At the age of sixteen, she had met Ian Fourie, Adele Paulsen began. They were two middle-class coloured teenagers growing up in Athlone, her family a few rungs further down the ladder of the class system than the Fouries. It was the early eighties and the winds of change were blowing through apartheid South Africa, but not hard enough to keep up with the tornado of ambition swirling inside Ian. His aura of ‘more-ness’ had him destined for greater things than what the restrictive government had mapped out for ‘non-whites’. Bright herself, Adele was perfectly content with her horizon and vacillated between nursing and teaching. Highest on her list of priorities was to adore her secret boyfriend. Ian was immensely intelligent, but – like many talented men – lived under the thumb of an insufferable matriarch.
‘It’s amazing how powerful men can be such shrivelled assholes in their mothers’ presence.’
Vee started a little at an expletive dropping so comfortably out of the mouth of such a collected, well-spoken woman.
‘Ian’s family didn’t have much more than mine, but watching his mother carry on you’d think they were rolling in it. Every time I came by, that crabby old bat had her face scrunched up like I had come to steal something. In a way, I guess … I guess I had. We were both so young and didn’t think for a second that we wouldn’t end up together. Naïve first love.’
‘What made you stop seeing each other?’
‘We didn’t. We never actually broke up, not formally. He left in December of ’81. One day he was here in Cape Town, the next he wasn’t. They had family abroad, in Europe. His mother hadn’t wanted him to leave the country to study medicine, but once he’d started up with me, it became the best idea she’d ever heard. I knew Ian wouldn’t pass up the chance in a million years. Not that our relationship didn’t matter: Ian’s just like that, always has been. He had a fire to climb, still does, nothing ever stood in his way. Personal relationships, love and the like, just have to work their way around his grand plans.’
Bitterness left her voice and she looked up with softer eyes. ‘He isn’t all cold, ambitious bastard. Ian’s a good man, he truly is. He protects and provides. I think so much is expected of him by so many people that it gets hard balancing success and keeping everybody happy.’
She still loves him. Something, fear maybe, coiled around Vee’s heart. Given time, would she deflate and petrify into an Adele, a woman blindly defending a man who had, for all intents and purposes, moved on with his life? What the hell was love worth, then, if you could be abandoned without a backward glance?
‘We stayed in contact as much as we could. We didn’t talk much about where our relationship was going, or whether it was going anywhere at all. Ian avoids confrontation when it matters most and being apart took a huge toll on his studies, so I stopped asking. There was nothing either of us could do about it. After a while, we just grew up. I, for one, started feeling extremely stupid waiting for a man who’d be so different when he returned – that’s if he ever did. He’d be a doctor and I’d be a teacher, you know? Politically, things were taking drastic turns. Apartheid was on its last legs and we were on the brink of new opportunities. But at the end of the day, he’d still be a doctor and me a teacher. I started thinking …’
That his mother was right.
‘Maybe his mother had a point, much as I hated to admit it. And you know how long-distance relationships can go and what men are like. Who knows what they get up to? I was young still, and if I didn’t look forward, my whole life would pass me by. So …’
Adele shrugged, an encyclopaedia of history in the movement of her shoulders. She’d done what she had to, and damned if she didn’t look ashamed and apologetic about it. Her hunched posture spoke of a woman who believed, to her own bewilderment, in one true love in a lifetime.
‘We fell out of touch eventually. It got easier. There were other men. Some were wonderful and I tried to take the relationship seriously. But … have you ever been in love?’
Vee dropped her eyes to her boots.
‘Then you know what I mean. You pretend to get over someone so well that you start to believe it. You remember all the history, everything they put you through, and tell yourself you can’t forgive. Then you plan this new life, to hell with the past. And all the while, deep inside you know you’re completely full of shit.’
Vee fidgeted. Dammit, was she looking at her own future here? ‘What happened when Ian finally came home?’
Adele shrugged again, only this time it was more a lazy lifting and resigned dropping of the shoulders. As if gravity was too strong to encourage more.
‘What I expected. We didn’t just pick up where we’d left off. Too much time had passed for that. We danced around it. I heard talk in the old neighbourhood that he was home for good, but over a year passed before we saw each other. Cape Town’s pretty small but you can avoid people if you want to. We finally ran into each other at a party at a mutual friend’s place. He looked so much the same. Only difference, he was married.’
She looked over, clearly expecting reproach. Vee nodded, impassive.
‘I knew – of course I knew. His wife wasn’t with him that night. She was ready to pop by then, about to have their first. I only saw her in passing over the years, and not often. We … met, much later on.’
‘What was she like? When y’all finally did?’
‘We didn’t talk much that night. Wanting to pretend for a while,’ Adele ploughed on, voice soft, a lover reminiscing aloud, alone in her sitting room. ‘That’s what grown-ups are meant to do, save face and moralise until they’re not fooling anyone any more. Then we met up for drinks, just to catch up. How long does that last with a man you have a past with. We swapped old stories from back in the day and laughed … It became a routine. More drinks, lunch, we’re only talking, I was just in the neighbourhood, until …’
She turned away, her expression a tempest of too many emotions for Vee to untangle.
‘After Jacqui disappeared, I started thinking maybe it was God’s way of punishing me, both of us, for the way we behaved. It’s crazy superstition, thinking that a child is a necessary sacrifice to set things right again. But I can’t help feeling that if we’d been more careful and she’d never been conceived, or if I’d been stricter and done more to keep her away from that pathetic family, none of this would’ve happened.’
‘When did Jacqui get to know her father’s other family? Was it your idea, or her father’s, to be closer to them? Or Carina’s?’
A sharp, bitter laugh broke from Adele’s lips. ‘Whose idea was it? My God, it wasn’t anybody’s grand idea. The three of us would never be that ridiculous, discussing things like mature adults. There was never a sit-down, no ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be fantastic if our families got to know each other and became one big, happy unit.’ God. Imagine that happening.’ She shook her head, chuckling again into her tea. A swift slurp and she set the cup down and fixed Vee with her full, grave attention. ‘You really have no clue, do you?’
Adele’s eyes drifted down again, this time to her feet, crossed at the ankles. ‘You know, when you called wanting to talk, I thought, I hoped, that Ian was finally stepping up. That finally he wants to stop being macho and grieving alone, or expecting the police to work miracles after two years, and that he had hired someone. Looks like wishful thinking, as usual.’
‘Jacqui was born not long after Sean. In fact, Jacqui’s close in age to the three eldest Fourie kids. She was born after Serena, same year. Carina did not waste time. She got pregnant right after they were married, and popped three more kids like it was going out of fashion. I assumed she’d be different, posh and what, being a doctor and white and all that. Maybe have only one. Maybe take some time to get to know his family, get used to our racial mess and whatnot. Ian might as well have stayed and married a coloured girl, another darkie like himself.’
‘No love lost between you and the missus, then.’
‘How could there be, considering the situation he put us in?’ Adele snarled. ‘Ian is no fool. He’s brainy, but not lacking in social skills the way the clever ones are. Especially with women – he has a special way with women. Not just in that sense. He has a way of making you … obey him, somehow. No one ever discusses things with Ian, really, but somehow you find yourself swept along till you wash up somewhere with no idea how you got there. The unspoken rule concerning his two families: we were separate and would stay that way. You know how it goes.’
Vee knew the deal well enough, having grown up in a similar set-up. Big house, small house. As old as the hills, a virtually indestructible pillar of the African family structure.
‘Of course, it was up to me to do most of the staying away, not that I had any intention of doing otherwise. They’ve always had that house out in Pinelands and I stayed in Athlone up until recently. Paths didn’t need to cross.
‘Then Sean developed cancer,’ she murmured. ‘Some form of juvenile leukaemia. Life plays the cruellest jokes, or then again maybe it’s God. He was the sweetest of the lot. You couldn’t find a better child. The terrible irony was that they were both gifted doctors who had to stand by, useless, and watch him die. No parent should have to go through that.’
‘There have been major advances in cancer research,’ Vee said, digging through her rudimentary archive. ‘Especially for children. Surely there were more options?’
‘You may be right,’ Adele agreed, ‘but the type Sean had was severe. I remember the first time Ian told me. It broke him, though he fought to stay optimistic and rational. That boy was the world to him. Sean was five or six then, two years older than Jacqui. Something about the treatment he got must’ve worked, because he went into remission. Then, eight or so years later the cancer came back, and this time it had claws. He was taken overseas, but still … So they started looking for bone marrow donors and … eventually Ian and Carina came to me.’
The room breathed for a few beats as Vee joined two and two.
‘Jacqueline was Ian’s, too. She and Sean were blood. The doctors always do family first, and they assumed they had a shopping list. It was the worst luck ever. Three siblings, and not one that was a good match for Sean – not even little Rosemary. Ian and Carina didn’t come close either. They had no choice but to ask for my help. At first he demanded it, saying it was his fatherly right to use one child to help the other as he saw fit. I told him to adjust his attitude and come back when he had.’
She sighed. ‘It wasn’t the kindest thing to have done at the time, but Ian picks the wrong moment to aggravate me. He can’t admit he’s wrong or needs help. He adjusts terms to suit – calling in a favour, keeping score, being entitled to this or that. He said the most utter bullshit, about doing so much to provide for Jacqui and whatnot, like that had obligated us to him. He even offered to pay me if she was a match.’
‘What did you decide?’
‘As in, did I let them ‘compensate’ me for using my kid? No, I didn’t. I’m a mother! What pissed me off was his suggesting that it could all be kept quiet. Slide me some cash, take Jacqui to the hospital and stick her up with needles to help Sean. I don’t know what that man had in mind, but he was willing to pull some dodgy stunts and risk losing his medical licence rather than be upfront with his wife about who the donor was.
‘That’s when I saw him for who he really was – someone who lived and breathed his bloody career and image. The great doctor was ashamed he’d made himself common by having a love child. He loved Carina but came to my bed when the fancy bloody well took him. Then he expected to snap his fingers, and I’d put my daughter through pain, for what? I knew then I’d never get any respect unless I demanded it, so I demanded it. No matter how afraid he was of throwing us all into the same messy pot, this time he was forced to consider my pride. He had to get his precious Carina’s hands dirty too, as in they both had to come to my home and speak to me about it properly. And I won’t lie – I wanted them to beg. Which they did. But it didn’t end there.’
Vee read her body language. ‘You were still apprehensive about the donation process.’
Adele nodded. ‘The first round was only blood tests to see if they were compatible. With half-siblings, I thought it was a long shot. I could still feel like a good person who had cooperated even when nothing had panned out. But once a match was confirmed, it got real. Even after we explained it to her, Jacqui was brave and wanted to do it. She met Sean and they really hit it off. The procedure sounded straightforward, there’d be anaesthesia and everything, but it was too overwhelming. I’m not proud of it but I lost my nerve and backed out. I got Jacqui discharged from the hospital and took her home.’
In the leaden silence, Vee did some arithmetic. With Sean aged fourteen, Jacqui would have been twelve. Old enough to absorb the awkwardness of their parents’ dilemma, but not old enough to understand every adult nuance, every undercurrent of friction. Vee pictured it: two families, subsets of each other, fighting and saving each other from drowning all at once. ‘That couldn’t have been easy for you. Didn’t go down well with the Fouries either, I expect.’
‘I’m not a monster. I knew I’d crack, but I needed time to digest it. Then Sean took a turn for the worse and it put things into perspective. It wasn’t about me or Carina or any of us. I didn’t need any more convincing, but Carina came to see me on her own, to beg me one more time to help save her son. Mother to mother. She wasn’t the same cold, hateful woman who had sat in my lounge when we’d met face to face. I agreed to take Jacqui back in the next morning.’
‘But the procedure didn’t work, did it? Sean died.’
Adele nodded. ‘It never even went ahead. In that short time, Sean developed an infection. They tried everything to save him. Infections are common before transplants, and his system was already too weak from everything else. He passed away around this time in September, not long after his birthday.’
Adele rummaged through her handbag for a pack of Stuyvesant Extra Mild and tipped it in Vee’s direction. Vee shook her head. She had more than enough chipping away at her already.
‘I warned Jacqui not to smoke,’ Adele said, exhaling out of the nearest open window. ‘I never used to. Disgusting habit. Told her it would lead to an early grave.’ She shook her head bitterly. From her lips to God’s ears.
‘How did Jacqui take Sean’s death?’
Adele knocked ash out of the window and walked out of the room. Minutes later, she returned with the squirming puppy in her arms. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘He’s not house-trained yet, but I never have the heart to leave him out in the cold.’
New cigarette between her fingers, she continued: ‘My girl was so different from me. Sometimes I wondered whether they didn’t hand me the wrong baby at the hospital. She took it so hard, because to her she’d messed up. She was like that, so protective and proud. When she loved someone, she made their well-being a personal responsibility. Something her father could’ve learned a lot from.’
Now came the hard part. Vee cleared her throat and sat straighter. ‘Ms Paulsen, you speak about Jacqui in the past tense. I’m sorry to have to ask, but does that mean you don’t believe she’s still alive?’
Without hesitation, Adele shook her head. ‘No,’ she replied flatly. ‘Wish I could say different, like ‘I feel it in my gut’ or ‘Deep down a mother knows’, but I can’t. Jacqui was a handful. She was growing wild and I was essentially a struggling single parent. But one thing she wasn’t was cruel or maliciously dishonest. Yes, she lied – which teenager hasn’t? But she wouldn’t run off without one word, not one, to tell me where she was or how she was doing. Nothing would make my girl do that to me. So, no, I don’t think she’s alive.’
She lowered her dejected weight back into the sofa. ‘I told her to stay away from those Fouries. I knew nothing good could come out of it, but she wanted to be part of them so badly. By the time the madness of the transplant was over, the idea of them had taken root. She wanted a real family. I tried to be enough, but they had a draw on her I couldn’t compete with.’
‘You suspect they had something to do with her disappearance?’
‘Don’t know what to think. I’ve been over it a thousand times in my mind and it makes no sense. This city’s dangerous, but no one wants to think what can happen to their own. I’ve learnt so much about missing children these past two years … Do you know how many go missing countrywide? Over one thousand six hundred per year. And three hundred of them are never heard from again.’
Her voice cracked. The burning circle of tobacco illuminated a film of liquid brilliance in her eyes, threatening to break over the rims. ‘One thousand six hundred a year,’ she whispered, ‘and my baby’s one of them.’
Vee switched off the recorder and let the silence chew at the edges of the room. Families and their lies and wars. If anything was familiar … She refrained from rubbing her tired eyes. Outside, the light faded fast. ‘Do you have a picture?’ she asked.
Adele walked over to a dresser, and retrieved and handed over a thick envelope. A lot of thought had gone into cobbling it together. Among the papers were two photographs. The uppermost showed Jacqui on the beach, fully clothed and laughing as she held a Coke. She had a small face, framed by shoulder-length curly hair, and her mother’s brown eyes. A pretty pixie of a girl. The second showed her decked out in full uniform, forcing an embarrassed smile for the camera on what looked like a momentous school day.
‘Keep it,’ Adele said, blowing smoke in Vee’s direction. ‘I don’t need so many any more. Sometimes I think I’m the only one left in the world who still cares what she looked like.’