Heaven Forbid

Christopher Hope

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781782397366
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

In the sunny jacaranda-leafed garden of his Johannesburg home, six year old Martin Donally is king of a small and perfect world. It is 1948 and life is full of childish rhymes and his colourful extended family. There's exuberant Grandpa, who sings and races horses; chain-smoking Auntie Fee, who always sides with the ogres in fairy tales and who makes up her own stories about Martin's dead father; and above all, Georgie, the family's Zulu servant and Martin's confidant. But this cosy world of certainty ends as Martin's tale turns to political and personal tragedy. He can't possibly foresee the defeat of the liberal government that will usher in a new era of bigotry and intolerance, not appreciate the significance of the fact that Dr Verwoerd, architect of apartheid, is a neighbour. And what is he to make of dour, racist Gordon, his mother's husband-to-be, a man who seems determined to shatter the carefree world of the Donallys for good...

1. At the Villa Vanilla

When I was about five, I used to lie in bed and think about my past. Back to when it was just my mom and me. When we lived with my grandpa, when we had a deal. In the Days Before Raymond, in the Time Before Gordon. Before I was denuded, desiccated, discombobulated … before I discovered dynamite.

Every afternoon Georgie would swing me up onto the gatepost. The front gate was dark and wooden, and it faced Sligo Road. On the gatepost was a slab of stone, flat, good for looking down from, for seeing right down to the end of the road. A boy could sit there and wait for his mom to climb off that tram and come home from Consolidated Federal, where the ledgers were. Each afternoon she came home on the tram. It was red and cream, that tram, with a bell. She climbed off at Park Lake.

My grandpa told me he came to Parkside because it spoke to him of Ireland. The names of the streets were songs, and I sang them. Derry was the next street down; Wexford was the next street up. Then came Bally-murphy, then Mourne … Sligo Road ran down to Erin Avenue, and across Erin was Park Lake, where the tram stopped.

Up the road from Park Lake was the zoo, and in the zoo was a cage of lions, big and yellow and tired and dusty. They walked up and down all day in their cage. On my birthday, my mom and me, we went to the zoo and rode in a little box on the elephant’s back, with a pink umbrella over our heads, all the way from the monkeys to the seals. We passed the lions and she didn’t even blink but at night she cried in her sleep.

My grandpa painted his house cream. He called it the Villa Vanilla. The shutters were yellow, the red tin roof had a curving lip. There was a palm tree in the middle of our lawn. I was at home in the garden but the garden was not my home.

My mom came walking up Sligo Road in the cool of the afternoon, wearing a big white hat and a frock with yellow daisies. I wore my Robin Hood hat with the feather and I waited for her to come home.

You could rely on it.

When she saw me she’d begin to run, wobbling on her high heels, holding onto her hat. When her skirt lifted I’d see her ankles, and her stockings gave her legs a buttery sheen, smooth to the eye but, when you touched them, rough as cement. Her best nylons – they cost the earth. She’d lift me off the gatepost (you could bet on it), she’d say: ‘Hello, darling.’ She’d kiss me, then she’d say: ‘By golly. What a day. I’ve had ledgers in chunks. I don’t care if I never see another blooming ledger – as long as I live.’

You could depend on it. Yes, siree.

I had a green hood with a tall green feather in it. I didn’t have a tunic, but I had a hollow in my leg, right at the top. I didn’t know how I got it, but she did. She’d push her fingernail right into the hollow – push, push, push – ‘My golly, can you feel that? There! Know what it is? That’s pure bone. That’s where they put the needle in, when you were a baby. Again and again. We thought we’d lost you. How could you, Martin? To your very own mother. Some day I won’t be here. Then what?’

‘Then what?’

‘Then you’ll be sorry, won’t you?’

‘I will.’

‘It’ll be too late. You’ve only got one mother. Know what I mean?’

I knew what she meant. I was sorry even before it was too late. Hansel and Gretel got lost. Anyone without a fine sense of woodcraft got lost in Sherwood Forest. Except Robin Hood. He knew every leaf of the greenwood. James Morisson lost his mother at the end of the town, though he was only three. I knew how it felt. I knew every leaf in Sligo Road and if she ever got lost, I’d find her.

My room was next to her room. When I heard her cry the first time, I woke up and went through to her bed and climbed in and shook her.

Her voice spoke in the dark. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘You were crying and crying.’

‘Was I, darling? Fancy. Oh, Martin, just hark at them. Goll-ee. Isn’t it a good thing you’re right next door? It’s when they ruin my sleep that I cry. That’s the night-lions. Know what I mean? I’m not scared in the daytime. I’m as tough as an old boot. But at night … Who wants to be gobbled up by some mangy old night-lion you can’t see? Before you’ve time to say excuse me. Or, kiss my foot. I’ve had night-lions in chunks. Know what I mean?’

I knew what she meant. She didn’t like lions or ledgers or the past or the war or the dead or drunks. She had a soft spot for the little pig who built his house of bricks and cooked up the Big Bad Wolf in a cauldron.

‘I’m glad he did. Imagine how you’d feel if that wolf turned up at your door, his tummy rumbling with his sharp digestive juices, just dying to gobble you up …’ She shivered. She did a good shiver. ‘It feels like someone just walked over my grave. Know what I mean?’

I knew what she meant. If you had the wolf at your door, huffing and puffing, you’d better not build your house from straw. If you didn’t want to be dissolved in his sharp digestive juices you built with bricks. I was the bricks she built her house with.

She didn’t like war.

‘You won’t catch me dwelling on what’s dead and gone. Not me. Oh-o-o, no blooming fear. I don’t want to see another war – not till my dying day. No thank you. I’ve had war in chunks.’

She didn’t like Boers, she’d had Boers in chunks. For being ruddy hypocrites, the whole bally bang-shoot of them. They gave her the heebies, just thinking of them gave her the pip, and a cadenza.

She didn’t like running balances. ‘Running balances can be tricky. I know someone – he can do double-entry. Fancy that.’

She didn’t like lightning. ‘Never stand out when there is lightning in the sky, never ever use a telephone, or get in a swimming pool – or stand under a tree. A tree is the worst place to be near in a bad electric storm. Lightning loves a tree. A lightning strike can burn all the grass for miles around.’

What she did like were clothes and pearls and policemen and our deal, because we had a deal and we promised it was for ever. When the night-lions woke her, and I came to her, she pulled me into her bed and hugged me. The lions were tearing up the night.

She held my hand. ‘Just listen to them. Aren’t you glad we’re in here and they’re out there?’

I listened. They roared like a big yellow sea in the dark.

‘I’ll look after you.’

‘Will you, darling? Keep an eye out? For ever and ever? Promise me …’

‘I w...

Table of contents

• About the Author
• Also by Christopher Hope
• Heaven Forbid
• Copyright page
• Epigraph
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1. At the Villa Vanilla
• 2. What a Boy Needs
• 3. Gumpf
• 4. Building the Country
• 5. Playing Politics
• 6. Rabbit Scoff
• 7. Lightning
• 8. Cherubim
• 9. The Glorious Dead
• 10. College Men
• 11. Keeping an Eye
• 12. A Pike of My Own
• 13. Visitors
• 14. Border Country
• 15. Home
• 16. The Price of Eggs
• 17. Marching Orders
• 18. Top-hole
• 19. Bombs Away
• 20. Onions
• 21. In Flagrante
• 22. Lake Como
• 23. Teepees
• 24. The Walk
• 25. Little Green Apples
• 26. Gordon the Good
• 27. The Troll
• 28. The Mirror
• 29. Balls
• 30. The Gay Gordon
• 31. Any Day Now
• 32. The Bitch
• 33. Our War
• 34. How I Discovered Dynamite
• 35. Iron in the Soul
• Acknowledgements