IN THE EVENING OF THE LONG DAY AFTER J J DIED, they sit stunned in the lounge when the last sympathisers have left, taking with them the kids who hav mooching about the garden doing their best to look sorrowful. Wild bananas jostle at the picture window. Out at sea, a rising wind ruffles the moonpath that narrows towards the horizon.
‘Good news.’ His sister Barbara sweeps in from answering the phone in the hall. ‘Bishop Chauncey will hold the funeral service in St Ethelbert’s.’
‘St Eth’s is huge,’ Hugh objects. ‘And you know how Dad felt about churches. We should just hold a wake.’
‘He deserves a proper ceremony. Madiba said he was an outstanding man of his generation after those rugby matches he organised for the Children’s Fund.’ Barbara has basked in her brother’s fame most of her life.
‘Who was that on the phone, anyway?’
‘A journalist.’ Barbara hasn’t let on that she has been feeding daily bulletins to the papers about J J’s weakening condition.
Shirley raises her blotched face. ‘I couldn’t bear a big funeral. I just want a small family service.’
After a considerate pause Hugh says, ‘I suppose we should talk to SARU about the bishop’s offer.’
Her head snaps up. ‘He hasn’t been to a rugby union meeting for years.’
‘Maybe not. But they owe him for the fund-raisers. They were fantastic publicity.’
‘And he was a war hero.’
‘That was long ago, Mum. War isn’t kosher any more.’
‘How can you say that?’ she flares. ‘He fought and suffered and almost died for his country. You chickened out of army service.’
It’s an old refrain.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘You’re so like Barbara. Always disparaging.’
‘Thanks very much.’ Barbara glowers at Hugh, whose rebellion against his father has included a skirmish with Marxism, avoidance of army duty and scorn for rugger buggers.
Lin sits looking out the window trying to ignore them. The big milkwood at the edge of the lawn is a restless silhouette against the moonlit sea, heaving with each gust of wind. She learnt to climb and balance in that tree, running along its sprawling branches with her arms extended and Mum calling out, ‘Careful, dear,’ and Dad yelling, ‘Go for it, Lin! Faster! Right to the end, then jump. I’ll catch you.’
She says, ‘Dad didn’t deserve to end that way. Petering out.’
‘Most of his friends have gone too. No one would come to a big funeral. We’ll hold a small private service with tea here afterwards,’ Shirley says, hopeful that now John’s gone she can have her way for a change.
No such luck. Lin says, ‘I don’t agree, Mum. It’s not just you involved. We all need to make the decision. I vote for St Eth’s. Dad loved pomp and ceremony.’
‘He never missed the Moth service on Remembrance Day,’ Barbara chimes in.
‘Played the gallant ex-serviceman to the hilt.’
‘Stop it, Hugh.’ Anger has perked Shirley up. ‘You’re all bullying me.’
Lin insists, ‘We just need to make a decision.’
‘I’ll go with the majority vote.’ Hugh escapes down the passage and up the stairs to knock on the bathroom door. ‘Sam-Sam? Have you showered?’
‘No, I’m on the bog. And don’t call me that. It’s childish.’
‘Sam, then. Hurry up. Charlie will be serving dinner soon and Gran doesn’t like anyone to be late.’
‘Old bag.’
‘It’s been an awful day, son. Don’t make it any harder.’
‘I’ll be out in five, promise. Greased lightning.’ It’s a family phrase from old press reports describing J J Kitching’s legendary dashes for the try line.
‘Don’t forget to use soap in your mad haste.’
‘I’m not stupid. You’re as bad as Ma,’ he grumbles.
Hugh goes back to the lounge, wondering if his first wife Bridget will come, and whether Nelisiwe will be in time for dinner. Nelisiwe is a chic town planner from Gingindlovu whom his father treated with the exaggerated courtesy of a plantation owner. His mother still struggles to talk to her, even in strained platitudes.
Lin has gone to sit near a light, where she pages through her father’s desk diary. None of them would have dared enter his study before he became too weak to go downstairs, and when they did, it was only to dust. So it feels like sacrilege to be looking at his jotted notes of doctors’ and clinic appointments and phone calls. Finding a full page of writing, she scans it and calls out, ‘Hey, listen to this.’
‘What?’ Hugh comes to read over her shoulder.
‘Dad’s last entry. It’s so unlike him. Last words for us, with a warning.’
‘That’s not unlike him. Always wanting control.’
She turns, keeping her place in the diary with her finger. ‘Thought you’d cleared things with him, bro?’
‘I did. Including the fact that you and I knew his deadly secret.’
‘Never mattered. He’s always been a hero to me.’
‘It wasn’t easy living up to his expectations.’
‘I didn’t feel that.’
‘Oh, but you did. Be honest. We had to study harder, jump higher, go further, reach for the stars he decided were best for us.’ Every confrontation had been a challenge until the day J J’s demanding glare began to fade.
‘Aren’t all parents like that?’
‘Not me,’ Hugh says with a determined scowl that makes him look just like his father. ‘But Dad and I made our peace. Okay, read what he’s written.’
‘Here it is: “As I prepare to leave the final changing room, these are my last words to my family. A wise man living in a culvert has explained ubuntu: it’s shorthand for humanity. War taught me something else: that life is a game of chance with many losers. So keep your eyes open, look after each other, and guard your birthright. You can never be sure who’s shuffling the cards.”’
For once, Hugh is speechless.
Shirley moans from the sofa, ‘John didn’t tell me anything about a man in a culvert.’
‘That’s Stanley Magwaza, Grampa’s friend.’ Sam comes into the room towelling his hair. ‘He took me to see him once. Looks like an old tramp, but he’s famous too. Played for Orlando Pirates in the fifties. The Bucs.’
‘Bucks?’
‘B-u-c-s, short for buccaneers. Another word for pirates. Neli told me. She’s cool. She’s got a 60-gig iPod and drives a Volvo as well.’
‘As well,’ Hugh corrects, an automatic reflex.
‘Don’t be pedantic.’ Barbara is trying to hide her own surprise. Her larger-than-life brother scorned pessimism. Or said he did.
Lin looks up from the bold handwriting on the diary page. J J still used a fountain pen and blue-black ink; they’ll find a crusted Parker Quink bottle in his desk drawer. ‘What does he mean by “guard your birthright”?’
Barbara says, ‘It’s Johnny being pompous. He liked laying down the law.’
‘Is he saying that we may need to defend our entitlement to belong in Africa? Was it an issue for him? I don’t remember him talking about it.’
Nobody answers.
Hugh sits puzzling over the coda: ‘You can never be sure who’s shuffling the cards’. His father had been an action man, not given to mystical thinking. What else had been hidden behind his austere face?
Shirley fumes, John didn’t tell me about this. Now they’re all forcing me into a church funeral. Everything’s changed and I’m left to deal with it. Typical.
Barbara is tapping the ash off her third cigarette of the evening, when Charlie appears in a white cotton uniform to announce, ‘Dinner is ready.’