Homemaking for the Down-At-Heart. Finuala Dowling

Campari and be back in time for supper. Pia was studying a large butternut in the vegetable bowl. It looked fleshy and bald, like a lot of babies she’d seen.

      “Could I borrow the butternut?”

      If she wrapped the butternut in her old baby blanket – that might work.

      Curtis picked up the butternut and turned it round in his hands. “I could draw a waking, crying face on this side, and a sleeping face on the other side,” he guessed.

      Pia brought him the ballpoint pen from the shopping list. She liked the way he read her mind. When he had drawn the faces, she wrapped the vegetable in a dishcloth to show him how good it was.

      “Just think: it cost less than ten rand and we can peel it and eat it afterwards,” said Curtis.

      “No one’s going to peel this here child of mine!” said Pia with a passable American twang.

      Don’t give in to your child’s wheedling for new “stuff”. Children hanker after new toys in garish packaging. Esther remembers Percy’s despondency one Christmas when it seemed that all the young boys of the Southern Peninsula had been given battery-operated tin and plastic boats. As we walked on the beach after Christmas lunch, we passed one and then another and another little boy gleefully holding his motorboat. A high tide had left a shallow lagoon on the Clovelly end of the beach, ideal for sailing. Esther and I collected bits of flotsam and put together a marvellous boat from a small plank lashed to bamboo stalks, with a cuttlefish for a life raft. Soon Percy was running along the water’s edge, shouting “Check this!” Children who are given realistic toys fail in one of life’s most important lessons: how to imagine the real.

      Alerted by Bella’s bark, Curtis went out to help Zoe. Margot’s mother looked bleached with exhaustion. Her legs were weak, but there was strength in the hands that grasped the railing on one side and her walking stick on the other. Once inside, he helped her onto the chaise longue and brought her a light blanket.

      “I feel like death,” said Zoe. “Could I have one of my not-minding pills?”

      “You have that in the evening, Ma,” said Margot. “But perhaps we can give you something homeopathic now.”

      Pia brought the Rescue Remedy. She sat in the chair beside her grandmother, nursing her new baby butternut. “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,” she sang. Zoe accepted the pill and closed her eyes.

      “Are you okay to play there a while beside Granny? Until you’re sure she’s asleep?” asked Margot.

      “Yes,” said Pia. “Look, it’s four generations of the same family.”

      “Counting the butternut?” said Margot. Pia hoped for a moment that she might stay. She didn’t have to join the game. She could do a crossword.

      “I think I’ll get a nap in, too,” said Margot. “Or at least just put my feet up and read.”

      Curtis went to the study and found that his father had replied to his mail.

      Dear son,

      You’ve got a damn cheek writing to me telling me my business while you sit there in that resort town doing sweet bugger all. Please do us all a favour and give up this armchair farming. If you want to come here and put in an honest day’s work, I’ll pay you your hire and salary like I would for anyone else.

      The cattle are fine. Some calf deaths, but nothing out of the ordinary.

      Not entering his second childhood

      Dad

      Such fight the old man still had in him. You had to respect him for that. His father knew exactly how to wound him. Any mention of sloth or incompetence riled Curtis. He didn’t see himself as a dreamer exactly, but as someone who spent a fair amount of time in the planning stage.

      As he climbed the wooden staircase which he himself had stripped and sanded, Curtis’s normally broad shoulders drooped. He opened the bedroom door quietly. If he could lie now with Margot, he would feel better. His sense of manhood would return. Sex was something he knew how to do. Or, if Margot were too tired, he could at least massage her knotty shoulders, ease off her clothes. Margot had closed the curtains against the afternoon sun: she slept. There were dark circles around her eyes.

      Curtis left her to her rest. He stood in the top room and looked out over the bay. Here came the chords of Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine. Sadness was so harmonious, the way it arched upwards, and fell so gracefully: it was laughter that broke things apart. Crude laughter cackled and rattled.

      There was so much to do. The garage he hired at Storage City was cluttered with old stuff, much of it needing hard decisions – Hospice? Dustbin? Mills Auctioneers? And if Mills, shouldn’t he fix things up a bit first – like those wooden headboards that he’d carried around for thirty-five years? Or he could prepare something for tomorrow’s session at the Mission School. He could return to the garden and use the newly repaired clippers, with its sharpened blades. There were knives and pairs of scissors all over the house that he could sharpen.

      The harbour was crowded with anglers. Far out to sea, yachts rounded luminous orange racing buoys. People were out there, pursuing their passions. When he’d first come here to live with Margot, he’d imagined that he’d spend his weekends fishing, or maybe volunteer as a deckhand. What had become of those schemes? Why did he fritter his life away?

      Down below in the garden, Pia was hanging over the wooden gate, swinging on it idly. She was wearing her jodhpurs and smart, pointy riding boots. It was already well past three o’clock, but then Leroy was never punctual. What a waste it was for someone like Leroy to have a child whereas he, Curtis, remained childless. Leroy seemed oblivious of his daughter’s inner life and rich talent. He was so narcissistic that he’d even complained to Margot: “Our child should watch me perform more often so that she can know who her father is in this world.” Leroy hadn’t grasped the first rule of childcare: Efface yourself. Give the little person the floor. Soon enough, like any other untamed creature, the child will become curious about you; will want to hear your stories and your opinions. Until then, play alongside him as though you were a child yourself. Draw lines in the sandy ground and say: This is the castle entrance and here is the courtyard with its blacksmith and stables . . . It made his breath tight to watch Pia hang on the gate, waiting for her father.

      Pia liked to meet her father at the gate to soften him up: if the first person Leroy encountered was Margot, there was likely to be an altercation. “Is that all the greeting I get?” he might ask, and the fight would start. You had to keep them apart because they were both too quick with sharp words. “He’s better behaved with me,” Pia told Margot.

      Pia could hear the phone ringing in the house. She dashed up the garden steps to answer it, hoping it wouldn’t wake her mother. She knew it would be Leroy, but she was too late.

      Curtis took the call on the upstairs extension. Leroy was running late. His lunch date was taking much longer than expected. His voice was barely audible above the clatter and shrieking voices of some public place. Would it be alright if he joined them for supper? He probably wouldn’t be very hungry as he was having a world-class lunch. He dropped the names of his lunch companions. Curtis didn’t know much about Cape Town society, and cared less. If it had been up to him, he would have told Leroy that a late visit would be inconvenient. However, he was aware of the household’s complicated mechanisms of placating Leroy and protecting Pia. If Leroy weren’t allowed to visit he might demand to take her overnight, insisting on the stipulations of the divorce agreement.

      Before Curtis could answer, he heard a voice coming from the downstairs telephone extension. It was Zoe. She had staggered up from her chaise longue to answer the phone. “You can come around anytime: I’ll be here,” she said to Leroy.

      “Zoe – how marvellous to hear your voice!”

      Curtis left Leroy sucking up to Margot’s mother. He himself had no verbal falderals.

      “Was that my dad phoning to cancel?” asked Pia, poised between hope and disappointment.