CHAPTER TWENTY

The meal I prepared was butternut soup with sour cream, my ouma’s Karoo lamb pie and buttermilk pudding.

When the soup was in the hotbox, the pie in the oven and the pudding in its dish, I washed and dressed. First I put on my lacy white underwear, then the special cream dress that my friend Candy had sent me from New York, and the matching shoes with low heels. I thought about painting my toenails with pearl nail varnish but decided that was going too far. I brushed my hair and put on fresh lipstick and sat on the stoep and watched the sky turn from pale turquoise to pink to purple. The soft green shapes in the veld became silhouettes. There was no sign of the kudu at the gwarrie tree, but I saw a small grysbokkie moving through the bushes.

Henk was late. We hadn’t said a time, it just felt late. I watched the first planets appearing in the big Karoo sky. Before the stars appeared, I heard his bakkie pulling up, into my driveway.

I sat very still and watched his dark shape move up the pathway towards the stoep. He only saw me when he was quite close.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Kosie needed settling.’

I was still a little cross with him, not for being late but for convincing me to leave Jessie in Oudtshoorn. I was cross with myself, really; I shouldn’t let a man tell me what to do.

He stepped onto the stoep and gave me that big smile, and his neatly waxed chestnut moustache smiled too. I stood up.

‘Hello, Henk.’

He pulled me against his warm chest, which smelt like a hot cross bun, and my anger melted away. He made me feel hot, not cross.

He breathed out a sigh, and I felt it go right through me. I looked up to see what was going on, but he was staring out into the darkness.

‘Would you like a beer?’ I said.

I fetched a Windhoek Lager from the fridge, then I lit a lantern on the stoep table and went back inside to get the soup from the hotbox. We had a few courses to get through before we could go to bed.

We ate the soup in silence, and I wondered if he even wanted to go to bed. He hadn’t kissed me hello and wasn’t looking into my eyes. He didn’t look at me much at all. I was glad I hadn’t painted my toenails.

‘Venus is bright tonight,’ he said, gazing out at the night.

‘Ja,’ I said, because it was. ‘Are you okay?’

He looked at me and gave a sad kind of smile.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘A bit tired. Sorry.’

‘I’ll get the pie,’ I said.

I put the buttermilk pudding in the oven and brought out Ouma’s Karoo lamb pie with peas and potatoes (mashed with butter and cream).

‘That smells good,’ he said.

He ate without his usual appetite, although it was an excellent dish.

‘It’s my ouma’s recipe.’ I said, ‘You stew the lamb first, with onion, bay leaves and peppercorns . . .’

‘Mm,’ he said.

Not Mm mmm like when something is yummy, but Mm like his thoughts were somewhere else. Something was wrong. Maybe he didn’t want to spend the night with me; he remembered what a mess it had been last time. Maybe he wanted to break up with me; he’d made a mistake saying he loved me. I was maybe-ing myself into knots. What I liked about Henk was I could be myself with him.

‘This is good,’ he said, after he’d eaten some buttermilk pudding.

Which was rubbish. It was not good – it was perfect. The best buttermilk pudding that had ever been made.

‘If you don’t want to be with me,’ I said, ‘maybe it’s better you just say so.’

He stopped chewing and looked at me, his eyes wide.

Now that I had started, I thought I’d better finish, even though I felt a fool. ‘I know it hasn’t been easy for you.’ I said. ‘But I stayed out of the case, like you asked. And I’m working on my other . . . problems. I really am.’

‘No,’ he said. He dropped his spoon on his plate and stood up and came and sat next to me and held my hands between his palms. ‘No, it’s nothing to do with you. It’s me.’

Oh, no, I thought, not that break-up line. He must be upset about the sex after all.

‘I’m cross with myself,’ he said.

I’d been cross with myself too. Maybe relationships just didn’t work unless you changed who you were. But I didn’t want to do that. It hadn’t turned out well the last time.

I stroked Henk’s fingers. The thought of being without him made my heart feel like a lemon cut in half and the juice squeezed out.

‘We did our best,’ I said.

‘It wasn’t good enough,’ he said.

I shook my head.

‘We tried,’ I said, ‘we really did.’

‘It wasn’t your job,’ he said. ‘It was mine. And I failed.’

He looked out again at the darkness, which was now full of stars.

‘And now a man is dead,’ he said.

‘What?’ I said.

‘It sits so heavy on me, it’s almost like I killed him myself.’

What was he talking about?

‘Of course we should have blerrie watched what he ate. We should have kept him in a safe house. We were warned, but we didn’t protect him. We didn’t do our job properly.’

Slimkat, he was talking about Slimkat.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yes. I mean, no. You did your best. Slimkat didn’t want to hide or run. He said his time would come when it came.’

‘Ja, well, it came with that blerrie kudu sosatie.’

‘Did they prove that? Was it poison in the sauce?’

‘Ja. You were right. But that’s off the record,’ he said, frowning. ‘Oudtshoorn police will decide what goes public. Please.’

I ignored the hidden scolding. ‘Doesn’t the responsibility lie with the Oudtshoorn police?’ I said.

It was a stupid question. Even I felt responsible for Slimkat’s death. If I’d been there just a bit earlier, I might’ve smelt the sauce wasn’t right . . .

‘They’re responsible for the investigation,’ said Henk. ‘But they brought us in to help with protection – and we failed.’

‘You weren’t expecting poison,’ I said.

‘We were stupid. There are many ways to kill someone.’

‘I’m sure you’ll catch the murderer,’ I said, thinking of that huge crowd and not feeling at all sure.

‘It’s not my case now.’

‘If they could find that other woman who asked about the sauce . . . Did you talk to the blonde girl from the Kudu Stall?’

‘I interviewed her myself,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘A terrible witness. She says she was looking at the food not the people. She thinks the first woman who asked was short and maybe wearing a scarf and sunglasses, and she described you – the second tannie who asked for the recipe – as curvy with blonde hair, though she can’t be sure.’

‘Jinne,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Again, this is all off the record.’

‘Ja, ja,’ I said. ‘Jessie was also asking questions. I’m sure she’ll tell you if she finds anything. She had a long talk with Slimkat, you know, just before he died.’

‘She told Reghardt all about it, and the Oudtshoorn lieutenant.’

Henk pulled me onto his lap. ‘Enough of my moaning,’ he said.

He rubbed his hands slowly up my arms. His fingers ran along my shoulders, at the edge of my cream dress.

He kissed me, which started a different kind of moaning.

‘Let’s go inside,’ he said, nuzzling my neck, ‘it would be unfair to make Kosie suffer for nothing.’