What Poets Need. Finuala Dowling

she was going to Angie the owl’s party. Angie had phoned while I was editing to say she was having a few friends – “mostly Holy Cross parents” – around for a fireside supper of soup on Saturday and we were welcome to bring our children. It was the wrong question to ask. Hannelie’s eyes brimmed with tears again. “Angie doesn’t speak to me,” she said, “because of the lice.”

      Apparently, Angie accused Hannelie of not treating Harriet’s lice and thus passing them on to her, Angie’s, twins. Lice are endemic at schools, Hannelie tells me, and not even the most expensive treatments work. “Because you can’t actually put a really strong poison on someone’s head. A woman in Polokwane killed her child by spraying his scalp with Doom.” Hannelie still had tears in her eyes but was now laughing.

      Just thinking about nits, my head began to itch almost uncontrollably. I confided in Hannelie and she kindly examined me, even using a special lice comb, and said I was clear. It was nice feeling a woman’s gentle hands moving across my head expertly. This is a primeval moment, I said, and Hannelie made a quick little primate face at me.

      The girls announced that they were starving. I said I’d better take Sal back and feed her, but Hannelie said nonsense, she’d make them some curried chicken fillets. I’d never seen Sal eat anything more exotic than a chicken burger with garlic mayonnaise, but I kept quiet. Sal tucked in and pronounced the food delicious.

      Hannelie and I had another glass of wine and spoke about Afrikaans poetry. She is of Afrikaans descent. You wouldn’t know it, except that she pronounces “washing” as “wushing”. She brought out a commonplace-book, a thick scrapbook in which she has copied out or pasted extracts she likes. She read to me from Jan Celliers:

      Dis al

      Dis die blond,

      Dis die blou:

      dis die veld,

      dis die lug;

      en ’n voël draai bowe in eensame vlug –

      dis al.

      There is a second stanza, about an exile returning to find a grave, shedding a tear, and once again, “dis al”.

      “I’ve always loved this poem,” said Hannelie, “though it seems to say so little.” It says everything there is to say about being South African, I replied. “No,” said Hannelie, “I don’t think it does really, it leaves out all the pain.” I said I thought the word “exile” carried the pain.

      It felt so good to be sitting there in the twilight, mildly disagreeing about a poem.

      When Sal and I got home it was dark. Mrs Cloete was sitting at our dining room table playing patience with a Bicycle pack. Sir Nicholas was making sleep a transitive verb at her slippered feet. He was sleeping her feet, I felt, sleeping her felt feet.

      I asked her had she locked herself out of her cottage. She said no, that the ace of hearts had gone missing from her computer and she thought she’d come in and play with our real pack which couldn’t cheat. I said please feel free to take it with you.

      The house was all warm from the anthracite heater I’d stoked up earlier. Neither Mrs Cloete nor Sir Nicholas seemed keen to go out into the cold night air, but I firmly walked her back to her door and switched on her lights and put on her kettle for her hot-water bottle. Sal found its pink crocheted cover. The old lady was clutching it to herself when we said goodnight and closed her door for her. She looked very tiny, with her navy blue slacks hanging loosely from her waist, the fabric somehow snagged and balled with wear, and her childish shoulders stooped inside her cardigan.

      I led the reluctant Sir Nicholas to his shed. Both he and Sal looked at me reproachfully. Sal said she thought I should make Sir Nicholas a hot-water bottle too. I said look what happened to the cushion.

      “Is Mrs Cloete anything to me?” asked Sal. “Is she my other granny?”

      I said, No, Mrs Cloete is the mother of my best friend Ryno. She’s lived in the caretaker’s cottage for years. It looks like she’s a family member, but she actually pays rent. Mrs Cloete’s family once owned the most fertile farms of the Western Cape, a long time ago, but now she rents in our yard. She still has some furniture and brass and stuff that is hundreds of years old.

      Sal said she did think the crocheted hot-water bottle cover looked old. I said there’s an important difference between worthless old and valuable old.

      At last I put Sal to bed. I fell asleep next to her. Waking in the middle of the night, I felt her warm back against my chest. There is such a taboo against this kind of thing that I dragged myself off to my own icy sheets. As I waited for them to warm up, I listened to the waves crash on the reef with the clarity of pistol shots.