Читать книгу Homemaking for the Down-At-Heart - Finuala Dowling - Страница 13

Margot and Zoe joined the Sunday springtime traffic. Trippers had pulled onto the Clovelly kerb to marvel at southern rights in the bay. The flow of cars slowed as drivers strained to see what had attracted the crowds leaning over the railings. Below them lay the scrappy beach with its brown mountain stream, struggling dunes and ink-blue water. The whales sprayed a little water, but otherwise merely lolled in the shallow bay.

Where the corner turned, so did the culture. Kalk Bay’s artistic élan, its cobbled neighbourhood of poets, artists, chefs, antiquarians and dress designers gave way, in a matter of a kilometre, to the land of old-age homes, bowling greens, funeral parlours, loan sharks and traffic circles. People sat down at tables to eat in Kalk Bay, but in Fish Hoek they kept the engine running while someone rushed in to buy takeaway chicken or pizza. How could one kilometre make such a difference?

If you squinted so that some of the new glass-and-steel homes on the mountainside above Sunny Cove were blurred, you might as well have been looking at a postcard from the 1950s. Fish Hoek was always Fish Hoek, anchored by the AP Jones Department Store and Central Hardware opposite. But there had been changes: the beach had a flagpole now. The job of the shark spotter was to hoist a green flag if he could see clearly that there was no shark in the bay, a red flag to indicate recent shark activity, and a white flag with a picture of a shark on it if there was a shark in the bay at that moment. But day after day, the shark spotter hoisted the black flag, which meant: “I can’t see a fucking thing – swim at your own risk.”

The landscape here was quite distinct from the protected, rocky coves of St James and Kalk Bay. Apart from a densely vegetated estuary, the valley was flattened, windy, scrubby. A few desperate palm trees, scoured by the constant through-wind, hunkered down in pots lining the excessively billboarded main street. Ugliest of all was the frontage of the tyre workshop. Twice Margot had gone in there with one flat tyre and they’d conned her into replacing all four. An unctuous man had offered her cheap coffee with instant creamer as a palliative. Was it true that instant creamer was made out of whale fat? She wished she wouldn’t retain every canard fed to her by her listeners.

Whenever Margot was tempted to give up radio work, she’d imagine what life would be like in a cheap rented flat above Central Jewellers, with the wind blowing plastic bags and takeaway cartons against the steel steps of the fire escape. It kept her motivated.

She turned left at the traffic circle and they rose up out of the valley and instantly everything was pretty once more. The narrow road through Sunny Cove seemed to carry the imprint of her childhood on it. She might see an untroubled housewife in a headscarf carrying a wicker hand basket, or her own family setting off for a picnic at Miller’s Point on the last day of the school holidays. Their old Anglia had been so much more innocent-looking than the cars around her today. She could speak to Curtis about that: he would love to talk to her about evolving car shapes.

It was disconcerting to feel the pull of the past so distinctly at that particular curve of the road, just where the mountain stream flowed beneath the road and out to the sea from a pipe below Jager’s Walk. Mr Morland said water was the photographic paper of the psychic world. Ancient battles still raged on the world’s river banks, he said.

Margot steered the car along the rocky coast, following the single-gauge railway line to Simon’s Town. They passed the disused stone quarry before Glencairn beach. A rock kestrel rode the thermal. It was a pity about the houses built too high on the mountainside, clinging there with their absurd sheets of glass. The road curved again, and there was Dixie’s Restaurant, where Margot had first tasted Indonesian food.

“Do you remember when we ate here and you thought the chef had accidentally stirred peanut butter into your plate?”

But Zoe didn’t remember. “Why don’t you just drive us off the edge here?” she suggested. “We could die together. You’re not happy either.”

“I am happy.”

Margot wasn’t happy. You, she wanted to say, it’s you who make me unhappy.

If it weren’t for Zoe, Margot could spend Sunday any way she liked. She could invite friends around for lunch . . . assuming she could change into the kind of person who tossed lunches together with ease after being awake all night. Assuming she wanted to see anyone at all. All she really wanted was to lie in a locked, curtained room reading a book in which nothing happened. She wanted to drop off to sleep with a book still in her hands, then wake and eat Salticrax straight out of the box for supper and speak to no one; never again, in fact, to have to dredge up another topic of conversation.

“You’re the saddest person I know,” said Zoe. “Living or dead.”

The phrase “idiot savant” came to Margot’s mind.

They were passing the site of the defunct marine refinery now. A historic reflex caused Margot to wind up the car window. It used to stink so much, adding to her childhood carsickness. Who would eat margarine, knowing that smell? On the left, behind barbed wire, the Lower North Battery pointed its fixed gun at enemies unknown. Like me, she thought. I do that.

In Simon’s Town they parked at Jubilee Square. The two women progressed slowly to the quayside, Zoe leaning heavily on her daughter. Margot should have had breakfast – she could feel the nausea rising. Think you’re going to throw up, but then you faint instead: life had taught her that much. The light was far too bright, bouncing off the water and the white hulls. The halyards hitting against the masts in the light breeze mocked her queasiness.

“I have to sit down,” said Margot. They were descending the stone steps past the shops, heading towards the slipway. Margot sat down abruptly with her head resting on her knees. Zoe was forced to cling to the railing.

“What is the matter, darling? Whatever is the matter?”

Margot felt the skin on her face lose all its warmth as her sweat reached the surface and cooled. “It’s just low blood sugar. I’ll be alright in a moment. Perhaps we should have coffee before we stroll.”

What with Margot’s bottom occupying the steps and her mother hanging on the railing with both hands, they were thoroughly offending other members of the public. “Really, this is a most inconvenient spot for you to stop,” said a robust woman with pursy lips.

“Aren’t you Margot from the radio?” asked another passer-by. “I’ve been wanting to get hold of you because my son wants to become a radio presenter too. Here’s my card – I’d appreciate it if you could drop me a line and we can chat about his future. He really is extremely talented. He was the announcer at the school fête and everyone said how brilliant he was.”

Only endure, thought Margot, as she heaved herself up and guided her mother towards the quayside restaurant. She ordered coffee and a bran muffin to share.

“Aren’t you famous?” asked the waitress. “You look like someone famous.”

“Well, I’m on the radio,” said Margot.

“I don’t listen to the radio,” said the waitress. “It must be from somewhere else.”

Let’s get this over with, she thought. “The company I work for has recently put up billboards with photographs of me and my colleagues along the M5.”

“Mmm.” The waitress shook her head as she considered Margot.

“I really urgently need the coffee and the muffin. Maybe it’ll come back to you.”

When the waitress returned with their coffee, her expression of doubt had been replaced by one of enlightenment.

“I’ve just spoken to the chef. He says you’re quite famous. He listens to you when he has insomnia. He wants to meet you.”

The chef arrived with their muffin. “Here you are, ladies. Great to meet you, Margot, really great. But you know who I really used to love in the old days was Robin Alexander. What a legend. Always so positive, no matter what. I really miss that guy. You should try to reach out the way he did. Anyway, enjoy your muffin.”

The more public the place, the greater the loneliness. Her mother’s presence only made it worse. Rather be solitary, with all the freedom of one’s flitting thoughts, than sit opposite a communicative cul-de-sac. Once Zoe would have held forth about Simon’s Town’s history, or joined Margot in making up stories about the other restaurant patrons. Most likely of all, her mother would have discussed the muffin: its texture (too dry – add grated apple). But today she looked disorientated and nervous, as if morning coffee were as intimidating a prospect as the security cordons at Heathrow.

Zoe was spooning jam and cream onto her plate and some onto the tablecloth. Margot used the paper napkins to clean up after her. What had happened to life? There was the briefest window of freedom between raising a baby and caring for an ancient parent – that was all. And she had missed it. The tedium of her mother’s custody was as confining as being responsible for a baby, but in this case, there were no rewards: no beaming smile, no gummy I love you’s, no flashes of verbal precocity, no astonishing leaps of development. Rather, the reverse: the failure to smile, to reach out, to converse. The inexorable downhill. Oh, she’d been on the Internet and read all the saccharine propaganda put out by the NHS about how looking after someone with dementia could be so fulfilling. Utter garbage. The truth about senility of a parent was that you had to sit still and watch your mainstay sink. You had to do it in a world that seemed not to notice your trouble. You could faint in a pedestrian thoroughfare and people would step over you to get to their own destination. She wished she could like people more, but they really needed to make more of an effort.

Above all, Margot missed her mother. She was with her, but she missed her. If only her real mother were here now, and not this imposter. Ma, she could say, I never got it, your whole homemaking thing. And her real mother would say: Of course you did, darling – just look at the wonderful child you’ve made! Or she could say: Ma, I had a terrible show last night; Pia woke me up early, worried about Leroy’s visit, and now I’m exhausted. And her real mother would say: Poor thing. You have a nap while I take care of supper. I’ll make sure there’s fair play.

If only it were possible to say to a living person: I miss the way you were in the eighties. Leroy today, for example, bore no resemblance to the Leroy that once was. He’d changed so horribly over the years that you’d have to identify him from his dental records. For a long time she’d stayed in the marriage, waiting for the original Leroy, as though he were a missing person who might return if she were only faithful to his memory. Leroy would be in the same room, and yet she almost strained towards the door to see if the real Leroy wasn’t about to arrive. That time when he’d left her at a restaurant table and chatted for ages to a gorgeous theatrical agent dining alone at an adjacent table. Talk, talk; laugh, laugh. Not once did either of them look back at her. She’d eaten her soup surreptitiously, not sure whether to observe her husband flirting with the beautiful, engaging woman. Once he’d talked to her, Margot, in that animated way, reaching out to touch her wrist when they were in accord on some point. If only she had poured soup all over him there and then, instead of thinking about it forevermore. What a missed opportunity: life was full of them. Tureens full of hot tomato soup not poured. Not so much to humiliate him as to mark him out for other women: beware.