Arriving at the Roundhouse – she had taken an Uber, having been warned that parking at the restaurant was limited – there was, inevitably, the awkward moment of greeting Kevin and Andrew … well, of greeting Andrew. Kevin and she had arrived at a civil form of salutation, a discreet kiss on each cheek; but not having seen Andrew since many years before, she could hardly pretend to even this degree of familiarity.
Kevin, sensing the awkwardness, tried to smooth things over by saying, ‘I don’t think you’ve met Andrew …’ which left it open to Margaret and Andrew to decide whether they’d acknowledge their earlier meeting.
Andrew took the lead. ‘Oh, we did meet long ago,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘I remember you very well.’
Of course, you remember me very well, Margaret thought, I was the woman who took Kevin from you. And now you’ve taken him back.
‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t have recognised you, but yes, I do remember.’ In fact, to her eye Andrew had, in that trying way some homosexuals had, hardly aged at all. The two of them, Kevin and Andrew, looked, she thought, provokingly pleased with themselves and each other. Kevin seemed to have gained some weight, and Andrew also had a well-fed air about him: she assumed that he was a better cook than she had been. Oh, both of them were, of course, well preserved – she was sure they hit the gym three times a week and undertook nature rambles together – but they had that glow of self-sufficient satiety that suffused most newish couples, of whatever orientation.
These uncharitable reflections were the work of a moment, indulged and dispatched in the two seconds that it took her to say, ‘Actually, I do now remember you well.’ This seemed to exhaust the conversational potential of their past acquaintance, her and Andrew’s only common ground other than the contested (or ceded) territory of Kevin; but fortunately newly arrived guests claimed Kevin’s attention, and Margaret could excuse herself to go to greet Celia and Bertie, who were, without their companion instruments, looking out of place, as if they weren’t sure that they’d been invited.
Margaret kissed both of them (Bertie looked alarmed at the liberty), and said, not very originally, ‘What a lovely evening you’ve chosen for your party.’
‘Oh, Mom,’ Celia said, ‘I’m nervous.’
‘Why should you be nervous, love?’ Margaret said. ‘It’s not a performance. And besides, you’re used to performing.’
‘Yes, sure, playing an instrument nobody notices, while the latest imported virtuoso dazzles the audience with her breathtaking technique and form-fitting dress – duh, Mom, do you call that performing, as in even being visible?’
‘At least you’re audible, beloved,’ Bertie said. ‘Try making yourself heard on a bassoon over Mahler’s Eighth Symphony.’
‘Isn’t that the beauty of an orchestra?’ Margaret asked. ‘That it’s a combination of a whole variety of equal instruments?’
‘Yes, sure, very democratic, but everyone knows some instruments are more equal than others,’ Celia said. ‘Perhaps I should take up the cymbals. That way at least you get noticed.’
‘Especially if you come in on the wrong note,’ Bertie said.
‘Well, then, you should both be pleased to have the floor tonight,’ Margaret said.
‘Thanks, Mom, that’s reassuring,’ Celia said. ‘A duo for viola and bassoon – that’s sure to bring the house down.’
‘Someone called Michal Spisak in fact wrote such a duo,’ Bertie supplied. ‘It sounds like a cat copulating with a bullfrog.’
‘Thanks, sweetheart,’ said Celia. ‘I’m sure we’re going to be making beautiful music together.’
Margaret was listening with half an ear while scanning the company: an awkward mix of ‘family friends’ (though, heavens, Margaret thought, what family?) and friends of Celia and Bertie’s, mainly musical friends, to judge by the dishevelled appearance of the women and the well-fed comportment of the men. Her eye fell, once again, on Kevin and Andrew, standing to one side, not quite incorporated into the main body of the party, if main body there was. Andrew was eating what looked like a vol-au-vent with solemn circumspection, careful not to drop a crumb. He probably never dropped a crumb: he was not a crumb dropper by nature. But in spite of his care, a flake of pastry had stuck itself to his upper lip, of which he seemed unaware, as he held forth animatedly to Kevin about whatever he had to hold forth animatedly on. Then, with a half-smile, Kevin leant forward and picked the flake off Andrew’s lip. He held it up on his finger teasingly, and very deliberately put it into his mouth and mimed a kiss at Andrew. Andrew smiled, too, and returned the motion. Margaret felt as if she were an uninvited witness to an intimate moment, and experienced a stab of … what was it? Jealousy? Perhaps: Kevin had never, as far as she could remember, indulged in such a moment of public intimacy with her. And yet, she also felt an unexpected and not entirely welcome twinge of tenderness for the husband who had, she supposed, made an effort to love her as he now loved Andrew without any effort whatsoever.
The rest of the party was dutifully festive, with some light innuendo and some heavy jokes. With the best will in the world, Celia and Bertie were not party animals, and entered into such spirit as there was with a visibly pained jocularity. Their friends, too – or colleagues, more likely: their guests, at any rate – were about evenly split between the uproariously voluble and the pathologically reticent, giving the occasion an atmosphere of a funeral gate-crashed by a wedding party. Bertie made a speech in which he extolled Celia’s virtues in musical terms – chief among them being allegrezza and vivezza, with an alluring touch of capriccioso ma non troppo – the hilarity with which these accolades were received suggesting, perhaps, that they were open to an ironical interpretation. He also thanked ‘Celia’s parents, Margaret and Andrew, sorry, I mean Kevin’ for producing such a sterling daughter. All in all, the reception of the speech added a note of hysteria to the proceedings, of unbecoming hilarity barely suppressed, rather than of warm conviviality. But the food was good and, seated between Frieda and Carl, Margaret had pleasant company – if not, she wryly reflected, quite as riveting as at the last dinner she’d attended.
‘Where’s Benjy while you’re here?’ Frieda asked, over the artichoke soup.
‘At home,’ Margaret replied. Then, as Frieda’s arched eyebrow signified that she was not going to accept that as an adequate answer, she added, ‘Jimmy’s looking after him, actually.’
‘Jimmy? The pushy but useful young man I met?’
‘That is a fair description, I suppose.’
‘And looking after Benjy – is that being pushy or being useful?”
‘Since he’s looking after Benjy, he’s certainly being useful, and seeing that I asked him to do it, I wouldn’t call it pushy.’
‘So who is this Jimmy, Mom?’ Carl chipped in.
‘He’s … well, just a young man who has sort of attached himself to me. He rescued Benjy off a rock ledge, and we got talking.’
‘Sort of attached himself?’ Carl asked, as she’d known he would. ‘What does that mean?’
‘I can’t really be more precise than that. He comes around from time to time and seems to like being useful.’
‘And how old is this useful young man?’
‘He’s twenty-four.’
‘Not so young then,’ Carl said decisively.
‘Not by your standards. By mine he’s very young.’
‘And he’s … what? Staying in your house with Benjy?’ Frieda asked.
‘Yes, where else?’
‘Isn’t that a bit rash? I mean, how well do you really know him?’
Margaret sighed. ‘What should I have done?’
‘Put Benjy in a kennel, perhaps?’ Carl suggested.
‘So poor Benjy has to languish in a kennel for three days because I don’t trust the person who saved his life to stay in my house?’
‘Mom, what kind of logic is that? Just because he saved Benjy’s life you think you can trust him with all your earthly possessions – including, by the way, Benjy?’
Margaret put down her soup spoon: she needed both hands to emphasise her point. ‘So at what point do you start trusting people? Because I assume that you do eventually decide some people can be trusted not to make off with all your earthly possessions?’
‘I’d say,’ Frieda contributed, ‘you start trusting them when you’ve seen them in a variety of settings and situations, not just a couple of times in your home.’
Margaret resumed eating her soup. ‘And I think I’ve seen enough of Jimmy to trust him.’
‘Jimmy? Is that his name? What’s his surname?’ Carl demanded.
‘Prinsloo.’
‘So he’s Afrikaans?’
‘Is that an issue?’
‘No, it’s a question.’
‘Well, if you really want to know, no, he’s not Afrikaans, not exclusively, anyway. His full surname, if you really really want to know, is Prinsloo-Mazibuko.’
‘So he’s …’ Carl looked at her over his soup spoon.
‘Half-Afrikaans, half-Xhosa, brought up in English schools.’
‘Jeez, a one-man identity crisis. So he’s coloured?’
‘Really, Carl, what does that even mean? I thought your generation had done away with racial classifications.’
‘I don’t know. I mean, race is a reality, right? It’s not some figment of the imagination?’
‘I’d say it’s a mental category devised for administrative purposes by an outmoded system. For me, the question of whether Jimmy is coloured or black or white has no reality.’
‘Not even as a neutral description?’ he asked.
‘I’d say a neutral description would be that he has dark hair, grey-green eyes and a light-brown skin.’
‘You call that a neutral description?’ Frieda asked. ‘What your mother is not telling you,’ she said to Carl, ‘is that Jimmy Whatever also happens to be extremely good-looking.’
‘So that’s another label,’ Margaret said. ‘Extremely good-looking. I can’t see how that enters into it. Or are you suggesting that I was influenced by his good looks?’
‘It would be very strange if you weren’t,’ Frieda said. ‘We’re all of us influenced by looks, even when we claim we’re not. Especially when we claim we’re not.’
‘Oh come, Auntie Frieda,’ Carl objected. ‘Mom’s nearly sixty …’
‘I’m fifty-five, Carl.’
‘So fifty-five, sixty, my point is that hopefully you’re not lusting after, what did you say, twenty-four-year-old dudes …’
‘Nobody said your mother was lusting after dudes, not even this dude,’ Frieda said. ‘There’s a difference between appreciating someone’s looks and lusting after him, though I don’t expect someone your age to know the difference. Just as I don’t expect a member of your generation to know the difference between hopefully and it is to be hoped that.’
‘Jeez, Auntie Frieda, can you blame my generation for being such a stuff-up when your generation has such low expectations of us? But Mom, are you saying you’re letting this dude stay in your house just because you’re, let’s say, uncategorically appreciating his good looks?’
‘I’m not saying anything of the kind. That’s what Frieda is saying, because she has a tabloid imagination, even though she pretends to read only nineteenth-century novels.’
‘Oh, the nineteenth-century novel has more in common with the tabloids than you’d think,’ Frieda said. ‘The storylines are much the same, the novels just have a better vocabulary.’
‘Jimmy what did you say his surname was?’ Carl asked, looking pensive.
‘Prinsloo-Mazibuko. It’s a combination of his father and his mother’s names.’
‘It rings a bell, but I can’t place it.’
‘You’d think that Prinsloo-Mazibuko would ring a largish bell,’ said Frieda.
‘It does, but I can’t tell where it’s ringing. But it will come to me. In the meantime, Mom, I wish you’d be careful.’
‘Oh, I’m careful. I’m just not paranoid.’
‘Famous last words, Little Red Riding Hood.’
‘Please, as you’ve so considerately pointed out, I’m not a babe in the woods. And Jimmy’s not a big bad wolf. Now, please, can we talk about something else?’
‘Okay, if you’re so sensitive on the topic,’ Carl said. ‘So … did you say hello to Andrew?’
‘You mean while we’re on sensitive topics? Yes, I did, believe it or not, and he said hello to me, and we did not physically assault each other. But what’s it to you?’
‘I guess I just want my whole extended family to get on together. A boy needs a stable home.’
‘I gave you a stable home when you needed it. Now you’ll just have to settle for a bit of instability like the rest of us.’
‘Yes,’ Frieda chipped in. ‘My granddaughter, who is all of six, informed me today that she was considering divorcing her parents and moving in with me.’
‘That’s exactly my gripe,’ Carl said. ‘My parents have deprived me of that option.’
‘Sorry, love,’ said Margaret, ‘you’ll just have to grow up and have your own divorce like the rest of us.’
As the evening wore on, through three courses and, in Margaret’s case, three glasses of wine, she found the room rather airless – summer was taking hold with grim determination – and she went outside, where several people had already settled with their drinks and cigarettes, at tables and chairs on the lawn. Margaret sat down at an empty table, content to regard the gathering from a distance. Carl had also come out and was at a nearby table, talking to a young woman who seemed, unforgivably to Margaret’s mind, a bit bored with his company. But she’d long since realised that the woman good enough for her son would have to be a paragon of nature and culture.
A big-boned woman, well preserved, slackly at ease in generously cut clothes of flamboyant silk, approached Margaret’s table with a brilliant smile only slightly dimmed by a lipstick smear on her teeth. She seemed precarious on her very high heels, but that could have been an effect of the uneven surface of the lawn rather than of the half-empty glass she was clutching.
‘Hello,’ she said, ‘you’re Margaret.’ It was not a question.
Margaret nodded and took the well-shaped hand the woman was extending towards her. She smelled strongly of cigarette smoke and a heady perfume, mixed with the woody Chardonnay that was being served. ‘Indeed I am. But …’
‘But you don’t remember me. I’m not surprised. It’s been a while. I’m Felicity.’
As Margaret still gaped, she offered, ‘Kevin’s sister. Do you mind if I sit down?’ Without waiting for a reply, she sat in the empty seat next to Margaret’s, carefully settled her glass on the table, and took a cigarette from the large Louis Vuitton handbag she had been clutching under her glass-bearing arm. ‘Do you mind?’
‘No, of course not, I mean about sitting down and the cigarette. And yes, of course yes, I do remember you, very well, I was just taken unawares.’
The woman lit her cigarette, exhaled, and leant back in her chair. ‘What a heavenly evening, what a sublime spot. Yes, of course, I never visited while you were married to Kevin, so why should I turn up here now?’
‘No, that’s not …’
‘I grant you, it is a bit odd. I last saw your daughter just before we emigrated, when she was about one year old. I’m not exactly one of the near and dear, though I am her aunt, her only, I gather.’
‘Yes, I don’t have any sisters myself, as you know. So you’re back from Australia?’
‘Yes, just temporarily, looking around, considering my options, now that the kids have left the house and … well, my darling Owen, very unoriginally, has buggered off with his secretary, a forward little scrubber with a bright little smile and a tight little pussy, although I can only vouch for the smile, and he’s forking out a hefty settlement to be shot of me. So, on the back of my ex’s ill-gotten gains I can probably afford to live even in Cape Town, monstrously expensive though it’s become. I’m visiting my boet and his boyfriend … I’m sorry, is that a no-go area?’
‘No, heavens, I’ve come to terms with that. After all, what else can one do?’
‘One can shout and scream and make mayhem, as I did.’
‘And did it help?’
Felicity exhaled fiercely. ‘Probably not. Anger doesn’t exactly make one more fascinating or more desirable. But it does give one the illusion of being in charge of something. Until you realise that you’re just venting your own helplessness. So I’ve let go.’ She giggled, or perhaps chortled would be more accurate. ‘But not before shagging the postman, all of twenty-two years old, a bit of an ocker, but cute, into surfing and older women, in that order. Thank God for deviants, I say. The young ones, that is. When they’re young, we think they’re kinky, when they’re old we think they’re dirty old men.’
Felicity seemed firmly launched on the topic of her own sexual satisfactions and dissatisfactions. To alter her course, Margaret asked, ‘So, if by and large you were, shall we say, well served, why did you shout and scream?’
‘Oh, nobody likes to be dropped, even when you’ve lost interest in the dropper.’ She paused, and made the pause sink in, before asking, ‘And you?’
‘And me?’
‘Since we’re talking so frankly, how have you taken …?’
‘To being dropped, you mean?’
‘I suppose that is what I do mean, yes. Sorry. I never had any tact, and I sure as hell didn’t pick up any in Australia.’ She laughed, a brief bark of a laugh.
‘No need to be sorry. As I say, I’ve come to terms with it. In some ways being on my own suits me quite well.’
Felicity leant over to Margaret, breathing smoke and Chardonnay over her. ‘Oh, you can say that again, lovey. Not to have someone snoring next to you in bed, not to wake up to his alcoholic breath slavering all over you as he decides it’s time for the weekly matrimonial duty …’
‘Well, fortunately it wasn’t quite like that …’
‘No, I can imagine, with Kevin. He was always the politest boy.’
‘Yes. The politest boy sums it up.’
Felicity stubbed out her cigarette in the lawn under the point of her patent-leather shoe. ‘But angry, so angry.’
‘Angry? Kevin?’
‘Of course. Didn’t you notice?’
‘Angry at what?’
‘Oh, at life in general, at the scheme of things, but mainly at my mother.’
‘Why? I met her only a couple of times, but she seemed … well, very correct.’
Margaret had in fact met the elder Mrs Crowley only twice, once at the obligatory prenuptial visit to Grahamstown. She now remembered the visit with a little shudder: it had almost made her reconsider her acceptance of Kevin’s proposal of marriage. The Crowleys were formidably colourless: their lack of style amounted to a declaration of faith, an abrogation of worldly vanity, Mrs Crowley’s tweed skirt and white blouse almost as institutional in appearance as her husband’s dog collar. She was a large woman, what would have been called in a more tactful age a handsome figure of a woman. She reminded Margaret of a Percheron mare or, with her heavy fringe, perhaps of a Hereford cow, had a Percheron or a Hereford been draped in tweed.
Dr Crowley, by contrast, resembled one of the smaller bipeds, a vervet monkey perhaps, with his mat of grey hair and his large eyes, which he blinked rapidly when he spoke, or rather, in the intervals between phrases. ‘You are very welcome, Miss Barnes’ – blink-blink-blink – ‘to what we like to think of as one of the glories of Grahamstown’ – blink- blink-blink – ‘I mean this house, of course, a proclaimed National Monument – not our own, of course’ – blink-blink-blink, watery smile – ‘but Church property.’
The house in question was an upright Cape Georgian house in the centre of the smug little city. Margaret liked the simple lines of the old house, but the interior was, to her critical eye, timidly tasteless: insipid landscape paintings depicting generic brooks and braes, undistinguished pottery featuring wan floral fantasies, blockish sofas covered in overbearingly twee Sanderson linen, curtains of the same fabric tied back with silken tassels, flimsy-looking occasional tables supporting pointless little bon-bon dishes. The staircase, leading straight from the hall to the first floor, was precipitously steep, in keeping with the general angularity of the place. At its foot loomed a grandfather clock that boomed the hour day and night, evidently Mrs Crowley’s pride and joy: she wound it every evening at six, just before producing the silver salver with medium-dry sherry and extra-dry water biscuits, always with the same coy, ‘I don’t suppose there’s any harm in a little spot before dinner.’
Margaret shook her head to clear it of the dreadful memory, to find Felicity’s slightly unfocused regard on her.
‘You all right, honey?’ she asked.
‘Yes, oh yes, of course. I was just reminiscing. Your mother was … well, formidable.’
‘Formidable indeed. Under the genteel exterior, as tough as old boots, Lady Macbeth in tweed and Green Cross shoes. She had about as much maternal tenderness as a crocodile, except for all I know crocodiles are quite warm, caring mothers. Compared with my mother, at any rate.’ She drained the rest of her glass, inspected it as if surprised at its empty state, shrugged, and put the glass down on the table.
‘That’s interesting,’ Margaret said. ‘Kevin hardly ever discussed his mother.’
‘Oh, trust Kev to bottle it up. I think he hated our mother. As for me, I shrugged it off, played hockey and tennis and smoked pot with the Graeme College boys. Had my first spot of hanky-panky on the Graeme College rugby field. I didn’t really enjoy it, got bitten something awful by mosquitoes and other goggas, but I thought I owed it to my mother to do what she was forever worrying I would do. I was half hoping to get preggers, but I didn’t. In the end, marrying Owen was the best I could do in the bugging-Mommy department. I knew she’d hate the fact that he was Jewish, but couldn’t say so because she was committed to liberal principles.’
All this was more information than Margaret could process in one go, so she tried to redirect the conversation. ‘And Kevin?’
‘Yes, poor Kevin. I guess we were polar opposites. He couldn’t divert his anger the way I could into let’s just say more creative channels, not as far as I knew anyway, although given this latest development, who’s to know what happened in the St Andrews locker rooms?’
Felicity was evidently on a meandering stagger down memory lane, and to recall her to the main road of her narrative, Margaret asked, ‘And how did your father deal with it? I mean with the temperamental difficulties in the family?’
‘Daddy?’ Felicity lit another cigarette and exhaled into the cooling air. ‘Oh, ultimately he dealt with it by shoving Mommy down the stairs.’
It took Margaret a moment to process the purport of Felicity’s nonchalant announcement. ‘You mean …?’ she said at last. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘Oh, I’m serious. I can’t prove it, but I’m as sure of it as if I’d stood there and seen him give her a good strong shove to send her crashing down into that horrible booming clock.’ She took a purposeful drag at the cigarette and exhaled violently. ‘Sensible thing to do, frankly. Did it about a month ago.’
‘And she …?’
‘Oh, she met her maker somewhere on the way down or perhaps on arrival, and good luck to him. That’s partly why I’m here, to console my old dad in his grief.’
‘But he seemed so …’ Margaret tried to find a word to describe the colourless aura of the Reverend Dr Crowley.
‘So wishy-washy he couldn’t stand up to his own shadow on a sunny day?’ Felicity filled in. ‘Yeah, for much of the time that’s what he was, but every now and again it was as if the anger built up in him under his clerical duties and his clerical collar and his yes-my-dear no-my-dear demeanour, and he’d explode. He once threw Kevin against a wall so hard that the little bloke limped for a month. Muscular Christianity, I guess you’d call it.’
Margaret was aghast. ‘But why … why didn’t Kevin tell me …?’
‘Not our Kev. Not one for unpacking the laundry basket even to his own wife. As I say, polar opposites: I do my washing on the village green. Whereas Kevin – not a talker, except maybe you found different …’
‘Hardly,’ Margaret said. ‘As witness late events.’
‘Yeah, I guess, except … anyway, with Daddy going on the rampage every so often and Mommy being a kind of emotional Great Wall of China, we didn’t exactly bask in the sunshine of happy familial relations. Except I think it was worse for Kevin. Boys and their mothers … How about you and your … Carl, is it?’
‘Yes. He’s over there. The one pretending to be interested in his phone, now that young woman’s stopped talking to him.’
Felicity looked across at Carl and nodded. ‘The sweet-looking one? Yeah, I can see Kevin in him. Do you think he tells you things?’
‘Carl? Yes, he tells me things. Of course, I don’t know if he tells me everything.’
Felicity sighed heavily. ‘Probably not. We bring up our children to lie to us, and then feel hurt if they do.’
‘I don’t think …’
‘No, I guess I should speak for myself. My Jason, truth be told, is a bit of an unknown quantity – drugs, of course, and sex. Anyway, you get the picture. Your average nineteen-year-old.’
‘I’m still a bit shaken,’ Margaret said, ‘about your theory that your father …’
‘Bumped Mommy down the stairs?’ She guffawed abruptly. ‘Yeah, it’s bizarre. Noisy, too, especially with the clock going boing-boing-boom-crash.’ She laughed so loudly that Carl looked up from his phone and gave Margaret a quizzical look. She mimed a tell you later message. ‘But it’s quicker and cheaper than divorce, I guess,’ Felicity continued.
Half appalled, half amused, Margaret broke into giggles, and every time she thought of poor Mrs Crowley smashing her treasured grandfather clock, another wave of hysteria overcame her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, between giggles, ‘but it’s horribly funny, I mean horrible and funny at the same time.’
‘It’s horrible all right, and probably funny, too, if you have a certain distance on things – which I think I do, now. The really funny thing is … Do you think one could find a refill for this inexplicably empty glass?’
‘I’m sure one could. Let me ask Carl. He’s looking rather bored.’
She beckoned to Carl, who was indeed without much evident interest reading something on his phone. He sauntered across, visibly conscious of Felicity’s none-too-covert appreciative appraisal.
‘Yes, Mom?’ he said.
‘Carl, in the first place, I want you to meet your Aunt Felicity.’
‘Hello, Carl,’ Felicity beamed. ‘My, how good the family genes look on you – that’s g-e-n-e-s, not j-e-a-n-s.’
He shook the proffered hand. ‘Oh, Dad’s sister? Yeah, he mentioned that you were coming out – from Australia, was it?’
‘It was indeed, and is. Yes, I’m staying with your dad and his … well, for the time being. I hope to see you there.’
‘Oh, you sure will. I think I’m due to have supper there this week.’
‘That’s fabulous then. Now, listen, your mother tells me you might be willing to fetch your old auntie another glass of wine?’
‘Sure thing, Auntie Felicity. What will it be?’
‘The Chardonnay, please. And you needn’t be squeamish about filling it properly. I hate these half-filled glasses, don’t you?’
‘Oh, I absolutely detest them,’ he said with a grin and walked off.
‘Well,’ said Felicity, ‘what a pleasant blend of you and Kevin.’
‘I’m pleased you think so.’
‘Yes, he seems to have a bit more … flexibility than the girl … Celia?’
‘Celia, yes. Yes, perhaps flexibility is not her main quality.’
‘I’m sure she has others.’
‘Oh, of course.’
‘And her young man seems very … upright.’
‘He is that,’ said Margaret. ‘It’s okay, you needn’t give all my kids a stamp of approval.’
‘Oh, hell, as I said, me and tact, we don’t sit at the same table. But seriously, your boy is gorgeous.’
After Felicity’s encomium on young men, Margaret felt a twinge of alarm. But even Felicity would hardly make a play for her own nephew, and if she did, Margaret couldn’t imagine that Carl would be amenable to a spot of hanky-panky.
‘Where was I?’ Felicity asked. ’Before I heard a glass of wine call my name?’
Margaret tried to recall. ‘I think you were saying The funny thing is,’ she said.
‘The funny thing is, the funny thing is, now what was the funny thing … ? Ah yes! The funny thing is, I went to visit my father in Grahamstown last week …’
‘And was he well?’
‘Oh yes, hale and hearty, well, not exactly hearty, you can’t imagine Daddy being hearty, but healthy and in possession of all or most of his faculties. But, and this is the funny thing, if that’s your idea of fun, I really think he misses Mommy. Couldn’t stop talking about her, what a fine woman she’d been, things she said and did, most of which I couldn’t remember.’
‘You don’t think it’s a way of making amends after the fact?’
‘A kind of apology for killing her, you mean? Yeah, I’m sure stranger things have happened. And I suppose it’s about as useful as most apologies.’ She stopped, possibly to catch her breath. ‘But where is that son of yours with my wine? Oh, here he is, the angel.’
‘There you go, Auntie Felicity,’ Carl said, handing her a glass of Chardonnay, indeed filled way above the line of discretion.
‘Thank you kindly, nephew,’ she said. To Margaret she said, ‘They have their uses, don’t they?’
‘You mean sons?’
‘Yeah, sons specifically, but men in general, bastards that they are. Except you, darling,’ she said to Carl, ‘except you. I can see you’re not a bastard.’
‘I hope you’re right, Auntie Felicity,’ Carl replied cheerfully. ‘Mom here brought me up not to be a bastard.’
‘I’m sure she did, I’m sure she did. But I brought my son up not to be a bastard, and he turned out a prize bastard anyway.’ She spluttered the mouthful of wine she’d just taken. ‘I didn’t say that, did I? I didn’t call my own son a prize bastard?’
‘If you did, we’ll forget that you did,’ said Carl, looking at Margaret as if to say What’s she on about? and Margaret took his hand, and said, ‘Are you getting bored, my sweet?’
‘Not bored as such, but I guess I’m about ready to skedaddle.’
‘Then skedaddle by all means. Only, are you in a fit state to handle that scooter of yours? Should I call you an Uber?’
‘No, I’m fine thanks, Mom. I’ve had one glass of wine all evening.’
He leant over to kiss her, and then extended his hand to Felicity. ‘Bye, Auntie Felicity. I’ll see you in the course of the week.’
She took hold of his hand and drew him closer. ‘I think you can drop the Auntie bit now, and give me a kiss while you’re about it.’
Carl gave her an obliging peck on the cheek, made big eyes at Margaret, and loped off. This was always the moment when Margaret most loved her son, when he, with a kind of instinctive grace, went his way.
Felicity sighed, and said, ‘They do tug at the heartstrings, don’t they?’ She got to her feet, peered short-sightedly into her glass and drained it. ‘But perhaps that’s enough reminiscing for one night. It’s been fabulous. Will I see you again?’
‘I hope so,’ said Margaret, and found, to her surprise, that she meant it. Felicity was overbearing and vulgar and indiscreet, but perhaps she’d had enough of the Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Evidently it could lead to murder.
So she said, ‘Come and see me in Hermanus.’
‘I will indeed. Your very obliging son can take me.’
‘I’m sure he can. Though I shouldn’t think you’d want to travel to Hermanus on the back of his scooter.’
‘Oh, don’t underestimate my adaptability! I’ve been on the back of a surfboard in my time. But no, I’m running a car, so we can go in that. I’ll be in touch. I take it Kevin has your number?’
‘Of course.’ She smiled. ‘We haven’t cut all ties and severed all bonds.’
‘Of course not. Your ex can be a good friend to have. If he isn’t better as an enemy. Toodle-loo.’