We flew up the road in Candy’s red MG, the wind so strong my eyelashes were blowing back. I was holding her straw hat in my lap where she’d dropped it. And then, just then, Jessie came by on her scooter from the other direction. She passed us, and must have seen us, but she didn’t turn her head.
There was a row of market stalls in the car park, close to the pavement. For a hundred rand a day, locals could hire a wooden trestle table, with a big umbrella. The umbrella was on a stand with a heavy concrete base. The umbrella shade was smaller than the table, and it moved around as the sun moved, so the wares were usually piled up on just one part of the table and then shuffled around to follow the shade. You could buy colourful hats or ugly handbags or cheap plastic things which broke before you got home. But some of the tables had good fresh produce from the farms nearby.
‘That’s him,’ said Candy.
We pulled up in front of a stall made of a double trestle table loaded with fruit and vegetables. A good-looking man with curly brown hair, a leather hat and a denim shirt stood in the sun, between two umbrellas. He had organised his tables so the green and leafy things were in the shade, and the melons, tomatoes and pumpkins were in the sun. He had also set his umbrellas so that there was some shade for his customers to stand in. Which was considerate of him. Or maybe just clever business. I recognised the man and his table. He had lived in the Ladismith area quite a few years, but he still behaved like an out-of-town type. He was there to sell, not to chat. I wondered if he would talk to us now.
Candy had parked so that he was on her side of the car. She did not look at him as she got out, but she knew he was watching. She moved slowly, as if someone was taking pictures of each pose: the red car door opens – out come her purple heels and long legs; she stands up, adjusts her sunglasses, shakes her blonde hair; her hands tug on the hem of her lilac dress; the cloth tightens on her hips and breasts.
The man’s eyes were photographing every image. I got out too, carrying Candy’s hat.
‘Look at these fine mangoes, Tannie Maria,’ she said, crossing the pavement, heading to his stall.
He had a nice selection of fruit and vegetables. I picked up a mango and smelled it. Sweet like honey. Some of the mangoes had little bumps on them. But that’s what you get when you grow food in your garden. It doesn’t always look as good as the shop food, but it tastes a lot nicer. A pile of fat black grapes sat next to the mangoes.
‘Can I taste one?’ I asked, looking up at the man.
He was about the same height as Candy in her heels and was still watching her from under his leather hat.
‘Go ahead,’ he said.
Ooh, it was good: sweet and juicy.
Candy was also tasting a grape, but she was taking longer about it. She rubbed it against her lips, touched it with the tip of her tongue, then licked the grape slowly. By the time she popped it into her mouth, I thought the man was going to burst. She smiled and then lifted up her sunglasses and looked right at him, as if noticing him for the first time.
‘Why, isn’t that John? John Visser.’
The man swallowed and wiped his mouth.
‘Remember me, sugar? Martine’s cousin, Candice.’
‘Candy?’ he said.
‘I suppose you’ve heard,’ she said, ‘about Martine.’
He frowned, and moved a cabbage into the shade.
‘Ja. Terrible.’
‘I was wondering how to get ahold of you. The funeral’s on Wednesday at ten in the morning.’
‘Terrible,’ he said again, his arms now at his sides. ‘That man.’
‘Her husband?’
‘Yes.’
His hands became fists.
‘You think he did it?’
‘He didn’t treat her right.’
‘Did you see much of Martine?’
He opened and closed his fists.
‘He was too jealous to let anyone near her,’ he said. ‘But I kept in touch . . . ’
‘When did you last see her?’
‘Couple of weeks back. She should never have married him.’
‘Did you visit her at home?’
‘What’s this, an inquisition?’
Candy smiled. She took her hat from me, and arranged it nicely on her head.
‘This is a family friend, Maria,’ she said. ‘John Visser. An old . . . friend of Martine’s. Maria is helping out with the funeral arrangements. John is a farmer. Still organic?’
He nodded.
‘Nice,’ I said, patting a pumpkin. ‘I’ve got a little garden myself. My chickens and my wild garlic keep the goggas away.’
‘So you’re also an organic farmer,’ he said.
‘I never thought of it like that,’ I said. ‘But I don’t use poisons for the insects, and I pull up my weeds by hand.’
‘And your fertiliser?’ he asked.
‘Vegetable compost and chicken poo,’ I said.
‘Excellent,’ he said, bringing his hands together in a silent clap. ‘Then you’re organic. Most home gardeners are. Until they get bombarded by crap from the agricultural companies. They’ve wrecked subsistence farming across Africa with their products. Pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilisers, and now the GM seeds. Criminal. Just criminal.’
Candy smiled.
‘Can’t just let nature take its course,’ she said.
‘Not where there’s money to be made. Profit. That’s all that matters.’
‘Money money money.’
He lowered his voice and leaned across the table.
‘It may be more than that,’ he said. ‘Control. These guys are evil. They have a plan.’
‘I’m sorry things didn’t work out with you and Martine,’ Candy said.
He stepped back and picked up a tomato.
‘She made the wrong decision there,’ he said, throwing the tomato in the air and catching it.
‘Maybe,’ said Candy.
‘Look how things turned out,’ he said.
He held the tomato in his fist at his side. He was squeezing it. Red juice dripped out between his fingers.
‘These grapes,’ I said, ‘how much are they?’
‘Fifty rand a box,’ he said, dropping the squashed tomato.
I didn’t like to see food treated like that.
‘I’ll take a box,’ I said, ‘and a packet of tomatoes.’
‘I’ll have three of these mangoes,’ said Candy.
‘I’ll get a fresh box of grapes from my bakkie,’ he said, ‘I’m keeping them cool under shade cloth.’
He wiped his hands on his jeans. I followed him across the car park, while Candy picked out her mangoes.
‘Bit early in the season for grapes,’ I said.
‘These are early ripeners,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got a greenhouse. Bit of a cheat, I suppose. I set it up to keep out the porcupines and baboons. Then I realised I can regulate the moisture and temperature, and sometimes I can get unseasonal fruit.’
His car was a big white 4×4 vehicle. The tyres: Firestone.
‘Do you have any pomegranate trees?’
John acted like he hadn’t heard me, as he unloaded a box of grapes. I saw a sticker on the back of his car. It was big and red and said: No Fracking Way. Fracking? Where had I heard that before?
‘What is fracking?’ I asked.
‘She loved pomegranates,’ said John, talking quietly to himself. ‘I planted a whole field of them for her. But it did me no good.’
He carried the grapes across to the table, mumbling something I couldn’t hear.
As I paid him, I asked again: ‘What’s that sticker on your car about fracking?’
‘Those fracking mining bastards, Shaft. They won’t stop till they’ve got all the coal, oil and gas out of the earth. Fracking is how they search for natural gas. They blast through layers of deep-strata rock. Toxic chemicals. It would totally mess up our groundwater. And they want to take water from our deep aquifers. A disaster for the Karoo if they go ahead. Total disaster. We’ve got a very fragile ecosystem here.’
‘They want to do it here, in the Klein Karoo?’
‘Mainly the Groot Karoo,’ he said, packing Candy’s mangoes into a brown paper bag. ‘But they’ve started investigating here too. I hear they are buying up land in likely areas. They’ve scoped everything from the sky. With their infrared satellite devices. After last year’s drought, a lot of the farmers are battling, selling their land cheap . . . ’
‘Did you talk to Martine about fracking?’ I asked.
He started rearranging the watermelons on the table.
‘Those mining companies are the scum of the earth. We’ve got to stop them.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘Looks like it might rain. Think I’ll pack up for the day.’
There were a few clouds building up, but it was a long way from rain. He started packing his melons and cabbages into cardboard boxes.
Candy said: ‘It’s at the NGK church. The funeral. On Wednesday. Could you be a pall-bearer?’
‘Terrible,’ said John to himself, shaking his head as he walked away, carrying a loaded box.
‘I reckon that fella’s one sandwich short of a picnic,’ said Candy, as we got back in the car.
‘Maybe he’s got a few sandwiches extra,’ I said.
I wasn’t quite sure what I meant, but I knew it was time for lunch.