It was eight days before Christmas when Hymie got a telegram from his father. It stated that his grandmother was dying and asked him to return home. Hymie wasn't overfond of his Russian grandmother, which was yet another of the things he felt secretly guilty about. In a Russian Jewish family it's practically compulsory to adore your
buba
and when he'd been little his mother had scolded him for his indifference. 'Go kiss your poor buba, Hymie! God forbid, when you come back from the bioscope, who knows? Maybe she has been taken already away.'
When he'd been younger and before he'd realised that the old harridan was indestructible, he'd race home from the cinema, his heart pounding, convinced he'd see a black hearse parked in the driveway with men in long black coats and top hats carrying his dead grandmother, dressed in her full-length silver fox coat, depositing her into a coffin in the glass-sided hearse. Then, just as the hearse was about to pull away, she'd sit up suddenly and look directly at him, wagging a bony dead finger. 'Shame, boy! You didn't kiss your poor old
babushka
goodbye! Such a small thing! And me who carried already a big black frying pan on my back all the way across Roosha so you could have always nice fried fish!'
'Shit! My grandma's dying again!' Hymie announced in disgust as he read the telegram that their scout Bennett had just delivered to his rooms.
'Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, sir,' Bennett said. 'Shall I pack your bags for the tropics then?' In his mind he could see a big, fat ten-bob tip coming his way. News of a death at home always brought out the best in the undergraduates.
'Yes, thanks, Bennett, only one small suitcase.' Hymie watched as Bennett shuffled into the bedroom before he moved over to the cupboard above the fireplace and took out a bottle of sherry and two small glasses. Moving over to the window, he poured the sherry and, handing one to Peekay, he sat himself in the remaining club chair, holding the stem of the small glass in both hands. 'What a bugger! I was really looking forward to Christmas at Cow Cottage.'
The disappointment was clear in his voice as he said, 'By the way, I've ordered a hamper and a Norfolk ham from Fortnum & Masonâ¦and a goose!'
Peekay looked up, astounded. 'A goose!'
Hymie laughed. 'Ever since I was a kid and read
A Christmas Carol,
where Scrooge finally comes good with a fat goose for Tiny Tim's family, I've wondered what goose at Christmas tasted like. I thought we'd cook it on that terrific rotating spit Eddy made for Harriet's hearth.' Hymie was talking faster than usual to conceal his dismay.
Peekay looked at his friend. 'Christ I'm sorry, Hymie. It won't be the same without you, but maybe your grandma is, you know, on her deathbed?' Harriet had invited Bobby, Eddy, E.W. and her mother, who was divorced from her father, a marine engineer who'd gone to live in America.
'Fat bloody hope! The old cow gets ill unto death every bloody Christmas.' Hymie paused to explain. 'I think I've told you before, my old man throws this big party in our garden for all his workers. He always dresses up as Father Christmas, the only Santa in the world who says, "Oi Vey!" The moment the old witch sees his Father Christmas suit going to the dry cleaners, in late November, she starts to complain about pains in her chest. "Oh, oh, I should die already in a house where is going on a Christian feast!"
'Of course, my dad doesn't believe her. But it's bloody hopeless. My grandma goes on clutching her heart and moaning and refusing to eat. When this happens my old man has to contend with my mother. I can hear her now, "So, what you waiting for? Mama should die and where is my son? Her only grandson? She should die and then it's too late to call the air force on the phone to bring him home? Shame on you, Solomon!'"
Hymie rose from the chair and moved over to the window to re-fill his glass, waving the bottle at Peekay, who declined. Then he returned to his chair. 'It's really a cryptic message you see.' Hymie dug into the pocket of his tweed jacket and produced the scrunched-up telegram. 'Here listen! I'll read it to you the way my old man wrote it. You have to understand, for two weeks now the old harlot's been dying on him and my mum's been nagging him to the point where he can't get it up when he visits his mistress in Johannesburg.' Hymie held the piece of paper in front of him and in a deadpan voice read, "Babushka is dying." Then raising his voice suddenly, '"PLEEEASE COME!" You see, it's a plea for help. That's why I can't ignore it. I can't let the poor old bastard down. His Christmas party for the staff is the single most important thing in his life.'
When Peekay had stopped laughing he asked, 'But how's you being there going to help?'
'Yell, at least it will get my ma off his back. With me there grandma will be happy. She likes a tidy death, everything tidy and in its place, especially the only grandson.'
Peekay drove Hymie to Gatwick early the following morning to catch the BOAC Comet to Johannesburg. Hymie handed him his camel-hair overcoat as they entered the airport passenger terminal. 'Wear it if you like, you've been through an English January.'
It felt strange to Peekay seeing Hymie off, holding the soft coat over his arms and knowing that in less than twenty-four hours Hymie would be stepping out into bright sunshine, walking through a garden where tiny hummingbirds hovered like jewels above the flowers, their long beaks competing with the bees for their share of the nectar.
It had been fourteen months since Peekay had been home, a fleeting trip of only three days to say goodbye to his friends on the way to Durban to board the boat. Knowing he'd be away at least three years he wanted to see his mum and grandpa, Mrs Boxall the librarian, Miss Bornstein his teacher, Captain Smit and Gert of the prison boxing squad, and above all, his adoring Dee and Dum, the two black twin house servants who'd grown up with him and who loved him passionately. Doc, the old German professor of music and Peekay's beloved childhood mentor, was dead, but he'd walked up to his small cottage which stood alone on a
koppie
overlooking the town. Peekay had sat in Doc's marvellous cactus garden and, speaking to the giant
Pachypodium namaquanum
which now stood almost eight feet high, had told it all that had transpired and that he was finally on his way to Oxford.
Peekay wrote home often and Mrs Boxall and Miss Bornstein replied regularly. His grandfather wrote only once, a letter which named twenty-nine varieties of roses in the garden and reported precisely on the condition of each, until Peekay could smell the soft dawn fragrance of roses in a tropical garden before the heat rises and burns away the perfumed air. The old man had ended the letter as he would a conversation. Peekay could almost see his pipe going, puff, puff and the blue cloud of smoke swirling about his head. 'There's a good lad,' the last words in his letter said. His mother too had written once for his birthday, a letter which mostly consisted of an admonishment in the name of the Lord, chastising him for his stubborn refusal to be 'born again' and ending with the words:
I am not mocked, saith the Lord.
Dee and Dum had also written once, in Shangaan, big, crude capitals with only three lines in pencil on the page, each of them doing a line, with the last line shared. Peekay had held the page to his lips and the tears had rolled down his cheeks.
Peekay had been so anxious and preoccupied with Hymie's unexpected departure, sharing in the acute disappointment of his friend at not spending Christmas at Cow Cottage, that he was halfway back to Oxford when it struck him that he'd be alone with Harriet for the next month.
His heart began to thump. 'Oh, God! What am I going to do?' he wailed aloud to himself. He immediately began to talk himself out of all the things which raced through his head. Peekay winced as he thought of the two large pillows propped against the headboard on the big Queen-Anne bed. 'She's not interested. If she was, I'd know. She thinks of me as a brother. That's it! We're like brother and sister. Bullshit!
You
don't feel that way about her. Yes, but that doesn't count. It's how she feels about me! I'm her brother. She feels safe with me. Don't change that. If Hymie comes back and I've split with Harriet because, well, something went wrong what's he going to think. It's like a trust, isn't it? I mean, if I tried something and was repulsed? What would he think? He'd have every right to think I'm a bastard!'
A lump had developed in his throat and he found it hard to swallow. He lifted his bum from the car seat and, with one hand, pulled at the crotch of his pants to make more room for the severe lump which had suddenly grown there. Oh, God! Stop it! Peekay begged himself.
Christmas Day wasn't quite perfect without Hymie, but it came damn close. It had started to snow early on Christmas Eve and had continued until mid morning on Christmas Day so that the Oxfordshire countryside was suddenly transformed. To Peekay it was like a miracle, a white Christmas spent in an English cottage in the English countryside. Hymie would have moaned and pointed to the wet, slushy roads, secretly sharing in his delight.
With snow covering the ground and the roof of Cow Cottage and clinging to the Francis Eileste, the white rose, now pruned neatly back to surround the doorway, the scene indeed resembled the cover on a chocolate box. It was a scene such as might quite easily have appeared on a four-pound box Hymie's father's salesmen presented as a free gift to a customer when they'd signed up for new Wilton in the lounge.
Mrs Clive, Harriet's mother, had arrived on Christmas Eve from Norfolk in a small green Austin estate wagon which boasted wood panels on the rear section to give it a country look. The small car was loaded with stuff for the cottage: towels and linen, pots and pans, even a hessian sack of yew logs for the hearth on Christmas Day and, of course, loads of good things to eat. Together with Hymie's hamper there was enough food to feed an army, and the Christmas table was positively groaning with food as Mrs Clive fussed around it, arranging crackers and nuts. At one end of the table was a space for the goose; its rich, delicious aroma now filled the cottage and kept the hearth fire spitting, splatting and hissing.
Eddy had arrived early to supervise the goose. It was about ten o'clock when Harriet heard his motorcycle negotiating the snow-covered farm road, the engine protesting as the wheels slid and slipped in the muddy ruts. He rode his Norton around the back to the stable and Harriet, in her wellingtons, went around to meet him. His face, as well as his thick navy woollen sweater and bulky plastic over-trousers, were covered with mud. When he removed his goggles and the beanie he was wearing, two white circles around his eyes and a strip of white skin across the top of his forehead were the only clean patches remaining on his face. Harriet opened the studio door and Eddy pushed his Norton inside. At the rear door of the cottage he stopped to remove his boots and moved into the kitchen in his wet socks just as Harriet lifted a large iron kettle from the hearth.
'Here, Eddy, come and stand by the fire; you must be frozen to the bone.' Harriet poured boiling water into a large basin she'd placed on the pine table, the kettle disappearing into the cloud of steam. Eddy stood facing the hearth, rubbing his hands together and shivering. Harriet refilled the kettle from a bucket and placed it back on the hook suspended above the fire. Then she reached out and touched his mud-splashed woollen sweater. 'You're soaked!' she exclaimed. 'Raise your arms, let me take this off and rub you down, I've got an old cardigan of daddy's you can wear.'
Eddy started to pull at the thick sweater and Harriet helped him off with it, pulling it over his head. He wore no shirt or singlet under the sweater and stood naked from the waist up. She pointed to his socks. 'Off with those, they're sopping,' she commanded.
Eddy grinned. 'Harriet, you're worse than me mum!' He held onto the edge of the table and, resting the side of his foot against his knee, removed a sock, doing the same with the other sock. Harriet placed a small towel on the slate floor below the basin where he could stand, then she lifted the bucket and splashed cold water into the still steaming basin, dipping her hand into it until it was cool enough. Eddy bent over the basin and Harriet took up a towel and began to wipe his wet bent back. Eddy splashed the warm water into his face. Harriet was not only drying his torso but rubbing it hard with the coarse towel to warm him as well. Eddy was a well-built young man with the broad, muscled shoulders and narrow tapering waist of an ideal middleweight. It was a body built naturally from hard work and Harriet thought how nice it would be to sculpt. Her hands moved the wet clay around the shoulders, moulding his abdominal muscles with the pads of her thumbs, building the beautiful young body bit by bit until it became a reality under her hands.
At last Eddy rinsed the soap from his face and, standing upright, he turned to face Harriet, his eyes closed. His dark curly hair, wet at the ends, fell across his brow, his skin shone with wetness and his thick, dark eyelashes and the blue shadow of his closely shaved chin emphasised his naturally smooth olive complexion. He held out his hand for the towel but Harriet pushed his arms aside and taking his head in the towel she drew him towards her. A moment before she'd been dispassionately admiring his hard young body. Now she was suddenly hungry for him. Her lips closed slowly over his. as she moved her body to stand against him. Harriet dropped the towel and brought her arms around his shoulders and slowly began to stroke his back. The young boxer didn't respond or show surprise.
Harriet had moved in on him so easily that the touch of her warm lips against his wet face seemed perfectly natural.