Ruby Red Read online

  I looked from Julian to Father, waiting for Father to come back with one of his quick-minded answers. Something that would make perfect sense and that held infinite value and wisdom. But he sat quietly and looked deep into Julian’s dark eyes, which held turbulent waters and desperate pikes in their murky orbs.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ was all he said.

  ‘As am I, sir.’

  That conversation between Father and Julian hung like a swinging chandelier in my topsy-turvy brain between terrified thoughts of the upcoming Disco Ball and my part as an accomplice to Mother’s latest scheme. She was planning to have an important gallery exhibition introducing Julian and debuting his work to her affluent crowd of art influencers. She was reluctant to tell Julian the good news for fear that it would somehow short-circuit his creativity. This had happened with some of her other artists in the past, both black and white. Once she had set a date for an exhibition, their work suffered. Performance anxiety was what she called it. There would be a right moment to tell Julian, but it was not yet.

  ‘It will upset his flow and concentration if he thinks he’s painting for an audience,’ she told me as we walked through her gallery, discussing which paintings would hang on which walls. I was barely able to focus on the complex task. There were twenty-five works of art to be hung and I was lost in rugby-match thoughts and Disco Ball fretting.

  It had been two weeks since the Steunmekaar-Barnard game and I was surprised that images of Johann, a boy I did not know and would probably never see again, kept popping into my head, sending a tingling sensation from my pink-tinged toenails to the crown of my long dark hair.

  ‘Is love inherently tragic, Mother?’ I asked as she measured a space on one of the gallery walls in her graceful and delicate way.

  ‘ “Is love inherently tragic?” Is that a title for one of Julian’s works or is that a question for me?’ She gave me one of her small bow-shaped smiles.

  ‘It’s the topic of an essay that’s due in English literature class next week. We have to either prove or disprove the theory using Shakespeare’s works.’ I held up the other end of the measuring tape for her and raised my eyes to meet hers.

  ‘Ah, I see… a theoretical question… twenty-three inches by twelve. Write that down, Ruby.’ She ran a hand along a coiled strand of coloured Ndebele beads that clung to her slender, pale neck. ‘Love is neither all heartbreak nor all joy. It is what we bring to it that shapes it. Sometimes the end result is a misshapen Picasso and sometimes it takes the form of a starry-night Van Gogh masterpiece, all blue and gold swirling colours that hold us eternally in its majesty and power.’

  ‘Van Gogh maimed himself, Mother, and died in misery,’ I said as I wrote down the measurements on a pad of paper.

  Mother dragged an oval-shaped chair close to the wall and, lifting the hem of her purple silk skirt, she climbed gracefully on to it. She ran the tape measure from her position and I caught it and dragged it to the marked spot.

  ‘Practical. How did I ever raise such a practical daughter?’ she chuckled to the empty wall. She reeled in the tape measure with a quick zipping motion and floated off the chair. ‘Ah yes, the poor wretched artist died but it is the art that lives on forever. Love can do that too.’ She sashayed ahead of me into the next gallery. ‘Come along, Ruby darling, this is going to be an extraordinary exhibition!’

  As I followed her aimlessly, I knew which side of the argument I would take and which Shakespearian work I would use to prove my cheerless belief. It would of course be Romeo and Juliet. I calmed myself with the knowledge that even if Johann Duikster and I were somehow to meet we were from opposite sides of the camp. A Capulet and a Montague. An Afrikaner and an Englishman. Shakespeare knew best.

  Chapter Nine

  Shopping was not something I enjoyed quite as much as some of the other girls at school. When we were still best of friends, Monica had to practically drag me to the boutiques in Rosebank or Hillbrow to buy new clothes. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the latest styles, the embroidered gypsy cheesecloth tops, the ever-so-high platform shoes and flared bellbottom jeans, it was that I felt that my muscular athletic legs filled out the trousers too much and looked bulky in a miniskirt. Monica used to laugh and tell me that I had a really good figure, but it was easy for her to say, with her tong-flicked Farrah Fawcett blonde hair and long, lean legs that looked fantastic in hot pants, something I would never dare to wear.

  We used to make a day of it. Saturday morning shopping, lunch and sometimes an afternoon film. If we were in suburban Rosebank, we would eat at the Branded Steer where the hamburgers were juicy and delicious and the chips, drenched in tomato sauce, melted in your mouth. But, if we were in fashionable Hillbrow, where dark safety-pinned punk-rock clothing and strong-smelling woolly Afghan coats hung side by side in small, psychedelically painted stores, we would eat at Cabbages and Kings, a new vegetarian restaurant that was fast becoming popular. I liked the lentil pie while Monica ate the tofu and rice concoction, but she insisted that we stop at the cafe on the corner to buy a Crunchie bar or Peppermint Crisp afterwards.

  ‘Too healthy!’ she would laugh, her pink-painted mouth spewing chocolate in all directions.

  I missed her. Missed having a best friend who enjoyed being with me no matter what we were doing. She was like cotton candy, all light and fluffy, unlike my thick-as-malt texture. We were a perfect odd coupling. Monica never asked questions about my parents or why they didn’t like kids to come over after school. She was the youngest in her family, with two older brothers who doted on her and gave her beer whenever she asked, which was every weekend. They would mix it with Seven Up for her to make a beer shandy, which was, according to them, what ladies drank. Monica liked to dance and even owned a pair of neon-blue spandex leggings that she would disco dance in all around their large rambling house.

  Now I had lost her to Desmond without even an argument or discussion. She had simply walked away from me when he’d decided he wanted her. I imagined that he made her choose sides. Him or me. Best friend or new boyfriend. She chose him. It hurt a lot.

  It hurt even more as I walked with Janice through Hillbrow and stopped in the same stores that Monica and I used to go to. We were browsing through the racks of Spiros, one of our favourite boutiques.

  ‘You’ll look great in this, Ruby!’ Janice held a lime-green halter-neck jumpsuit out to me enthusiastically.

  ‘It’s a bit flashy.’ I coughed, trying to unstick the lump in my throat.

  ‘You’ve got to go a bit over the top for the Disco Ball – everyone does!’

  It was true. This was the one night when everyone shed their conservative school uniforms and we were allowed to wear whatever we liked. Outrageous had become the antidote for all those pent-up days in school uniform. It was the night when Barnard High’s teachers turned a blind eye to the girls’ micro miniskirts that barely covered anything or the boys’ white shirts that were open almost to their navels and glowed neon white under the ultraviolet lights that were mounted on the walls of the auditorium.

  ‘Ruby, c’mon, give it a whirl!’ Janice pushed the jumpsuit into my hands.

  ‘Okay, I’ll try it on.’ I reluctantly headed into the dressing room.

  As I stripped down to my bra and pants I tried to stop the ball of disappointment from welling up and spilling over in a flood of injured tears. I would get over this, like I did everything else. I would hide how I really felt. Only Julian had seen small cracks in my less-than-perfect self.

  ‘Well, how does it look?’ Janice was practically panting outside the closed curtains.

  I stepped into the lightweight spandex jumpsuit and tied the halter top behind my neck.

  ‘It looks good,’ I answered honestly. The jumpsuit was surprisingly flattering and followed the lines of my body closely before flaring out into large bellbottoms. The bright colour offset my dark eyes and dark hair.

  ‘Jeez, Louise!’ Janice flung the curtains open before I could protest. ‘You look fab!�
��

  I blushed. ‘Thanks, Janice, you’re a real pal.’

  It was true, she was a real pal, but not a best friend. And that would just have to do for now. Maybe just a pal was enough. If a pal decided to leave the friendship, it wouldn’t hurt as much. While I paid for the jumpsuit and Janice fumbled for crumpled rand notes in her oversized crochet purse for the flowing gypsy skirt with embroidered hemline and bell-sleeved Indian-print top, I made a silent pact that I was done with best friends for good. We ended the afternoon at Cabbages and Kings. I decided that it was high time I ordered something different, so I chose the rice and tofu concoction that was Monica’s favourite. It was tasty and delicious but every mouthful burned my insides as it went down.

  Janice’s mother picked us up in her grey estate, swerving to an untidy halt on the corner of Piet Retief Avenue and Bishops Boulevard. She waved her wobbly arm frantically at us in case we couldn’t see her. She was hard to miss with her outdated blonde beehive hairdo and flapping false eyelashes. Janice’s eight-year-old brother, Gerald, was slumped down in the back of the car. His oversized body spilled over both seats and he seemed less than thrilled that he had to share the back seat with anyone.

  I squeezed myself into the tiny space beside him while Janice sat next to her mother. The car smelled like day-old pizza. Mrs Harris shot a barrage of questions at me that began the second the car door was closed, while Gerald shot bits of chewed-up paper through a straw at anything he could. I was, of course, his nearest target. Janice was busy pulling her new purchases out of the bag to admire and Mrs Harris was so intent on getting as much information out of me as she could in the fifteen-minute car ride to my house that neither noticed I was being assailed by chewed-up wads of paper. I tried to block them before they hit me but it was a losing battle. For an overweight eight-year-old he had the chewing-spitting speed of a sleek cheetah.

  ‘So, Ruby, Janice tells me that you and Monica Benson are on the outs. I never liked that girl, a flirt in a skirt, is what she is. I was at high school with her mother, you know – Lynette, she was always such a high and mighty one.’ She scratched way down into the top of her coiffed hair with a long silver-painted nail that disappeared into her dyed yellow nest.

  Before I had a chance to tell her that Monica’s mother’s name was Claudia, not Lynette, and that she grew up in Cape Town, I got shot in the ear by another gobbed-up ball of paper.

  While I tried to unplug the soggy intruder, Mrs Harris’s next question came at me through muffled tones.

  ‘I hear your mother’s gallery is under criminal investigation for helping communist artists. Gossip! Just nasty gossip…’

  ‘Mom, you’re not looking!’ Janice made the gypsy skirt dance in front of her. ‘Do you like it? Do you…?’

  ‘I need the toilet!’ Gerald whined. ‘I ate too much lunch.’

  I tried to think of something quick and clever to say in response to her question. Or perhaps something stupid and naive would be better, whichever came first. But instead I settled for the truth.

  ‘My mother handles artists and their art. Not politicians and their politics, Mrs Harris,’ I answered firmly but politely. I could tell that my response sailed clear over her high beehive and out of the wet-balled window. She seemed suddenly at a loss for words and turned her attention to Janice’s gypsy skirt, oohing and aaahing over it in her nasal voice, then turned to Gerald, promising that they would stop at the local cafe so that he could use the bathroom after they had dropped me off.

  The rest of the questions about my life were more banal but equally annoying and I answered each one perfunctorily, counting the seconds until I could jump out of her smelly car and escape her spitting son and her tactless stupidity. Janice was lost in boutique-buying heaven and didn’t seem to notice that my monosyllabic answers to her mother had an edge to them. ‘Any boyfriends, Ruby? Did your outfit for the Disco Ball cost more than Janice’s? Do you like being an only child?’

  I bolted out of the car with a terse ‘Thank you’ the instant her car pulled to a halt outside our wrought-iron gates.

  A dark hollowness came over me as I unlocked the large gates then secured them quickly behind me.

  I looked up at our white-shuttered two-storeyed house. The purple bougainvillea clinging to the outside trellis. The honeysuckle climbing wildly up to the second floor like strands of a fragrant necklace. There was music coming from an open window somewhere upstairs and my eyes wandered upwards. It was then that I caught sight of her, my mother dancing, swaying gracefully to the strains of a piece of music that I recognized. It was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. I knew it well. ‘Music is the right hand, Ruby, and art is the left. The one helps the other. They are equal parts of what makes creative perfection,’ were Mother’s words when I grumbled about being dragged to classical symphonies when I was younger. She let me miss some, but never Vivaldi. Vivaldi was her favourite.

  Suddenly another person came into view through the upstairs window. I stood mesmerized as he wrapped a hand round Mother’s slim waist while his other laced her delicate fingers through his much larger ones. She smiled up at him before leaning her head against his broad chest. I dropped my handbag, my keys and my new purchase on to the ground and stood frozen by what I was seeing. He dipped her backwards and I watched as she threw her head back and laughed. I took in a breath of icy air that filled me with sweet honeysuckle and Vivaldi and knew that this was a moment I would hold inside me forever, a cherished nugget of gold. My parents. Swaying together as one, soft light playing on his familiar face as he looked down at her with sheer adoration. She raised her small, pointed chin and gazed up at him.

  Here was my amulet of protection against the outside world. The right hand holding the left, the melding together of all that was solid and yet so fragile in these times of hatred and fear. ‘Your mother’s gallery is under investigation…’ Mrs Harris’s prying words rang through my head and jolted me out of the moment. As I picked up my belongings and made my way inside, the dark, hollow feeling washed over me again.

  ‘You had a phone call while you were out.’ Mother’s dewy face appeared in the kitchen a few minutes later. She hummed the last strains of the symphony as she poured herself a tall glass of lemonade and offered me one. ‘A girl named Loretta phoned. Do we know her, darling? She sounded Afrikaans…’

  ‘She’s a girl from Steunmekaar,’ I answered quickly, and felt a jolt of lightness returning to my being. ‘Did she say when I should call back?’

  Mother held the cool glass against her check and traced a finger along the tiled kitchen counter top. ‘I’m not sure it’s such a good idea, darling, to be making friends with an Afrikaans—’

  ‘Mother!’ I slammed my glass on to the table. ‘You’re joking, right?’

  ‘I’m afraid not…’ she said each word slowly and apologetically. ‘Ruby, they hate us, they’re watching our every move.’

  ‘They? You mean all Afrikaners? Not just the police and the Special Branch?’ I raised my voice angrily.

  ‘Ruby, listen… you just met this girl.’ Mother came towards me and touched my shoulder, but I shook her hand off. ‘You don’t know who her parents are, what they do…’

  ‘She’s just a girl. But she’s an Afrikaans girl, that’s all, Mother.’ I bit down on my lower lip.

  ‘I know this sounds awful, especially coming from me.’ Mother frowned, making tiny, feathery crease marks between her arched brows. ‘But we’re under such scrutiny and with Julian’s exhibition weeks away – if there is still going to be one – I just don’t need to be worrying any more than I already am. You understand, darling?’ She looked anxiously at me.

  I could feel simmering anger brewing inside as she spoke, but what came out of me surprised us both. I laughed. An uncontrollable sound that would not stop even when my father, freshly showered, came into the room.

  ‘What’s the joke, ladies?’

  ‘She’s upset,’ Mother said.

  ‘Hardly seems to be.’

/>   ‘She is. Trust me. It’s about the Afrikaans girl.’

  I caught my breath, short-circuiting the sound that emanated from me and turned to Father. ‘You agree?’

  ‘These are difficult times, Ruby. We need to close ranks, not open our world to strangers.’

  ‘Hypocrites! Both of you.’ I shook my head. ‘Acceptance of some but not others? What happened to “all men are created equal”?’ I circled them both in a slow dance of my own. ‘Or is it selective? Black and white but not English and Afrikaans.’

  ‘Ruby, stop!’ Father raised his hand to silence me, then turned to Mother. ‘Annabel, she’s right. We can’t bring her into this. She’s made a new friend. We’ve raised her to not see race or creed or colour. It’s bad enough she can never bring anyone home.’

  ‘Risk is not what we need right now…’ Mother ran a quivering hand along her slender neck. ‘But I suppose, yes, well, I’m afraid we have lost ourselves in all this.’ Mother shook her head. ‘What was I thinking? She’s only a schoolgirl, yes, nothing more. I’ve just become very wary and cautious lately,’ she said quietly, and sat down slowly at the kitchen table. ‘Very, very cautious…’

  ‘Is the gallery under police surveillance, Mother?’ I pulled up a chair beside her.

  ‘Yes. Every day.’ She sighed. ‘They lurk around outside the gallery. Go through our rubbish. Sometimes they even send one of their plain-clothed chaps in, pretending to be an art lover.’ She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her temples as if the thought of it all brought on a nasty headache. She rubbed her temples for a few moments, then, as if something heavy had lifted inside, she opened her eyes and held my gaze. ‘But I’ll be damned if that will stop me from giving Julian his exhibition.’ She shot defiant blue eyes at me. ‘Even if it has to be at midnight!’