Margaret was getting used to the fact that Jimmy tended to deliver on his promises: when he undertook to do something, he normally did so without too much delay. So she assumed that he would produce the promised TV set within a day or two, and was mildly surprised when she heard nothing from him for three, four, five days. After ten days she was frankly puzzled, but she told herself that, after all, she knew very little of Jimmy’s real life, the life that he led when he was not with her. It was one of his gifts, or tricks, to make you believe, when he was with you, that you were, for the moment, the most important person in his life. It took an effort of the imagination to remind herself that he must have many other such relations, and that they were no doubt as demanding of his time as her chores had been.
So Jimmy’s absence probably had a very simple explanation and, as Christmas loomed, she assumed that he would be spending it with his family, or such of his family as was not impossibly dysfunctional. As for herself, it was one of the advantages of divorce that it liberated her from Christmas. As part of a family, one felt somehow obliged to make some concession, if not obeisance, to the season, which more and more had become a dutiful gathering of people who would have gathered more congenially without the constraint of having to feel something. At least their family had, by near-common consent, given up on the idea of presents when the children had left school, and had settled down to a somewhat dutiful observance of the day. All in all, Christmas seemed to bring out the worst in their family, which the quality of her and Rebecca’s cooking did little to redeem. One year Frieda had, in her words, betrayed her Jewish roots by offering to prepare the Christmas meal, ‘just because I can’t stand to see you pretending to be having a good time over such dismal fare’. Rebecca objected to what she described as ‘heathen’ food, but Frieda, whose knowledge of literature extended to the Christian Bible, pointed out to her that Christ had fed the multitude on bread and fish, and what was ciabatta and smoked salmon but bread and fish?
So for Margaret the prospect of a solitary Christmas held none of the deprivations that gregarious people imagined it to harbour. Rebecca, though, probably in the continued absence of TV, was less pleased with the idea of a non-Christmas, and let it be known that she would like to spend Christmas with her family. This was reasonable enough, though Margaret did wonder why Rebecca couldn’t have delayed her initial move till after Christmas. She did not relish the prospect of a trip to Khayelitsha on a Christmas-clogged N2. The move to Hermanus had had the effect, probably disempowering, of rendering her reluctant to venture out into the daily fray: why subject yourself to petrol fumes, road rage and shopping malls, when you could walk the cliff path and have an omelette for supper?
Still, Rebecca wanted to be taken to Khayelitsha, and as Margaret was walking the cliff path on the Thursday before Christmas, she was trying to make up her mind when would be the least stressful time to make the trip. She was so preoccupied with this calculation that she only became aware of her surroundings when Benjy started yelping excitedly. She looked up, to find Jimmy bending over Benjy, rubbing the dog’s chest to calm him down.
He looked up at her. ‘Oh, hi,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ she replied. ‘I haven’t seen you for a while,’ she said, and then thought she shouldn’t have. He would not want his absence to be an issue.
But nor, it seemed, was her mentioning it an issue. ‘Yip, been out and about. Yourself?’
‘Not out and about, really. Which is the way I like it.’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, I know. You’re not one for rushing about and changing the world.’
She smiled. ‘I would change the world if I could. But no, not by rushing around. In fact, I was just thinking, while I was walking … Rebecca wants to be taken to Khayelitsha for Christmas, and it’s more or less the last thing I feel like doing.’
‘I see. So when would you like me to take her?’
She looked at him, wondering whether he could be serious. But he was looking at her as if expecting an answer. So she said, ‘I didn’t tell you that so you should feel obliged to step in.’
‘I know that, and I don’t feel obliged. But I’m happy to do it. So when …?’
‘Tomorrow, if that suits you.’
‘It can be arranged. Ten o’clock.’
‘I’ll tell Rebecca. She’ll be very pleased. And Jimmy …?’
‘Yes?’
‘I am very grateful.’
‘Gratitude …’ He held up an index finger.
‘Yes, I know. So let’s say Benjy is very grateful.’
‘From him I’ll accept it.’
Without much further conversation, he went his way, and Margaret was left once again feeling both pleased and annoyed: pleased that he’d so readily offered to help her, and annoyed that his manner of offering seemed calculated to make the offer as little of a favour as possible. If it was possible to be generous with bad grace, that was what he was: no doubt yet another of the multitudes he contained.
She looked out over the ocean, calm and featureless today. The whales, having given birth, must have migrated back to the cold waters of the Antarctic.