He grabbed the cheekier twin by his ear.
“But I am dressed already!”
“Slow down.”
“But I want my porridge! Last night you didn’t-”
“Your porridge you will eat here.”
All the children looked at him rather shocked, right down to the youngest one struggling with her hand-me- down bloomers. This feeling for propriety surprised him.
“In here?” queried the quieter twin, who was more like his mother.
“You are not going into the other room now. I’ve cleaned it for when Mama comes home-none of you.”
“Even to go to school, my father?”
“No. You will all go out by this window! I have seen what a mess you can make quick as quick! You see? Then I will have only one more room to clean.”
“That is a good idea,” said the eldest girl, who was now helping with the housework and hating it. “Our father is clever!”
“Lick his toes, lick his toes!” the others chorused.
“Stop the noise,” Zondi boomed, “or I take off my belt!”
“Then your pants will-”
The cheekier twin took his painful ear into a corner, complaining that his homework had been too hard to understand without help.
He went unheeded. Zondi was standing very still, trying to recapture an idea which seemed like the key to the lightning robberies. It had been suggested to him only moments before- by either something said, or something done.
No good; it was gone.
Klip Marais was also up at that hour, not having been to bed. This wasn’t the fault of his stomach-for he was actually in excellent health, having rushed from the dressing room merely to be sick-but because his mind kept on racing like a mad thing.
His attitude to Kramer had undergone quite a change once he had realized he was being given a chance to vindicate himself, only he was very unsure of how to go about it.
Especially as, during the small hours in the dispassionate solitude of his single-man’s quarters, he had been forced to admit the evidence was flimsy. He looked again at his list. It was a new one-he relied a lot on setting down his problems in an orderly manner. This attempt read: 1. Clothing-too good for occasion 2. Calls-too soon after CID notified 3. Character-too flustered (W/O Gardiner says) 4. Comprehension-too quick to understand boy
Marais was also partial to alliteration, having passed his exams largely by the help of mnemonics, which only he found less difficult to memorize than the original material.
Points 1 and 2 had lost their impact; they were too much a matter of opinion, and could be simply part of the man’s normal drive to boost his image and business. Point 3 was also opinion, if you set friendship aside, and different deaths affected people different ways-he had never vomited after a road accident. Point 4 was based on the word of a native, and a particularly slow-witted one at that, with a hint of the vindictive about him. And yet…
Marais thought a moment and added “Clock” to the others, as this was as close as he could get to “Time factor.” That was the vital issue.
He had a list of times already prepared, and was mulling them over when a sleepy constable stumbled into his room without knocking to say he was wanted on the phone.
His mind raced even faster.
The subject, Kramer remembered, had first come up in a roundabout way when the Widow Fourie suddenly asked him if he knew anything about psychology. He had answered in the affirmative, explaining that psychology was a plastic duck. And when that had not been properly understood, he said that psychology was also aiming a kick at the suspect’s goolies but stopping your boot a millimeter short.
It had been about the time metrication was introduced in South Africa.
She had not mentioned psychology again for about a week after that. Then he found her reading a library book about it and questioned her interest.
Without a word, she had dug into her handbag and handed him the letter from her eldest son’s headmaster. It suggested, in a very kindly way, that she should make an appointment to see the school’s psychologist. Piet, it appeared from their observations, was a very unhappy boy whose work was now being affected.
The Widow Fourie had gone to the education department and seen the psychologist, only to return home with her head whirling with the names of things she had never known existed. Like displacement and Oedipus and trauma and God knows what else.
That was why she had asked Kramer what he knew, and why she had been trying to find out from library books what it was all about. He had spent the rest of the evening reading some of the books himself-even chunks of them aloud, when they revolted him, such as: “The Oedipus complex may be defined as ideas which are largely unconscious and are based on the wish to possess the opposite-sex parent and eliminate the father.”
At midnight he had thrown the books aside and told her that Piet was simply a growing boy who needed the room to grow in. Living cooped up in a top-floor flat would have driven him mad as a kid.
She had then started an unpleasant scene in which she revealed that her relationship with Kramer had been mooted as the possible cause of Piet’s trouble. And that had gone on until daybreak, when they made love twice and he said, “We’ll see.”
All of which was still very fresh in his mind that morning as he stood waiting impatiently on the pavement for Zondi to turn up with the hired lorry. It was to have been picked up from an Indian car dealer at eight, and with a mountain of stuff to shift, a delay wasn’t funny. The two of them would be hard at it until sunset.
The time was after a quarter to nine Then the lorry appeared, driven at Zondi’s incurably frantic pace, with four black men in overalls clinging to the back of the cabin roof. Kramer knew it would be impolitic to ask who they were.
“Right, boss-which is first?” Zondi asked, springing down from the driver’s perch.
“Better make it the breakables.”
“Hey! Three of you! Come on, jump!” Zondi ordered the men, and then set about organizing everything.
The Widow Fourie came down to watch-she had sent the children to the park for the day. Her yellow hair was hidden by a scarf against the dust of moving, and she wore a shapeless uniform borrowed off the nanny, so there was only her face left for him to enjoy-which he did, very much, as he had never seen her so happy and excited.
“Careful, Mickey!” she cautioned with a gasp.
But Zondi, who had begun tossing up cartons of carefully packed crockery to be caught like bricks from a scaffold, just laughed politely.
“Why don’t we leave him to it?” Kramer suggested, taking her arm. “Let’s go over and open up.”
“Well…” she said, watching over her shoulder as he led her to his car.
They drove in silence all the way out to the far western side of town, passing the airfield and shooting range, and traveling into an area of gentle hills where some of the earliest settlers had built their homes. The grass was yellow, like her hair, and the dark green of the blue gum leaves and wattles came close to the uncommon color of her eyes.
He could sense she was crying quietly when they stopped.
There it was. The big house. With a veranda all the way round, and a rain-water tank at one corner to catch the flow off its low, corrugated-iron roof. And the big garden. Three acres of weeds and lawn and vegetable plots and trees with branches just right for platforms or monkey ropes. A messy, homely place. A dump.
She was now smiling as she did when he came down on her.
Kramer, who had been saving his salary over the years for the want of something better to do with it, had simply bought Blue Haze on sight and left it to her in his will. In the meantime, the Widow Fourie would continue to pay the same rent for it as the flat had cost her.
“Control to Lieutenant Kramer, Control to Kramer,” the radio intruded suddenly. “Please come immediately to HQ. We repeat, please-”
