Читать книгу How to Make a Heart Sick - Heather Mac - Страница 4

The last night of the holidays came way too soon.

Before I knew it, I was lying in bed listening to the ‘grown-ups’ pack up the house, every muffled sound overlaid and surrounded by the thud, crash and sigh of nearby ocean waves that relentlessly pushed and pulled at the shore. Light ebbed and flowed in the dark amid the shushed roar of paraffin lamps that marked the grown-ups’ movements up and down the hallway and in and out of the house to pack the trailer they’d hitched to the back of the Kombi.

Wet cossies, sandy towels, empty food containers, unwrapped Christmas presents, Dad grumbling about the ‘bloody mess’, Mom’s mumbled responses came in late night whisper voice by the flicker of lamplight. There’d be no more meals on green plastic plates or drinks from matching plastic cups; no more hidden biscuit tins to discover and raid, or endless games of Rummy by gaslight; no more braaied fish, caught fresh that day, nor glorious sunrise walks on the beach collecting shells and bits of what the tides had brought in; no wanderings in the dunes, tracking dik-diks.

Simon rolled about in the bunk above, kicking and fighting unseen enemies, the springs in his mattress squeaking and grinding, making it difficult for me to judge the grown-ups’ movements. I shoved upward, hard, with both feet, aiming for where I reckoned his bum was, forcing him to roll over and be quiet for a while. Steven lay mumbling in his sleep on the bed opposite. During the holidays, we shared ‘the kids’ room’ while the grown-ups had a room next door.

I lay willing my parents to hurry up and go to bed, to sleep, so I could escape through the bedroom window one last time to say goodbye to the ocean. There was, at last, a deep silence, but still I waited an excruciatingly long time, trying to pick out even the slightest movement in the house. Nothing. Gingerly I crept out of bed, the mattress springs creaking unbearably loudly, my heart flipped and dropped into my stomach. Freeze. OK.

Carefully lifting the window handle, I pushed the glass wide, to be immediately enveloped by the full-throttle sounds of the ocean roaring and rumbling in the darkness. I could hear it, taste it, smell it—freedom. There was no wind that night, and the black and white checked curtains, shoved easily aside, allowed no more light into the room. There was no moon, no street lighting, just darkness. I dropped into its arms and tiptoed over the grassy verge, which, I knew from experience, was full of dubbeltjies despite Dad’s best efforts to weed them all out. I remembered him stabbing at the hard earth and cursing us for being ‘sodding lazy’ for not helping him—stab, toss, stab, toss, an angry scowl on his face, as though we’d purposefully planted the weeds to ruin his holiday.

I’d often stood a few feet away from him, aching for him to get up, to smile and take me away on an adventure, just the two of us. He’d turn his back on me, saying, ‘Go on, go and make yourself useful, I’m sure your mother can find something for you to do.’ Perhaps he sensed her lurking behind doors to ‘catch me in the act' of sucking up or some similarly heinous crime. I convinced myself he was protecting me from her, and I loved him all the more for it.

Standing on the very southern edge of the continent of Africa, wavelets tickling as they died over my feet, I’d often poured my heart out to that great unfathomable power, the ocean. Alone in the dark that night, I felt drowned by the enormity of the ocean’s restless pounding at the shore, overwhelmed by the majesty of the Milky Way and a gazillion stars strewn across the heavens. I’d made my way to the beach for some sort of communion with nature, and now I found myself shivering in the warm night air, holding my arms tight to myself, afraid to move, afraid of whatever was out there. ‘I’ve come to say goodbye, Ocean. We leave tomorrow, and I don’t want to go.’ I could barely whisper the words, a nameless dread in the pit of my stomach shooting a wave of chills up my spine and making my throat constrict. Suddenly danger seemed everywhere.

I’d tried not to wander too far from the lifeguard chair that loomed up from the beach. Using it as a marker, I glanced toward it, seeking reassurance from familiar daylight things, only to find myself being watched by a man, perched there between heaven and earth, staring down at me. I started, stumbling backward, then rolled to my knees and launched myself homeward as fast as my legs could carry me, stubbing my toes on shells abandoned by the tides. Shock, shame, fear and embarrassment raced through my mind while my feet tried to outrun them all. Who was he? Would he tell on me? Would I find the narrow gap in the scrub marking the pathway I needed to follow to find the road and home? Rather than relief at sighting the gap, anguish exploded out of my mouth in a groan that matched the overflow from my eyes. Rage! How dare the stranger be there? How dare he ruin my last night like that? I lifted my head and half growled, half moaned at the nonexistent moon, stamping my feet where just days before a cobra had slithered across my path. Thoughts of the cobra sobered me a bit, and I broke into a dash for the window, back to bed, back to prison, having tasted freedom for a while, a gorgeously hot, blue-skied and windy freedom; then I closed the window behind me and lay down to take what the darkness would bring.