An Unquiet Place Read online

  AN UNQUIET PLACE

  For the real author, the miracle maker, the only one who can bring something out of nothing. That is what he has done with me.

  Published in 2018 by Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd

  Company Reg No 1953/000441/07

  The Estuaries No 4, Oxbow Crescent, Century Avenue, Century City, 7441, South Africa

  PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

  www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za

  © 2018 Clare Houston

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  First edition, first printing 2018

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0962-2 (Print)

  ISBN 978-1-4152-1024-6 (ePub)

  Cover design by Riaan Willemse

  Author photograph by Shane Doyle

  Text design by Fahiema Hallam

  Set in Adobe Garamond Pro

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Suggested Reading

  CHAPTER ONE

  High on the plateau, evening crept across the sky. Swallows pitched and swung through the air, and a small breeze lifted the grasses, sending a ripple across the surface of the reservoir. The breeze shivered through the grey leaves of the old gums, and gently picked up the skirts of a woman carrying buckets across the flat ground. A fabric kappie hid her hair, its floppy brim obscuring her face. Her tattered skirts brushed the tops of buttoned boots, their soles gaping with each step. The tin buckets were heavy. The handles cut into her blistered hands, causing her to wince as she walked, her bony shoulders taking the strain.

  On the slope below the plateau, Alistair’s herd of blesbok looked up from their grazing and the male snorted a warning. The woman placed her buckets on the ground, side by side. Bending low, as if ducking through a low door, she disappeared.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘What do you want, Hannah? It’s nearly midnight.’

  ‘I need the paperwork for my car. You still have it.’

  ‘So? I can carry on licensing it for you. My secretary does it.’

  ‘No, I want to do it.’

  ‘Why? You’re useless at admin.’

  ‘Todd, it’s my car. I’m leaving Cape Town and I don’t want you to be involved any more.’

  ‘Jeez, Hannah, I was trying to be helpful. Fine. I’ll get Monique to run it over in the morning.’

  ‘No. I don’t want to see her. I’ll give you my new address.’

  ‘What new address? Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m moving to Leliehoek in the Free State.’

  ‘Where?’ She could hear his frustrated sigh. ‘Grow up, Hannah. Don’t sulk because Monique and I are now together. You left me, remember?’

  ‘Believe it or not, this isn’t about you. I’ve got a new job.’ His silence stretched for a moment before she filled it. ‘It’s in a bookstore. I need a break from … everything.’

  ‘I suppose you’re going to dump Patches on me before you go to Plaas Jaaphoek or wherever it is.’

  ‘No, Todd. She’s my cat. She and I are both going to have a new start.’

  ‘Seriously, Hannah. You’re really moving to the bundu? You? I don’t buy it. You’re just doing what you always do. Giving up and running away. I won’t hold my breath – you’ll be back.’

  ‘You’re such a bastard.’

  ‘Say what you like, Hannah. I know you. You won’t stick at this. You never engage. Never persist. You’ll bail at the first hurdle.’

  ‘Oh, piss off, Todd, and leave me alone!’

  ‘You called me.’

  Hannah swiped the call to an end, furious with herself. Why hadn’t she emailed him rather? Kept it impersonal.

  Rocking back in her chair, she stared at the old-fashioned ceiling of her room. She had grown up in the ramshackle Victorian house in Kenilworth, just above the railway line. Her parents lectured in the anthropology and classics departments at the university, treating the house much as they did Hannah. Spurts of attention every now and then, usually when something went wrong. Cupboard doors were replaced one by one as they came off their hinges, and flooring was replaced room by room as needed, the result a hodgepodge of styles and colour which Maud and Stephen Harrison rather liked.

  Piles of books inhabited every room, stashed behind couches or teetering on small tables. Hannah found the clutter overwhelming. When she had left Todd, she had walked away from rails of dressy outfits and work suits. An enormous shoe rack left untouched, except for her running shoes and a pair of blue plastic flip-flops. She didn’t know or care what Todd had done with all her stuff. She guessed the housekeeper had bundled it into black bags and had it delivered to the nearest SPCA shop. Monique would balk at even handling second-hand clothes, let alone wearing them. Hannah had seen a few pictures of them in the Sunday newspapers, usually on the society pages, and couldn’t help a small, malicious smile at the printing which had distorted their features so their eyes hovered to the left of their faces.

  She didn’t miss that life for a second, and just felt enormous relief that she no longer had to force herself into the ghastly miasma of false faces and breathless small talk. She had gone along with the bulldozing flow of Todd’s charisma from the moment they had met on Jammie steps all those years ago. A break between under-grad lectures, a patch of sun on an otherwise chilly Cape autumn day, and an introduction by someone in her English class were all it took to put her on a fast-moving track that had pulled Hannah along for so many years. The biggest betrayal was that their relationship had been instigated and driven by him, and then he had dropped her. Like a pair of old shoes. Shaped and moulded to fit his feet and then binned when he’d decided they were no longer useful. It bit her still.

  Hannah had sworn she would take control of her life at last. That said, she had moved back in with her parents, registered for a PhD, and struggled every moment to wade through something she wasn’t interested in. Coming back home after leaving Todd was like immersing herself in a familiar, suffocating pool.

  Her room hadn’t changed at all since school. Her blazer still hung in the cupboard and seeing it today, as she emptied her few clothes into a suitcase, brought a mix of fondness and leaking sadness at the memory of her young self. Boldly pretty and so confident she would make a success of her future. Honours braids and badges had set her up believing that the world was completely hers for the taking; that a career and a man and a family would fall into place as if owed to her. Now, at thirty, all she had to her name was a half-finished thesis that not even she wanted to read.

  Hannah climbed into her childhood bed and pulled the quilt up to her ear. She closed her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest and curling up
like a child. Her back was to the desk lamp, which cast a soft yellow glow across the room. It didn’t matter how many years passed. The dark still frightened her. Sometimes she wondered if she hadn’t stayed with Todd just so she wouldn’t be alone at night.

  The shrill alarm came far too quickly. Hannah stumbled from her bed. She pulled on her jeans, T-shirt, and a fleecy top, twisting her hair into a ponytail. Padding in her socked feet down the old staircase, she sat on the bottom step and pulled on her running shoes. Patchy followed her into the kitchen and Hannah quickly grabbed her, pushing her into the cat box. Patchy’s indignant expression made Hannah smile. ‘Patchy, you and I are going on an adventure.’ On the kitchen table was a bowl with ProNutro already poured, the sugar bowl set alongside it. Hannah peeped into an ice-cream tub next to her place and grinned at the neatly wrapped sandwiches and chocolate brownie that were packed inside. A thermos stood alongside the tub, and Hannah knew that inside would be sweet milky coffee. Nellie’s thoughtfulness brought a lump to Hannah’s throat. Nellie had worked for the Harrisons for as long as Hannah could remember. A solid presence at Hannah’s back, rather like that feeling when she woke in the night and lay facing the shadows in the room, but knowing that the wall was behind her – no attack could come from there.

  She gulped down her breakfast, picked up Patchy, and let herself out, pulling the door and hearing the Yale lock click into place. It seemed to signal a life closing behind her and, as she reversed her Mazda pickup out of the garage, she felt like she was heading into no man’s land. One door closed, and nothing yet open before her.

  The highways around Cape Town were never empty, and it was four am by the time Hannah cleared the outskirts of the city, heading up the N1 towards Paarl. The sun began to rise as she passed through the Hex River Valley, the sky lighting pink over black, ragged mountains. She passed the stony town of Laingsburg, her little Mazda purring as they cruised along, the landscape opening up into the spectacular expanse of the Karoo. Miles and miles of semi-desert, coloured in greys and oranges. Small sparse bushes dotted the ground and, in the distance, rose-blue mountains.

  The road stretched before and behind her in an absolutely straight blue ribbon to the horizon, the November sun glaring bright off the now silver-and-green landscape. Crossing the Orange River, the longest in South Africa, was a milestone in Hannah’s day. It marked her entry into the Free State, taking her well over the halfway mark. The landscape shifted after Bloemfontein to vast fields which stretched flat to the horizon. She passed kilometres of maize, wheat, and sunflowers. The golden light was softer and more forgiving than the bright white light of the Cape. She smiled to herself, fancying that maybe life here could also be so.

  At a small town called Winburg, she turned off onto the N5. As she passed the dusty-looking town, she caught a glimpse of tall concrete needle-like structures set back against the hillside. She had heard of the second Voortrekker Monument, dedicated to those fierce, determined pioneers who had crossed the rough country by ox wagon. Their history was much contested now. The apartheid government had turned the Voortrekkers into an idealised mythology and now the pendulum had swung, with their history removed from school curricula and their monuments defaced. Hannah wondered as she drove, What if somewhere in the middle, they were ordinary farmers looking for a quiet place to settle? She smiled at the thought of how wild that would make her mother. Her academic mother, who, despite – or perhaps because of – her Afrikaans roots, would now make a strong case against the Afrikaner history having any place in a new South Africa.

  When Hannah saw the first sign to Leliehoek, she gave a shout of triumph, ‘We did it, Patch! A freaking long way in one day and we did it.’ At half past five in the afternoon, she turned off the main road into the small town. A tall stone Dutch Reformed church stood on the corner, appearing too large for the scale of the little town. The light had faded, dimming the stretch of grass on the town square to blue-green. On the next corner, old trees shadowed a small stone Anglican church. The shops around the square were quaint. A gallery nestled alongside a cafe and a gift shop, and on the opposite corner Hannah could see a bistro-style restaurant. Next door was an attractive old house, newly painted white with a narrow stoep running along two sides. A metal sign hung on one of the stoep’s wooden pillars, ‘Leliehoek Books’.

  Hannah parked alongside the house. As she was rummaging for her bag in the debris of the passenger footwell, a short man with dark curly hair and thick black-framed spectacles opened the garden gate at the back of the house. He stood on the pavement with his hands in his back pockets, grinning at Hannah.

  ‘You are so welcome, Hannah Harrison,’ he said. ‘I told Chris that we must wait – and here you are!’

  Giving up on her bag, Hannah unfolded her long, stiff legs from the car and was engulfed in a hug, just managing to squeak, ‘Hi, Tim,’ before the breath was squeezed out of her.

  ‘You must be so tired from that drive, goodness me … Let’s get you inside. Chris is champing at the bit and the car is all packed. Our flight to Oz leaves on Sunday and we’re spending our last day with friends in Joburg. I can’t believe we’re actually leaving. I know Chris needs to explore this. I know he does. He’s given up so much for me, you know, agreeing to live in the backwoods and working from home. Now’s his chance to try something new.’

  Hannah nodded, her scrambled brain only just keeping up with the continuous stream of chatter. ‘How long will you stay in Australia?’

  ‘For the foreseeable future. We need to give it a proper shot, you know? Although I just couldn’t bring myself to sell this place. Not until we know for sure that it will work out over there. I need some security, and we worked so hard on it.’

  Tim steered her up the garden path. A tall, distinguished-looking man opened the French door with a smile.

  ‘I’m Chris. Come in,’ he said.

  She stepped into a spacious kitchen, decorated in country style. It was furnished with free-standing antique pieces. A dresser with glass-fronted doors held a collection of pretty, mismatched china, and a square kitchen table and chairs stood in the middle of the room. Set below a window was a rectangular porcelain sink, plumbed into a concrete plinth with an old-fashioned copper tap and spout.

  ‘This is gorgeous,’ Hannah said.

  ‘We just love it!’ said Tim. ‘Country Life did a feature last year – you might have seen it? We’re auction addicts, so we’ve picked up bits and pieces over the years, and it’s all just come together so beautifully.’

  ‘Let’s show Hannah the rest of the house,’ said Chris, ‘and then we really must be getting on the road.’ He ushered Hannah into the passage. To the right was a small bathroom.

  ‘That bath is the pride of the house,’ said Tim, peeking over Hannah’s shoulder. ‘We found it in the compost heap. Can you believe it? Look at those clawed feet.’

  Hannah smiled back at him. ‘We have two at home, but my parents’ bathrooms haven’t been updated since … well, ever really.’

  ‘Ooh, authentic,’ said Tim.

  ‘More like neglected,’ said Hannah, grinning.

  ‘And this,’ Tim continued his tour, ‘is our tiny lounge–study. You know, in summer we live on the deck outside, so it’s really only in winter or on rainy weekends that we sit here. And we do use the fireplace,’ he said, gesturing at a small Victorian stove. ‘It’s heaven on a freezing night – warms up the whole house actually.’

  ‘There’s Wi-Fi throughout the house and garden – I use it for work,’ said Chris from the doorway. Another French door, like the one in the kitchen, led out onto the wooden deck with a wrought-iron table and chairs.

  The garden, in the soft early evening, was lovely. It had been carefully planted to look wild, with roses rambling amid meadow grasses and herbs. Clumps of aloes broke the softness with their thick structured leaves. Hannah could see the hand of a clever gardener.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Hannah.

  ‘It’s Chris’s work,�
� said Tim. ‘I just follow instructions and do the manual labour.’

  Hannah turned back inside and found the last room in the house. The bedroom window looked onto a narrow strip of garden that bounded the property. A tall hedge marked the fence line, and between this and the house was a grove of small trees, planted close together, groundcover spread at their feet.

  ‘Those trees are just alive with birds in the mornings,’ said Tim, ‘gorgeous to wake up to.’ Chris rolled his eyes at Hannah, who smiled. Cotton rugs were spread on the wooden floor and, like the other rooms, simple antique furniture was used to create a neutral, fresh look.

  ‘And lastly, the shop,’ said Tim. ‘I told you that Barbara would be in tomorrow to really give you the rundown. She’s lovely. Organised but not bossy, which is the exact opposite of me, so we made a great team.’

  A door blocked the passage. Tim opened it and led the way into the other half of the house. Hannah breathed deeply, the woody scent of old books floating on the air.

  ‘These two rooms must’ve been the front living rooms of the old house – they work perfectly for the shop,’ said Tim, standing aside to let Hannah pass. ‘This room on the right is where we keep our second-hand stock.’

  Polished wooden floorboards warmed the feel of the room, echoing comfortingly as Hannah entered. White-painted bookshelves reached from floor to ceiling around the room. Books filled the shelves, stacked with their spines facing out. Hannah ran her finger along their edges, leather and gilt alongside faded fabric and cracked paperback.

  A Victorian tiled fireplace stood at one end of the room with a battered leather couch and a velvet-upholstered wing-back chair facing the fireplace. An antique table and chairs stood in the centre of the room. It had the feel of an old-fashioned English reading room, and Hannah smiled at the thought of spending her days there.

  ‘Working here might be a problem,’ she said, quickly adding as Tim turned to her with frown, ‘I mean, with all these books and this room. So distracting.’