Ruby Red Read online

  As I rode home after school, I thought about Loretta. I had been worried that she might not take kindly to me inviting Johann to the dance, and I feared that my newfound friendship with her might suffer now that her brother had my attention. But I was quite wrong. She had called me later on the very night that I had spoken to Johann and was delighted to hear that I had invited her brother to go with me.

  ‘Hy hou van jou!’ she said with an excited lilt in her voice.

  ‘I like him too,’ I said sheepishly.

  ‘Then, for me, alles is goed!’ Loretta laughed.

  ‘Yes, everything is good,’ I said.

  ‘Johann asks for me what flowers you like best. I say I don’t know.’

  ‘Daffodils but they’re off season. Lilacs are always wonderful.’

  ‘Boetie is, how you say, picky with the girls. But you are special.’

  ‘So are you, Loretta.’

  I said a silent thank you that this kind girl had come into my life when I most needed her.

  Julian was standing in the driveway when I rode in. He looked gaunt and tired, his eyes sunken back in his strong-featured face. He wore rumpled jeans and a paint-splattered white T-shirt.

  ‘Come,’ was all he said as I got off my bike.

  I quickly dropped my satchel inside the house and followed him.

  We walked silently down the path to the studio. I wanted to say something light and conversational but the words would have fallen on deserted ears because he suddenly strode ahead of me.

  I felt my pulse quicken with dread and anticipation. The memory of how our last encounter in the studio together had ended was still painfully fresh in my mind.

  Julian was already at his easel when I entered. He was standing with one hand protectively holding on to a corner of a white drop cloth covering the painting beneath it.

  The empty space between us felt rigid. The air seemed to slink away into the cracks of the studio walls until Julian finally spoke.

  ‘Not a second has gone by since you were last here that I did not feel pained by my behaviour, Ruby.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said softly, walking towards him.

  ‘No it is not.’ His voice crackled with emotion. ‘You were not deserving of my anger.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter… as long as you aren’t angry now.’

  ‘I have been tortured by this…’ He lowered his head.

  ‘Don’t, please…’ I hugged him tightly. He leaned against me and clutched me fiercely.

  ‘My God, you’re burning up!’ I felt molten heat radiating from the core of his being.

  ‘I am ashamed of my actions.’ He clung to me even tighter. ‘Forgive me.’

  I breathed in the acrid smell of paint and unwashed skin and felt the harsh scraping of his unshaven cheeks against my shoulder blade but I did not pull away. I was glad that I could be there with him and relief washed over me that I had not lost him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I whispered against his ear.

  He heaved a deep sigh, then slowly unwound his arms from mine and wiped his damp face on the sleeve of his T-shirt.

  ‘Walk ten paces back, then turn round and close your eyes,’ Julian said.

  I could feel him watching me as I did as I was told.

  With my eyes closed I felt a strange dizzying sensation. I sucked in a deep breath of the paint fumes and Julian’s scent that were all around me.

  ‘Open now,’ he said.

  I opened my eyes. Julian stood with the white drop cloth in his hands, his red-rimmed eyes trained on my face as I took in the painting on the easel. It was a scene of a young boy of perhaps eight or nine, standing with the tin-roofed, makeshift homes of Soweto’s shanty town behind him. His clothes were pitifully large and hung like loose elephant skin around his frail dark body. The shirt cuffs drooped from his arms and the oversized dark trousers were bunched in folds round his thin ankles. His naked feet stood on the potholed dusty street. In his barely visible hand he held a purple crayon. The small boy’s eyes were raised upwards, beyond the billowing smokestacks that blew foul grime into the desolate late-afternoon skies. But above all the wretchedness hung a pale crimson and gold-ribboned sky where a single white bird with grey-tipped wings flew ever higher, its circular path traced by a swirling lavender trail that was tinged with deep shades of magenta. The little bird was very far from the open azure ocean, but its species was unmistakable.

  ‘It’s a seagull,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ Julian said softly.

  ‘And the boy—’ my eyes filled with tears – ‘is you.’

  ‘It is every boy, Ruby. Every child who has ever dreamed to fly above our dark world into the open skies.’

  ‘It is the most beautiful painting you have ever done.’ I felt the tears begin to roll down my cheeks.

  ‘Ah, now it is your turn to cry.’ Julian came towards me and gently wiped my tears away with the corner of the white drop cloth that was still in his hand. He clucked softly. ‘It must be contagious.’

  ‘Mother will be so pleased…’ I sniffed.

  ‘It’s not for the exhibition. It is for something much more important.’

  ‘But…’ I began to speak, but Julian placed a finger over my lips.

  ‘It’s for you, Ruby.’ He moved his finger away and pulled my face towards his and held it between his large rough hands. Deep, dark eyes filled with liquid emotion held mine for a second. Then Julian tilted my head and kissed me gently on the forehead.

  ‘I don’t deserve this,’ I said.

  ‘But you do, Ruby. More than you will ever know.’ Julian went to the painting and took it off the easel and held it out to me.

  ‘It is called Ishiboshwa takes flight.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ I asked as I took the painting from him.

  ‘Ishiboshwa means “the prisoner”.’

  ‘The prisoner takes flight,’ I whispered. ‘I will treasure it forever.’

  ‘Yes, forever.’ A pained look crossed Julian’s face despite the smile he gave me as he opened the studio door.

  I walked out of the studio into the afternoon light and turned to thank him, but he had his back to me, his eyes fixed on the now empty easel.

  ‘Thank you, Julian.’

  ‘Have a good time at your school dance,’ he said quietly, without turning round.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I had tried to keep myself from pacing back and forth in my room but it was impossible. I had counted days, then hours, and now finally minutes until seven o’clock Saturday night would be here, and Johann would pick me up and drive us to the Disco Ball. There were four and a half minutes left to go. I could still not believe that Johann wanted to be my date. We had spoken earlier in the day and, despite his promise that he wouldn’t be late, I was struggling to calm myself, but jumbled thoughts kept pulling me in all directions. This was all a big joke that I had played on myself. I was going to the Disco Ball alone. There was no date. No Johann. I see-sawed back and forth between what was real and what was not. In the moments when I believed that it was all true and that Johann would be ringing the doorbell at any minute, I would rush to my vanity table and stand in front of its large mirror and check my hair and make-up for the hundredth time. I marvelled at how decidedly different I looked tonight. Sleek dark-lined green eyes under layers of mascara, shimmering pink lips and shiny dark hair that I had flipped at the ends with a curling iron. I laughed nervously at the face that stared back at me. ‘Cleopatra goes Disco’ came to mind.

  I rarely wore a lot of make-up. But tonight was different. Tonight I wanted Johann to be proud to be seen with me. I wanted Monica to take in my new fitted lime-green jumpsuit and my new white platform shoes and remember all the fun we used to have shopping together. I wanted to be carefree for once. Tonight, I decided, as I ran a blush brush over my cheekbones, nothing was going to stop me from being a normal seventeen-year-old teenage girl with a handsome boy at a dance. Nothing. Neither hateful Desmond nor guilty thoughts about
Julian, who had locked himself up in the studio all day and showed no signs of coming out.

  It had taken some negotiating with Mother and Father to agree that Johann would be allowed to come into our home to collect me. I had assured them that I would not discuss Julian or the exhibition or anything about our lifestyle with him.

  ‘We have to meet him, Annabel. He’ll be driving her, for heaven’s sake.’ Father shifted his jaw from side to side, a habit that usually meant he was unhappy about something. I wasn’t sure what was upsetting him more, a stranger coming into our home, or the fact that his only child would be under the care of another man, even if it were only for an evening’s outing.

  ‘Goodness, my daughter looks so grown up!’ Mother had stood behind me and fastened a green beaded necklace round my neck. ‘I must be getting old. And you, my dear Ruby—’ she turned me round to face her – ‘are getting more and more beautiful.’

  As I nervously made my way downstairs I said a silent prayer that there would be no security police watching our house tonight.

  The gate chime rang just as I reached the entrance hall. I buzzed Johann in through the gates and waited to hear the front doorbell ring. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, and, although I was expecting it, I jumped when the melodic sound rang.

  Johann was wearing black slacks and a pinstriped jacket. His blue shirt was open at the neck and a silver cross was visible on his smooth chest.

  He took me in appreciatively and I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. ‘You look, how can I say… out of this world. Great.’ He smiled.

  ‘You look great in a tutu!’ I laughed and he laughed with me, and as I ushered him inside I felt that everything was going to be okay.

  I floated through the brief but pleasant introduction of Johann to my parents. Father seemed satisfied enough to let us leave without firing too many questions at him while Mother was gracious and amiable and seemed charmed by Johann’s formal use of the English language.

  ‘I will be sure to have your daughter home before midnight, meneer, sorry, I mean, sir.’ Johann shook Father’s hand on the way out of the door.

  ‘Meneer is just fine.’ Father gave Johann a pat on the arm.

  ‘Aangename kennis,’ Mother said in Afrikaans, and I almost toppled off my platforms down the patio stairs as we made our way to Johann’s car. It was a language that she despised, for it had only been spoken to her of late by policemen and people who wanted to destroy her and her gallery. I had never heard her utter a word of it before, despite the fact that all English-speaking South Africans had to study it as a second language at school.

  I turned to look at Mother, her lithe frame leaning against Father who had his arm round her small waist. She blew me a kiss and in that moment I loved her more than I ever had before.

  ‘Have fun!’ she shouted as Johann held the door to his silver Buick open for me, and soon we were on Jan Smuts Avenue on our way to Barnard High.

  Johann seemed relaxed and I leaned back on the soft leather seats while he told me about his dream of studying abroad after high school. His athletics would guarantee him a scholarship in most foreign universities. He wanted to get as far away from his father as possible. His father drank too much and had a hard line approach to keeping South Africa a pure-white-controlled country.

  ‘My grandfather was even worse. He was a member of Die Broederbond. They beat up blacks and even worse… It makes me sick to think about it.’

  ‘You believe blacks should be equal?’ I promised myself that I wouldn’t talk politics, but it was impossible for me not to ask after his comment about his father and grandfather.

  ‘Yes. It is not a fair way for human beings to live. But I keep this mostly to myself…’

  ‘I feel the same way,’ I said quietly.

  Johann reached over the gear lever and squeezed my hand, leaving his fingers wrapped round mine.

  ‘We have more in common than you think, Ruby.’

  I held Johann’s hand and, instead of feeling nervous, a calm descended over me. Here was someone who truly thought like I did and cared deeply about things beyond his own world. Something inside me settled, like the ocean holding smooth and still after an eternity of rough seas. I wanted to tell him my secrets. Somehow I knew he would understand.

  ‘We are here, I think.’ Johann looked over at me. ‘Are you ready?’

  Barnard High was lit with roving searchlights that bounced across the quadrangle and up the high brick walls. The rugby field had been converted into a giant parking lot and the music coming from the gymnasium was so loud that it throbbed through my feet as they hit the ground.

  Johann took my hand and smiled at me. ‘You okay?’

  I wanted to turn and run to the far end of the rugby field to my secluded spot and take Johann to sit with me amongst the pine needles away from everyone else. I felt suddenly protective of him, this kind, handsome boy who had grown up without a mother.

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have…’ I started to say, but Johann turned me to face him.

  ‘It will be fine. I will not let anything ruin our evening.’ He pulled me towards him and put his arm round me and I felt the ground pulsate and my legs quiver as we made our way into the gymnasium.

  The gleaming disco ball that hung from the middle of the room cast diamond shapes across the dancing groups of teenagers. There were several boys in black slacks and open-necked shirtsalready on the dance floor and I was glad that Johann would blend in with the other boys. Neon spandex leggings that hugged every inch and silver and gold hot pants were the most prevalent fashion statement for the girls. My one-piece jumpsuit stood out and I felt glad that dancing was something that came naturally to me. Johann led me on to the dance floor. I felt curious stares from a few of the girls as we wove through the throng.

  We danced well together and one of the girls in my class, who was close by with her partner, leaned over and asked, ‘Who is he? He’s dreamy!’

  I was about to answer when Desmond and Monica made their way on to the dance floor.

  I leaned into Johann. ‘Let’s take a break.’

  He took my hand and I steered him in the direction of Clive and Janice, who I’d spotted sitting together at a small table amidst silver streamers and white balloons.

  Clive and Janice had decided to come to the Disco Ball together since neither one had a date. They were staring down at the two watery Cokes on the table in front of them looking horribly glum. Janice brightened up considerably when she saw Johann and me heading their way. She stood up and waved, and giggled when I introduced her to him.

  ‘I kept telling Ruby to look at you when you were playing on the rugby field. I spotted you right away,’ she babbled.

  Johann was patient and charming as she rambled on about how much she loved rugby and what a great player he was. I tried to start a conversation with Clive, but he mumbled a few words and continued to stare vacantly at his Coke. I suggested that we all go and get some food together, but Clive shook his head and Janice, feeling obliged to keep Clive company, remained with him, although I knew from the look on her face that she would have much preferred joining us in the food line.

  The ultraviolet lights mounted on the walls of the gymnasium made anything white gleam and shine under their fluorescent brightness. It was fun to watch the students gyrating as they danced, where anyone wearing white shone in blinding neon light.

  Johann and I stood in line and I could not help but feel a thrill as he placed his hand on my waist. ‘You are the prettiest one here,’ he whispered in my ear.

  ‘And you are the most handsome one here.’ I reached my hand up and placed it boldly on his strong jaw line.

  ‘Ruby,’ someone said, breaking the moment. I turned round to see who it was and my heart sank. It was Principal Dandridge. He had a half-finished plate of salad and chicken in his chubby hand, but was apparently in line for more food.

  ‘The potato salad is a must!’ He pointed to the creamy remnants of it on his plate. �
�Don’t miss it!’

  ‘We won’t,’ I said quickly, and was about to ask how Mrs Dandridge was enjoying the ball, when he turned his full attention to Johann.

  ‘You look very familiar…’ he began, speaking between bites of chicken that he shovelled in through his rubbery lips. ‘Are you a King Edwards lad?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Johann replied, ‘I am a Steunmekaar lad, sir.’

  The chicken practically spewed out of Principal Dandridge’s overstuffed mouth. He looked from me to Johann incredulously, the waiting potato salad suddenly forgotten. ‘Now I know why I recognized you.’ He wagged a fat finger at Johann. ‘Johann Duikster, captain of Steunmekaar’s formidable rugby team.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re a brave young man to show your face here. Our team doesn’t take losses, especially to an Afrikaans school, too lightly.’

  ‘It’s a dance, sir,’ I said, my voice sounding unnaturally high and shrill. ‘This isn’t about rugby.’ Johann sensed my growing distress and put his arm round me protectively.

  ‘In fairness, sir, we are all sportsmen playing a game…’

  ‘I don’t want any trouble, Duikster, is that understood?’ He shook his head at me as if to say, ‘What were you thinking?’ and waddled off.

  ‘It’s much too early in the evening for trouble,’ a voice drawled from behind Principal Dandridge. ‘The fun hasn’t even started yet.’

  Desmond and Monica sidled in behind us and I could not help but notice that she was wearing the exact same jumpsuit as mine. Only hers was in blazing purple.

  ‘Well, lookie, lookie what we have here…’ Desmond raised his voice above the music. ‘A red and a redneck…’ he goaded.

  Johann’s grip on my hand tightened, but I forced myself to turn round to face them. I felt a burning charge ignite in me, a fire that had long needed to find release aimed at its much deserving targets.

  ‘A snob and a snake…’ I said, looking from Desmond to Monica.

  ‘That’s so mean!’ Monica hissed, and narrowed her eyes.

  ‘A snob… I’ll take that as a compliment.’ Desmond flashed a cunning smile in my direction, then looked over at Johann and eyed him up and down. ‘But cavorting with our Afrikaans rival, now that’s just plain insulting to all of us at Barnard High.’ He sneered at Johann, ‘Keep her on a leash. She’s a bitch with a vicious bite.’