The Safekeep(25)

Isabel would go upstairs. The tutor would come, and music would be played, and the tutor would go again, and Hendrik would stand outside and wave him goodbye and then stand there after he was gone.

And then, one day, the tutor came, and music was played, and the tutor left, and Hendrik was not outside on the drive and his bike was gone. Mother asked Isabel whether she had seen him, and Isabel said no, and Mother muttered to herself for a while and then said that it was soon to be dinnertime—soon to be evening, and could Isabel go and see if she could find Hendrik and bring him home?

Isabel went on her bike. It was a terrible spring day—the air overfull with pollen, the grasses a screaming green, the swallows dipping up and down and the sheep grazing on the sloping fields. Isabel biked over the dike with a scowl. The wind was strong. She found Hendrik’s bike tossed to the side near the sluice bridge. The tutor’s bike was there, too, leaned on top of Hendrik’s. They weren’t anywhere that Isabel could see. Down the one side of the dike there were the high waters; down the other, a grazing hill, a farm, a stand of trees.

The sun was bright and Isabel’s heart was racing. She left her bike with the other two and wandered. She thought, I should call his name, and couldn’t. The sheep scattered away from her. She went to the trees and there she found them: in the shadowed patch, on the ground, entangled. She had not made out much of what was happening, only the panting, the writhing, a quick hand, and Hendrik’s quiet Oh God. The man a bulk of a back hunched over him.

She turned around and walked and then ran and fell and hurt her knee and then got up again. Her hands were shaking. When she got home, the maid was setting the table for dinner, and Mother asked her, “Where is Hendrik?” And Isabel shook her head and shook her head and took loud and rattling breaths.

Her mother said, “Isabel? What is wrong? Isabel?” and Isabel fled upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom. She cleaned the mud and blood off her knees. She washed her face. Her mother knocked on the door. Isabel called out: “I fell. I fell off the bike. That is all.”

They were halfway through dinner by the time Hendrik returned. He was rumpled. Bright-eyed and happy and rumpled, came in with a ramble of “Oh, you started! What are we having, God I’m starving, hello, Mother,” and kissed her on the cheek. Sat at the table. He had mud on his shoulders. Mother asked, “Where have you been?” and Hendrik said, “Oh, just, out,” and Mother said, “I was worried,” and Hendrik said, “Why would you be worried? I just went for a bike ride.” And then, with half a potato in his mouth: “I biked a bit of the way with Edwin. It was a nice day for it.”

Mother watched him. Hendrik didn’t notice. His collar was folded inward, and there—a mark. The skin of his neck had been irritated to a mottle. Mother put down her cutlery. Isabel went cold in her seat. She finished her plate, and the food sat big and bulky in her stomach.

There were no more piano lessons after that. Isabel overheard a fight where her mother whispered tightly and Hendrik sobbed at the top of his voice and Isabel closed her bedroom door and pushed her hands to her ears. When that didn’t help, she sat on her bed and stuffed the entire corner of the quilt into her mouth and then all she could hear was her own breathing.

She caught Hendrik several days later. It was some unclear hour of night. He was trying to be quiet about it, but Isabel was a light sleeper, listening out for sounds: creaks, knocks. She heard him go down the stairs. She followed in her nightgown, feet quick on the icy floor. He noticed her then, and they fought by the front door in whispers, her saying, “You can’t—you can’t!” And his saying, “Can’t I? Are you going to stop me, Isa?” His breath was heavy with drink and he had a bottle of something in his jacket pocket. He was once a child and she had held him through his night terrors.

She said, “Why are you doing this?” And he just looked at her. Swayed on his feet a little. His eyes were wet. He went into the night, the sound of his bike loud in the garden. Isabel stood outside her mother’s door, unsure of what to do. The cold sunk into her legs, her thighs. She went back to bed and didn’t sleep at all and listened as the night broke, as a blackbird called out, as the rooster from the farm a kilometer away crowed. A car drove up to the house.

There came a knock on the door. Once, then three times in a loud row, and then a voice like authority calling out, asking whether anyone was awake, whether anyone was home. Isabel heard Mother’s door open, heard Mother’s shuffling, her bewildered muttering and her hurried movements down the stairs. Muffled voices. Isabel pushed aside the curtain to look outside—a police car. A low mist was clinging to the ground.

Isabel sat at the top of the staircase, held on to a spindle. She heard snatches of sentences, some man’s low burr of a voice: Hendrik had been shouting and drunk. Hendrik had tried to throw stones at a window. He had cried, he had woken up a suburban street.

The only thing Mother said was: “I see.” And, “I see.” And, “Thank you.” And, “Clear. I see.”

Hendrik said nothing, was silent through the whole thing. Tea was offered, declined. The officers left. Isabel pressed her face to the railing and closed her eyes. The house smelled like morning, like the oil used to polish the wood. Mother murmured softly to Hendrik, and Hendrik laughed in response; a mean laugh, a drunken laugh.

Mother’s voice rose: “I forbid it, Hendrik. I forbid it.”