When Marion got out of bed and looked around for her slippers she felt light-headed, she’d bent down too fast. She showered and wore a camel turtle-neck, feeling chilled despite the good weather.
‘About yesterday,’ both women said, paused. ‘You first,’ they both said, paused. Sighed in unison. Marion moved from the doorway and sat opposite Hortensia at the kitchen table. Ever-discreet Bassey, stacking the dishwasher, left the task incomplete and excused himself.
‘You were saying?’
‘I was just going to say that – I don’t know how to put it – I was thinking of what it must feel like, to have read Peter’s will … Thinking how I would have been.’ That wasn’t what she’d wanted to say.
‘Hmm.’
Marion laced her fingers. ‘What were you going to say?’
‘How are you feeling?’ Which hadn’t been what Hortensia had wanted to say, either. The question seemed to surprise Marion as well.
‘I’m fine. My neck hurts. You?’
‘Everything hurts after a certain age. Dr Mama told me that, but he said it in such a way that it sounded funny.’
Marion smiled. She had something to say.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot. Oh God!’ she covered her face with her hand.
‘What now?’
‘I’m going to cry and you’ll be upset with me.’
‘Why are you going to cry?’ Hortensia felt her body move between impatience and compassion; she settled somewhere in the middle.
‘Because I am ashamed.’
‘Okay.’ She moved towards practicality. ‘You cry, Marion. I’ll make us some coffee. Did you notice this beautiful piece of machinery in my kitchen – ordered it, flown in specially, delivered yesterday. It’s a Blumenthal. Just you wait.’
‘How do you do it?’ Marion emptied her nostrils into a handkerchief.
‘Do what?’ She assembled two espresso cups on the counter.
‘Keep it all together.’
Hortensia liked to press the buttons; such a simple transaction: push some buttons and make delicious coffee. ‘I don’t keep anything together. I lost everything long ago, I don’t have anything left to keep together.’ She put one steaming cup in front of Marion, took a sip from the other. ‘That’s how I do it.’
‘Good coffee.’
‘Excellent, you mean.’
They sat like that. Somewhere in the house a vacuum cleaner started up.
‘Did you know, I was born in District 6. Did you know that?’
Hortensia shook her head.
‘I don’t remember it really, my parents moved the next year. To Wynberg. Then we moved to Plumstead – we kept creeping southwards.’ She took in the coffee aroma. ‘I wish old age would make me senile. I wish to really forget. I was just now thinking, remembering. Before he died, my father used to do this thing. They were divorced by then, my parents. And old. I’d arranged for them to stay at the home, full of Jews, the people they’d spent their lives avoiding, but they bore it. A decent enough place. So I’d visit every Sunday and we’d all three have breakfast. And my father would do this thing with the newspapers. It never really hit me before. I thought he was just losing it a bit. We’d all be sitting, and Father would start reading out a few headlines from articles in the Cape Times … or was it the Argus? I can’t remember. He’d say – my father had a really deep voice – you know he’d be reading to himself and then suddenly he’d shout out something, like So-and-so backs colour bar in factories or Challenge to Nats to keep South Africa white. He’d say Police out as rebellious miners protest, such-and-such street disturbed by gunfire, and on and on. Thing is, this was the early Nineties – these weren’t the actual headlines. He was making them up, remembering, perhaps, from days gone. He spoke in a certain tone. As if trying to make a point maybe. Trying to say, look at what we called a country … Just look.’
Hortensia stretched her legs, leaned forward on the chair to massage the length of them. She had to keep her blood moving, otherwise she feared she would not be able to stand up. Ever.
‘Just blurting that stuff out. Like he was calling up the ghost of something, of apartheid. Saying … or rather feeling sorry. I think so, anyway. I remember now that my mother would get upset and ask him to stop. Maybe one or two would be violent-sounding. Please, my mother would say, and my father would stop but do the same thing the following Sunday. Such a feeble thing, you know, but I started thinking: maybe he was trying … I really like to hope that he was trying.’ Her eyes glistened.
Hortensia said nothing. Her fingers massaged her leg.