‘Tannie, Tannie,’ the skinny boy said, as he came running towards me, ‘have you got cake?’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
I was right; the people outside the hall were Seventh-day Adventists. They were dressed very smart for church. Ties and fancy hats and all.
‘There’s food here that we can eat, Tannie. My mother said.’ He looked hungrier than usual. ‘We’ve been saving our food for the mountains, Tannie. We’re going camping.’
The pale lady who had stopped me from feeding the children came and stood beside the little boy. She was wearing a blue bonnet.
I told them both: ‘Yes, there will be vegan food, but you need to wait until after the funeral. And we can’t have the funeral without a priest. Do you have a priest who can help us?’
‘Well,’ said the lady in the bonnet, ‘there’s Emmanuel, but he’s not here.’
‘Gone looking for Emily, his wife,’ said Georgie, joining us.
She was wearing a pink hat on top of her grey curls.
‘Georgina here is a lay priestess,’ said the lady.
‘Oooh wooo,’ said Georgie. ‘No, no. I’ve never preached outside of the Adventists.’
‘She’s done funerals,’ the woman said. ‘Two of them.’
Georgie shook her head so fast that the small pink roses on her hat looked like they might fly off.
‘I’m sure we can organise some payment,’ I said.
Georgie looked at her friend then back at me.
‘How much?’
‘A spinach pie now for you, and two hundred rand afterwards,’ I said.
‘Oooh,’ said Georgie. ‘Done.’
More people were arriving now, on foot and by car, dressed in their church best. Candice and David stood at the door, greeting them as they walked in. The wheelchair-and-bandage group settled in at the front. I sat next to some of the Spar workers in the middle. Most of them were still in their work clothes, but Marietjie was all fancied up in a dress and heels. She was sitting next to the manager, Mr Cornelius van Wyk. I suppose he used some kind of glue on his hair to keep it combed sideways like that. The Seventh-day Adventists sat at the back.
The light was coming into the church from windows that were very high up, and it felt like we were underwater. When the pews were almost full, music started playing, and the pall-bearers came in with the coffin. Reghardt, Piet and Jessie carried one side of the coffin; Kannemeyer, David and Didi the other. I guessed Didi must have forgiven John. Maybe she wasn’t the jealous type. She probably didn’t know about the ripe pomegranate. Jessie and Henk sat next to Candy in the front. Grace was near the front too. She wore a blue shweshwe headdress and sat up very straight. Hattie came late and stayed at the back with the Seventh-day Adventists. There was an empty space next to me, and the ghost of my husband, Fanie, came and sat down. I tried to shoo him away, but his heavy presence stayed.
Georgie did a good job of the sermon. She spoke about how our lives all come to an end, and gave us a bit of God and heaven talk. She threw in some stuff about the end of the world too, but didn’t invite us to join them in the mountains for the big day. Then she invited family members to speak. Dirk got up, but when he was in front of everyone, the words stuck in his throat so he sat down again. Candy stood up and said some sweet words about her cousin and the kind people of Ladismith.
The bad-tempered ghost of Fanie still sat beside me. No mention was made of the husband hitting Martine or the person who murdered her. Funerals are always scrubbed clean of dirt. We sang ‘All Things Bright And Beautiful’.
And then we sang ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’ and the pall-bearers carried the coffin back down the aisle. Kannemeyer looked sad, his moustache drooping. My tummy felt strange, like it was being kneaded, as he walked right past me. I stood up to join the procession and left Fanie’s angry ghost there on the church pew.
The family and all their wheelchairs were behind the coffin: Candice pushing Oupa, the nurse pushing Jamie, Anna wheeling herself, and Dirk walking slowly behind them all. The coffin then the wheelchairs were carried down the steps.
Then we all rolled, hobbled and walked to the cemetery behind the church. Someone had dug a very deep hole. The wheelchairs parked in the front row on the flatter side of the grave: Anna, Oupa, Jamie. Rows of people stood behind them: Dirk and the nurse; David, Candice and Kannemeyer; John and Didi; Jessie, Reghardt and Piet. Even Hattie was on that side, with them all.
I stood on the other side of the grave with the Seventh-day Adventists and some workers from the Spar. Just when I thought we had all settled down, and Georgina was giving Martine some final words of farewell, I saw Jamie’s wheelchair rolling forward. The nurse grabbed for it but missed and it hung out over the edge of the grave. Piet dived forward and managed to catch it before it fell. He pulled it back onto safe ground. David took a couple of steps backwards.
‘Oooh wooo,’ cried Georgina.
‘The brakes were on,’ said the nurse, gripping the back of the chair. ‘I don’t know what happened.’
Grandpa reached out for Jamie and patted him on the knee. Candice crouched down beside him, but the boy seemed okay, humming to himself, making grabs for his granddad’s hand.
Priestess Georgie said quietly that we all came from dust and to dust we all return. Men in workers’ overalls used ropes to lower the coffin into the grave. Then they began to cover it with spadefuls of earth. There was a big mound of soil. The service was scrubbed clean of dirt, but there was no getting away from it here.
It made a soft heavy sound as it hit the lid of the coffin.
Martine was never coming back.
I picked up a handful of soil and threw it in.
I’ll do my best, Martine, I told her. I’ll do my best to find who did this to you.