Black Dog Summer (9 page)

“Here.” Bryony shoves the wooden chopping board closer to her cousin, and then Gigi's previous kitchen experience seems to kick in, because she suddenly picks up a tomato, places it at the desired angle, and touches the knife to the shiny skin. Then she stops. She closes her eyes. On the other side of the kitchen, Adele rattles the lid on the pot of rice.

“In segments . . . Like an orange,” Bryony whispers. “That's how we normally do them for salad.”

Gigi doesn't say anything, but she opens her eyes again and starts cutting the tomato at last. In segments.

Liam enters and hovers at the kitchen doorway, looking in. He clenches his hands into fists in the pockets of his chinos. Bryony notices him first and flaps a wet lettuce leaf in his direction.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey.” He shifts from foot to foot, not looking at her.

“Ah, Liam, could you just—” Adele begins, but her request is cut short by Gigi, who flings down the red knife, runs across the kitchen, and crashes into his chest. Bryony stares, mouth open.

“There, there,” Liam says in a soft voice, and he lifts his hand to
give Gigi's shoulder blades a tentative rub. Bryony tries to think back to when her father last hugged her; it was the day he told them that Gigi was coming to stay. She uses the tip of one finger to squish the edge of a lettuce leaf into the corner of the countertop. It bruises transparent, leaking watery lettuce blood.

“I got up, Uncle Liam,” Gigi says, and bursts into tears.

Bryony darts a glance at her mother and notes that her face has gone melted marshmallow pink and white again.

“Good girl,” Liam whispers. He has a helpless sort of look on his face. “It's going to be all right, Gi, it's going to be all right.”

“Well.” Adele steps back, holding a pot lid up in front of her like a small, stainless-steel battle shield. For a moment, the only things moving in the kitchen are the steam rising out of the rice pot and the up-down, up-down of Liam's hand on Gigi's white T-shirt. “Go and call your brother, Bryony,” Adele finally barks. “Dinner's nearly ready.”

“She knows you, Liam.”

“Adele—”

“No. Stop dodging.”

“After all that's happened in the last week, is one of your bloody interrogation sessions really necessary right now?”

“Stop turning this all around on me.”

“I'm just saying that things are crazy, and we need to support each other at a time like this, not start making up ridiculous crap all over again.”

“I made nothing up, Liam. Sally told me herself.”

“Oh, don't start. I know this story, Adele, believe me.”

“I'm sure you do.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Silence. Bryony waits on the other side of their bedroom door, taking tiny sips of breath so as not to give herself away.

“Why does that child act like you're her long-lost friend?”

“She needs
someone
, Addy. She's just lost everything, for God's sake.”

“And that someone just happens to be you? By chance?”

“Look, I know how much you want to be close to Gigi to make up for all the stuff that happened with Monkey in the past, but you've got to give her time, doll. She's here, she's got a safe place, just let it happen.”

“Cut the trite bullshit. That's got absolutely nothing to do with what I'm talking about here, and you know it.”

“Trite bullshit? What happened to the grief and the guilt and the ‘wanting to make everything right again,' hey?”

“She was my sister, of course I still feel—”

“Look, I can't do this right now, Addy.” Liam's voice breaks and then stills again: “I'm sorry.”

Bryony jumps back from the door as she hears Liam approaching from the other side. She scampers across the dark passageway in her bare feet and then crouches behind the bathroom door, heart thumping. She listens to her parents' bedroom door open, her father walking out, and the soft click as it closes behind him. She waits until she hears the TV downstairs before venturing back to bed.

Finally, they're all asleep.

Even Gigi, exhausted from battling to act like a normal human being all through dinner and then pretending to watch the Sunday night TV movie while her thoughts ran riot inside her head, manages oblivion without any chemical assistance.

While they sleep, the threads go slack, and the story quietens a little, allowing me some time to drift high above the orange city lights along with the Joburg dust on Africa's night breath.

Then I let the wind take me north to where the air is thicker and hotter, the crickets louder, and the stars huge and milky in the charcoal sky.

I let it carry me home.

The warmth of the dark bushveld pulses beneath me, but as soon as I get near enough to the farm to pick up the faint, familiar scent of baobab tree bark, serval scat, and thatch, a strange force surges up and pushes me back. I hover at its perimeter, unable to discover if Jemima
still leaps and pounces on invisible prey in her enclosure, or if the little Thomson's gazelle with the gimpy leg still sleeps in the stall beside Seb's retired racehorse, Polonius. Are Phineas and Lettie still living in their tiny, tidy house beside the old water tank? Do they still wake every morning to tend the rows of morogo and beans in their veggie patch, and harvest ivory-skinned pumpkins from the giant vine that sprawls over the compost heap? I cannot get close enough to find out. It would seem that the farm gates have been secured against me with something far more powerful than the chunky old chain and padlock that we used to use.

The first time I drove up to those wonky wire farm gates with Gigi slumped and sleeping against her seat belt in the backseat, I thought I was just visiting.

“Come and stay for the weekend, Monkey,” Simone had coaxed. “It's always good to get out of the city and just be. Come, you'll be amazed at the clarity you'll find.”

I was frazzled at the time; Adele's excommunication had steadily sent all sense slip-sliding out of my life, and I was rigid with confusion about what to do next. “Come,” Simone insisted, and so I went.

I'd been driving on dirt roads for what felt like days, rattling my old Opel's bug-spattered windows and jolting its suspension on the rutted dirt roads, when I finally saw the lone baobab that Simone had mentioned to watch out for, and then the gates that heralded the entrance to the farm. I knew I was at the right place because Simone had tied a scrap of pink fabric on the wire, just as she'd told me she would. The incongruous floral flag flaunted itself like a showgirl against the sensible greens and browns of the bush. I turned off the engine, climbed out to open the gates, and froze in shock. The silence was so thick it was almost edible.

That astonishing silence was also the first thing that Liam commented on when he came to visit, many months later. By that point, I'd finally surrendered all thoughts of going back to my old life in the city, quit my shitty PA job, moved all my stuff to Simone's, and ensconced myself and Gigi within the small community of conservationists, esoteric wanderers, international volunteers looking for an “African experience,” and healers who passed through the sanctuary she'd
created on the land her family had left her years before. I had finally lost the lilac look around my eye sockets, managed to get a light tan on my arms, and was even meditating in the mornings (which in my case, meant sitting with my eyes closed and listening to that rich, layered bush quiet for as long as I could keep my mind from lurching off into thinking about Liam or Adele).

“Man, but it's
quiet
,” Liam exclaimed as he extracted his long body from the shell of his dust-coated Mercedes. I had known he was coming, and had spent the morning in a state of nerve-wringing anticipation, nursing a thundering tension headache, and now, at the sight of his crumpled jeans, crumpled smile, and a funny-looking fluffy gray rhino with a bow on it that he'd brought for Gigi, I burst into huge, heaving sobs.

“Well, it
was
quiet,” he said, hugging me and then pulling back with a grin once my crying had died down. “What are you doing out here in the sticks, Monkey?”

“Living,” I said, wiping my wet face on the sleeve of my grubby T-shirt.

“I guess I can believe that,” he said. “You look good.”

“I am.”

“Are you sewing up wounded leopards and doing physio on crippled zebras?” he asked as I led him towards the house.

“To be honest, we mostly handle the smaller, less glamorous predators that get caught in farmers' traps,” I said. “I'll introduce you to my charges in a bit.”

“Jeez, you don't have much security out here, hey? Is this place safe?”

“Oh boy, listen to the paranoid Joburger!” I laughed. “Would it make you feel any better if I told you I only took the padlock off the gate this morning because we knew you were coming?”

“A padlock? That's your security? You never heard of farm murders, Sal?”

“Of course I've heard of them, Liam.”

“Well, you don't seem to be taking them very seriously; it's happening all the time, especially here up north. There's a whole damn hillside of little white crosses on the road from Joburg to Polokwane. You must've seen it.”

“Crosses?”

“Ja, man, each one represents someone on a farm who has been murdered. They're offing people all the time out here, Mugabe-style. Zim's just over the hill, in case you hadn't noticed.”

“You sound like a throwback from the apartheid era or something, Liam,” I said, scowling. “Heavens above, this is the new South Africa, and I think we should take a more positive approach.”

“Positive? If you can find something positive about having a bunch of assholes come into your home to wipe out your whole family, then you must be smoking some really strong stuff out here in your hippie commune.”

“Liam.”

“Jesus, man, I heard how they killed this one old lady by holding her down and shoving a hot iron on her chest.”

“Stop it. Talking about stuff like that just creates bad energy.”

Liam shook his head at me, squinting against the light.

“We're trying to live in harmony with things out here, Liam. Negativity creates fear, and fear brings things to be fearful of.”

“Christ, listen to you!” He gave me a gentle smile, but his blue eyes were grave. “Any minute now you're going to whip out a guitar and sing ‘Kumbaya' at me.”

“Please, you know I can't carry a tune in a bucket,” I said. “And we're getting electric fencing soon, so stop panicking.”

Suddenly, Liam gripped my arm with his large, warm hand and drew me to a stop. “You're OK, are you, Sal? You haven't resigned yourself to some kind of wacky bushveld purgatory just because Adele went ballistic, have you?”

“Purgatory? Have you looked at this place?”

He did so then, taking in the muddy whitewashed farmhouse with its mended wooden doors and the odd collection of paddocks, wire enclosures, and cages nestling between the trees. In the center of the yard, the lucky bean tree was just starting to flower, and its bare branches were bristling with vibrant crimson spikes. Beyond the clearing, the lush, long grass glowed tall and green and singing with life, and, in the distance, you could just see the smoky outline of the Soutpansberg.

“It's bloody gorgeous, Liam. You can practically chew the oxygen out here,” I said, and he shook his head and smiled.

“I guess it's very
you
, Monkey.”

“I guess so.”

We continued walking towards the house.

“And this place belongs to the same Simone from way back when in Joburg? I remember her from when we were in varsity. What's
she
doing out here in the sticks?”

“Her family has owned this plot of land for decades; it used to be a working farm once. When her grandparents passed on, Simone was going to sell it, but then she met Seb, a conservationist who was looking for a place to start a community of like-minded, earth-conscious souls. So they moved out here and started this sanctuary for rehabilitating wildlife.”

“Including Monkeys.”

“Ja.” I grin. “Hey, monkeys are wildlife too.”

“Tell me about it.” He shot me a sideways look, then darted his eyes away again when our gazes met. “So this Seb . . . he's a . . . ?”

“Conservationist and energy healer.”

“Of course. Does he play the guitar?”

“Oh shut up, you cynical old capitalist!” I said, and, as I punched Liam lightly on the arm, I suddenly realized just how different being in his presence had always made me feel. I may have started sleeping better and gotten some sun at Simone's, but I hadn't felt so light inside since before that afternoon when Adele threw me out of her house. Then I remembered how, later that evening, I'd thrown my torn turquoise wraparound skirt into the bin with the eggshells and sodden tea bags and other used-up rubbish of my life.

“Oh,” I gasped, and Liam turned to look at me, brows drawing together.

“Ah, Monkey,” he said. “I know. This whole mess is bloody impossible, isn't it? I've stopped trying to talk some sense into Adele, to be honest; it just makes her nuts if I so much as mention your name.”

I said nothing, the breath still snagging in my throat.

“Not surprising, I guess, considering my part in the whole
debacle. She doesn't know I'm here, of course. She'd have a mental breakdown if she knew I'd even spoken to you on the phone.”

“So you're . . .”

“On a golfing weekend.”

“Ah.”

“Not a total lie; there's a great golf estate not far from here, as luck would have it. I'll be staying there tonight.”

“Oh,” I say, keeping my voice bright. “That's cool.”

“Ja,” he said. “Cool.” He stepped onto the stoop, and the sudden shade made it impossible to see the expression on his face. “Now where's my little Gigisaurus?”