‘Good morning, Captain, Doctor.’ Darlene extended her slender right hand. The children shuffled to their feet and greeted the two interlopers in a singsong chorus. A wave from Darlene seated them again.
‘Finish your seascapes,’ she told the class. Small heads bowed over sheets of colourful paper. After a few furtive glances, they were absorbed once more in scissors and glue and bits of glitter. As Tamar discussed what she’d tell the children with Darlene, Clare drifted to the back of the classroom. A series of postersized self-portraits were pinned to the wall. Cheery collages with a smiling child, a few blonde, most dark, at the centre of each one. Pictures of parents, siblings, houses ranging from modest to mansion, ice creams, braaied fish – the small, familiar pleasures that made sense of life for a child.
The lone redhead caught Clare’s eye. Oscar. He had given himself wild hair out of orange twine. When she turned to look for the original, his green eyes were riveted to her. She smiled at him. He looked down at once, a startling blush creeping up from under his collar.
Clare looked at his portrait again. The images were skeletal, arresting, executed in the colours and form of the rock paintings found in the desert. Oscar’s drawings told a story that the other children, who could speak and shout and laugh, did not need to. Clare looked at his picture of a woman with a mass of hair twisted out of fraying yellow wool. The next picture had the same feeling of bell-jarred silence. A man and boy sat side by side; in a second chair, a woman, taut as a wire, watching television. Another drawing with the woman absent, and Oscar plastered to the man’s side, his limbs uncurled as if they had been released from invisible ropes. Ordinary scenes made extraordinary because of the sense of menace that pervaded them.
Clare felt Oscar’s presence next to her, as she had on the couple of occasions when he had fallen in step beside her on the boulevard. She looked down, startled to see the contusion on the cheekbone, just below his left eye, and a small, livid tear in the tender skin. Clare put her hand on Oscar’s thin shoulder; feeling across his back where there would be more bruises. The child winced.
‘What happened?’ asked Clare, concerned. Oscar avoided her gaze as he tumbled his hands over each other.
‘You fell?’ she asked. ‘Off your bike?’
He nodded and pointed to the single photograph on the wall. It was fuzzy, printed on cheap paper.
‘Mara?’ asked Clare, bending closer. The boy nodded.
‘You’ll miss her now she’s gone.’ In the photograph Mara Thomson stood exultant on top of a dune, arms and face lifted towards the sun, eyes closed in delight. The shadow of the photographer had splashed against her feet, giving the picture an odd perspective.
Oscar was seated next to her shadowed feet, swathed in a hat and long sleeves.
‘You know the desert though, don’t you? That’s the place you went with your mother, isn’t it?’
Oscar nodded, shoulders bowed like an old man.
‘Clare?’ Tamar and Darlene Ruyters were looking at her. So were the children.
‘Sorry,’ said Clare. ‘I was lost there for a minute.’
Oscar looked down, the thick fringe of auburn eyelashes hiding any expression.
‘Mrs Ruyters says the children will want to ask you some questions too,’ said Tamar. ‘They’re always curious about foreigners.’
‘Being South African is hardly foreign,’ said Clare.
Darlene raised an eyebrow. ‘They think Swakopmund is a foreign country and it’s only thirty kilometres away.’
‘Let them ask, then,’ said Clare, smiling.
‘Thank you, it’ll help them be less…’
‘Afraid?’ offered Clare.
‘I was going to say fascinated.’
Tamar explained that the dead boy had been taken to the morgue. And that they were safe. The half-moon of children sitting at her feet stared at her with wide, solemn eyes. Only the bravest had questions: where would he be buried? Could they go to his funeral? Tamar fielded them with practised empathy. Soon the children had sidled closer and she got them talking about other things.
‘This has been a big help,’ Darlene said when she had winkled Tamar away from the children and ushered them out of the classroom. ‘Thank you.’
‘That little redhead,’ Clare said.
‘Oscar?’ said Darlene.
‘Yes,’ said Clare. ‘His face is bruised.’
‘Oh, Tamar can tell you, we have such bad cases…’ Darlene’s voice trailed off. She looked at Tamar for support.
‘What do you think?’ Clare was thinking that somebody’s ring held a trace of the child’s blood in its setting.
‘I don’t know what to think,’ said Darlene. ‘The children come to school with bruises, but you want to see some of the mothers on a Monday. They bear the brunt of it.’ She closed the classroom door behind them. The corridor was cold and quiet after the buzz of the children.
‘I met an old friend of yours,’ said Clare. ‘In McGregor.’ Her voice was loud in the empty corridor.
‘Oh?’ Wary.
‘Mrs Hofmeyr,’ said Clare, watching Darlene closely. ‘She told me why you stopped dancing.’
‘I’ve got to get back to my class.’ Darlene cut her short.
‘It was an army boot on your ankle.’
‘So what if it was?’ hissed Darlene. ‘Since when is it a crime to be beaten?’ She put out her hand to open the door. The amethyst bracelet of bruises Clare had seen a few days earlier gleamed citron.
‘You’ve got my number.’ Clare placed her index finger on Darlene’s wrist.
‘I don’t need it.’ Darlene had her mask-like smile back in place when she stepped back into the classroom. Her voice calling her giggling charges back to order followed Tamar and Clare down the passage.
thirty-seven
It took forever for the lights of Walvis Bay to roll up towards Riedwaan. He had slept over in Solitaire, a half- abandoned hamlet in the southern Namib Desert. The miles are longer on roads where there is nothing to measure distance. The last stretch through the Namib had been bone-shattering. No other vehicles except a donkey cart. Not even telephone poles. He tried phoning Clare, but all he got was an automated voice telling him she was out of range and that he should try later.
‘This whole country is out of range.’ He said it aloud, just to hear a human voice. Then he dialled Tamar Damases’s number.
‘Yes?’
‘Sorry to call so late,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d be in before sunset.’
Tamar laughed. ‘Did you believe the map? They make things look much closer than they are. You must be finished.’
‘I am,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I need a shower and some sleep before I do anything.’
‘You’re booked into a guesthouse on the lagoon. It’s called Burning Shore Lodge. Don’t be deceived by the fancy name, but it’s close to the station and to where Clare’s staying.’
Riedwaan jotted down the address. The town was quiet, only the pizza place open. He was hungry but too tired to stop. He hoped there would be something for him to eat where he was headed.
The guesthouse was a facebrick nightmare on the lagoon. It seemed to have been designed to avoid the view. Riedwaan rang three times before someone buzzed him in. He pushed his bike into the courtyard.
The only light on was at the bar. Inside, the walls were covered with signed snaps of Hollywood celebrities who had washed up on this barren stretch of coast to make B-grade movies, a couple to give birth to A-list children.
An overweight man took down Riedwaan’s details and gave him a key.
‘Show him to his room, Rusty,’ he said to a morose youth hunched over a beer at the counter.
