Uses of Agapanthus Read online

clasps his hands behind his head.

  "Your grandfather was a magistrate down in Ixopo when he was a young man. They say he spoke perfect Zulu, just like a native elder. Do you know–" she pulls herself up on her pillows to confide.

  "His Zulu was so good, he'd correct the official court translators." Brett finishes the family legend in his mind before his mother can say the words.

  Brett pretends not to notice his mother is crying. "Here's your tea, Mom." She was fine when he'd gone to the kitchenette. He finds a coaster, and sets her cup and saucer on the bedside cabinet. He slumps into the armchair, and wishes to God he could get back to the crisis at the waste treatment plant. Sewerage pipes leak, they don't weep. He glances across to see if the cringing moment has passed, and is transfixed. The reticulation of deep wrinkles around his mother's eyes distributes the tears down runnels without overflowing. It's an elegant solution to the problem of inundation. She pulls an embroidered handkerchief from her sleeve and dabs at her eyes. That's a novelty, an old woman's act Brett remembers his grandmother performing, but never Mom before.

  "He was such a handsome man." How I loved him. "He would come up from varsity at the weekends."

  "Mom, you're confusing Uncle Dickie with Dad. It was Uncle Dickie who was the lecturer. He was a botanist, just like Giles."

  "Ah, yes." She wipes her eyes again. "There was a place called Bushman's Nek, high in the mountains. You could just make it out from the farm. Do you remember it?"

  "Vaguely."

  "Dickie heard there were still rock paintings from long before the Zulus arrived. But I think it was just Dad and his mates pulling his leg."

  Brett laughs – that would be Dad. He thinks of the time they went camping in the bush near Kruger Park. Giles had tuned his transistor radio to an African station. He and Mom started this wild dancing around the campfire. She called Brett to join them, but he found that sort of thing excruciating. Besides, he'd kept count of her gin and tonics, so he knew that, after the dancing, there would be tears, and tomorrow she'd be too tired to come on a game drive. Dad tugged at his sleeve and motioned for him to follow into the darkness behind a wide spreading fever tree. Brett was transfixed by the mad figures circling the flames until Dad whispered his plan. Dad roared into a bucket, and Brett thought they'd bust themselves laughing at Mom and Giles scrambling towards the car. And, as he and Dad made like they were scaring the lion away, they stared petrified with their faces against the glass. You'd think, just once, she might remember something good about Dad, just one happy memory from all those years.

  Mom doesn't notice her son's smile at his own reminiscence. "Dickie found a guide, Sipho or Siphiwe, I can't remember now, who said he could take us to some caves up at Bushman's Nek. And, as we walked, Sipho, yes that was his name, pointed out plants and roots, and told us what they were used for. He would spell out the Zulu names for Dickie to write down in his notebook, and Dickie would tell us the Latin names. And I just took in what I could. They both knew so much about their worlds. Of course, your Dad spoke enough Zulu to tell the labourers what to do around the farm. They respected him, and, make no mistake, he'd never put up with any nonsense. But I think they really loved him because he treated them as equals."

  Brett sits forward in his chair. "Who did they love?"

  She doesn't answer.

  He flops back. "Uncle Dickie? Yah, just like they loved Giles. After all he did for them, and the thanks he gets is a bullet in the head." Brett sighs when he sees the serenity of Mom's smile. He'd thought maybe he'd overstepped the mark, but it's obvious she hasn't listened to a word he's said. He needs to breathe. "I'm going to get some fresh air. Mom, I'm just going outside."

  Brett wishes he still smoked; that would give him a good excuse to be pacing the garden alone. Yah, well, if she wants an Afrikaans word, then how about broedertwis? A good one that, because 'brotherly conflict' doesn't quite make the mark. But how can you keep on fighting when the paragon of virtue is dead? Before she came, Mom's letters were page after page about Giles, how he was reorganising the farm, doing this and that for the locals. Now, he's not been gone six months, and all she can talk about is Uncle Dickie, someone dead so long ago, he might never have really existed.

  The lure of brilliant purple catches Brett's eye. He strides across the lawn, and aims a scything kick that would have sent the ball through the middle of the posts and had Dad cheering from the touchline. A few agapanthus lazily somersault away, stalks and all. Some are flattened, and others waver, before springing back. Brett is panting as he turns. There's an old woman at the window, her face aghast, but she's someone else's mother. As he walks back across the lawn, Brett bends to clap the sap from his trousers. A petal has lodged in his turn up. He plucks it out and tosses it away.

  Mom is in the same position as when he left the unit. Her tea is untouched, but she's smiling. Brett returns to the armchair. He's never heard anything about petroglyphs near the farm before. "So, Mom, tell me, did you find the rock paintings?"

  She laughs. "No. And, at the end of the day, my feet were so sore. I told the men I couldn't take another step. Dickie went to find a stream. He brought the water back in his bush hat to bathe my feet. It was icy." She shivers at the memory. "And then Sipho took a bag from his knapsack. Do you know what was in it?"

  "Zambuk?" That was Dad's cure all.

  "Agapanthus petals. He stuffed my shoes with them." Dickie, on one knee, eased my feet in, like Prince Charming and that girl who worked in the kitchen. My old veldskoens were overflowing with lilac petals. And Dickie, so gentle it almost tickled, took my feet, and slipped them into the shoes.

  "Oh what a relief it was," she says. "I can feel how the petals eased the chafing even now. It was like I was wearing slippers of talcum powder. We were too late then to go back down the track in the dark."

  "What did you do?"

  "Sipho found us a cave for the night." The cave was as big as a barn, but, as he made a fire, Dickie said we'd be like two pearls snuggled together in a shell. "What an adventure!" She lies back and closes her eyes.

  Time has not been kind to his mother's looks. Brett has a photo of her then, before children. Blonde and tanned, she could have been a film star, Grace Kelly perhaps, posing in a silk scarf and sunglasses on the bonnet of an Austin Healey, no doubt parked on the boundary as Dad batted. He was good enough to have played provincial cricket, rugby too, but she never wants to remember that. And now, she's so frail, and her puckered face is almost simian. The blonde waves have receded to sparse white strands. The sun and gin have more than taken their toll. Only the blueness of her eyes still shines through the mask. It's a terrible thought, but it's a good thing that Dad didn't live long enough to see his princess end up like this.

  "Mom. I've got to go down the hall."

  "It's just down the hall."

  For Christ's sake – what do you think I said? He sighs. "I know where it is."

  In the visitors' bathroom, Brett splashes water onto his face. The coarse weft of the paper towel feels good against his skin. He rubs his eyes hard. How can she still make him so angry? He's here, doing the best he can with the dutiful son thing, but when has she ever been a proper mother to him? Take that time in the bush, that's what he'd like to ask her: if she really did think it was a lion, how come she was locked in the car with Giles, while he was left outside with Dad to scare away the man eater?

  Brett grasps the rim of the sink and leans forward. His muscles flex ready for him to repeat his morning press ups. He doesn't need her. Suzie will make up for it all. He imagines how it will be, how he'll wait for her outside her rooms. At 5.15, the door opens and a young man on crutches swings his way out, and across the small car park. That's her last appointment for today. She packs her bag. Off goes the angle poise lamp on her desk, the blinds close, just a final chinwag with Annie at reception, and she's here. He flicks the radio off and is out of the car to hold the door open for her.

  He's worked hard at their marriage. A relationshi
p is like a bridge – you build it properly to start with, but you never forget to keep up the maintenance. He's made sure of things. Suzie kisses him. "This is a nice surprise." She knows he's not a man of soft words but she understands his acts of love.

  "Let's go to the wharf for a sundowner," Brett says. "Make hay while the sun shines."

  On the deck of the bar, the other couples retreat inside one by one, leaving their vinegary chips and fish scraps for the swooping gulls.

  "So, exactly what women's problems do you use agapanthus for?"

  "Don't even go there," he says. "She tells me they're the flowers of love. I had no idea the old girl was into alternative medicine."

  Suzie laughs and shivers. Brett stretches out and pulls her close, and she asks the question he dares not. "And that stuff about your Mom and your Uncle Dickie – do you think she was confusing or confessing?"

  "Where were we?" Back in his mother's unit, there's only ten minutes of the visiting hour to go; Brett can afford to be indulgent. "You were telling me how you and Uncle Dickie found a cave for shelter."

  "Yes. That's right, we did."

  Did Dickie ask Sipho to leave them alone or did he just understand he should, as, no doubt, men do? He'd been there as she'd spread out a blanket close by the flames, but, when she