I Heart Beat by Edyth Bulbring

Author:Edyth Bulbring
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471400629
Publisher: Hot Key Books
Published: 2014-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

WHEN I GO to bed on Friday night I enter the “talk about tomorrow” discussion in my file of some of my grossest conversations ever. It goes like this:

Beatrice says: “Grummer, the pubbingrill’s having a dance tomorrow night.”

Grummer replies: “Yes, Beatrice.” Awkward silence.

Beatrice says: “I want to go.” (And Beatrice thinks: I so do not want to go.)

Grummer asks: “Are you going to go on a date with Christoffel?”

Beatrice says: “It’s a sort of date.” (And Beatrice thinks: I’m so definitely not going on a date with Christoffel, or Toffie or any of his relatives. But you’ve got a date, Grummer, with Dr Simon Fridjohn.)

Grummer says: “I’m not sure if you’re old enough for this sort of thing.”

(Beatrice thinks: But you’re old enough.) And Beatrice says: “But I badly want to go.”

Grummer says: “I can’t let you go out alone at night. It’s not the right thing.”

Beatrice says: “You’re right, Grummer. I think you must come with me.”

And then Grummer decides and says she’ll come — but just for a short time. But we have to go shopping and buy “something pretty” to wear. I think that’s an excellent idea. Grummer could do with something a little more jazzy. Her wardrobe really is on the dull side of dowdy.

Then Grummer has her turn to “talk about tomorrow”. This also occupies a place of honour in my file of grossest conversations ever.

I don’t say much. I just count the liver spots on Grummer’s hands as she talks on and on.

Here is a paraphrase of it: Grummer has a terrible “burden”. It’s all to do with that old man Mr September, who used to grow fruit and vegetables on this plot and then got chucked off the land in the olden days when apartheid was the big thing. Now tomorrow Grummer’s going to ask (firmly ask) Mr du Plooy to rip up the last of his garden and she is feeling bad about it.

Why? Now this is the killer: “Mr September lost his wife shortly after they were forced to move to Die Skema. But he came back one night after the funeral and sprinkled her ashes in the garden … among the quince trees,” Grummer says.

I keep awake by concentrating on making my feet go numb. Then my ankles and then my calves. I move suddenly and it gives me this crazy, tingling feeling.

“Yes, I was also terribly moved by Mr September’s story. You see, Beatrice, I scattered your grandfather’s ashes in our rose garden at home. And whenever I see those roses, I imagine that there is something of your grandfather in those wonderful blooms,” Grummer says. And she goes for one of those tissues she likes to hold captive in her bra strap.

Grummer’s big dilemma is that she wanted to plant a garden that Grandpa would like — an English country garden full of hollyhocks and roses, elms and oaks — not rotten old fruit trees. Grummer asks me what I think.

I think it all sounds completely gross and boring.

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