All rights reserved
LEMON BLESSINGS
By Shona aka "Woodwitch"
The farm stood high on the hill above the Keurbooms River, where it ran peaty through the valley just before broadening into the wide estuary, which swept into the bay at Lookout Beach. The house looked, to the east, onto the blue silhouettes of the majestic Tsitsikamma Mountains, which tumbled down to the Indian Ocean; in front of the large lounge windows lay the generous Bay of Plettenberg, or Formosa, meaning "beautiful". And to the west, like a protective arm which cradled the bay, was Robberg, that ancient rocky bluff, covered with indigenous fynbos.
Many beaches lay along the wide, smiling curve of the bay, all offering different conditions and treasures: Keurbooms Beach, where the waves were roughest, harboured a secret blow hole which was filled with oysters, accessible at low tide. It was worth getting up in the grey dawn to rattle in the old combi, shivering, down the Ou Kaapse Weg, which was part of the farm road, and to come to Keurbooms Beach; cradling the icy bottle of champagne, feet scrunching in the hard wet sand, skipping around the rocky promontories to reach at last the blow hole and a breakfast the gods would have been grateful for.
The next beach along was Lookout Beach, where the surfing was good and the dolphins knew it - they were there every sunrise, joyfully riding the long rollers. If you walked down Lookout Beach to the estuary mouth at low tide, sometimes you would find a delicate and rare chalky pansy shell lying flat in the sand, and if you saw it before you stepped on it, you could gingerly pick it up and carry it home as a good luck omen.
Beacon Island Beach looked on to the promontory where the whaling station had been, and a large, shiny hotel stood. The Piesang River lagoon there was rich with life, and crabs and blaasops peopled the shallows. If you went down to the beach in the late afternoon, when the fishing boats were coming in, you could buy Red Roman or Steenbras still wet and shiny and with bold bright eyes directly from the fishermen, and bear it home to cook in foil over hot coals. Coloured ghillies with oceans of knowledge in their rheumy eyes would attach themselves to you on the beach, if they thought you had come on holiday, and offer to take you fishing at Robberg for "two rand and a dop".
Robberg Beach was where Millionaire's Row was starting. Mansions had sprouted like mushrooms, and property on Beachy Head Road was expensive. More and more people from out of town were building holiday homes here, and the character of Plett was changing as the city folk converged on this piece of paradise. Robberg Beach was always the calmest, except when storms came in and the whole sea was churned grey and the cream foam whipped along the wet sands, and you couldn't see the bluff from the shore; but in good weather, the little waves lapped gently up the shore, and the beach was long and wide and curving, cradled in the arm of the Robberg. At very low tides, you could see the shipwreck, which no salvage company had ever been able to raise.
When I was very young we first started holidaying in Plettenberg Bay, driving up from Port Elizabeth through the three great passes of the Tsitsikamma Mountains, always stopping to see the Big Yellowwood Tree at Storms River, and finally arriving at Ben Cambria, an old Cape Dutch house which still lies on Beacon Island Beach. In those days there was no car park. The Why Not Tearoom was there, and we spent our Saturday money on lucky packets and lollipops bought from the hatch. So I had known Plett almost all my life, and regarded it as my place. Robberg and I, particularly, had a very mystical link and I loved always to go there and walk along the rocky path to the Gap, looking down at the calm waters of the bay, watching the oily cormorants driving themselves along with their wings as they hunted under the water. The water there was greeny blue and deep but very clear always. On the wild side, as we called it, stood the island, which you could walk to at low tide. Once we found a piece of ambergris on the island's beach. I liked to visit Robberg and explore the caves, carrying home skulls of long dead animals, fantasising about the primitive strandlopers who had lived there hundreds of years ago. Whenever I came to Plett, Robberg opened her arms to me and welcomed me home.
Michael and I moved to the farm soon after my father died. Our marriage had been heading for trouble for some time, and when we got my inheritance, we decided to leave Zululand and everything that was familiar to us, and start again in a new place. Plett fell into our laps as though it was meant. I saw an advertisement for a retired couple to caretake a farm outside the village, and spent all night awake writing our application. We had an income; we were not retired, no - in fact we were 27 and 25 years old respectively; but we knew and loved the area, and would be honoured to be given the opportunity. After that it all happened fast, and in a month we had sold all our furniture and most of our clothes - "going minimalist", we told our friends - and moved to Mooiplek. Our wood and iron cottage on the farm had no electricity and it was very simple, but I loved it right away. The large vegetable garden was overgrown, and I mimicked the Zulu women with my hoe, and found that, though it was hard work, the rhythm of the swinging hoe in the morning sun lulled one into a sense of tranquillity, and I understood why the songs had been made in the mielie fields. Soon the garden was alive with young green shoots of living things: food for our table in the months to come.
I could have been happy on the farm; I loved working in my garden and planting young trees, and collecting still-warm speckled eggs from the henhouse to fry for breakfast; I loved standing in the orchard watching the whales mating and playing in the bay below me; I loved baking bread in the gas oven, and stoking up the donkey fire for hot water in the evening; I loved sitting in the gentle glow of the oil lamp sewing. I was in danger of becoming an earth mother. Michael marred my happiness. He marred it with his restlessness, his need for change, his sulky moods and sudden explosions.
People had said that Michael married me for money; when you come from money, you can never really be sure, but I had liked to think that he loved me. After all, I was a unique and wonderful person. But the move to the farm had not saved our marriage; it was disintegrating, dissolving into nothingness, and there was nothing I could do. Michael treated me with contempt and resentment, as though I was holding him back and tying him down. His long legs paced the cottage restlessly and he couldn't settle to anything. He was impatient and bored. We avoided each other as much as possible, and this was not difficult during the day, because the farm was large, and there were so many places to visit. We had a rowing boat on the river, and he would take himself off fishing, while I occupied myself with my hens and my young fruit trees.
At last the winter was upon us, and the long evenings in the gaslit cottage became unbearable. We were at a loss with each other, and Michael was like a caged animal. The moonpath on the water on those clear crisp nights could be breathtaking, but Michael didn't see it. He would stand at the window and look to the lights of Plett and the hotel, and he would seethe resentment. It came off him in waves, and I could not escape it. I watched him, and the helpless hollow feeling in the base of my throat would grow into a bubble. We did not make love. I still loved Michael, desperately, but I knew that things were very bad. I couldn't seem to be able to fix them, because the more I tried, the more irritated he became. I longed to run my hand up his lightly freckled arms, to brush a lock of curly blond hair - too long, now - from his forehead. I longed to burrow myself into him, to feel the closeness we had once shared, but it was gone, and he brushed me away.
It was very cold, so cold that the snow was visible on the mountains across the bay from the streets of the village. Icy winds swept over the bay and churned it into a white froth. I had to mulch my saplings, and feared that my beloved "Eureka" lemon, which is always the first tree I plant in a new garden, would die. In mid winter Michael got a job. We didn't need the money, but he was so obviously bored, and when he announced that he had been offered a place at the hotel, I thought it might do us some good to have external situations and people to talk about, so I eagerly agreed that it was a good idea. Perhaps we would make some friends, and start some kind of social life together. We had been too isolated, too alone on the farm. So I encouraged him. It meant late nights alone for me up on the farm, but I didn't mind. He seemed excited and filled with purpose again, and when Michael was happy he was truly beautiful - he shone. I was glad to see him that way.
Spring came, and with it the mushrooms, which were sprouting in the orchard under the fruit trees, and could be found in the forests of Knysna. I bought a field guide, and delighted in ferreting out these wonderful fungi, chocolate ceilinged and lichen roofed, and then cooking them in butter and garlic. Mushrooms plucked early from the ground retain their earthy odour and flavour, and the muskiness of them is a hedonist's delight. I got to know which ones to pick.
Michael was very busy now; he had joined the Life Saving Club, and they rowed their big boat out and around the bay every week. He was working hard, and liked the people he met. He was enthusiastic, now, and sometimes he even forgot himself and impulsively hugged me. Hope dawned. I lured him home with special home baked breads and fresh fish; I fed him like there was no tomorrow. If I couldn't feed our marriage with love, if I couldn't feed it with intimacy, at least I could feed it. I was pouring all my energy into keeping Michael happy.
The day I realised it was all in vain was a perfect sunny September day: we had been invited to a holiday house on Beachy Head Road by some friends Michael had made at the hotel. We had been asked to bring oysters. For the first time, that day, Michael was up with the sun and down on the beach collecting oysters before I had let the chickens out. When he came home I saw that he had bought a bag of ice to lay them on. I hadn't seen Michael taking real trouble over anything for a long time, and wondered.
The house was very smart, right on Robberg Beach, done in stark white with bright art deco accents. A manservant opened the front door, and motioned us out onto the deck, where people were sitting around, and the tantalising tinkle of ice against crystal and the somnolent murmur of voices filled the air. A beautiful woman of about forty-five greeted Michael effusively, hugging him and keeping her arm around him as she introduced him to the others. Then she turned to me. "Oh, you must be Michael's wife," she said, "I don't recall your name".
"Jennifer" I replied. "Pleased to meet you". I still didn't have the faintest idea who she was.
"Oh, and this is Jenny, everyone," the woman sang, and then guided Michael to a seat at the edge of the deck. I looked at the company, feeling very spare in my ragged denim shorts and t shirt, and sidled to the nearest vacant chair, cursing myself for neglecting to dress properly. Someone put a drink in my hand. With pride dancing in his eyes, Michael was displaying his oysters and the woman was gushing about the size of them. His eyes didn't meet mine. No one spoke to me, so I sat cradling my drink, wishing I was back on the farm among familiar things.
It was some time before Michael came over. "How's it going?" he asked
"I don't know who anyone is." I said miserably. He pulled me out of my chair, and led me over to his hostess.
"Marguerite," he said, "I forgot to introduce you to Jenny. Jenny, this is Marguerite."
"What an oversight!" Marguerite cried. "Come and sit here, and join us."
So I joined my husband and his friend. She extended an oyster to me, her long purple fingernails bright on the sides of the barnacled grey shell. "Have one of these. They're simply divine," she said.
"An oyster fork?" I asked
"Oh my dear, we do the heathen thing and eat them with our fingers!" she cried. "But look! Your poor hands! You have no nails."
I looked down at my red and hardened hands, at my torn fingernails, which had dug and made grow all the good things in my garden, and I looked at her perfectly manicured hands, her long slim fingers secure with thick gold. Michael took the oyster from me, and loosened it. I tried to hide my hands, but had nowhere to put them, and I eventually reached out and accepted the shell from my husband. "Oh Belinda," yodeled Marguerite "Look at Jennifer's hands! What have you been doing, toch labour?"
"Oh, she's an earth mother!" exclaimed Michael. "Never happier than when she is grubbing about in dirt."
I glared at him but he smiled sarcastically at me, and then turned away to talk to someone else. Marguerite was engrossed in a conversation with Belinda, and I was back in limbo, being ignored. I had to go to the bathroom, but I didn't want to ask where it was. I didn't want to get up and walk through this crowd of trendy strangers to the house. I sat there miserably, waiting for Michael to finish his party with his friends.
I was angry because he should be the one feeling awkward in this company, not I; I was the one from the "good" family, the one with the money and the social connections. But I had lost all social dexterity through lack of use; I had chosen to become a hermit, and now I felt strange among all strangers. Michael was at his most charming, debonair, in fact, and the voices and laughter progressively got louder as the afternoon wore on. Drinks flowed, and someone kept topping up my glass. I just sat there, drinking it down, while the world got fuzzier and fuzzier. I felt sick and it was hot in the sun. Michael was telling his friends now about his racehorses. They were actually my mother's racehorses, but he had a tendency to adopt my family's possessions as his own. I had noticed this before, and overlooked it, but now I became aware that these horses belonged entirely to him, that my family did not even exist, and that I was merely an irritating shadow he had to put up with. I wanted to go home.
Eventually I had to ask where the bathroom was, and a jovial fellow with a scarlet face and several chins directed me down a very long, white, sterile corridor. The bathroom was entirely tiled in mirrors, and my reflection leaned out at me from all angles - a scruffy, tanned blond person with split ends and ragged nails. What was I doing here, among these creamed and coifed creatures? I decided to go straight back out there and ask Michael to take me home. I washed my face and hands, but that didn't really help - I still looked, and felt, like a street urchin.
As I was making my way back onto the deck, I heard Marguerite's shrill voice: "What a funny little thing she is, Michael. Where on earth did you find her?", and Michael's reply "Oh, we're more like siblings than spouses. It's a marriage in name only." I came out onto the sunny deck chilled to my bones, my heart shattering into a thousand crystal pieces. "Michael," I said, not caring who heard me, "please take me home". He did take me home, but the damage was done.
It was a relief to be back on the farm. Michael was behaving as though he didn't know that I had overheard him; everything was still the same for him. Something in me was gone completely, however, and I couldn't look on him with any love now. I went into the bathroom and scrubbed at my offending hands until they were raw. Then I told Michael that I was feeling ill, and would go to bed. "In that case," he said coolly, "I'll go back to the party, if you don't mind." I walked to the bedroom without another word.
I lay awake all night, my mind constantly reliving the events of the afternoon. "More like siblings than spouses" "What a funny little thing" The voices echoed through my being, and I could not shut them out. Michael didn't love me. He had betrayed me, he had chosen strangers over me, and he was ashamed of me. I had brought him here, to my beautiful, holy place, to heal our marriage, and he had taken it from me. My heart, my soul, my self-esteem, had been robbed by a greedy pirate.
Michael did not come home that night. When the sun at last came up, and the birds were twittering outside proclaiming another beautiful spring day, I got up from the bed and dressed. My limbs felt strangely numb, and the only sensation I could feel was a peculiar tingling in the palms of my hands. It was cool outside, and the dew lay thickly on the grass. I let the chickens out, and then made my way to the orchard. The bay lay calmly blue before me, and Robberg's rocks glowed golden in the early sunlight. There were mushrooms dotted everywhere, like fairy circles, sprinkled with dew. Automatically I began to pick them, shaking them so their spores would return to the ground, before piling them into the front of my shirt. I was numb and tired, raw and taut as a cable. Then I saw it. On it's own, nestling under my lemon tree, was a mushroom slightly different to the others; it was a Death Cap. I had been warned about these mushrooms, I knew how to recognise them, I had left them there in the field before. But this mushroom seemed to call to me: "pick me and I will solve all your problems". I went back to the cottage and fetched the yellow rubber gloves from the kitchen, and returned to the orchard. The mushroom squatted there, waiting for me. I bent down, picked it, and carried it to the kitchen. It looked harmless enough, but I knew how deadly poisonous it was. Yet I wasn't rationalising my actions; I was on autopilot. The sun was well up in the sky when I heard the combi coming up the driveway. I put the pan with butter and garlic on the stovetop, and slipped in the sliced mushrooms. I smiled brightly as Michael strode into the room, brimming with life and confidence. "Hullo, Darling." I said "Just in time for breakfast".
THE END
BACK TO SHONA'S PAGE"
THE WRITERS CLUB MAIN PAGE