Hortensia walked beneath the Silver. A slight wind at her cheeks. She touched the trunk and traced the place a person (so long ago some thought it ought to be forgotten) had carved. Scars, long and deep, one two three – people were dying and someone was counting. Hortensia experienced a swell of sadness as she thought of her sister. She missed Zippy, but realised phoning her would not assuage the feeling. She missed their childhood, the lost opportunities they’d had for real friendship. And then Hortensia tried to imagine Beulah’s grandmother, Annamarie, but her mind veered from that too. Then she thought of Peter. She thought of the already dead.
It was unpleasant to be back in a hospital, but Hortensia was glad to be on her own two feet and not flat on her back on a stretcher, at the mercy of others. Bassey had mentioned he would be visiting Agnes and Hortensia asked if she could go along. A young man picked them up from the house; Toussaint his name was, dark with bright eyes and a French turn to his accent. They drove to Red Cross Hospital. Cape Town looked strange to Hortensia from the back seat of the Renault. There were men at the robots with window-wipers and white bottles squirting soapy water. Hortensia asked Toussaint to roll down her window.
‘It’s stuck.’
‘Apologies. Child-lock.’ He drove on when the light changed.
‘I’d wanted to give them money,’ Hortensia said, rueful.
Toussaint and Bassey spoke in French. Hortensia felt left out, which made her listen closer, lean in. Toussaint’s voice, the intonations, the way he pronounced ‘Bassey’, almost leaving off the last syllable; he had a familiarity with the name, the shorthand of intimacy. Bassey in the passenger seat stretched his hand and placed it on the back of the driver’s headrest. All this was a small window into something Hortensia had never wanted to see. She didn’t want to make friends with her house-help – that could too easily turn her into Jessica Tandy’s Miss Daisy, a do-gooder, and all the complications of that. She wanted a clipped relationship, professional, a respectable exchange, good money for good service.
The man at reception said there was someone there already, so when they peeped through the door and saw Marion sitting on a chair, her back to them, Hortensia felt prepared. Agnes was sitting up, propped by a family of pillows.
‘Mrs James.’
‘I’m so sorry, Agnes.’
Marion turned around. Bassey and Toussaint went towards Agnes and the way they greeted each other brought again that sensation, like she Hortensia had missed out on something. She placed the flowers she had picked from her garden amongst the other vases and teddy bears that cluttered a small table. Agnes looked groggy from the operation.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Hortensia said again. ‘I don’t know what else to say.’
Agnes smiled. She was clearly weak, but also had that look of peace Hortensia had taught herself not to envy in others.
A woman appeared at the door. Hortensia would later learn she was Agnes’s daughter, Niknaks.
Marion greeted her and then they all left, so the mother and daughter could be alone.
Toussaint offered Hortensia a lift home but she declined. ‘I’ll call a taxi when I’m ready.’ She turned to Marion, ‘Would you have tea with me?’
‘Well.’
‘I’d like to talk, Marion. Please.’
‘Okay.’
They fell into step along the dreary hospital corridor. The pattern of their walking reminded Hortensia of the obstacle courses she’d navigated in her home with Marion looking on.
There was a small cafeteria. There was no Earl Grey, but something the waitress referred to as ‘normal tea’.
Marion frowned. ‘Tastes like wet paper.’
Hortensia cleared her throat. ‘I’m sorry I hit you. I shouldn’t have done that. It was wrong of me.’
Marion pursed her lips; it looked like she was thinking, and her lips seemed to be an instrumental part of that.
‘What?’
‘I was just thinking how … I hate it when you apologise. It doesn’t last long enough and you never beg.’
Hortensia laughed. Marion smiled and shook her head in a certain way, as if to say she was tired of herself.
‘I’m sorry I hit you, Marion.’
‘I heard you.’
‘The more I realised I’d never have children, the more I realised how much I’d really wanted to be a mother. Things weren’t okay between my mummy and I, and I thought I could fix that … you know … with my own children.’
Marion sipped.
‘I thought, if only I hadn’t done it, lied to Peter. Ended it the first time. Like everything after was punishment. I shouldn’t have hit you. But … no one had ever done that before. Thrown it, my failure, in my face like that. All these years. Not even Peter at his most nasty. I’d never felt that before. When you said what you said – that feeling. Never felt it … out loud.’
‘I shouldn’t have said it. It was cruel of me.’
Hortensia emptied another pack of sugar into the brown-coloured water.
‘I called Esme.’
Marion nodded.
‘She’s coming.’
Hortensia brushed her head with the palm of her hand. They drank bad tea as if it were gin, their teeth barred, the muscles in their necks tensed.
Frikkie and his crew completed their work. When she’d left Hortensia’s, Marion had moved back into No. 12, enduring the dust and noise until finally the works were complete. Still, this was a temporary solution. The house was due to go on the market soon. Her children had mentioned two words that together gave her a fright – retirement and village.