‘I thought we—’
‘Let me speak, Marion. I can’t absolve you. I don’t want to do this thing with you. This let’s-talk thing.’
‘I thought we were becoming friends in a way.’
‘I don’t know what that means and I prefer not knowing.’ Hortensia squeezed her eyes. ‘Do you hold yourself in high regard?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you think of yourself highly?’
‘I think I’m not bad, that I’m okay.’
‘Precisely. Well, I think very lowly of myself. And I am under no illusion that I am anything close to “okay”.’
‘I see.’
‘And what’s more, I don’t think you’re okay, either. I don’t hate you, Marion, I just think you’re a liar. And I can’t get involved. I don’t care enough and anyway I think it’s too late. I don’t want kinship with you. I don’t hate or like you. I don’t really consider you. I’m also dealing with things. But I don’t want any kinship. And we don’t have to get in a car and drive off a cliff or anything. You stay here. We keep out of each other’s way. Your house gets fixed, my leg heals, we carry on with our separate lives. I think, at this far-gone stage, that’s about as much as people like you and I can muster. Please.’
Marion stood up and left the room, her steps measured and heavy.
The conversation made Hortensia feel at home again. The worst had been said, she’d explained herself. She no longer needed to avoid Marion. She hoped she had cured her of any notion of any form of connection between them. With this sense of freedom, when evening came, she went to sit in the television room to watch the news – something she hadn’t done in a while and had missed. On account of it being the twenty-fourth of September, the pictures were full of South Africa’s history. A documentary was on, discussing Heritage Day, and its predecessor, Shaka Day. Hortensia wondered about Marion’s attempt at comradeship. Had she heard something on the radio, some call to humanity, the kind of thing that had lurked about in South Africa in the heady days of a new democracy?
After they’d arrived in South Africa, Hortensia had turned to Peter and said, this place isn’t well. The country? he’d asked and she’d nodded. And the people. The best of them know they are sick and are trying different medicines. Some know, but are inert. And the worst think they are fine, that they are in need of nothing.
Of course she herself hadn’t been well in years. And she hadn’t had the strength or the inclination or any sense of responsibility to promote healing either in herself or others. Not then and not now.
She went to bed feeling sorry for Marion. Sorry that Marion hadn’t found herself living in a better person’s home. Or at least a person more prone to delusions about the human capacity for real, lasting truth and reconciliation.
When she was already in her nightgown and pulling on her compression socks, Marion knocked on the door.
‘Come.’
‘I wasn’t sure if you’d still be awake.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not okay.’
‘Yes.’
‘I just wanted to say that … to you.’
‘Alright.’
She started to close the door.
‘Marion, wait. You want to know things? Past things? You really want to know? I was thinking of this story my mother told me. You remind me of her, by the way. But, anyhow, I was thinking how, before she died, we didn’t get on very much and before she died there was this thing she told me. How she regretted leaving home, leaving Barbados for England. They took an Italian boat, which stopped off at Tenerife and Genoa en route. Docked at Dover, then took the train to Waterloo. She told me she’d wanted to come back even before they docked. There’d been a few of them travelling from the Islands. They’d stayed in the section of the ship for the workers, they shared sleeping quarters with some of the ship’s greasers and female entertainment, should we say. I was along already. I’d won a scholarship for school and gone ahead, but Zippy, my sister, she was travelling with my parents. There was a young family on the boat with them, husband, wife and a baby of a few months old. Apparently there was this debacle that took place. My mother, Zippy, the woman, with her baby in her arms, were walking on deck. The baby was light-skinned. There came these white women, they saw the child and decided that she had been kidnapped.’
Marion put her hand to her neck; there were no pearls to hold on to.
‘They seized the baby from her mother and wouldn’t return the child until papers were shown, proof sorted out. My mother said she knew immediately that she was going in the wrong direction, towards the wilderness, away from civilisation.’
‘That’s a terrible story.’
‘Yes, it is. And there are many more – too many.’
‘Why did you tell it to me?’
‘Because I want to upset you.’