Ruby Red Page 8

  ‘Thank you, Loretta.’ Father put the Citroën into gear.

  As he pulled out of the driveway Father turned back and waved. I was glad that he had met Loretta and hoped it would calm his anxiety about my new friend.

  Loretta held both my hands in hers. ‘You are here. Ja? I cannot believe… yes. Finally! Come.’

  We climbed the large smooth-stoned stairs together and I felt happier than I had in a long time.

  As she opened the front door the smell of steaks cooking on an outside braai filled my nostrils. ‘Boetie, I mean, my brother, he is cooking up some steaks and wors for our supper. You eat meat, yes?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ I reassured her.

  As we walked through the contemporary-designed house I noticed the lack of a woman’s touch. Most of the rooms were carpeted in dark chocolate brown or dark tile and the living room was dominated by large, oversized leather couches that surrounded a heavy oak rectangle coffee table. There was a zebra skin stretched out in front of an unlit fireplace and an ivory elephant tusk jutted out above the mantlepiece. My eyes were drawn to a heavy panelled cabinet in the dining room that was filled with gleaming silver trophies.

  Loretta followed my gaze, ‘Ja, those are mostly Boetie’s. He’s a big athlete. Soccer, rugby, swimming. Alles! You will meet him soon. My pa, he is still at the Country Club.’

  I went with Loretta down a wide tiled corridor that had paintings hanging on both walls. Being the daughter of a gallery owner I found myself examining the art in other people’s homes scrupulously. Loretta’s father, in contrast to their ultra-modern home, chose traditional oils that showed scenes of the history of his Afrikaans forefathers. As we passed through the hallway I glanced for a moment at paintings of Voortrekkers sitting round a campfire, their white-canopied ox wagons in the background, another, a Cape Dutch house nestling against the majesty of Table Mountain, and a third, a ruddy-faced farmer, Bible in one hand and rifle in the other.

  ‘My oupa, he gave all this art to Pa before he died.’ Loretta made a face. ‘Boetie and me, we don’t like them, but Pa says out of respect to his father…’ Her voice trailed off as we came to the door of a room. ‘Hier’s my kamer. Kom binne.’ Loretta smiled.

  She ushered me into her room. It reflected everything that Loretta was: warm and inviting. I was glad there was at least one room in the house that had bright, feminine colours. Her bed was covered with a purple-and-yellow quilt with large black-centred daisies dancing in circular patterns. Her bedroom walls were painted aquamarine, which swirled like sea-foamed waves. I felt as if I had stepped into a psychedelic picture book.

  ‘Gee whiz!’ I said.

  ‘Pa is very strict with alles, but he was very good about letting me make this room the way I want it.’

  She positioned herself on the edge of her bed and I sat down in a plush purple beanbag that faced her nightstand. On it was a single item. A silver-framed picture of a striking blonde woman leaning against the trunk of a large tree. Her blue dress was cinched tight into her small waist and her hair lay pale and wispy against her angular cheeks. On her hip she held a toddler, a little blonde girl who had her downy head resting in the curve of the woman’s neck.

  ‘My ma,’ Loretta said softly.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No worries. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘You were so young when she died.’ I shook my head.

  ‘What is your mother like?’ Loretta plumped the pillows as if her hands needed something to do.

  I was caught off guard. No one had ever asked me that question before, nor had I ever thought of how to sum Mother up.

  ‘Well, she’s lots of things.’ I imagined Mother in the gallery as she talked earnestly to an artist, her small hands undulating in the empty air. ‘She’s passionate about art and artists. She likes to help other people. She’s very beautiful…’

  ‘She sounds much excellent.’

  I did not correct her choice of words. In many ways Mother was just that. Much excellent.

  ‘We have our moments,’ I added, but in truth those moments were few and far between. I knew how lucky I was to have a good relationship with my mother and how many of the girls at school disliked their mothers and felt distant from them.

  ‘I wish my pa had married again,’ Loretta said wistfully. ‘He says no one could ever… what is the word in Engels? Place over Mother?’

  ‘Take her place,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, take her place.’ Loretta and I were quiet for a moment, our eyes resting on the image of the little girl in her mother’s arms.

  Loretta turned and looked at me. ‘I am very happy you are here.’

  ‘Me too.’ I smiled back at her and in that moment all the dreadful things from the week faded away.

  Loretta hopped off the bed. ‘Kom, let’s go and see if Boetie needs help with supper.’

  I followed Loretta down a maze of corridors until we reached the back door. A shiver went up my spine as she opened the door and the cool air rushed in. The garden was lit with torched lanterns and dominated by a kidney-shaped swimming pool.

  ‘Boetie!’ Loretta shouted out. ‘Kom, my vriendin Ruby is hier!’

  At the far end of the garden, beyond their swimming pool, was the figure of someone leaning into the burnished flames of the braai, intently focused on what he was doing.

  ‘Boetie!’

  This time he cocked his head at the sound of his sister’s voice and turned in our direction. The glowing light from the flames caught the gold of his hair and it was in that moment that I recognized his body movements, the sureness of his actions. He turned, waved and put down the large fork that he was holding in the same hand that I had last seen with a rugby ball in its grasp. The world stood still.

  Johann was ‘Boetie’. Johann was the brother I had spoken to on the phone but never knew. How did I not know?

  Johann, who was now smiling and walking towards us. My heart leaped with the flames that glowed behind him.

  He extended his hand and I felt myself tremble as his fingers and palm touched mine. ‘Ruby. It is nice to meet you.’

  ‘Yes,’ was all I could get out, then, ‘Very.’

  ‘Loretta said that you were very pretty and for once she did not lie.’ His hand held mine for a second longer before releasing it and I felt the instant loss of his touch.

  ‘Thank you,’ I stammered. ‘I saw you win against our school.’

  ‘I told you she was lekker mooi!’ Loretta punched her brother’s arm affectionately. ‘And I don’t lie, Boetie!’

  ‘My sister’s English is much better since she is your friend,’ Johann said. ‘She hated studying it before – ja, sussie?’

  We walked back around the pool to the braai. I could barely hold myself steady on the grassy lawn and felt light and giddy. I stumbled on a sprinkler head and Johann caught my arm. ‘You okay?’ I felt his fingers cup my elbow.

  ‘Yes.’ I said breathlessly. ‘I’m fine.’ But the truth was I was more than fine. I was wonderful.

  It took a half hour for me to stop marvelling at the impossible. That this was real. That Johann Duikster was talking to me and putting boerewors and steaks on to a platter for us to eat together.

  We moved into the kitchen and I helped Loretta set the breakfast-nook table while Johann arranged the meat and corn that had been boiling in a pot on the stove on to plates. Their servants apparently took Saturdays off instead of Thursdays. The phone rang and Johann came back to say that their pa had called to say that we should start without him. He was running late at the golf club.

  Our conversation over dinner drifted from one subject to another and I soon found that Johann had the same warmth and ease as his sister. We talked about the latest music from England and America. The Rolling Stones and the Eagles were favourites of Johann’s while I liked Carol King and Fleetwood Mac. Loretta was a big fan of Abba and announced that Olivia Newton John was worth having a poster of on the wall. I looked over at Johann a few times just to make su
re he was real and I hadn’t just conjured him up from wishing too much. He caught my eye and held my gaze just long enough for me to feel a warm flush wash over my cheeks before I looked away. Loretta must have been aware of the quiet flirtation that was going on between our bites of sweet corn and juicy steak.

  ‘Johann, he says that all the meisies at our school are boring—’ she glanced over at her brother with a wicked grin – ‘but the girls, they all chase him anyway.’

  Johann laughed. ‘They just like the idea of me – captain of this and captain of that. Like a prefect badge that they can wear on their school blazer.’

  ‘Ruby is a prefect.’ Loretta began clearing the table.

  ‘Me too,’ Johann said. ‘Something in common, yes?’ He looked over at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and I felt myself swimming deeper and deeper into his liquid blue eyes.

  The slamming of the front door with a loud smack broke the moment.

  ‘My pa is home.’ Loretta turned to Johann. ‘No fighting, Boetie, okay?’

  ‘My father and I do not, how do you say, see eye to eye,’ Johann added.

  I didn’t have a chance to respond because Meneer Duikster’s deep voice filled the room. It was followed by the sour smell of whiskey.

  ‘Aangename kennis.’ He slurred slightly as he spoke. He took me in but did not extend a hand. He was a tall man, well built with a short, cropped goatee. His head was completely bald but, despite the lack of hair, he was a youthful-looking man, probably close to the same age as Father in his mid-forties.

  I stood and practically curtsied to him. ‘Aangename kennis, Meneer Duikster,’ I said in my most perfect Afrikaans, and tried not to breathe in the alcohol fumes. Neither Johann nor Loretta seemed to be aware of the strong smell that surrounded him and I wondered if it were something they had grown used to over time.

  Loretta jumped from her seat and went to the kitchen to prepare a plate of food for her pa. The warm, relaxed mood that had permeated the room quickly evaporated. I felt my hands grow hot and clammy and my throat tighten so that not another word could get out. It didn’t seem to matter because Meneer Duikster did not look at me again, nor direct any questions at me. He ate methodically and seemed lost in a post-afternoon-drinking haze. He asked a few questions in Afrikaans to both Johann and Loretta mumbling words between mouthfuls so that I could barely understand anything that he was saying. Something about rugby practice for Johann and a question for Loretta about a shirt he needed the servant girl to iron on Monday. Johann answered his questions tersely but gave me a few apologetic smiles and asked if there were anything else I wanted to eat. All I could do was shake my head. I watched the hard, set lines of Meneer Duikster’s mouth and saw that despite the slow slurred manner of his speech there was a coldness to his words. It was obvious that neither Loretta nor Johann took after their father. Their kindness and warmth came from the soft beautiful woman in the picture frame who was long gone. I watched Loretta, suddenly keyed up and on edge as she tried to make light conversation with her father. How was his golf game? Did he want to lie down after dinner?

  She also tried to fill in the blanks of Johann’s monosyllabic answers to their father. It was obvious that she played middleman between them. Meneer Duikster seemed kinder and gentler towards her, if that were possible.

  He stood on unsteady legs and pushed himself away from the table as soon as he was done eating. He gave me a half-nod as he passed by me.

  I felt my throat relax and open again once Meneer Duikster was gone.

  ‘Askies vir Pa.’ Loretta began clearing away his dish immediately, as if to rid the table of the sourness that he had left in the room. ‘Saturday is his day for golf and whiskey.’

  ‘He is… what do you say…’ Johann swirled the lemonade in his glass. ‘A piece of works.’

  ‘Piece of work,’ I said.

  ‘He is not always so bad.’ Loretta lowered her eyes. ‘I am sorry. I should have met you somewhere else…’

  ‘But then I would not have met Ruby.’ Johann cocked his head at me, his blond hair falling forward and I felt my heart lurch and hurtle into my stomach.

  Loretta smiled and looked from me to Johann and back again. ‘Well, for this I am glad then,’ she said slowly, and I felt the warmth in her eyes again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sunday went by in a blur. I walked through each minute on dreamy air. Light and fluffy feelings drifted through me like soft white clouds with Johann at the centre of each one.

  I helped Mother hang paintings for the exhibition. I rewrote my essay for English literature about whether love was inherently tragic. I changed my point of view and said that of course it wasn’t!

  On Tuesday night I posed for Julian in the studio. He had decided that he wanted one portrait, something completely in contrast with his other work. He must have felt guilty for ignoring me all week so, to make up for it, he invited me to be the subject of his last painting, the one that would complete the collection. It was to be a statement piece. A vision towards change, even though Julian felt that change would be a long time in coming for his people.

  ‘You are fidgeting too much, Ruby.’

  ‘Why do I have to wear my school uniform?’ I complained.

  Julian had asked me to wear my winter school uniform, blue pinafore, white shirt and school tie, including the blue panama hat that none of us girls ever wore. He had me sit in a straight upright chair with a book in my hands. I was to pretend to be reading it intently. When he told me what he wanted, I did not see the significance of the painting. A white schoolgirl reading a book did not seem to be a subject that would draw any attention.

  ‘What’s so great about me reading? I don’t get it.’

  ‘Look at the cover, Ruby.’ Julian had set up his easel a distance from me and had already begun sketching.

  I turned the book over and looked at its cover. He had put a false cover on the book. It was obvious that Julian had painted the jacket cover and the title carefully. The title was in a language I did not know.

  ‘In-kul-uleku!’ I said guardedly.

  ‘Inkululeku!’ Julian pronounced the word for me. ‘It means “freedom” in Xhosa,’ he said, without looking up. ‘One day white children shall learn to read in our languages, just like we have to learn theirs.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ I said.

  ‘Now will you stop complaining?’ Julian gave me an impish grin.

  I sat still in the chair holding the book and did not move for at least twenty minutes. I wanted so badly to tell Julian all about Johann, but knew that now was not the time. He needed absolute concentration and quiet when he began a new work. Once the initial pencil sketch was down and the paintbrushes were brought out I would be free to talk but, for now, I had to be patient so I opened the book.

  Julian had been devouring all the books on our bookshelves since he had moved in. Several were piled high on the nightstand in his room. He must have taken one from his growing mound and redressed it with his own jacket design. I opened the book to a page.

  ‘Read to me,’ Julian said.

  ‘But you like quiet…’

  ‘I will make an exception. This book is about finding inner peace and a higher purpose.’ His eyes glanced up and held mine for a second.

  ‘Shall I read from anywhere?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. It is all good. It is a book about a seagull.’

  I opened the book and began reading. ‘For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.’

  ‘A big thinker, this bird is,’ Julian chuckled. ‘Read on

  ‘ “Why, Jon, why?” his mother asked. “Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can’t you leave low flying to the pelicans and the albatross? Why don’t you eat? Jon, you’re bone and feathers!”

  ‘ “I don’t mind being bone and feathers, Mum. I just want to know wha
t I can do in the air and what I can’t, that’s all. I just want to know.” ’

  ‘Knowledge.’ Julian’s fingers moved smoothly across the canvas. ‘That is what life is all about, Ruby. A yearning to understand and achieve something beyond our limits.’

  ‘In a country full of limits,’ I sighed.

  ‘Ah, but, like Jonathan, we must learn to fly above them.’

  I looked at Julian and felt a sudden flood of adoration for him.

  ‘How are you so wise?’ I asked.

  Julian shook his head. ‘I am not completely sure but I do know that suffering snuffs out our youth and sharpens our senses.’ Julian looked back and forth from me to the image that he was creating.

  ‘You are a wonderful subject to paint, Ruby.’ His eyes grew soft as he held the charcoal ever so gently on the canvas image.

  ‘Julian, there is something I want to tell you.’ I riffled the pages of the book on my lap.

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes, it is about a boy.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It is in your eyes, Ruby. They are the outside windows to our hearts. What people learn about our hearts is open to them through our eyes, yes?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘There are velvet curtains hanging in your window.’

  ‘That obvious?’

  ‘Yes, for me.’

  ‘What about your window?’

  ‘Filled with knotted branches. No view past them into my heart until after the show.’

  ‘It’s going to be wonderful.’

  ‘That is what I am most afraid of,’ Julian said quietly. ‘Tell me about this boy that has stirred all this sparkle in your eyes like sugar in a glass.’

  ‘He is very kind and special. I think he might like me too.’ I felt my cheeks grow hot.

  Julian put the charcoal down. ‘You can stretch now.’

  I stood and arched my back and reached my arms high in the air.

  ‘Is he in your class at school?’

  ‘No, he goes to another school. Steunmekaar.’ I yawned and held my arms out wide.