• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 867 0

dam, then we look at the ducklings, there where I’m taking you there’s also a dam like that with ducks, just prettier, with green heads, and you can swim in our dam, can you swim? I’ll teach you to swim, first with a little tube around you, till you feel you can do it yourself and then I’ll hold my hands under you so that you can feel you’re floating, and then I’ll show you how one does like a little dog, round and round in a circle while I’m holding you, and then little bits on your own till you’re nice and strong and then one day we’ll swim to the middle or we’ll go rowing on the drift with a picnic in the boat just for you and me and a coloured blanket to sit on and then we’ll spread it in the shade and then we’ll eat, nice fresh bread spread with thick butter and apricot jam, just like the sandwiches that I brought you yesterday, you remember, they were nice weren’t they? And red cooldrink. And a sausage and cheese and hard-boiled eggs, and blood-red slices of watermelon. Do you know watermelon? And when we’re finished, then I’ll sing you a song.

You looked at your shadows in the footpath, a woman in a hurry with a jibbing child. You sang.

The bottom of the bottle, the bottom of the bottle

the bottom of the bottle fell out.

Open your mouth open your mouth

open your mouth nice and wide,

so the syrup can flow inside.

You were walking much too fast, dragging the child behind you. She strained back, pulled to one side, looking for an escape route.

I’m walking a bit too fast for you? And I’m talking so much! Let’s walk a bit slower, it’s not far now.

The dam wouldn’t get any closer and the house seemed too far away to turn back. It was very hot. You felt shaky. It hadn’t been a good idea just to set off like that without a plan. Time was short. You looked on your watch. Quarter past ten. In an hour’s time Jak would be there. He was always punctual when he had to come and fetch you from your mother’s.

Your knees started knocking. Nausea welled up in you. You gulped to swallow it down. Once you looked back. The front door was closed and the shutters fastened against the heat of the day.

Come let me carry you the last little bit.

You bent down and lifted the child onto your hip. You felt the pelvic bones against your waist, the wiry body straining away from you. And then. A twist, a slip, a duck, under your arm, a sinewy thing slithering down your side. She left you standing, swiftly, swerving, between the bushes and the tussocks aiming for the cottages to the left of the dam.

You were off balance when you started running. You crashed down. Coming to your feet you were missing a sandal. Over bush and tussock you leapt, within a few paces you were right behind her. But you felt clumsy, you couldn’t anticipate the child’s sidesteps. Your one bare foot crippled you.

I must pass her, in a straight line, you thought, I must get ahead and cut her off, before she’s seen, before Joppies sees her. Because they wouldn’t have told him, or perhaps they would. Both possibilities could spell the end.

The end of what? it flashed through you. You did think that then. A grey streak of lateral considerations that streamed past you along with the tussocks and the ant-heaps and the bushes.

Nothing has really begun, you thought, I can let her go, I can go home, I can go back to the farm and just carry on where I left off. I needn’t put myself out. Not if the child herself doesn’t want to. Not if nobody else, not even my own mother, cares, if not even my husband is going to support me. Not if it seems that I’ll have to fight for something that’s the self-evident duty of civilised people.

You thought it all, as you ran and jumped and grabbed after the child.

Stand still! you screamed, watch out! as you cut in in front of her and grabbed her by the waist and fell down hard with her. The child tried to scrabble away on all fours. You dived after her full-length, grabbed her by one foot. Hand over hand you hauled her in. Ankle, calf, thigh, rump, arms, shoulders, till you were sprawling half on top of her. The dust billowed around you.