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CHAPTER 1

BOY IN A JUTE-SACK HOOD

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Grant Fotheringay is at a loose end. These are his own words. He has said them aloud, and now having struggled with the new-fangled coffee machine, he paces the length of the room that Stella – bless her bloody cotton socks – called the lounge. He is alarmed: that is what old men do, mutter to themselves. So there's nothing for it, such a malarkey must be confronted head-on since the unexamined life etcetera ... Defining his condition, raking over his thoughts, over his own words, has become habit, the old ballast that chains the dog etcetera ... There seems to be no accounting for the words that slither into the mind, and then he is duty-bound, owes it to himself – because you are worth it, as the ads declare – to investigate, which is to say poke, even if it is with a retractable ruler, gingerly, at that writhing tangle of decanted worms.

What then does it mean to be at a loose end? Grant thinks images: a rope dangling from a mizzen sail; the frayed edge of fabric, something rough like jute; the forlornness of something or other; and he sighs theatrically, at the unfinished that passes itself off as freedom or enticement. He supposes, as he stands in front of the window, waiting for the kettle to boil, that his arms are dangling. Then, before him, like a vision, a child charges across the lawn, purposefully, a zephyr whose arms, swivelled in their sockets, stretch out behind him. The child's cheeks are puffed out. He is running backwards, but with the confidence of one who knows the terrain, knows where he is going. Grant steps back from the window. Weird: it would seem to be the image of the child, an after-image of streamers taut in the west wind, that has brought to mind, as it does for the time-traveller, the notion of a loose end.

Loose ends belong to another country, another time. And when the rest of South Africa bangs on about memory, he is reminded that there is another history, one that has no truck with memory. But being at a loose end and seeing the child charge across the rain-spangled lawn bring an irrepressible image of himself as child charging with a kite on Glasgow Green, a picture no doubt puffed up, he thinks, by kail-yard tales, or rather, his scorn for kail-yard. Grant winces at the thought of a yard, and the mean space of a Gorbals close. That surely accounted for his childhood asthma, that close of fag-ends, hawked-up phlegm, and the smell of neeps and sprouts cooked to death, that squeezed the air from your lungs and made you wheeze. Then he knew nothing of mangoes, avocado pears, could not have known of the Queen of Sheba leading her soft camels widdershins round the kirk-yaird a full two decades later. Instead, there was the Green – vast, bright, defiant under a pewter sky – for a boy with a kite that soared like an eagle. Lucy in the sky-y with di-iamonds. His blood-red kite, a diamond with a tail, thumbed its nose at the Presbyterian sky, taunted that grey lid until it lifted and light came crashing through the cloud. Before his very eyes the Green buckled into fells and highveld where lions roared and flashed their yellow eyes in the bracken.

It was from the grand old derelict fountain on the Green, its cracked, blunt-nosed sculptures, that his dreams were fed. There a child from the Gorbals could escape to far-off lands via the terracotta tableaux of the colonies. He did not mind the broken meths bottles, the smell of piss and vinegary pokes of chips as he wandered around the peoples of the colonies. Trailing his red kite, he became an explorer, a discoverer of things that no Glaswegian had dreamt of; he wandered through weird vegetation, slew the giants of Africa and sailed off to India. He favoured the bearded man in the South African tableau with a gun by his side, and at his feet a sweet, odd-looking girl who would speak in a lovely sing-song voice, quite unlike the slags who smoked and cursed in the close. But best of all was the ostrich with a long snake-neck and full, soft feathers like the girl's bosom, an image that guided his hand at night under the blanket and brought wet dreams of coupling with a continent. The worn school atlas that he claimed to have lost, and for which his teacher demanded three shillings, he kept under the mattress, safe from the younger children.

Yesterday afternoon, and only three months late, Grant sent off his manuscript, a monograph of one hundred and thirty thousand, two hundred and seventeen words, the fruit of four years' research and painful writing; although the pain after the first draft had abated. It is his first-born. It is not surprising then, he consoles himself, that he feels at a loose end, even if he had expected something else, something at least distantly related to pleasure or relief. For two of those years, more or less after Stella moved out (Jesus, what timing, what a bitch), he has lived the life of a recluse, other than the minimal conversation with colleagues and necessary interaction with students. Now he supposes he will have to think of a new project – but not yet. First there should be a loosening off, a settling of the mind so steeped in the late-nineteenth century. Should he take a deep breath and join a gym? No, he is neither ready for the sweat of the middle-aged, nor for the lycra-clad limbs of youth.

On the cream sofa, wide as a boat, the red silk cushions are lined up into stiff lozenges just touching at the corners to form a row of diamonds, which makes the blood rush to his face with rage. Why should he have to put up with this, twice a week, after Poppie has been? Why should he have to struggle with a maid who insists on having her own way, her own aesthetic? he supposes. He rearranges the cushions into careless piles, as if they had been tossed from afar; he hates the orderly line that stands on tip-toe to attention. The girl must imagine that he doesn't care, doesn't know that the untidy tumble of red is no accident, and all because he is a man, yes that's what it's about. As a progressive who has long since given up on manhood, he resents the stereotype, for what else could it be that blinds the girl – or woman, he should say – to the plumped up cushions that she finds each time so obviously, so artlessly, arranged into random heaps?

The rain comes and goes. Grant Fotheringay stretches out on the sofa, but no sooner does he settle down with the Mail & Guardian, than the child again crosses the lawn from right to left. This time over his thin T-shirt the child wears a folded jute sack, the type in which sugar is sold in bulk. With one corner tucked like a lining into the other and slipped over his head, the sack is a cape with a peaked hood, which keeps him dry. This time with arms stretched before him and puffed-out cheeks, he describes a wide arc across the lawn, his left wing dipping dangerously before landing. Then the child seems to rebuke himself, for suddenly he straightens, sober, pensive, as his cheeks deflate; he is too old for such nonsense. From his pocket he draws a rolled-up exercise book, saunters over to the large picture window, and with book in hand measures its length in wide strides, twice, back and forth, as if he cannot believe his own findings. He makes a note in his book, possibly of the number of strides. The rain stops once again.

Light bounces off the window, so that glancing into the room the child sees only dark shapes, only furniture, he thinks. He presses his nose against the pane, curious about the interior that he is sure will be wonderful. He has puzzled over the wonky wrought-iron table with a fully rusted top and the frayed stuff of the wicker chair on the stoep. He knows the man to be rich and grand. Why then does he keep such ramshackle, such shameful old things?

Can the child really not see Grant? He sees what he expects to see. For months now he has known the man to work all day in the study at the back of the house that looks out at the mountain. Sitting with his back to the window, the man would not have seen anyone running across the lawn, backwards, without bumping into anything, or anyone peering into the living-room window.

Is the child staring at him? Grant flushes, doesn't know whether to stir. This is the sort of thing that Stella would have taken care of. When the rain starts beating against the window, the face spreads across the pane; the sugar-sack hood frames black eyes around which he has cupped his hands the better to exclude the glare. Heavens above, what insolence, and Grant leaps to his feet and goes to the window where the child now stares in horror before putting his palms over his eyes with shame. Grant taps at the pane and with a wave beckons him in.

When Grant Fotheringay came from Glasgow in 1984, he knew nothing about the academic boycott of South African universities. Which does not mean that he knew nothing of the world. He knew lots of other things: about the Union, the Empire, the miners' strike, the Irish Troubles, Thatcherism in all its Tory viciousness, and, of course, the snootiness of England. As a research student he had been on an anti-apartheid march through the city, although he could not help feeling that the centre being cleared of traffic on a Saturday morning was an indulgence on the part of students. Had Grant known of the boycott, would he still have come? That he cannot answer: it is no longer possible to tell.

Professor Stevenson, his new boss in Cape Town, spoke of Grant's moral courage. The boycott, he agreed, was ill-considered; such isolation would simply make the establishment dig in their heels, and of course it was detrimental not only to the progressive academic community but also to the very black population it claimed to protect. Grant winced at the word 'black': was it okay to call people that? The march, that if the truth were told was an attempt to get close to a fiery redhead from Edinburgh whose name he has forgotten, may not have brought the calculated outcome, but here in Cape Town, unexpectedly, it came in handy. (Now it seemed possible that the redhead was rather mild-mannered, but he couldn't be sure.) In Stevenson's retelling, the march was cast in the plural, and there seemed little point in being pedantic, in saying that there had been only the one, or that he had felt somewhat foolish chanting in the streets: Maggie, Maggie, Maggie; Out, Out, Out, or: Barclays Bank, Barclays Bank; Out, Out, Out – or some such awkward thing that made the Barclaycard in his wallet migrate and lodge itself in his heart like a thrombus. There had, of course, been no need to say that he had applied for three posts in Edinburgh and Glasgow, all without success.

And so, without premeditation, Grant found himself at Cape Town in the role of activist. You will have to make allowances for us here in the boondocks of Africa, old Stevenson said humbly. Your radical European tradition no longer comes naturally to us. It's all uphill here, a struggle to hit the correct note of dissidence, he wheezed. Grant felt the gravity of the situation, the new responsibility, but there was, thank God, none of the unease of the Glasgow march where the redhead had thrust a Free Nelson Mandela placard with a photograph of a burly young boxer into his hands. Here in the brightness of the Cape sun or the cool shade of suburban gardens, the lines were clearly drawn. How could he be anything but heir to a liberalism that in the blinding southern light bled so wantonly into radicalism?

Before long, and by way of finding favour with younger firebrand colleagues who were known to have toyi-toyied through the coloured suburbs, the story gathered ambiguous mention of the ANC. He did not elaborate, but others assumed that the breaking of the boycott had somehow been sanctioned, that in the cloak-and-dagger climate of secrecy it would not do to ask questions. Wally Serote, what a speaker, what heroic figures those guys cut on the balcony of Glasgow's City Chambers! That was what he actually said, and Grant was surprised to find that such innocent mention of exiled revolutionaries brought awed respect. Again, it was the woman who had taken him along to some or other event where senior members of the banned organisation addressed the Scottish anti-apartheid movement. They spoke of Outspan oranges and economic boycott, but he does not remember any mention of academia, or perhaps Grant had slipped into daydreaming or had actually nodded off. He recalled staying up until the early hours with the redhead, all to no avail. He does not think he saw her again.

How much nicer it was anyway to find himself thawing in Cape hospitality, finding his political feet without the dubious guidance of sex. As he later said to Stella, it was his very own northern heart that he found in Cape Town, a healthy heart that turned out to be hungry for political challenge. Pah, so much for Stella's commitment. Where was she now that Rome was burning, or at least still smouldering? Well, in Edinburgh, of all places, which in some ways conveniently confirmed for him the permanence of his stay in the South. And was he not also entitled? Did he not in his own humble way, as did all the activists on the Jameson steps, contribute to the birth of the new South Africa?

The boy seems not to understand the man's gesture. He runs his hands over his eyes and over the tight fleece of hair under the sack, and disappears. Grant finds him squatting on his haunches on the back stoep, writing in a grubby notebook. He turns out to be older than Grant thought, eleven or twelve, although one can never tell with these people. He does not look up as the man towers over him, but there is nothing craven about the set of the thin shoulders, it is not even an act of bravado; the child is simply absorbed.

What are you doing? Grant asks.

Writing, he says. I'm writing down the names of bushes and things in the garden, and then when I go home I'll see if I got them spelt right.

I could check them for you ... Grant is after all at a loose end, but no, the boy would like to do it himself, in his new dictionary. That is what he had wanted for Christmas and so this year Father Christmas managed to get to Grassy Park for a change. Then he smiles, I don't believe in Father Christmas; it was my dad. I don't believe in God either, but you're not allowed to say so.

His dad is George, the gardener who asked at the beginning of the year if the child could come along during the school holidays – he was a good boy, he would not be a nuisance – with the usual slyness of these people, for there was the child standing stiffly beside the father who no doubt thought that Grant could not refuse in his presence. Couldn't be left alone at home, George mumbled, although Grant seemed to remember that there were a number of children. But it would not do to ask. Better to just say yes rather than unleash a long, convoluted story that would not add up, that would have to be taken with a pinch of salt. Anyway, what did he care, with that bitch gone it hardly mattered as long as the child kept out of his way. And now, many months later, it turns out that the boy still comes on Saturdays although Grant has never seen him before.

So what's your name? he asks.

Samuel. And yours? the child asks without looking up from his writing.

Grant starts. Dr Fotheringay, he stammers, but the child says that he knows, that he also knows him not to be a real doctor, so what is his real name?

He repeats after Grant. Grant's a nice name, he says, solemnly intoning: Grant-us-thy-peace, and then as he returns to his writing, Dr Fotheringay has the distinct feeling of being dismissed.

Righty-ho then, he says, and wonders where on earth he had picked up that expression. Righty-ho? He is sure that he knows no one who says righty-ho.

When Grant returns to the back stoep an hour later the child has finished his writing. Still hooded in the jute sack, he is reading the editorial of an old Mail & Guardian salvaged from the pile at the back door.

Let's go inside, Grant says, no need to wait until you get home. You can use my dictionary to check your work.

Samuel folds up his sack neatly and carries it under his arm. In the study he lets out a wolf whistle at all the books. He goes along the shelf and ghost-runs his index finger down the spines, not touching; he reads aloud the titles, hesitating before unfamiliar words that he mouths silently before saying out loud. These he writes down in his exercise book; he will check the meanings later in the dictionary. Grant goes to the kitchen to prepare food, salad and left-over chicken. It would be a nice change to have lunch with someone, even with a strange boy. He nips into Stella's herb garden, now overgrown – he must have a word with George – where he finds some straggly chives for the salad.

Lunch, he calls to Samuel, let's have something to eat. He has set a festive table in the kitchen with woven mats and matching napkins, but Samuel says wait, he'll get something from the garden, and returns with a posy of fennel heads, rosemary and marguerite that he stuffs into a glass of water.

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Excerpted from "The One That Got Away"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Zoë Wicomb.
Excerpted by permission of The New Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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