Читать книгу The Fetch - Finuala Dowling - Страница 12

In autumn, flowering ericas turned the slopes above Slangkop purply mauve. William walked on the mountainside in the near windless conditions that would persist, he knew, until the first northwesterly of winter made landfall.

He left the path and scrambled up through the scrubby bush to where a wide overhang formed a cave. Tens of thousands of years ago Khoisan people had squatted here, feasting on fish and seafood. The place was still inches deep in limpet shells. This was the prehistoric rubbish dump that had given Midden House its name.

What a lovely safe and sheltered spot it still was, William thought, with its generous canopy of a roof, its great length and many convenient ledges that could serve for seating perches and shelves. What did they talk about, the early people, as they sat here? What did their language sound like?

He lifted his binoculars and identified a Steppe buzzard hovering over its prey. Then he moved his sights downwards. Slangkop was deserted. The only figure he could see was Kobus, fishing from the rocks. He was probably hoping for galjoen, lured by a nice piece of stinky red bait, but the weather was too fine for galjoen.

Now he saw a caravan pulling in at the campsite. Something was wrong, because after a palaver at the boom, the driver was allowed into the park only in order to make a wide turn before heading back up the hill towards the ocean drive.

“What the …” said William, when he saw the caravan turn into his own shady driveway, disappearing into the milkwood canopy.

He hurried down the mountain path, almost stumbling on the stones he loosened in his haste.

An old Sprite caravan was parked outside William’s cottage, and on his tree trunk-bench, casually chewing gum, sat Dolly. Her strawberry blonde hair was matted, on its way to dreads, and her exposed midriff sported a belly ring.

“I’m trespassing, I know!” Dolly came forward to embrace him. Since she had no flesh to speak of, it was like being briefly gripped by a row of bangles and a whiff of patchouli. “Where is everyone?” she demanded.

“They’re all at the funeral,” said William. “Emmanuel too. Mrs Fawkes died. Did you know that?”

“How would I know? Nobody tells me anything! The old dinosaur’s dead, then? What did she die of?”

“Embolism,” said William. “She had a fall, but then died in hospital while they were treating her.”

“Let’s face it, she won’t be missed,” said Dolly. Her face brightened: “She told me once that she’d leave me her rings in her will.”

William didn’t speak, but Dolly soon thought of another benefit of Mrs Fawkes’s passing.

“Maybe Chas’ll let me stay at Midden House now that his mom’s pushing up the daisies! Can you believe it – they wouldn’t let me in at the campsite. The stupid guard said he wasn’t allowed to take in any casuals. ‘But I’m a friend of Neville and Sharon’s!’ I said. ‘They know me!’ This country, you know, it’s the land of ‘no’. Nice welcome I get after three years away. No one will even so much as give me enough water to make a cup of tea!”

William took the hint. “I could give you some tea,” he said.

“Or something stronger, if you have it.”

“Would you like to come inside?”

“I’ll just stay here and have a smoke while you fetch the wherewithal.”

William went inside. When he returned, he was carrying a bottle of vodka and a pot of tea.

“You’d think he could’ve texted me at least to say the old girl had died,” said Dolly. “Hell, she’s still my mother-in-law!”

“Where’ve you been all this time?” asked William.

Dolly stretched. As her arms reached upwards, so did her cropped top, briefly exposing her nipples and what looked to William like a slightly larger curve of breast than he remembered.

“All over. Sodwana, mostly,” she replied. “The climate suits me there. But I go wherever I please. I’ve hitched my wagon to the stars, as you can see. Been a bit of a bumpy ride, I might add.”

“Have you been working there?”

“Oh, I do a bit of this and a bit of that. Henna tattoos on the beach, walking people’s dogs for them. Mostly living off the money Chas gave me. But it’s run out now. To tell the truth, I can’t even afford to camp at Neville and Sharon’s place. I was hoping they’d let me in for mahala. I’ll just have to fall upon the strained mercies of my husband.”

They heard cars coming down the track, including the Karmann Ghia with its familiar Volkswagen roar.

“That’ll be them coming back from the funeral,” said William. He went down the driveway so that he could see the cortege more clearly. “They’re heading for Midden House. There’s going to be an afterparty. We’ll get a better view from my pole.”

“I’d forgotten the joys of pole-climbing!” said Dolly, pulling herself lithely up the lookout beam. “The usual suspects,” she called to him. “Plus some people I’ve never seen before.”

She came down, drained her glass and then balanced it on top of her head. William asked her if she’d like another drink.

“It’d be rude not to,” said Dolly. “So how’ve things been here? Chas still partying up a storm?”

“Not so much recently. I mean, not here anyway. Shutters have been closed for a while. They’ve been in town. Chas visiting his mom in hospital.”

“I think I’ll just go down and pay my respects,” said Dolly, getting up and adjusting her shorts, which hung rather loosely around her skinny hips. Pausing at the tarnished Toyota Corolla that pulled her caravan, Dolly bent over so that she could check her make-up in a side mirror that had been repaired with packaging tape.

William could not remember seeing anyone as undressed as Dolly at a funeral, but he said nothing. People were best left to be themselves. When she’d disappeared through the milkwoods, he unrolled a hose from its wheel fixture next to the rainwater tank and watered his vegetable patch. He was particularly proud of his scarecrows, which were dressed in Sharon’s castoffs. Then he picked three ripe tomatoes and some basil and went inside to make a salad.

He cleared away the marmite jars so that he had room to work. The table faced the open kitchen door. He could watch the lizards sunning themselves on his doorstep, and the witogies frolicking in the stone basin he’d made at the base of the water tank.

The child looked furious. It stood in the doorway, one hand resting on the frame for support, and scowled at William. Its sodden nappy hung down.

“Hello,” said William.

The child held William’s gaze steadily.

“Does your mummy know where you are?” he asked.

The child nodded, though it was hard to tell if the nod had anything to do with the substance of William’s query. Its eyes now fixed on the baskets and buckets lining the walls of William’s cottage, stacked high with broken gadgets. The child addressed William in a questioning tone, saying something that sounded to William as though it might have been transcribed in a mixture of orthographies.

“Nguni Häagen ngô?”

The child seemed fluent in English, Zulu, Ice Cream-ic and, perhaps, Vietnamese.

“Come in and have a look,” said William, gesturing towards the baskets in a welcoming manner.

The child toddled past William, stopping at the first of the containers to examine its contents.

Nothing like this had ever happened to William before. Baboons, porcupines, meerkats, even a spotted genet on occasion. Stray humans too, but never a baby. Could it have found its way up here from the beach or had it come down from the scenic drive?

The child was amusing itself by extracting partly dismembered electrical circuits and switches from William’s containers and examining each one before tossing it aside. Then it pulled at its sodden disposable nappy and said: “Off!”

“Right,” said William. He released the tapes securing the nappy so that the pulpy plastic fell to the floor around the child’s ankles. Clearly, it was a boy.

What to do about a replacement nappy? A large safety pin was the easy part: he knew he had one in the trays of his tool box. But what did he have in the way of wicking? William walked slowly through his cottage, pondering the problem. An old, worn bath towel would do, cut down to a square. He found what he was looking for and carefully folded the fabric side to side to make the cut exactly.

A loud, indignant wail started up. The boy! William hurried back down the passage. The baby had pulled too hard on one of the baskets, which had toppled over, releasing an avalanche of broken TV remotes, as well as a discarded pair of swimming goggles and a snorkel.

William swiftly lifted the capsized container and picked up the crying child. The boy cried with yet greater force when William attempted to lower him onto the improvised nappy which he’d laid out on his work bench. He put the snorkel into the boy’s hand and was rapped on his head for thanks.

When the towel was fastened, William grabbed a nearby plastic shopping bag, emptied it of rusty nails, snipped two leg holes in the bottom and squashed the boy’s thighs into the roughly fashioned waterproof. He wound masking tape round and round the boy’s waist so that the pants were secure.

By now the child was shuddering with grief, its face a slimy mess of snot and tears.

“M-m-m-ama!” it gasped.

“We’ll go find her,” said William, lifting the boy onto his hip. Surely the boy’s mother would be walking up the hill towards them? But as he left the cottage and walked past the open door of Dolly’s caravan, the boy pointed and sobbed yet more vociferously for his Mama.

Oh shit! thought William. The baby must be Dolly’s.

William took the baby on a full tour of the caravan in order to demonstrate that there was no mother there. The interior was strewn with baby garments and G-strings, empty wine bottles and sour baby bottles. But the boy was not at the empirical stage yet, and when William carried him outside again, he pushed his heels against William’s thighs, writhing in his arms to show his displeasure.

“We’re going to find Mama,” William said firmly as he stepped down from the caravan and set off for Midden House.

His mind rapidly filled with arithmetic. The child’s behaviour indicated that Dolly was its mother. But was he the father? Or Chas? Or even Neville? The unknown quantity (n) was the child’s age. The younger it was, the less likely that Slangkop men were involved. The nappy was a good sign, as well as the Danish/Vietnamese.

William let the boy down gently so that he could toddle downhill. For the boy’s amusement, he pointed out all the little arthropods about their daily routines: the damselfly pausing on a restio reed, the glittering monkey beetle feeding on a pincushion flower.

He showed him birds too: a Cape grassbird inside the cage-like branches of a geelbos, an orange-breasted sunbird perched on an Erica mammosa.

“That little bird is all alone in its genus,” he observed. “A monotypical taxon. Like us. Or not. Multicellular life is over-divided, you’ll find, by taxonomists. We crave uniqueness.”

He lifted the boy again and stepped right in among the bushes to show him the golden orb-web spider.

“Look at that web,” he said. “So strong. Not even the wildest wind can destroy it.”

The child seemed soothed by William’s monotonous interest in biology.

The back gate of Midden House was open. In the kitchen, Emmanuel did not seem surprised to see William carrying a baby dressed in a plastic bag. He smiled and pointed towards the interior of the house, made a drinking motion with his hand and said something hardly more comprehensible than the child’s utterances.

William was about to do as Emmanuel seemed to be suggesting when Neville arrived breathlessly at the kitchen door.

“I tried to keep her at the clubhouse, but she’s insisting on gate crashing!”

“Dolly?” asked William. “I thought she was already here.”

“She wasn’t welcome,” said Neville. “Tried to cadge money off some of the mourners. I took her to the clubhouse and gave her some drinks but now she’s on the rampage again.”

“Waar?” asked Emmanuel.

Noise from the front of Midden House alerted them to Dolly’s likely whereabouts.

“She must be down on the lawn already,” said Neville. He looked at the baby in William’s arms. “Is this another of your recycling projects?”

“Ja, well, you see, I think there’s a complication …”

Fundiswa’s entrance interrupted William’s reply.

“Hurry, hurry! Emmanuel! She’s on the back wall of the tidal pool and she’s taken her top off!”

Neville hurried out. He was the man for this job.

Fundiswa busied herself filling the kettle, making more tea for Chas’s guests. William was in her way and she was forced to come to a halt before him. She looked from William to the baby and then back again.

Remembering her strongly expressed views on sperm, his sperm in particular, at their last encounter, William thought it would be politic to follow Neville out of the kitchen.

But his progress was slow. Midden House was full of mourners, either friends of Chas, there to support him, or elderly contemporaries of Mrs Fawkes.

Chas’s friends were blasé about Dolly’s nudity. They’d seen it all before, their expressions seemed to say, and they didn’t need to see it again. Yesterday’s news. Some only glanced out of the window and then carried on talking or wandering around the buffet table with their side plates, too bored to make their way onto the stoep for a better view.

Mrs Fawkes’s bereaved friends, in contrast, were disturbed by her daughter-in-law parading topless along the back wall of the tidal pool and shouting up at the house.

“I should think she’ll catch her death,” William heard one old lady say to another. The two women moved outside to make a full assessment of the situation.

Their departure allowed the baby to see the table laden with biscuits and cakes.

“Deh, deh, deh!” He pointed and used his knees and feet to urge William in the direction of the confectionary. William handed the baby a lemon cream, which it sucked on with pleasure.

Sharon came in from the stoep with a pile of dirty cake plates just as Fundiswa returned from the kitchen with a fresh pot of tea.

“She’s not as toned as she used to be,” said Sharon.

“I never saw her before in my life, naked or clothed, so I can’t comment,” said Fundiswa, her mouth drawn down in disapproval.

“Her tits are looking a bit more droopy. And what’s happened to her hair? I said to Neville: ‘Has Dolly gone Rasta or something?’ Anyway, my husband is out there trying to save the situation.”

“Thixo! I think it’s a scandal to behave this way at a funeral!” said Fundiswa, pouring a cup of tea for William and placing it where he could reach it with his spare hand.

“Thanks,” said William. He looked out of the window and saw Nina moving from the stoep to the lawn. Her blonde hair looked pretty, spread out on the dark cardigan she wore over her sober funeral-going dress.

Nina studied Dolly’s nakedness, so different from her own very private plumpness. So that was the kind of body Chas admired, she thought. No wonder there had been no repeat of February’s kiss.

Some people were moving down the steps to get a closer look at the goings-on. She overheard a confused old gentleman asking his companion whether this was the latest thing, entertainment at funerals.

Nina didn’t join the throng. Even at this remove, she could hear Dolly’s tirade: “Yes, have a good look, everyone! It’s the outcast! The unwanted wife! The unwanted daughter-in-law! Not allowed into her own home! God, I’m so lonely!”

Emmanuel edged his way along the slippery pool wall towards Dolly, holding up a beach towel as if she were a guest needing help into her evening coat. Neville was approaching from the other side.

“I have nothing! See how he gives me nothing!” shouted Dolly.

To demonstrate her point, Dolly unzipped her shorts, let them drop to her ankles and flicked them into the pool with her left foot. Neville reached out, trying to intercept the flung garment, but lost his balance and fell into the water. He gasped at the cold and struck out for the shallows as quickly as he could. Emmanuel abandoned his attempt to swathe Dolly and went to Neville’s aid instead.

Dolly’s long, slender body with its larger-than-remembered breasts was now adorned only by a lacy red G-string. Like a gymnast on the balance beam, she seemed completely at home on the narrow wall.

“He won’t even let me in to fetch my clothes and CDs! His mother left me her diamond rings – I’m entitled to ask for them! He can’t chase me away – I’m only asking for what’s mine!”

Chas was standing a little way away from Nina, his body taut with fury. He wore a dark jacket, formal pants and lace-up shoes, an outfit that somehow made Dolly seem even more naked. When he could bear it no longer, he marched to the top of the steps and shouted down at his estranged wife.

“My mother’s body is hardly cold but you want to come in here, raking through her possessions!”

Dolly became tearful at this injustice: “That’s not true! All I wanted was my stuff. Aren’t I even allowed to attend a family funeral?”

“For God’s sake, woman, come off that wall. How dare you cavort there with your breasts hanging out! These are my mother’s friends! Have some respect for the dead!”

Dolly looked venomous. “You!” she cried. “How dare you tell me how to behave? You want to talk to me about respect! The things I could say about you, Mr Goody-Two-Shoes!”

She paced the wall, clearly thinking about the things she could say. Then it came to her: “You think you’re so beautiful and so perfect. But you’re mean and penny-pinching and your tongue hangs out during sex! Oh yes, Chas loves lots of lovely sex! He loves girls! He loves boys!”

Nina saw that Chas was weeping. She ran inside and addressed the tea drinkers: “Can’t somebody do something?”

William stepped forward. “I think I know what might stop her,” he said.

Carrying the baby onto the stoep, William passed Chas, who could only stare at the infant in his arms.

When the child saw its mother, it started to sob again.

“M-m-mama!” cried the boy, reaching out his arms.

“Did somebody actually invite a baby?” asked one of Chas’s friends.

“My child!” Dolly wailed. “Oro! My little Orrie!” She skittered off the wall, finally accepting Emmanuel’s offer of a large bath towel. Securing the towel above her breasts, she took her son from William.

All eyes turned to him, as if to query the connection. William looked away from Midden House, out at the beach where a cormorant was drying its wings on the yellow-lichened rocks and a gull was poking about on a pile of rotting seaweed.

Still watched by the mourners, William led mother and child away from the tidal pool and up the sandy track.

“Well, at least he’s done something useful,” said Fundiswa.

“Who calls their child Oro?” asked Sharon.

William walked ahead, wondering when Dolly would leave Slangkop – if she’d ever leave. Chas wouldn’t give her any money, not now, not after her performance, and she’d arrived without the wherewithal to even pay for a camping spot. Didn’t she have a home to go to? Yes, she did, and that home was currently parked very snugly in his driveway.

William was usually attracted by problems. He liked the way they made you pause and try to remember everything you’d forgotten, because you knew that somewhere in that disused heap of memories lay the solution. But the problem of Dolly did not appeal to him. She wasn’t like his grey-water project, or the game camera his client wanted to install near a black eagle’s nest. He loved to think about those problems. They could be solved with a section of PVC piping or a small plank and some brass screws.

Dolly was Chas’s problem, a problem he was temporarily solving for Chas by taking her and the child back up the hill to his cottage. Could he make Dolly and her child and her caravan go away? Or was he stuck with them? It made him feel tired to think about it. Oh, to be alone, to look at the camera and think about how it could become weatherproof if he did this or that with it. Going outside to have a smoke and think about how something as simple as a Tupperware lunchbox might do the trick. Then sitting on his tree trunk, smoking a joint or sipping vodka to celebrate the solution.

But that wasn’t how the evening was going to turn out. He’d have to entertain Dolly, feed the child. He wouldn’t be able to lie down, as he liked, across the threshold of his cottage, half in and half out, staring up at the night sky until the drink and the dagga did their work. He had to host Dolly, make sure she and the child had what they needed.

“He deserved it,” Dolly was saying. “It’s true I’m a bit tanked up; drink has loosened my tongue. But he got what was coming to him. My life! God, what a disaster! But fuck him! Let everybody know what he’s really like! He can’t just keep this madwoman in the attic! I’ll get legal aid and take him to the cleaners. Or he can just give me a lump sum. I’ve got to make his life unbearable. It’s the only way to get the moths to fly out of his purse.”

It was evening now, and William saw that indeed the moths were coming out, drawn by the strong perfume of the fringed shrub, Juffertjie-roer-by-die-nag. Little-lady-gad-about-at-night. Rather than listen to Dolly’s rant, he thought of the struthiola. Though not much to look at, its narrow scented flower lured moths with fine proboscises.

They passed the spot where, earlier, William had pointed out the golden orb-web spider.

“Ider! Ider!” shouted Oro, and tried to use his knees to steer his mother into the shrubs at the side of the track. But Dolly ignored him.

“Look at me! Barefoot, naked, carrying my lovechild! Not even two cents to rub together! But what does he care? He’s got to let me see his mother’s will! This old rust bucket,” she said, pointing to the caravan as they walked into William’s driveway, “is my only asset.” She spoke pitifully, making a play for his solicitude. “What I need is a hot shower and one of your nice vodka teas.”

“Sure,” said William, “You know where the bathroom is.”

Emmanuel came panting up behind them. “Master Chas, hy sê – die handdoek …” He pointed towards the towel that was Dolly’s only covering.

“Good grief, that man wouldn’t give me snow in winter!” said Dolly. She handed Oro to William and unfastened the towel, letting it drop onto the dirt. Then, naked except for her G-string, she walked inside saying: “You’ll find Orrie’s bottle is in the van. Mix some hot tea with milk and sugar. We’ll find him something to eat later.”

Emmanuel was still standing there. “And Master Chas hy skryf vir jou …”

William unfolded the proffered piece of paper.

Beware! said Chas’s message.

William knew Dolly’s type. She was not a subtle, nocturnally scented shrub. Dolly was one of those people who present themselves to the world as a permanent emergency. Nothing else is important, shrieks the permanent emergency, but my crisis, my pain, my need.

Looked at another way, Dolly was the Queen of Spades: your only chance was to pass her on to the next player. If Chas wouldn’t give her the cash to leave, he would.

William sat on his bed with Oro, listening to litres of solar-heated water sluice down his plughole in the bathroom next door. At least he’d insisted that Dolly have an empty bucket in the cubicle with her. She – or he, perhaps – could bath Oro in the water saved that way. And while Dolly showered, he had this moment’s peace from her relentless chatter.

He needed silence in order to think. Already his word count for the day was mounting dangerously high. It was easily in the hundreds by now.

The child was quiet, swigging at his bottle, never taking his eyes off William, who was rummaging in his bedside drawer for his miner’s light. He adjusted its elastic around his head and switched it on. Then, followed by Dib, he climbed the ladder up to the hole in the ceiling.

“Up! Up!” called Oro from the duvet, chucking his bottle aside. He flipped onto his tummy and slid expertly off the bed, making his way to the bottom of the ladder.

“Orrie up!” he shouted, trying to lift his foot onto the first step.

But William was already reaching into the attic above. He found the cloth bag and stepped down, careful to avoid the tiny hands clutching the bottom rungs.

He sat on the bed again and opened the bag of gold coins. Orrie stood beside the bed, his clasped hands resting on the duvet with the attitude of one expecting good things to happen soon.

William counted out the Krugerrands. How many would it take to get rid of Dolly? One would be too little. Five would amount to a third of his stash, but would probably mean a clean break. Strictly a loan, of course, until Dolly and Chas sorted out a divorce settlement. He had a feeling she’d take it without trying to bargain him upwards. Then, once she’d gone, he’d build a gate across his driveway and put a padlock on it.

After that, he promised himself, he’d live the rest of his life by the mantra that there is no such thing as a free fuck. Yes, he would go to the coin exchange in the morning. Borrow her car if necessary.

“What have we here?” It was Dolly, her wet hair wrapped in a towel, wearing his own bathrobe. “I hope you’re not feeding Orrie chocolates before suppertime.”

“Oh, it’s nothing – just entertaining him with some old junk,” said William, swiftly shovelling the gold back into the bag and bundling it up tightly. “Would a boiled egg be okay for his supper? And ours too, I’m afraid. It’s either that or quail. But I don’t really have enough quail.”

“Oh, no need to go to any trouble. We love our eggy, don’t we, Orrie? Don’t worry about me. I don’t have a big appetite. But a drink is always welcome.”

Dolly left to get dressed in her caravan.

“Bring some clean clothes for the kid,” said William.

He felt quite light-headed. He had a plan. By midmorning tomorrow he’d be a free man.

He switched on the beam of his miner’s light in preparation for putting the gold back in its hiding place, but Orrie was on to him this time and said firmly: “Up! Up!”

Clearly, having a child doubled the number of problems a person had to solve every day. With one arm holding Orrie fast to his hip, William had to use his free hand for the dual purpose of holding the bag of gold and steadying their ascent. Cat’s eyes peered down at them from the dark hole above, giving Oro much happiness.

“Now you’re going to have a bath,” William said to Oro when they were safely down. He undressed the boy and tried to lower him into the warm soapy water that had accumulated in the bucket standing in the shower cubicle. But Oro kept lifting his knees up.

William fetched the goggles and snorkel and threw them into the bucket first. Oro consented to follow them into the water. He played with these new toys while he was soaped and rinsed. Finally, William wrapped Oro in a towel and carried him to the kitchen.

Dolly came in while he was filling a pot with water, looking almost respectable in a pair of jeans. She’d knotted her checked shirt to expose her midriff and wound a cheap, tasselled shawl around her hips, belly-dancer style.

“I’ve brought Oro’s clothes,” she said, pointing to a patchwork bag she carried over her shoulder. Do you mind if I dress him in your room?”

“Go ahead,” said William, handing the boy to her.

While Dolly was busy with Oro, William set about making their simple supper, cutting the bread and toasting it, putting three eggs into the pot of water he had placed on the stove.

Dolly came back to the kitchen with Oro in his pyjamas. “I’ll just put this back in the caravan,” she said, indicating the patchwork bag.

William put a heavy bolster on top of a chair so that Oro could reach the table top, then he threaded a leather belt around the child and buckled it behind the chair back.

“Take a seat,” he said to Dolly when she returned.

“In a moment,” she said.

William wanted her to sit down and help the child with his supper. He felt unsettled by her restlessness. Dolly kept moving around his living space and touching things, turning them over.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“It’s a gauge for my anemometer,” he replied.

“What’s an anemometer?” asked Dolly.

“It measures the wind speed.”

William cut an egg carton into three. He buttered the toast and spooned the hot eggs into their cardboard cups.

“No thanks, nothing for me,” said Dolly when William asked her if she would like one. She stood in the doorway smoking and looking out at the night.

Oro regarded his supper with the gravest suspicion. He watched as William cracked his own egg open with a spoon, setting the implement aside in order to dip a toast soldier. Oro then took up his spoon and gave the egg a good whack. It broke free from his section of carton and rolled away across the table. William intercepted the egg and returned it to the makeshift egg cup. He cut open the lid of Oro’s egg, carefully peeling away shards of shell which Oro’s mishandling had crushed into the egg white. Then he returned to his own meal.

Oro watched William eat toast dripping with egg. The child developed a sympathetic drool of saliva. He seemed to be waiting to see whether William’s egg was good, not poisonous. Satisfied, he then pincered a rubbery morsel of egg white between his fingers. Not liking the sensation, he tried to throw it away. The egg white, with a dab of yolk attached, flew off his finger, only to land in his hair. Oro scratched his head, leaving behind another piece of egg white on the helix of his ear, in the place where a clerk might rest a pencil. At last, he laid hold of a toast soldier and mashed it into the egg. The toast crumpled and then broke off inside the yolk. Oro squashed it further down with his finger. He wanted to wipe his fingers down his front, but missed his chest and got his neck instead. Then he indicated that he would prefer some of William’s neatly dipped toast. They swapped. Oro received a neat toast finger tipped with a perfect coating of egg yolk, and William used a spoon to extricate the pulpy remains of the toast finger from what had been Oro’s egg.

“How old is he?” he asked.

Dolly left her post at the doorway and came inside to answer the question. “Orrie?” She seemed to need to think about her child’s age. “He’s just turned two. I suppose you’re wondering who his father is. Let’s just say that Orrie’s my little lovechild.”

William had a rational person’s dislike of sentiment, so he did not pursue this line of questioning. “How long are you planning on staying in Slangkop?” he asked instead.

“Don’t worry, we won’t be much trouble to you. I’m used to living on the smell of an oil rag and, as for Orrie, well, you can see that he’s just like you.”

She looked at the two of them for a moment and then added: “I thought I might drive to Fish Hoek tonight. There’s someone there who is willing to lend me some money. Maybe you could help me unhitch the caravan. Orrie can help, can’t you Orrie? I’ll just get your trainers so that your feet don’t get dirty.”

William felt relieved. Dolly seemed to be taking charge of her own destiny. Perhaps he would be able to keep his gold coins after all.

He released Oro from his improvised high chair and fetched his miner’s light. They went outside. William chocked the van’s tyres, checked its handbrake, unclipped the safety wire and unplugged the electrics.

Oro bent his knees slightly, his hands resting on his thighs in a manly way as he watched William. When the jockey wheel was in place, William let Oro think that he was helping to tighten it.

The car was now released of its burden, and, as if in sympathy, Dolly’s mood lightened too. The patchwork bag slung over her shoulder, she seemed almost to skip to the car door. “I won’t be long, darling,” she said, kissing Oro’s forehead.

“You don’t think you should take the kid with you?” asked William.

“Oh no, he needs to find his land legs. We’ve spent too many days on the road. Here, darling, wrap Mommy’s shawl around you.” She removed her tasselled hip wrap and draped it around Oro. “I’ll be back soon, munchkin. Love you.”

William picked up the dismayed boy, and they stood watching the tail-lights of Dolly’s car disappear. To distract Oro, William pointed out the Southern Cross in the sky above. Then he took him inside and made him another bottle. The boy was subdued, except when William tried to remove his trainers so that he could sleep more comfortably. William gave up and simply covered him with a blanket, shoes and all.

Afraid to do anything that would cause further excitement or distress, William sat quietly beside Oro on the bed. The child’s eyes started to flicker and droop as he sucked on the bottle. At last it dropped from his lips with a plopping noise. The boy slept.

William went to his workbench and picked up the stem of his father’s old bendable bedside light. He had been thinking of putting together a flexible webcam using the salvaged tube, but after all the day’s shenanigans he felt too tired to work. He checked his e-mails instead. There was one from a client with a crazy idea for setting up webcams on Gough Island. How the hell did he propose William should get there? By rowing boat? The client suggested they start with a trial run on one of the Saldanha islands. William remembered Marion Island. He’d done a stint there in his student days. How tame the albatrosses were. You could stroke their massive wings. It was one of the few things that had ever brought him to tears – the trusting innocence of those island creatures.

There was another mail from his wealthy birding enthusiast: did William think it might be possible to erect a camera on a pole above a fish eagle nest he knew about on a farm near Gourits in time for the breeding season? Once, an idea like this would have kept him awake for hours. How to set up the camera so that no one knew it was there; how to do it without disturbing the birds. Solar-powered, of course. Depending on the distance from the farmhouse, it might require satellite. But tonight William felt as broken down as the webcam on his workbench. How many people had he spoken to today? Each one of them had carried away one of his working parts. Only rest could reassemble him. He returned to the bedroom, lay down next to the boy and closed his eyes.