The doctor took various tests and the cabinet in the bathroom filled up with the tablets they prescribed. But Peter’s complaints (body ache, fuzzy head) persisted. Four years later the Jameses moved to Cape Town. The location changed very little; Peter continued to suffer from a series of complaints that doctors misunderstood, misdiagnosed or suggested he ignore. In South Africa Peter spoke less and less. It was not the kind of thing that was easy to notice. In 1995 Peter spoke about a tenth or so less than he had in 1994. No one knew, but this pattern was doomed to continue, until 2014 when he died a veritable mute.
Before that, though, Hortensia endured the descent. Everything was sore but he still limped off to golf on Sundays. He threatened to go on a hunting trip and she called the club and told them he was senile, that they shouldn’t let him near a rifle. In bed she read out passages to him. Sometimes he listened agreeably, but mostly he blocked his ears with his hands or he pointed out to her that her voice was unbeautiful. But he buttered her toast. He knew just how brown she liked it and tutted Bassey if he ever attempted this job. You’re no good at this, ol’ boy, he said. Or ‘my man’. Those were the names he used for Bassey. His shoes were never side by side, instead often rooms apart. Hortensia could not work out how this feat was achieved so consistently. Neither could the housekeeper. The snoring was unbearable. He ate meat when his doctor had said no. He refused a hearing aid, goaded her about hers, even though he needed one much more than she did. He sat practically deaf and turned the volume of the television up so high that the neighbours complained. He was sick. They’d grown old together, but all that seemed to mean was that they’d borne each other and not died yet. He had nightmares sometimes; he once woke her up and said his mother was on the phone. Your mother is dead, she said. She’s not on the phone, Peter, she’s dead.
He still liked to cut her fruit, bring a plate of quartered oranges out to the garden while she inspected the rose bushes, trail behind her.
‘You look ravishing, my tulip. I love your hair like that,’ he would say. Except her hair was the same as it had always been and so the compliment meant nothing. Plus she hated tulips.
He joined her in the television room. Picked up the remote. He chopped between channels with no regard for the programme she’d been watching.
‘Peter, really?’
The doctors had said just ignore him.
‘What is it you’re looking for, my love?’
He continued.
‘I said, what the hell is the channel you are looking for?’
‘Where’s the sex channel?’ But under his breath, like she wasn’t in the room and he was talking to himself.
‘The what? Peter, we don’t have a sex channel.’
He flung the remote control out the open window. It fell in a puddle, she had to buy a new one.
‘Stupid box.’ He walked out.
But he also came home with flowers. Bougainvillea. I know you love these, he said. And he brought his nose to her neck and said, are you wearing perfume? His breath was old man’s breath, sweet, rancid – he only brushed his teeth if she stood and watched and this was not always possible. There were nights, rare but beautiful, when he asked her if he could hold her in bed. I can feel your bones through your nightie, he said.
He got sicker. The time to bring up the past – the lover who had appeared as mysteriously as she had disappeared – the time to reconcile passed them by. Hortensia still did not know for sure what had made Peter lose his love for her, misplace it. It hurt her that, despite her anger, she’d loved him until he was a ravaged and lifeless body.
‘Do you need some water?’ Hortensia sat by the bed, the nurses having left for the day and she finding herself, strangely, walking up the stairs and into what used to be their room and was now his; she’d moved into the room next door.
The floor lamp by the door cast a shadow that hid most of the waste his muscles had become. There was a way his tongue hung out that Hortensia decided meant thirst. She moved to pour him a cup of water. His eyes followed her. She hadn’t come into the room, hadn’t said a word to him in weeks, over a month.
‘Here.’
She helped him lift up, just a bit, so the water didn’t spill down the front of his white flannel pyjamas. She held the cup for him, placed her other hand at the bottom of his back. His throat worked to get the water down, much went out the sides of his mouth. Hortensia settled him back, wiped him. The act of caring was like bicycle-riding – once learned, never forgotten.
‘Pardon?’
She thought he’d whispered something. Hortensia put the cup down and moved her ear closer to his chapped lips. It would be a bit of a miracle; he’d stopped speaking months before.
‘I can’t hear.’
She moved so close the cracked skin on his bottom lip scratched her ear, a sensation, a tingling and an excitement that seemed misplaced.
‘Peter?’ Still unable to hear, she took his hand. Then Hortensia lifted the skirt of her nightgown and eased herself onto the bed she hadn’t shared with him in almost a year.
He’d always been so massive.
‘My love,’ she said again, allowing a rare tenderness.