It was 1951, Marion’s final year at St Winifred’s High. She informed her parents that she would be studying architecture. It was a problem. Marion’s mother would have preferred a daughter less inclined to study and more ready to marry. But prospects were dim and so, as Marion had grown into a young woman, her mother had engaged in a different fantasy. Having never studied herself, she began to hope that Marion, with her quick mind at maths and science, would take medicine, the profession to end all professions. However, Marion’s father, with no sons to work with, had enjoyed his daughter’s grasp of how things were put together. They had spent weekends hammering in his workshop and tinkering with the engine of the white bakkie that he carted his trade items in. A civil engineer – he had ventured in his innermost quiet dreams – and had even gone the distance of imagining a bridge in his own name.
What neither parent factored in was the will of Marion herself. She bore down on their arguments, their threats, their attempts to slather on guilt, her mother’s tears, her father’s sulks, their reasoning. In between their sessions of persuasion with their daughter, there was the noise of them fighting one another. Each blamed the other. It broke something in both people, brought something ugly back, served as an opening for them to raise their voices after years of speaking only softly. By the time Marion stepped onto the University of Cape Town upper campus, dressed in moss-green loafers, a red pleated skirt and a white short-sleeved shirt with a collar; by that time her parents were busy with the business of dividing their assets, signing papers.
After finishing her studies and after her company came into being, each year Marion grew in stature for the homes she designed. The question she was most often asked was: what made you want to become an architect? There were many answers, like a series of diminishing dolls, each more intricate than the other, more hidden and more true. There was the big and loud answer. It was the I-love-great-design answer. And she did. A well-executed design with all the parts that fit together, nothing sticking out.
There was the slightly softer-toned answer that was not for journalists. It was an answer for a dinner party. An answer for the corner of a room, with a worthy acquaintance. This answer was about wanting to make things, real things that could stand up. The feeling that, at the end of the day, the result of her labours had to be material and lasting. And to this Marion could tack on the story of her parents and how they had argued about her choice of vocation.
The first year of architecture school had been a daze. There was a rash of classes, a set of tests and then the end-of-year exams. Marion’s headache of growing up, of the things no one spoke of, but that were there anyway; how to be blind but still see your way to walk; all the fuzziness was slowly replaced by the exactness of geometry, the rules of perspectives, two-point and three-point. Marion discovered that she liked her pencils sharp, she wanted to go to Finland and notice the architecture over there, she wanted to sit at Aalto’s feet.
This was why she’d studied architecture, this was the teeny-tiny doll answer whose face was barely there, whose body was often without lacquer, without frills. It was so intricate an answer that it was difficult to explain even to herself. That the reason she studied architecture was only made clear to her after she began studying it, as if her subconscious had known something her waking mind had not. That architecture was about a construction, a made-up thing made real. That she, Marion, needed this skill. And that even though the vertigo would never go away completely, architecture would be the only thing Marion had to steady herself.
‘What’s that noise?’
‘What?’ Marion cocked her head to listen. ‘Ambulance,’ she said.
Hortensia continued along the hallway, planting the walker in front of each footstep. Her timing had been off today and Marion had caught her doing her routine. Hortensia hated an audience. Each time the walker hit the wood, the clank moved up her arms like a ripple of static.
‘Ice-cream truck,’ Hortensia said.
‘No. Ambulance. Anyway it doesn’t matter. How are you feeling? Can I get you something?’
Hortensia cut her a look and ambled past. After a few seconds Marion moved up further along the hallway, overtaking Hortensia, and settled against the wall nearer the front door. Hortensia hobbled closer.
‘Pain?’
‘Huh?’
‘I saw you scowl.’
‘Hmm. Haven’t heard much noise lately. How are the works coming? Frikkie, the builder. Knows what he’s doing?’
‘Well. I suppose.’
‘Gordon is coming by this week. Thursday, I think. Late afternoon.’
‘Oh. I really like him.’
‘I know. That’s why I’m telling you.’
Hortensia, standing to pause for some beats, noticed Marion blush.
‘First darkie you ever had the hots for?’
‘Hortensia James, I don’t appre—’
‘Spare me, Marion.’ She started walking again.
‘I don’t see him as black.’
‘Of course you don’t. That’s what makes you racist.’
‘Hor—’
‘Marion! It’s too early to argue. I’m sick. And besides, we’re too old for all this.’
She reached the front door, spent several minutes swivelling. She cursed as she did so. Mama had promised she could start walking up stairs soon, but he’d also warned her not to push too hard. Time was a factor in the healing, not just the exercises. She grudgingly accepted that the mindless talking helped her ignore the pain.
‘So, tell me, Marion.’
‘What?’
‘You and Max.’
‘What of it?’
‘Mr Straight-Down-the-Middle.’
‘That how he came across?’
‘Mr Suit-and-Tie.’ Hortensia, her back to Marion, cackled. ‘Wouldn’t have thought you a Non-Black-Gordon-Mama type of gal.’
‘Hey!’