Authors: Alastair Bruce
I think I might find more: my parents’ wedding rings, the jewellery my mother used to wear – but there is nothing. There is no safe in the house, it seems. He may have sold the jewellery as he appears to have sold most of the furniture and other belongings. It may have been my father, of course. I imagine him alone in this house. He was always a quiet man, kept to himself, even with his children. But this is too quiet. Too much silence for one man. Five bedrooms, one person. They must have seemed emptier, larger, for the knowledge they used to be filled. Then, him and one other: a grown-up son. Better or worse? The son a constant reminder – another reminder – of what was lost.
Why did he keep the house? The past is baked into the walls. If I stripped away the paint, the coats that I applied and my brother and father must have applied, shadows, scents would be released. The more I strip away, the more the house fills with them, layer upon layer, sifting in the breeze.
At the bottom of the drawer is a brown envelope. There is no writing on the outside. Inside I find more photographs and another envelope, this one sealed. There are three photographs.
The first is of my mother and father. I grow numb when I look at this, when I notice it is them, a wave of coldness, starting at my neck. I do not have any photos of them. No photos of my brothers either. The ones I found here are the first. I have never had any, not since that camera I owned, and not since, after my mother died, my father removed all the photographs from view. This is the first time I have seen my father since I left Port Elizabeth, aged eighteen. My mother before that even. She died in 1987. I was twelve, the age Peter was when Paul died.
They’re grinning broadly. It must have been taken before they had children, or at least when we were very young. They are younger than I am now. My mother’s hair is being blown to the side. She is wearing large sunglasses. I can still see her eyes – they are laughing. My father has curly hair, though it is already beginning to recede. He is bare-chested. A day at the beach perhaps. I do not recognise the faces. I do, of course, but they are like strangers. At least, these are not the pictures of them I have in my mind, the pictures I can remember. They do not look like this when I picture them.
Around my mother’s neck is a string of white beads. Her brown skin. This I remember. I remember rolling the shells – I think that is what they were – around in my fingers. Beneath my fingers her warm skin and the mole at the base of her throat. I look for this but I cannot see it in the photograph. It is not right that I can’t see it. I remember it. It should be here. I remember touching it and her pushing me away. Paul was not there. It was after he died. A thought flashes through my mind. This is not my mother. But I know it is, really. The photo is faded. Perhaps the light was at the wrong angle. Perhaps the mole only appeared on her later. I place the photograph on the bedside table.
The more I think about that time, the more I have to admit the memories are fading. They are reflections in a pond. Revisiting them is like dropping a pebble into the water. They break up, disappear. Fallible – the word comes to me.
Maybe it would be for the best if she were not my mother, if they were not my parents. Perhaps they, too, had that thought.
There is something in the photo, these happy, smiling, young faces, that I do not know, that stands over me, looms – that is the word – over me. Something dark in the looking at it.
The next shows two boys crouched over a dog lying in the road. I close my eyes. We did a lot together, the three of us. When you live in the middle of nowhere, there is no one else to play with, so you stick together. There were just two years between each of us so it was easier. Paul and Peter were closest. The younger of the two wanting to be seen to be older and the eldest, almost a teenager, not wanting to be around children. I was more bookish than them as well – always reading. But we managed well enough. We all loved cricket and played it in the garden together. We rode our bikes. We went exploring, looking for bugs, for snakes in the bush at the back of the house.
They were cruel sometimes, as boys can be. On one of our hunts, as we called them, we went out onto the road. Peter and Paul went up ahead, stood at the fence and looked back at me, running to catch up. They looked only momentarily and then ducked under. The fence running parallel to the road was ornamental and not designed to keep boys in or intruders out.
On the other side, they stopped again to look at me. We were not allowed on the road. We had been told many times. That look was a challenge. I knew that even then. I looked back at the house, but there was no movement in it, no shouts from our mother to come back.
I walked up to the fence, to a part of it a bit further along that was hidden from the house by a tree. I called to them. I cannot remember what I said. I stood there in the shade and watched them on the black strip of tar. Peter had a stick in his hand and they were standing over something in the road. I could not make out what it was and, taking another look back at the house, went to join my brothers.
It was a dog, not a mark on it, at least nothing I could see. Its eyes were closed. I thought – more and more of this scene is coming back to me – it could be asleep. I stepped forward, then knelt by the dog, slowly reaching out a hand. I was dimly aware of my brothers behind me but I was focused on the dog, willing it to open its eyes. Someone, I do not remember whether Peter or Paul, reached out to its haunches and shoved it, making a barking noise at the same time. It was Peter, I remember, and it is him in the picture too. I jumped, but stumbled, falling backwards into Paul’s legs. They pushed me forward again and this time I had to put out my hands to stop falling and one of them I placed against the dog’s fur. It was still warm, but the flesh beneath was stiffer than it should have been. I remember arms holding me there, touching this animal; me, unsuccessfully, holding my face back from it. I cannot remember what I said, whether I was laughing with them, whether I was screaming at them.
After what was probably just a second or two, they let go and walked off back to the house, Peter’s arm around Paul’s shoulder, my camera in Paul’s hand.
Did I fling stones after them? A detail that could be the product of my adult mind and not a fact that occurred almost thirty years ago. Memories get embellished.
These things were nothing. What boys do. Forgotten five minutes later. Children do not bear grudges.
The third photograph is of Paul. He is sleeping. A photograph taken by a loving parent. His child asleep, growing, replenishing. Any minute now he will open his eyes and smile. He is nine or ten and the time for this is fast running out. Best cherish it. He will reach out, still half asleep, for Mommy or Daddy, and bury his face in their neck.
The boy has golden hair. An angel. I can see this even though the photograph is faded, even though it is almost thirty years old. The hair is parted at the side and falls neatly to the left. He faces straight up from the pillow. He is smiling, as much as you can be in your sleep. I am smiling now too.
Paul, the middle child, was favoured by both Peter and me. He was Peter’s closest companion, and he was, in many ways, the boy I wanted to be. Always laughing; almost as tall as Peter. And, when Peter was not around, we played together. It hurt that he would turn to Peter when the three of us were together, but it was natural.
I put the photographs back in the envelope and place that in the drawer. I will keep these. Once everything is done, maybe I will hold on to these.
I hold the other envelope, turn it over. I do not open it, but instead start to walk out of the room. In the doorway I stop, turn around. I go back to the drawer and open it slowly. I take out the photographs again and go back to the last one: Paul. The picture is different now. Where before I could see, could feel in fact, the blood in his veins, feel his breath on my cheek, now it is different. The child is dead; the body in a coffin, or lying on a shelf in a morgue. The camera excludes everything except the boy’s face and the cushion beneath it. The picture is taken from the side and above. It excludes the left side of his skull so the viewer cannot see the break. He has been expertly prepared. The hair, too neat for a sleeping child, combed lovingly, for the last time, by my mother – or perhaps by someone else, the morgue attendant, a stranger. It is hard to tell.
How did I miss it? The pallor of the skin, the blueness of the lips. No amount of make-up could ever disguise it.
I wonder about the photographer. I imagine my father. Maybe it was not him, but I picture him nonetheless, his hands shaking slightly, but at the moment he presses the shutter, still. Why would a father do this? How could a father do this? I picture him at the morgue, standing over the body. He wants to reach down to his boy. Take his heart in his hand and squeeze. Maybe, just maybe.
I embellish. The photograph is fading, the boy in it disappearing. I cannot see any of this.
It comes back to me. My father at the pool, Peter in his lap, Paul at his feet. On the rocks above, perched like a vulture, another child, too frightened to cry.
6
I am in the bungalow. I wake up here. At least, I come to consciousness here. I do not remember walking over.
I am in the chair in front of the screen. There is a disc in the laptop and I am watching it. There are hours of footage of me. I paint, sleep, eat.
I get to my feet and walk through the smaller house, going into each room. I press my palms against the walls, knock on them with my fists, listening for an echo.
Later, I return to the cemetery, taking flowers as promised. When I get there, I realise I should have bought more than one bunch. I split the bunch and separate the flowers between the graves, as if doling out sweets to children.
Peter’s grave is undisturbed. I do not know what I was expecting but still I find myself thinking this.
The day of Paul’s funeral was windy. It is always windy here. A normal day. The wind blew sand into my mouth. It stuck to the wetness on my cheek and dried there. I felt encrusted with dirt.
Opposite me, a woman in black and white – a nun. She was looking at me too. She had her hands clasped together and held out in front of her, praying. I have never been religious, though we went to church every week as a family before Paul died. She smiled at me. I did not smile back. I wanted her gone. Not just away from this place – I wanted her to disappear completely. Who was she to smile at me like that? Doesn’t she know what happened? Doesn’t she know, this messenger of God?
To my left, Peter, and to his left, our father and mother. I stand apart from Peter, as far away as I could get. He knows what happened, what I saw. Peter, in turn, stands apart from our parents. The gap between me and them a chasm.
There was plastic grass around the grave.
I did not want to stand near them. I was angry with them. With Peter, with my parents too, though I did not know why. What I had seen: Peter, skipping away down the rocks, faster than I could go, me struggling, slipping down the rocks. How could they leave me back there? Why did they run off? I did not know where I was and could see nothing. If they had not left me, things would have been different. Thoughts I had – or have. I cannot tell whether they came to me on the day Paul died, the day of his funeral, or now, standing here, reliving it.
There was a cut on my leg and there was pus and it was leaking into my sock. Standing at the grave, I could feel it hardening.
I still have a scar on my knee from that day at the river. Another on my chin.
I force myself to try to remember the details. Of the death, I mean. It is of the utmost importance. It is of the utmost importance, it seems to me, to remember everything, every detail. If I can, then this feeling that has been with me since I got Paul’s letter in London might go away. The feeling that something is not right.
I have not thought about it. I’ve tried not to think about it for so long it is difficult now. I will probably not be able to remember all the details, all the facts. The older I get, the further away from the truth I recede. Perhaps. Things are changing, shifting. I remember details but I ask myself if they are made up, or some of them at least, and the question doesn’t go away. I want to and, if I am honest with myself, have wanted to for some time, bang my head against a wall, over and over again, until it all comes back, until it comes back or goes away, forever.
I go through it – methodically is the word that comes to mind.
The setting is a series of pools in a mountain river near Barrydale, a town in the Karoo.
It is as if it is different people.
These people arrived and drove to the cottage they were renting. It was hot and there was no swimming pool and they had heard about the rock pools up in the pass.
After parking their car – a Chevrolet – at a viewpoint, they picked their way through gorse on the slope of the mountain, moving slowly into the valley. There were five of them. The man, who carried a basket, was in front, followed by two children, his wife with the third child in the rear.
The father held the basket in front of him. The child behind him, Peter, had to catch the branches as they flew back. It seemed to be a sort of game. Peter was becoming a man. He had to show this.
Behind him, Paul. It is harder to see him. The picture is faded.
The youngest child lagged behind and the mother called to him, or shouted.
Their path led out from the bush onto rocks by the side of the river. The youngest was the last to emerge and he walked between the members of his family, looking up at them, their attention elsewhere.
The party laid out their picnic at the uppermost pool. It was the largest and the warmest, they thought, and there was space on the rocks to sit. The mother had a camera with her. It belonged to one of the boys – the youngest, me. But she was using it. He did not mind. He said he did not mind. It was new. It was a deal they had. It was his camera – a birthday present – but she would use it sometimes and she would show him how to use it properly too and maybe one day he would be a photographer and she would buy all the film he wanted, of course. He liked their arrangement, but maybe she was using it a little bit too much now. She was taking pictures. The father told her she was wasting film. It was easy to tell he was not being serious, was just humouring her.
She took photos of the boys mainly. Of the three of them together, or in pairs, when they weren’t looking. In one, the two older boys were standing with their arms around each other’s shoulders, posing for the camera. The eldest was flexing his left bicep, his face in a grimace. In the background of that photograph, the third boy slipped into shot. Facing the camera, features blurred. He is not meant to be there.
After a while, the two boys went off, followed by the youngest. ‘Look after your brother,’ the mother called. Or did she? Do I remember those words or do I think of them just because they are the obvious ones to say?
The two older boys set off down the path. The youngest followed. The path led through thick bush – thick, at least, to a child.
He kept up with them for a while, but the path was steep and uneven underfoot and he had to push his way through branches that scratched at his face.
He began to lose them. He lost sight of them, could not hear them either. He stopped and looked around him. The sun, the bush, the cicadas.
He began to move again and he called out too, but as he did he stumbled and fell to the ground. That must be where the cuts came from, though I cannot see them.
There was a noise from down the path and the eldest came back and looked at him and said something. Or, he said nothing and just looked. The youngest was quiet too, his voice stopped by the expression on his brother’s face. He was left alone. He turned and looked back. He could not see his parents. He heard a voice, he thought, or was it a bird? Nothing else. He looked back down the path, down the trail of white rocks disappearing around a corner and into the deep blue of the sky.
He wanted to go back to his parents. He wanted to be sitting on the rocks with his mother and father, sitting between them. He didn’t want to be here, but he had been told to go and now he couldn’t go back on his own.
What did he do next, as he got to his feet, what did he see? I try to remember, try to put myself back in the skin of the boy, try to imagine myself there. It is hard. Twenty-eight years. I close my eyes and try to think myself there. But it has gone.
There was a policeman at the funeral as well as a nun: the law for this world and the next. No, not a man – a policewoman – standing back in the crowd. I could not see her, of course. But I knew she was there. Know she was there. A courtesy. And then afterwards, at the wake, I went out of the house. I did not want to be there any more. Did not want to be surrounded by these people, who all seemed to want to kiss me, or pat my head like I was a dog. I went out and down to the bottom of the garden where I could not be seen. The rain had stopped. I sat on a rock behind another rock. The irony is not lost on me. I sat there and then I saw the policewoman. She was smoking. I watched her for a long time before I was seen in turn. She seemed to get a shock as if she had seen a ghost. But then she nodded and said hello.
She came over and stood a few metres away. I try to remember what she said, how the conversation went. I do not remember her talking, do not remember answering. I wanted to tell her everything. But I said nothing. I stared at her, just stared and eventually she gave up trying to talk to me.
She held out her hand instead. A good person.
We walked back to the house. I held her hand. It was a long way for me. I did not want to go inside. I wanted to tell her something, this person who held my hand and did not push me to say something. I wanted to tell her something, everything. I had seen everything after all. But everything was too much to tell. Would it have made a difference if I had spoken? Would that have rescued things somehow or harmed them even more?
But I could not talk. The words would not form themselves.
She delivered me inside and I watched as she got into her car and drove off. I watched her go and drive up the road and I waited at the window for a long time for her to come back. But she never did.
I wonder where she is now. She will be in her late fifties or early sixties. Perhaps I have passed her in the street without realising. Perhaps, as we passed, she sensed something, turned and looked after me as I carried on, unknowing.
‘Paul Hyde. Beloved son and brother. 15 June 1973 to 11 December 1983.’ I read it again and again.
Apart from when I was here for Peter’s funeral, I have never been back to Paul’s grave. My parents, and later my father on his own, must have visited the grave, but I was never taken. At least, I cannot remember being taken.
I wonder if Peter ever came here. If he did, what would he have felt? Guilt can be a strange thing. It can give birth to ghosts. Out of the grey dust, bones begin to form, then the flesh on the bones. The wind blows it away almost as fast as it forms, but in the end he comes to see, in the half light, his brother in the dust. He comes to see all that has been taken.
What would things have been like if we had not lost touch, Peter and I? What if I had come home, maybe a few years after I left? Patched things up, maybe together we’d have agreed on a different story. I could have flown in, driven from the airport to Peter’s house. In the morning we would have come here together. Afterwards a coffee, a drink in a bar, a walk on a beach. We would have left our families behind for this.
A fairytale.
I have never been back.
I remember now. It comes to me. Dad used to come here all the time after Mom died. He asked me once to come with him and I said no. I shook my head, in fact. I did not say anything. He went on his own. He would have stood here, where I stand now. Would he wonder why his two remaining sons did not want to go with him? They each had their own reasons. Perhaps the reasons were a mystery to him. Perhaps he held back, fearing if he spoke out he would uncover an unspeakable horror at the heart of it.
I left South Africa in 1993. I was eighteen. The idea was a gap year, though I knew it would be longer than that. I had a British passport. It would be easy to stay away.
I left in the morning to catch a flight to Johannesburg, from where I would fly to London. My father drove me to the airport and left me at the passenger drop-off point. He did not park and come into the terminal building with me. I said nothing, of course, and did not complain when he told me the plan. I just shrugged. He said it was practical, that the airport would be too busy. We both knew that was not true. This was Port Elizabeth after all. My father got out of the car and unloaded my backpack from the boot. He stood before me. I sensed he wanted to hug me, or, at least, was thinking that he should. This was hard for him. Hard for me too. I could have made it easier. I held out my hand. My father hesitated, only for half a second, then held his out. ‘Good luck.’ I don’t remember the words. It could have been anything. It was brief, though. I stood on the pavement and watched while my father got in the car and drove off. Part of me wanted to run after him. Or, at least, lift up my arm so he could see in the rearview mirror that I was waving and perhaps he would have smiled. I am sure he didn’t smile.
I did not say goodbye to Peter either. He also left home at eighteen, four years before me. After two years in the army, he had returned to Port Elizabeth and was working as a waiter. He lived in a flat with three others. I had not seen the flat, just heard the odd word from my father. There was some talk of a course at the technikon. But nothing came of it. I didn’t take any interest in what he did. We hadn’t seen each other for around six months by then. My father tried to persuade me to go round there the week before I left. I did not answer and it was not mentioned again.
I go back to the airport – try to. I try to go back to the handshake and look into my father’s eyes. I have never really thought of him as a man with internal contradictions and emotions. They never reached the surface at least. Or perhaps I just do not remember. I know now, if I did not know then, that he knew I wouldn’t be coming back. Of course he did. He was not stupid. Why would I come back? Two men in a house, one other in the same city, all that is left of a family in which a son and brother had been killed and a wife and mother died when her car went off a cliff. And the blame – for there was blame, there is blame – shifts from man to man to man. Why wouldn’t the two remaining sons want to get as far away as possible? He was lucky, if you can call it that, they stayed until they were eighteen.
I put myself in the car with my father on the drive back to the house. In his thoughts. Ten years is all it took. First a son, then a wife. Then two more sons. Not dead but, let’s face it, they might as well be. They had made their choices. He had tried to get through to them ever since the day Paul died in the accident. Peter and Paul were always daring each other to do things. It was an accident. What else would it be? He had tried. And what was waiting for him at the end of the road? An empty house, devoid of everything that had once filled his life. I imagine the car coasting to a stop and my father leaning forward over the steering wheel – and then nothing. I lose sight of him at this point.