been conceived, or if I’d been stricter and done more to keep her away from that pathetic family, none of this would’ve happened.”

      “When did Jacqui get to know her father’s other family? Was it your idea, or her father’s, to be closer to them?”

      A sharp, bitter laugh burst out of Adele, as if she had just heard the most ridiculous thing ever uttered in her presence. “Whose idea was it? My God, it wasn’t anybody’s grand idea. We didn’t all sit down like mature adults and say, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be fantastic if our families got together and acted like one big happy unit.’ We never did that, that never happened. How could it?” She shook her head, chuckling again into her tea. Then she set the cup down and fixed Vee with her full and very grave attention. “You really have no clue, do you?”

      She softened as she regarded her feet, crossed at the ankles. “You know, when you called me wanting to talk I thought, I hoped, Ian was finally stepping up. That finally he wants to stop being macho and grieving alone, or expecting the police to work miracles after two years, and that he hired someone. It doesn’t seem like that’s the case.”

      Vee waited.

      “Jacqui was born not long after Sean. In fact, Jacqui’s near in age to the three eldest Fourie kids. She was born after Serena, the same year. Carina did not waste time. She got pregnant just after they were married, and popped three more kids like it was going out of fashion. I assumed she would act different, being a doctor and white and all that. Maybe take some time to get to know his family, get used to the prejudiced mess this country was. Ian might as well’ve stayed and married a coloured girl, another darkie like him. A European one didn’t seem to be much different.”

      “I take it there’s no love lost between you and the missus.”

      “How could there be, considering the situation he put us both in?” Adele clarified: “Ian is no fool. He’s brainy but not lacking in social skills the way the clever ones are. Especially with women; he has a very special way with women. Not just in that way, if you know what I mean. He just has a way of making you . . . obey him somehow. I don’t think anybody ever really discusses things with Ian, but you just find yourself somehow going along with a grand plan. The grand plan concerning his two families was just that: he had two families and they would stay separate. I’m sure you’re aware this kind of thing happens all the time.”

      Big house, small house. Vee was very familiar with it, having grown up in a similar set-up. It was as old as the hills and a virtually indestructible pillar of the African family structure.

      “And of course it was up to me to do most of the staying away, not that I had any intention of doing otherwise. They’ve always been in Pinelands and I was still in Athlone. Not too hard to lead separate lives. But that was right when everything happened.

      “Sean developed cancer,” she continued. “Some form of juvenile leukaemia. Life plays the cruellest jokes, or then again maybe it’s God. He was the sweetest one of their kids; you couldn’t find a nicer child. The painful irony was both parents were gifted doctors who had to stand by and watch him die without being able to do anything. No parent should have to go through that.”

      “I thought so much had improved in the cancer field,” Vee said, digging through her rudimentary science archive. “Especially for children. I know the treatment isn’t always successful, but these days it isn’t usually fatal, right?”

      “I think that’s correct,” Adele agreed, “but the type Sean had was severe. I remember the first time Ian told me about it. He was so broken, even though he tried so hard to be optimistic and rational, the way a doctor should. That boy was the world to him. Sean was about five or six then, two years older than Jacqui. Something about the treatment he got must’ve worked, because after a while he went into remission. Then, years later, the cancer came back, and this time it had claws. He was taken overseas, but still . . . So they started looking at

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