The Year the Gypsies Came Read online

  Dinner

  Dinner is served at six-thirty sharp even though in spring the sun is just beginning to go down.

  We’re all together. Eight people, two families. It’s a big rectangular dark oakwood table and we fit round easily. There’s always enough room in the Iris family house for more. We don’t even have to use fold-up chairs; there are enough dark wood ones with curly legs for everyone and enough matching plates and knives and forks to go all around. Expensive stuff that Papa Joe left Mother when he died.

  Mother is dressed in a white linen mini shift, her hair is loose on her shoulders and she seems to shimmer against all the dark polished wood in the room.

  ‘I always tell my girls that dinner should be a formal affair that’s served punctually at the same time every day. My father always said that no matter how much insanity there was in a day some things needed to be kept constant,’ she says smoothly, looking at Jock who’s seated to her left. Peg is seated to Mother’s right with Otis at her side. Father is in his usual seat at the head of the table and Streak and I sit side by side opposite Sarah and Otis.

  ‘Room’s very lovely,’ Peg says. I watch her as she takes in the monumental wrought-iron chandelier that hangs above the table and the matching dark oak Welsh dresser that stands behind me with its antique willow pattern plates displayed on the shelves. On one wall beside the Welsh dresser hangs a painting of an old Cape Dutch house in Constantia and on the wall behind Father hangs a large oil painting of a mountain scene in the Hex River valley. The room is as formal as the dinners we have in it. Peg and Jock, who look cleaner and neater than they did earlier in the day, look sadly shabby next to Mother’s linen and Father’s crisp mustard-coloured shirt and silk cravat.

  Lettie, her starched blue-and-white uniform crinkling loudly against her round, cushiony body, brings in the peas and rice. She keeps her head lowered when she returns from the kitchen with the roast.

  Father slices the roast on its silver platter. He does it well, perfect slices, not too thick, not too thin. Mother’s talking to Peg, low and private. Women’s talk. Peg’s hands look tired on the table next to Mother’s lemon juice and Ponds-cold-cream-every-night hands.

  ‘On the road, both born on the road,’ I hear Peg say. She’s left Opalina in the caravan and looks naked without the snake coiled round her neck.

  ‘Nothing like the freedom of being a wildlife photographer,’ Jock tells Father as he stabs a cluster of peas onto his fork. ‘Great way to live, but tough when money gets tight.’

  ‘Of course,’ Father says earnestly.

  What does he know about work outdoors, I wonder. I think of him melting away every day in his warehouse of imported chocolates. Placing phone orders to confectionery stores all over the country for his assortment of fine European chocolates. His most popular are dark-covered with bitter-tasting cherry liqueur inside. The only time I’ve ever seen Father outdoors at his office is when he goes to smoke a cigarette in the alley behind the warehouse, always carefully placing a white handkerchief on the packing box before he sits down, his small pot belly resting over his belt. He tells me, on one of my few visits there, that he won’t allow anyone to smoke inside for fear of a fire breaking out.

  While I’m imagining a hot-flamed room of melted chocolates, I catch Otis looking at me funny. His face is kind of blurred and cross-eyed looking. He eats sloppily. Red meat juice dribbling onto his faded T-shirt. I look sideways over at Streak. He’s quiet like me, not saying a word, just watching everything, but he scowls every once in a while across at his brother. Mother seems even less pleased with Otis’s table manners than Streak is. She drums her fingers on the edge of the table and gives Father a do-something-about-it look. Father just shrugs his narrow shoulders and clears his throat.

  ‘What class are you in?’ Peg asks Sarah in a hurried voice, as if her talking will take the attention off her messy son.

  ‘Form three, only two more years until I’m finished with school,’ Sarah says.

  ‘Form three,’ Peg sighs. ‘Otis, Otis.’ She pokes him with the back of her fork. ‘Do you hear that? Sarah’s in form three, what you’d be in, huh?’

  Otis doesn’t seem to hear her. He doesn’t even notice when she jabs him in his side. He’s begun pouring the salt and pepper shakers out in front of him in mounds and they stand there, like two growing mismatched mine dumps on the white tablecloth. Mother’s eyes narrow and she opens her mouth to shout for Lettie, but Sarah has already begun scooping up the salt, shovelling it with a tiny teaspoon onto her own plate.

  ‘Thank you, Sarah,’ Mother says in a clipped tone, while Peg apologizes in her halting raspy voice for Otis’s behaviour.

  I see Jock, clenching his jaw and narrowing his eyes at Otis just like Mother did, only he makes his eyes into tiny narrow slits. Otis sees his father’s look and backs away from the table, away from his father’s stare, like it’s a blow and not a hard stare his father is giving him.

  ‘He gonna git it, git it good,’ Streak whispers under his breath.

  I turn to look at Streak, expecting to see an angry dare-you look in his eyes. Instead I can see only the top of his head, like he pulled his neck in suddenly like a tortoise would into its shell when it feels danger’s about to come its way.

  After this Otis sits still and quiet and doesn’t eat another bite. I hear Sarah sweetly telling him about our two cats, isiCoco and inDuna, that were named by Buza, and how we just call them Coco and Duna, and also how we once had a baby donkey that died a few years back. Mother and Father are listening closely as Jock spins out long tales of life in the bush; how he nearly got stampeded by a herd of elephants in Kenya and how a buffalo bull almost gored him to death on a photo shoot in South West Africa.

  Streak keeps humming into his shirt. ‘Git it, git it. He’s gonna git it good,’ in a sing-song voice and doesn’t put his head up until Lettie carries in dessert of hot baked apples and melktert.

  After dinner Jock excuses himself and steers Otis firmly by the shoulder out of the dining room and takes him back to the caravan which has been parked in the exact spot that Mother and Father agreed upon. Jock comes back a little while later without Otis but instead brings with him a box of wildlife pictures.

  ‘Gave that boy a stern talking-to,’ he says gruffly, then adds in a quieter voice, ‘Boy’s just not used to eating at such a fancy table, never seen silver salt and pepper shakers before.’

  ‘Worrying about the next meal, I’m afraid, Mrs Iris, was more important than the way we ate it,’ Peg says apologetically to Mother.

  ‘I’m sure he knows not to do it again,’ Sarah adds.

  ‘Well now, let’s see what’s in that box, shall we?’ Mother says, using her perfect mannerly way of steering unpleasant conversation in another direction.

  Jock places the pictures in a stack on the dining-room table and we all crowd round while Jock takes out the first picture.

  ‘Damn timid animal, bushbuck.’ Jock gently holds the corners of a glossy picture of a ram in his big hands. ‘Took this one in False Bay. Near impossible to get.’

  The rusty orange buck stares out at us, big eyes startled, wet nose glistening, ready to jump right off the smooth paper at us. There are other pictures: an African elephant in the Londolozi Game Reserve, a shot of horses and ostriches feeding in a field together in Calitzdorp in the Little Karoo, close-ups of a Burchell’s zebra that he took in Maputoland. Jock handles each picture so gently, and I think how he treats his pictures as special as Peg treats Opalina. Like snakes and photographs mean more to them than anything else. The last picture that Jock shows us is of a male lion, his yellow eyes gazing straight ahead into the camera, filling the whole picture with his strong golden body.

  ‘Magnificent,’ Mother murmurs, leaning closer in.

  ‘Impressive stuff,’ Father says, lighting a cigarette and holding it between his teeth.

  ‘Choose a picture each, girlies,’ Jock says to Sarah and me. ‘Go ahead. My treat. A little thank you to your mom and dad for putting us up, but mostly for putting up with our bad ragamuffin boys.’

  ‘Oh, goody!’ Sarah says excitedly.

  Sarah chooses the horses and ostriches, and I take the frightened buck.

  ‘Being a photographer must be thrilling.’ Sarah clutches the picture to her chest. ‘Just think, you get to see the wonders of the world and then capture them forever for others to enjoy.’

  Jock laughs appreciatively. ‘Couldn’t have said it better myself, girlie.’

  ‘Couldn’t have said it like that at all,’ Pegs says sharply to him in her dry-sounding voice.

  Mother’s lips curl in a small smile at Father, and I see them, the perfect host and hostess, shimmering, glowing brightly against the background of our new rumpled house guests.

  ‘Shoulda chose the lion.’ Streak follows me to my room after dinner.

  ‘I liked the bushbuck more,’ I say, carefully taping the picture to my cupboard door.

  ‘Otis once threw a stone real hard at a little buck and near killed it.’ Streak wipes his hands on his shorts that are already smeared with custard. ‘Ma says he don’t know his own strength. Bet he could wallop Pa good and proper, but Pa always ties Otis up when he gives him one with the strap.’

  I think of smiling Jock. Warm hand in mine. This special picture he’s given me. Jock with a strap hitting a tied-up boy. Pictures that won’t come together in my head. The bushbuck’s eyes catch mine. Run, they say. Run.

  ‘I’m going to see Buza, our Zulu nightwatchman,’ I say hurriedly to Streak, a sudden feeling of closed-in spaces coming over me.

  ‘I seen him as we was coming up for dinner,’ Streak says. ‘What ya want to see him for? He’s just a dumb old kaffir.’

  For a second I am the lion, eyes so strong, pressing my nails into Streak’s arm. ‘Don’t ever call Buza a dumb old kaffir again, you hear? He’s the smartest person in this whole house. Don’t you dare say it again!’

  ‘Boy, oh boy.’ Streak rubs his arm where I’ve pinched the skin. ‘Jeez, that’s what Ma and Pa calls them. Smelly kaffirs. Hell, I didn’t know you was going to turn into some wildcat from just one dumb word.’ Streak stares hard at me, then looks away and shuffles back and forth on his feet.

  Then I notice them: a circle of purple bruises round each of his ankles, like the coiled marks of a snake.

  ‘Does your father hit you too?’ I whisper.

  Streak looks down at a spot between his feet and wraps his arms round himself, like a big chill suddenly came into the room, then he slowly looks up at me.

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘You got lotsa friends, Em’ly?’ His dark eyes stare straight into mine.

  ‘No. Not really.’

  ‘I got none.’ He unfolds an arm from round himself. ‘Take me with you to meet your old Zulu boy, an’ I’ll be good an’ well behay-ved, I promise, Em’ly.’

  ‘You’ll meet Buza another time, Streak. Not now, not today.’

  ‘Won’t say no mean words to him.’

  ‘Streak, go back to the caravan. Tomorrow I’ll take you with me to a special place.’ I feel him so close beside me, feel his aloneness inside me, like it’s my own. ‘Tomorrow, I promise.’

  ‘No one keeps promises ever!’ he says angrily, then bolts suddenly from my room.

  Nightwatch

  By the fading light and the sudden coolness of the air, I know that Buza has already left his room in the servant’s quarters at the back of the house to start his nightwatch. His room is small with a red polished concrete floor and an iron bed that stands on bricks to keep away the scary man – the tokoloshe. There are tin cans with holes in them on a wooden box in his room. Magic stuff inside, he tells me. Muthi, to make aches and pains go away. The only decoration is a photograph of a young smiling black girl holding a baby. It’s in an old frame held by a weak nail in the rough wall. I’m not supposed to be in the servants’ rooms. Father’s made it clear that they are off-limits, so I’ve only seen inside Buza’s room once or twice. ‘Don’t need you two to be interfering in the servants’ lives. They know their place and you girls know yours, so stay out of their rooms. Understand?’ he told Sarah and me one afternoon when he found us playing in Lettie’s room that smelt of disinfectant and rose water.

  As I walk down the driveway to Buza’s wooden stool next to the big white pillars, I watch the light coming yellow and orange through the woods. The ribbons of colours make me think of a yellow lion chasing an orange bushbuck towards the house.

  ‘New people staying long time, Miss Emily?’ Buza asks as I sit down beside him. There are no beads for us to thread together today.

  ‘I don’t know. Father said it was just until they find another place to stay.’

  Buza looks out across the road towards the woods. His eyes gaze somewhere past the lake, somewhere far away.

  ‘Miss Emily, the new lady, she have a snake, a python?’ He moves his hands in a circle in front of his neck, his copper bangles catching each other like angry bells.

  ‘She wears it round her neck. Pretty funny, huh?’ I laugh, but Buza doesn’t.

  ‘Ay, Miss Emily, that python it’s a skelm. You know what is a skelm?’

  ‘Yes, a crook – a bad man.’

  ‘Hai, you are right. The python, it’s bad.’ Buza holds the top of his wooden stick, rolling his palm back and forth on its knobbled head. ‘This is how we Zulu know about the black soul of the python. I tell you this story because, me, I am not happy that it has come to stay with us.’

  I tuck my legs underneath myself and wait for Buza’s voice to float down to me in the fading light.

  ‘In the beginning, Miss Emily, people, they did not die. Death, he lived with uNkulunkulu, the Great One, the Creator, who would not let Death go down to Earth. But Death, he begged so much with the Great One: “Please, let me go down to Earth. Please!” So at last the Creator, he agreed.

  ‘But the Creator, he made a special promise to First Man. He said even though he now let Death go about the Earth, the people, they would not die.’

  ‘How did the Creator know that, Buza?’ I lie back on the grass and look up at the sky. There are a few pale white stars already out, and I think that they are watching us as closely as I watch them.

  ‘See, to protect them, the Creator, he put some new skins into a basket for First Man and his family, for them to wear when their bodies became too old. Then they would be young again and they would cheat Death.’

  Buza stands up and leans on his stick. I can tell that his legs bother him when he sits too long. After a few minutes he sits down again.

  ‘Ay, I am getting too old, Miss Emily.’

  ‘But not old enough to have forgotten stories,’ I say, wanting him to carry on.

  The stars are coming out fast all over the sky, and soon Mother will send Lettie to get me ready for bath and bed.

  ‘Now, Miss Emily, the Creator, he asked the jackal to take the basket of skins and give it to First Man. But that jackal, hai, he is also no good, you know.

  ‘On the journey, Jackal stopped in the veld. Some friends were enjoying a big meal of impala, and Jackal joined in. And he ate too much so that he fell fast asleep. While he was sleeping, Python came and he took the basket of skins, and he slid away on his belly into the bush.’

  I think about the jackals I once saw in the bush, standing like beggars, waiting for the lions to finish feeding on a dead kudu. When the lions were done, the jackals ran in, barking and snapping at each other like a pack of pirate dogs.

  ‘Well, Miss Emily, when Jackal woke up and found that the basket of skins was stolen, he ran so fast to First Man to tell him the terrible thing that has happened.

  ‘First Man was very angry, and he cried to the Creator, “Look what has happened to the gift of new skins!” But it was too late.

  ‘And since that time, when people become old and their skin gets wrinkled, they must die. And that is why my people want to kill the python when they see it.

  ‘But Python, he’s too slippery. You see, Miss Emily, he’s still got those skins in the basket. So only he can throw off his old skin and put on a new one when his skin gets old.’

  Buza looks down at me. I am still on my back looking at the sky. I think how old Buza is. How wrinkled even his fingers are.

  ‘What are you looking so long at, Miss Emily?’

  ‘I’m looking for the Creator up there. I need to tell him to do me just one special favour – to send me only one new skin.’

  Buza laughs. ‘Hai, Miss Emily, a new skin for what?’

  ‘For you, Buza, for you.’

  Cattery Club

  In the morning I take Streak to see my Cattery Club. From the look on his face I can see that he’s half not expecting me to come down to the caravan to get him, but I tell him that promises shouldn’t be broken and I don’t break mine.

  ‘What’s a Cattery Club?’ he asks as we walk round the side of the house to the back garden. He swings his arms like a free flapping bird beside me while his chameleon clings for dear life to his shoulder.

  ‘You’ll see,’ I tell him, feeling excited and scared about letting someone new into my special place.

  The boys at school don’t ever notice or talk to me. They bring Rowntrees Fruit Pastilles and Cadbury’s Peppermint Crisps to Melody and Mindy Fairchild, the pretty blonde twins who sit behind me in class and giggle at the exact same moment at everything anyone ever says to them. Cuteness and blondeness are what the boys at school seem to notice most, but Streak doesn’t seem to care that I don’t have either of those.

  We make our way through the rows of apricot and apple trees towards the furthest end of the garden. Once we get there I tell him that he needs to leave his chameleon outside.

  At first he looks at me like this isn’t what he’s planning on doing, then he notices my hands on my hips, that I mean serious business. He grumbles about my ‘stupid rules’, but ties the chameleon with some string to a bush and leaves it in the sun. ‘Won’t run away. Too tame.’ He strokes its green scales, as if it’s soft and furry, like a kitten.