ready for that?'
Lucy switches off the engine. Her face is stiff as she fights off tears.
'In any event, the trail is cold. Our friends aren't going to be caught, not with the police in the state they are in. So let us forget about that.'
He gathers himself. He is becoming a nag, a bore, but there is no helping that. 'Lucy, it really is time for you to face up to your choices. Either you stay on in a house full of ugly memories and go on brooding on what happened to you, or you put the whole episode behind you and start a new chapter elsewhere. Those, as I see it, are the alternatives. I know you would like to stay, but shouldn't you at least consider the other route? Can't the two of us talk about it rationally?'
She shakes her head. 'I can't talk any more, David, I just can't,' she says, speaking softly, rapidly, as though afraid the words will dry up. 'I know I am not being clear. I wish I could explain. But I can't. Because of who you are and who I am, I can't. I'm sorry. And I'm sorry about your car. I'm sorry about the disappointment.'
She rests her head on her arms; her shoulders heave as she gives in.
Again the feeling washes over him: listlessness, indifference, but also weightlessness, as if he has been eaten away from inside and only the eroded shell of his heart remains. How, he thinks to himself, can a man in this state fmd words, find music that will bring back the dead?
Sitting on the sidewalk not five yards away, a woman in slippers and a ragged dress is staring fiercely at them. He lays a protective hand on Lucy's shoulder. My daughter, he thinks; my dearest daughter. Whom it has fallen to me to guide. Who one of these days will have to guide me. Can she smell his thoughts?
It is he who takes over the driving. Halfway home, Lucy, to his surprise, speaks. 'It was so personal,' she says. 'It was done with such personal hatred. That was what stunned me more than anything. The rest was . . . expected. But why did they hate me so? I had never set eyes on them.'
He waits for more, but there is no more, for the moment. 'It was history speaking through them,' he offers at last. 'A history of wrong. Think of it that way, if it helps. It may have seemed personal, but it wasn't. It came down from the ancestors.'
'That doesn't make it easier. The shock simply doesn't go away. The shock of being hated, I mean. In the act.'
In the act. Does she mean what he thinks she means? 'Are you still afraid?' he asks.
'Yes.'
'Afraid they are going to come back?'
'Yes.'
'Did you think, if you didn't lay a charge against them with the police, they wouldn't come back? Was that what you told yourself?'
'No.'
`Then what?'
She is silent.
'Lucy, it could be so simple. Close down the kennels. Do it at once. Lock up the house, pay Petrus to guard it. Take a break for six months or a year, until things have improved in this country. Go overseas. Go to Holland. I'll pay. When you come back you can take stock, make a fresh start.'
'If I leave now, David, I won't come back. Thank you for the offer, but it won't work. There is nothing you can suggest that I haven't been through a hundred times myself.'
'Then what do you propose to do?'
'I don't know. But whatever I decide I want to decide by myself, without being pushed. There are things you just don't understand.'
`What don't I understand?'
'To begin with, you don't understand what happened to me that day. You are concerned for my sake, which I appreciate, you think you understand, but finally you don't. Because you can't.'
He slows down and pulls off the road. 'Don't,' says Lucy. 'Not here. This is a bad stretch, too risky to stop.'
He picks up speed. 'On the contrary, I understand all too well,' he says. 'I will pronounce the word we have avoided hitherto. You were raped. Multiply. By three men.'
'And?'
'You were in fear of your life. You were afraid that after you had been used you would be killed. Disposed of. Because you were nothing to them.'
'And?' Her voice is now a whisper.
'And I did nothing. I did not save you.'
That is his own confession.
She gives an impatient little flick of the hand. 'Don't blame yourself David. You couldn't have been expected to rescue me. If they had come a week earlier, I would have been alone in the house. But you are right, I meant nothing to them, nothing. I could feel it.'
There is a pause. 'I think they have done it before,' she resumes, her voice steadier now. 'At least the two older ones have. I think they are rapists first and foremost. Stealing things is just incidental. A side-line. I think they do rape.'
`You think they will come back?'
