was too late! Her brain hammered the thought: a man must be allowed to work life out for himself, and only when he needs her can a woman help. But when he was in need of her help, he had not wanted it, and now it was too late.
‘I must go to him,’ she said, pushing herself out of her father’s arms and trying to force him away from the door.
‘You can’t. He’s gone, run away.’
She lifted her face up to look at him, her cheeks shiny from the tears smudged against his khaki shirt. And as he put out a hand to comfort her, she moved away round the table, feeling the fight draining out of her arms and out of her body.
In the corner a coffee-pot gleamed dully against the black iron of the stove. She picked it up and held it tight. It was still warm. Holding it close to her, she opened the lid and closed it and opened it again while the tears dried on her cheeks.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘Jan – I should’ve told you on the boat – he clubbed Old Hendriks and stole his money.’ The words trailed out, empty and defeated. ‘He came back from Cape Town this morning, drunk when he got off the bus, they say. About lunchtime he went to Hendriks’ – two men were there from the hotels buying mullet, and they told the police Jan looked pretty drunk and – and wild. Well they left and then he … ’ His hand flipped in a helpless little gesture. ‘They’re getting a police dog from Cape Town tonight.’
‘And Hendriks is dead?’
‘Nee, nee! Did she say – ?’
The girl spun to face him. Warm coffee slopped out of the pot and down the front of her dress.
‘Then they won’t – Pa, they won’t hang him!’
And in her mind Sarie was shouting. O Jan, Jan I can help; I can help!
And she knew where to find him. Where he would hide when the brandy wore off, and he could see the size of what he had done. Up in the deep cleft in the cliff, screened by a tangle of shrub and vines, and overlooking the lagoon. A place they had played in: cooking mussels, exchanging first kisses – where he had asked her once, when he was just fourteen, to be his nooi, always. Where …
‘I must find him first,’ she said.
Beyond the headland, the grey road dropped to a causeway bridging the shallow, silted mouth of a blind river. Open at high tide, it lapped back into the mountains, with banks rising steep and wooded from broken shores to twin lines of sheer cliff.
When Sarie reached it, the tide had fallen back with the setting sun, and the water lay quiet and dark as treacle. Leaving the road and turning her back to the sea, she moved swiftly from one rock to another; surefooted as a cat; hardly testing a step before shifting her weight for the next. And as she moved, a legion of crabs scuttled away ahead.
Where the broken rock ended, she jumped down to a thin strip of sand and crossed it to a high shelf that jutted out into the water. Reaching up, she explored the slippery face of the rock, feeling for the finger grips they had used as children. Then she stepped on to a narrow ledge and, carefully, moving a hand, a foot, worked her way to the corner and edged past it. There the ledge dipped into the water and ended.
Taking all her weight on her fingertips, she stretched out her left leg and felt beneath the surface for the narrow crack that cut back into the rock.
When she found it, she transferred her balance, stepped up to a higher foothold, pulled herself on to the top of the shelf, and walked along it towards the slope and the deeper shadow of the trees.
Beneath them the dark was close and forbidding, and she climbed fast, digging her toes into the damp loam, and feeling ahead for something to hold, to pull herself up on – roots, tufts of grass, branches – until the cover broke, and she could see the cliff face towering black against the lighter sky.
The blood was pounding in her temples, and the scratches covering her arms and legs were alight with pain. But she stopped only long enough to draw breath and take her bearings. Looking across at the silhouette of the opposite bank, and then down to the curve of the breakers at the mouth of the lagoon, she turned right and stumbled on.
A sudden, slight movement in the bushes ahead stopped her. Something sensed rather than seen. Breath frozen, she pressed herself against the face of the cliff. But the shadows were motionless and the only sound was the distant surge of the sea. Then she noticed a slight smell of wood smoke.
‘Jan,’ she said softly. And when there was no answer, again loudly: ‘Jan!’
A man stepped out of the shadows. In the half light she could see the empty sleeve tucked into the right pocket of his jacket.
‘Go home, Sarie,’ he said.
‘But – I’ve come to help you, Jan.’
‘Then go home.’
And before she could answer, he ducked behind the bushes that hid the cleft.
It cut straight and narrow into the face, the floor rising sharply over tumbled rock, then broke to the left and widened to twice the span of a man’s arms. Years of storm water, spilling down from the plateau above, had dammed silt against the rocks of the entrance and left a floor of fine, level earth that stretched back to where one of the walls had caved inwards. The result was a rough chamber, open to the sky.
When the girl entered, Jan was sitting on his heels beyond a small fire, his back towards the fall of rock. She moved forward timidly, expecting anger. But there was none. He sat quite still, watching the fire and ignoring her. His face, bronzed and moulded by the glow, smouldered like a coal against the shadows.
At last he looked up. The line of his mouth was thin and bitter; his dark eyes dancing flecks of firelight.
‘And have you come to take me back?’ he asked.
‘Ja.’
The corner of his mouth twisted up and he laughed.
‘So, they can give me money for killing an old bait seller?’
‘He’s not dead.’
Her answer sounded flat and unimportant; but she was alert, seeing every flicker of emotion that crossed his face. As the tenseness went out of it, and his head and shoulders sagged, she stepped past the fire and dropped to her knees by his side.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. There’s £60 there,’ he said, nodding towards an old fibre suitcase near the entrance. ‘I’ll go to Jo’burg, maybe.’
‘They’re bringing dogs tomorrow.’
‘Ja. And tomorrow I’ll be gone.’
A dark shiny object caught the girl’s eye, and she picked it out of the sand.
‘Look – is it one of ours?’
He took the mussel shell from her and rubbed it against the lapel of his jacket, cleaning off the sand. Then he dropped it into the fire.
‘Nee. Ours are all buried
