‘Vinkie … the farm …’
Roeloff bent down, straining his ears to hear.
‘Take care … of them.’
Roeloff waited for him to continue, but Willem Kloot didn’t speak again.
‘Pa!’
There was a small gasp, then his father’s eyes rolled back in his head. Roeloff watched him drift slowly away, the hand coming to rest on the sheet. He didn’t go out to the others. He was angry, angry at the unfairness, angry at God. How could he come back now, after so many years, only to have his father taken away? Hadn’t he lost him before? He sat by the bed, sobbing into his hands, his grief welling up like a hot spring—for the lost years, for the grandfather who’d loved him, for his brother’s betrayal, for the child sitting by himself when they carried his mother away. He’d never acknowledged that child. Never took time to deal with his pain. He’d carried the pain inside him all these years, silent and sleeping. The grief ripped from his chest in a groan.
The others found him lying almost on top of the corpse, and Pietie Retief came over to console him.
‘Be content, Roff. It’s hard, but he waited for you. You made your peace.’
Roeloff cried into his shoulder.
‘He was always so strong, Oom Retief. How could he go just like that? I didn’t have much of my father.’
‘That’s how life is, son. We come for a few minutes of pleasure.’
‘I loved him. Even then.’
‘And he loved you. That was what ate at him. He wasn’t the same after you left. He knew he’d made a mistake, that it wasn’t you who’d killed that horse. That horse caused a lot of trouble. One shouldn’t say this about brothers—and may God rest his soul—but you were the one he loved most, your mother’s child. He never got over Lisbeth.’
Sanna came in carrying the tin tub for the women to wash down the body, and he noted with a certain detachment that Jan Joubert was directing things. He was too numb to think. Neeltje was right, he should have prepared himself, but as always he didn’t like to think of the worst and other people always saw further than he did.
He left the house through the kitchen and walked down the path to the dam. There was a certain comfort in seeing the familiar faces of Hennerik, Kupido, Kleintje, and some of the other Koi-na. No one knew whether to come forward to commiserate with him, or to keep at a respectable distance. A few minutes later he arrived at the spot where he’d once pulled his sister from the muddy water, and sat down. It all seemed a lifetime ago. His father, the stallion, his brother. It was still hard to think of David, but the grief had lessened, there was remorse where before there had only been pain.
‘Roff?’
He turned.
‘Ma said to come get you. People are asking for you.’
‘Sit down, Tinktinkie.’
Her face brightened a little.
‘No one calls me Tinktinkie anymore.’
‘Are you too grown up for that?’
‘No. Will you go away again, Roff?’
‘No.’
‘You will stay on Kloot’s Nek?’
‘Yes.’
She started crying suddenly and pressed her face into his shoulder.
He held her close, letting her cry out her grief. He could hear again the voices of Drieka and Sanna and Diena as they came running across the grass, their shouts as he pulled Vinkie from the water. He had raised his voice to his stepmother that day. It was all silent now, the pieces of driftwood sticking out of the milky brown water, the stillness of the trees. In a few hours his father would be put in the ground. Consigned to darkness and silence. He would never hear Willem’s voice again.
He got up and she put her hand into his.
‘I knew you would come back.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Pa told me.’
They walked slowly back to the house.
The kitchen was filled with faces he knew, and some he saw for the first time. Six new families had trekked to the Hantam. People spoke in whispers, and embraced him with their sympathies, filing in and out of the voorkamer paying their respects. Neeltje was feeding Harman at the table, and he went with Vinkie to sit next to her, where he listened to Jan Joubert at the other end telling Retief of the sheep he’d recently lost. Roeloff waited for him to finish speaking.
‘I was thinking that perhaps the funeral should be in the morning instead of the day after next.’
Joubert looked at him, surprised.
‘We’re waiting for more people, Roff. And the field cornet has to verify the cause of death. It’s customary to wait three days.’
‘I could send a message to the field cornet and let him know. My father’s been lying here—well, we can’t have the corpse ripening in the heat. If it wasn’t dark, I’d do it now.’
The room fell silent. The new master had spoken. And what he proposed was unthinkable.
‘Now?’
