civil-service salary, but she felt that the boy deserved the best. Once it came home from the store, Johan meticulously stencilled EMIL COETZEE onto the trunk. As the Coetzees were trying to decide what next to do, a letter came from the Selous School for Boys congratulating Emil on his acceptance and providing a very extensive list of required items. Gemma and Johan divided the list into two and set about buying the items on it. Johan wished that they had more than one holiday break and, consequently, more than one pay cheque to prepare for Emil’s departure for boarding school. Emil might have received a full bursary, but school uniforms for both summer and winter needed to be purchased, along with a cadet uniform, several sports kits and a litany of sundry items that included a rifle and a pistol (which were to be the first in a series of firearms that the boy would need to acquire over the years at the school). Emil was a growing boy and chances were that the start of every academic year would see the need for such expenditure. Luckily, Gemma had long learnt how to stretch a civil servant’s salary and had developed an eagle eye for bargains and sales. She managed to successfully stretch Johan’s one pay cheque to afford all that was needed by the Selous School for Boys and graciously accepted Scott Fitzgerald’s Christmas and New Year’s invitations so that the Coetzees could have a wonderfully festive season before Emil left for the school. Scott Fitzgerald had followed close on the heels of the Coetzees when they left the BSAP outpost and, like them, had resettled in the City of Kings. At Scott Fitzgerald’s parties, Gemma hoped that no one noticed that her stockings were darned.
With nothing much required of him, Emil watched as his trunk gradually filled up and he wished with all his heart that he could have found it in himself to have loved the City of Kings better, because that love would have saved him from the fate that had now befallen him.
The trunk, filled to capacity, was finally shut the day before he was to depart for the Selous School for Boys.
‘Wouldn’t it be lovely if we went out to Centenary Park?’ Gemma said suddenly, as she latched the locks of the trunks. ‘You could ride the train there. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
Emil nodded. Was it too late now to pretend to love all the things the city had to offer?
‘We could go to the natural history museum afterwards … or … or the theatre for the matinée. There’s a wonderful production of Anything Goes, I gather,’ Gemma said, searching for her hat. Just like that, she had decided on a day out. ‘It has a lot of musical numbers. You would like that, I dare say, and we could also get some ice cream. We’ll make an entire day of it. I’ll leave a note for your pa and instructions on how best to warm up the cottage pie. I don’t want him to worry when he finds us not here for lunch.’ Gemma breathlessly inspected her reflection in the hallway mirror. ‘I know you’d like your father to be there for this last hurrah … We can all go to the bioscope in the evening. You would love that, wouldn’t you?’
Emil nodded slowly as his mother set his appearance to rights.
‘Yes. We will make an entire day of it and it will all be lovely … very, very lovely indeed,’ Gemma said, as she wrote a note for Johan.
Gemma, determined to have the best day with her son, crossed Borrow Street with Emil held safely and firmly in hand. The day started out promisingly enough. They rode along on the train through Centenary Park and Gemma, occasionally stroking her son’s blond hair as it was ruffled by the breeze, made herself smile at nothing in particular. When they hopped off the train she bought them ice cream, which they ate as they made their way to the National Museum of Natural History. They spent a little too much time for Gemma’s liking poring over lithographs, letters, pottery, tools, weapons, fossils, menageries and trophies that represented some aspect of the country’s past. Emil was evidently enjoying himself and so Gemma let him peruse at his leisure … until she heard him wheeze as he stood before a miniature bungalow that looked very much like the government-issued house that had been their home at the foot of the Matopos Hills. Probably all the dust in the place, Gemma supposed as she led Emil out of the museum. Hopefully he would feel better at the theatre and they could carry on enjoying the day.
They did not even make it to the intermission of Anything Goes. Emil’s wheezing had at first attracted sympathetic glances that became a few glares here and there and finally a united voice that loudly whispered, ‘I judge that it is best you take the poor fellow home.’
Gemma obeyed the wishes of the many, held Emil by the hand, walked him back up Selborne Avenue to the Prince’s Mansions and led him up the stairs. She opened the door to the flat, immediately stopped short, let out a scream and was very surprised when no sound came out.
When Emil saw his father in his mother’s red cloche hat, black lace and chiffon drop-waist dress, string of pearls, rouge and lipstick, he assumed it was a joke, something funny his father had prepared for his departure, and he was just about to laugh when he saw the look of absolute horror on his mother’s face. When he glanced over at his father and saw the guilt, humiliation and shame on his face, Emil was filled with dread and knew that, whatever this was, it was not supposed to be happening.
Gemma let go of Emil’s hand and went to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. She left father and son staring at each other. With the comforting aroma of cottage pie wafting between them, Johan’s eyes travelled to a spot just above Emil’s head and settled there, and there his gaze would remain whenever he looked at his son. Gemma returned with Emil’s medication and gave it to him. She then went to her bedroom and shut the door behind her.
The quiet that surrounded them was absolute.
After what Johan had done, both he and Gemma were afraid of what the other would say, so they stopped speaking to each other altogether. In this way she never had to ask him about what she had witnessed and he, therefore, thankfully, never had to explain himself to her or to himself.
Emil was left alone in the confusion of the peace.
CHAPTER 4
Emil had seen the Selous School for Boys in his mind’s eye every day since he had learnt that he was to attend it. At night, he created dreamscapes in which the school was a sprawling and rambling grey Gothic building, complete with gargoyles as grotesque and ghastly as the ones he had seen on the picture postcard of Sanssouci in Potsdam, Germany, that was on Mr Bartleby’s desk. To heighten his trepidation, the school was, for whatever reason, situated in the middle of a moat that had a healthy population of piranhas living in it. As a result, Emil’s impression of the place was that there was no prospect of his ever being happy there.
Not a word was spoken during the long journey to the Midlands in the car his father had borrowed from Scott Fitzgerald, which did not help matters because what Emil needed more than anything else at that moment was the gentle cushion that his parents’ voices would have provided. His mother, sitting beside him in the back seat, had simply put her white-gloved right hand over his bare hands, smiled feebly at him and then stared out of the window. His father, sitting in the driver’s seat, would, by peering at the rear-view mirror, periodically steal glances at the space above Emil’s head and satisfy himself that all was well enough with his son.
As he sat there, as silent as a sphynx, Emil wondered what it was exactly that had been witnessed by his mother and him the day before and why it could not be spoken of. But, in lieu of asking this question, Emil gazed out of the window and attempted to console himself with the changing landscape: city, suburbs, smallholdings, farms, villages and, finally and refreshingly, wide open spaces with singing elephant grass.
As their journey carried them closer and closer to the grey Gothic castle with gargoyles, Emil gradually grasped that, whether he was ready to or not, he was growing up. He came to understand that this was his first step away from his parents and this terrified him more than the nightmares he had had of the Selous School for Boys. The momentousness of the occasion having dawned on him, Emil’s stomach, long queasy, lurched and he quickly squeezed his mother’s hand twice, which was his new way of communicating to her that he needed to relieve himself in a nearby bush. She, in turn, tapped the back of the driver’s seat and his father promptly parked the car on the side of the road.
Emil walked into the singing elephant grass by