Entertaining Angels by Marita van der Vyver

Author:Marita van der Vyver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Afrikaans writer, novel, trauma, miscarriage, collapse of her marriage, sense of humour, supported by family, rebuild her life, friends, therapist, fairy tales, liberation, happy ending
ISBN: 9780624063940
Publisher: Tafelberg
Published: 2011-08-06T16:00:00+00:00

16

Whatever Happened to Rumpelstiltskin?

The Christmas tree was small enough to stand on the coffee table. Nella had decorated it in gold and silver: it was as stylish as the grown-ups’ trees you see every year in glossy magazines.

Griet would have preferred a naïvely kitsch tree, with flickering lights and shaving-foam snow and all the other over-the-top decorations children love. She crouched before the tree in her parents’ living room and touched the spiky foliage. Even an artificial tree decorated by a child would have looked more alive than this real one turned into a piece of pretentious artwork.

A year ago she’d looked forward so much to this Christmas Eve. She had been seven months pregnant and irrepressibly excited about the adventure that lay ahead. She must be patient, her analyst told her: memories were like blood that congealed to form scabs. The problem was that dates kept coming up that scratched the scabs off. Tonight everything was all bloody again.

A year ago she and her husband had been alone, his children with their mother, her parents holidaying at the coast. She wanted to be with her parents, but he wasn’t in the mood for a family Christmas. So she’d given in and spent Christmas with her silent husband in his silent house.

‘Next Christmas everything will be different again,’ she promised him over a glass of sparkling wine. ‘The baby might even be crawling by then.’

They sat alone at the long dining room table in the empty house. It was impossible to believe that anything between them could ever be different to this unbearable reality. But she wanted to believe it so badly.

‘The house won’t be so quiet. Michael and Raphael will be here. I want to get a proper Christmas tree, and a turkey and plum pudding and all the trimmings, and invite my family over to join us for a change, for a real –’

‘Is it necessary to involve your family in the extravaganza too?’

‘Christmas is supposed to be a family feast.’ She laughed nervously because she didn’t want to quarrel on Christmas Eve. There were enough arguments, there were enough other evenings. ‘We could also invite your family, I don’t mind, but you probably wouldn’t …’

‘I can’t wait.’ George studied the trout on his plate critically. The fish looked raw, Griet realised. It was the first time she’d cooked trout. ‘It sounds like the perfect evening. My AWB brother will no doubt fall for your lesbian sister.’

‘George, I know it’s boring of me to be fond of my family.’ She felt as though she were posing for a camera, the muscles round her mouth sore from smiling. ‘I’d like to be able to suffer with you because I don’t get on with my parents and my siblings. It might have given me something to write about.’

‘Are you sure this fish is cooked through?’

‘Trout is supposed to be pink.’

She tasted the fish cautiously. It wasn’t raw. She was so relieved that she drained her glass in one gulp.

‘If I could have chosen, I would perhaps have chosen different parents.

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