Years passed. 1958, she was twenty-eight years old and her mother wanted to know why she wasn’t yet pregnant. Peter said nothing. The sexual clamour of their arrival in a new place died down, though, and Hortensia discovered the loneliness of marriage.
They began to argue about silly things and she discovered that he had a temper, rare but awful enough that, each time it erupted, the gap between them widened. Gradually it became a fact that Peter touched Hortensia very little.
In bed at night they slept turned away from one another and in the daylight, on the rare occasions they walked together, they did not reach for each other’s hands. Marriage was a disappointment. Colder than Hortensia had imagined, it was the sad end to her Sunday-school belief in the lore of Noah – that life was best lived in pairs. Instead, marriage had turned out to not be much after all. It was the tedium of little domestic details. It was negotiating the tiresome habits of another. Marriage also made Hortensia suspicious when she met new people. Where was the nastiness in this one? she would think to herself as she handed change to a trader or stood to be measured by a polite seamstress. She’d seen Peter cradle an injured bird so gently that the animal had managed to come to a state of calm. And, in the heat of one of his moods, she’d seen him smash a plate to the floor. Not just any plate, but the gold-leaf-painted Chinese porcelain plate that she’d spent months negotiating for and finally wangled out of a dealer in London. It had been her favourite, with four pheasants and four orchids arranged along the face, flecks of gold dancing between them like magic dust.
What happened? This was a common question she asked herself. And then Hortensia would work backwards through their time together, through the string of little and big arguments, offences taken, insults applied. Often the house settled into weeks of corrosive silence. The silence was easier than the booby-trapped mission of attempting conversation. But sometimes the silence wasn’t a relief, it was a form of punishment. The spells of silence could continue for days, but they always ended unceremoniously.
‘Did the paper come?’ Peter would ask at breakfast and Hortensia would answer in a clear sweet voice.
Or they would be in the bedroom, Peter dressing for work, the sounds of the driver singing as he completed the morning car wash, the tinkling of the housekeeper as she laid the breakfast table. Hortensia would already be dressed. She’d stand by the window and look out into the garden, the tennis courts beyond, the pool that the gardener fought with every day to maintain the chlorinated blue of cleanliness.
‘Harmattan is late this year,’ she’d say.
And Peter would nod and then, understanding that she couldn’t see him, with her back turned, and might take his silence to mean he intended to stretch the fight out, he’d say, ‘Yes, it just might be.’
Sometimes they did make love, but it was duty. Hortensia remembered her father telling her about hurricane scares when he was a boy. When the electricity was cut off, how to keep the eggs fresh: every few days turn them over. That was how they made love. It was a domestic task to keep something from rotting.
THIRTEEN
THE FEELING MARION was experiencing was not one she was familiar with.
She knocked on the door.
‘Marion,’ came Hortensia’s response – the woman could see through wood.
‘May I come in?’
She heard what sounded like a sigh, which was as close to a ‘yes’ as Hortensia was likely to come.
‘Sorry to trouble.’
Bassey was off and the house was empty.
‘I felt like some company.’
Hortensia pursed her lips, watched as Marion pulled a chair up to the bed.
‘Marion, with all due respect, I didn’t invite you into my home in order to offer you company.’
Always terse. Always so cutting.
‘I went to the library,’ Marion said in a bid to ignore Hortensia’s discouraging look. When she didn’t say anything, Marion bravely carried on. ‘I … I just felt like … Don’t you sometimes feel a bit …’
‘Marion—’
‘Just let me try and explain. I remembered something.’
‘Is this really necessary?’
‘Yes.’
Marion had remembered being in class.
‘At school, St Winifred’s, in Wynberg. Maybe you’ve heard of it.’
Hortensia nodded, her face was set, Marion faltered.
‘I … I—’
‘Marion, really.’