18. Durban, 1992 - Packing
In which Eleanor is hiding something.
Alasdair grapples with the weight of Eleanor's choices. What is really going on with her?
Alasdair
Fuck.
Alasdair McRoberts looks down at Eleanor’s slim—no, thin—form lying on her bed where he’s placed her, still in her wet clothes from the shower he had to give her. Gently he removes her glasses and places them on her desk, strips off her wet clothes, finds a T-shirt and gets it over her. Eleanor is floppy and hardly helping, she’s that out of it. Finally done, he pulls the duvet up over her. He can’t help but tuck a lock of her long, dark, now disheveled, wet hair behind one ear. He’s tried to get all the puke out of it; he’s not sure he has. Her pale face, so expressive when awake, is still and peaceful now.
Fuck. Is she going to be okay?
She had gone from happy, dancing drunk, to blind, fall-down drunk so quickly. It had taken him completely off guard.
He tries to review the evening again in his own mushy head. What exactly had happened? He remembers Eleanor stating that she’d never gone clubbing earlier in the evening, and he, Meredith and Sebastian, Meredith’s boyfriend, had decided that of course that needed to be rectified, and no time like right now. So they’d gone to one of the clubs on North Beach. All he remembers is Eleanor and Meredith dancing, then he was holding Eleanor up outside while she retched, some of it getting on her clothes, in her hair, on her shoes.
Sebastian had driven them back to campus. By that point Elle hadn't even been able to walk up the stairs to the residence hall; he’d had to pick her up and carry her in his arms. She’d felt too light. When he’d asked her a week ago about her weight loss, she’d made some flip comment about “You know, dining hall food, it’s enough to turn anyone off eating,” and then snapped at him when he’d pressed her. “I’m fine, Alasdair. Stop being my mother.” He didn’t know what to make of that.
He knows she’s been pouring herself into her studies. She’s intensely studious, and with this being her final semester she’s doubled down on her work. But then she also has this whole other adventurous, playful, free-spirited side where she’s up for anything—like tonight. And a dark sense of humor that appeals to him. But dammit, she can also be so darn stubborn and willful sometimes.
He shakes his head, trying to clear the fuzz from his brain. He has to get to rowing now, but he resolves to drop by Meredith’s place on his way back to see what she knows or remembers. He won’t get any sleep until later, but he’ll manage.
He leans down to plant a soft kiss on her forehead. A little snore escapes her, then she settles back to regular, deep breathing. A sigh of relief escapes him. She’s just going to have to sleep this one off, then. She’s going to have a doozy of a hangover when she wakes up, though. He makes a mental note to bring Enos, paracetamol and orange juice with him when he comes back.
He moves quietly to the door, takes another look at her, then closes it softly behind him.
Later, his head cleared by a hard row on the Durban harbor, and freshened by a shower and lunch at home, he heads to Meredith’s, where he finds her in the kitchen. She’s still in her PJs and looking rather the worse for the wear.
“Hungover?” he asks her, lightly resting a hand on her shoulder and giving her a gentle squeeze.
“Argh,” grunts Meredith, resting her head on her arms at the table. “My head,” she mutters indistinctly. “Eleanor partied hard last night.”
“Yeah, I noticed. What was that? It’s like something got into her.” He reaches for a glass in the cabinet, fills it with water and pulls out a chair, automatically swinging it around so he sits in it backwards.
Meredith just grunts again.
“Merri, have you noticed that Eleanor’s lost weight?”
Meredith turns her head to one side, looks hard at him through clouded eyes. “No, Alasdair. I haven’t. I’m blind, remember?” There’s a note of bitterness in her voice.
Alasdair winces. “I’m sorry, Merri. That was insensitive of me.” He fidgets uncomfortably with the glass in his hands, turning it and turning it. “I just wondered if you might have picked up on something. Or if she’s said anything to you—” he hesitates, “or if something is going on for her—?”
“No, she hasn’t said anything to me.” Meredith turns her head back into her hands.
“Did something happen last night?” he tries again, after a pause. “She just went from fine to fall-down drunk. She’d only had, like three or four drinks, right?”
Meredith sighs. “I wasn’t counting her drinks, Alasdair,” Meredith says somewhat testily. “Eleanor makes her own decisions. She doesn’t have to report to me.”
“Okay, okay, no need to bite my head off, Merri. I’m just trying to puzzle it out. I’m a bit worried about her.”
“I get it,” Meredith says, reaching out a hand, finding his, and patting him placatingly. “I think she’s just processing shit. You know, the negotiations breaking down, final semester, her baby brother, Boipatong1, Bisho2, everything that’s happening in the country.” She sits up. “You know how she is, Al. She feels the world—all of it. She can take things so seriously.”
And too personally, Alasdair thinks to himself.
“Now that I think of it, I do remember one conversation from last night, though,” Meredith leans back in her chair, blowing a strand of hair away from her face. “Do you remember Chester, that douchebag from high school?”
“Yeah?” says Alasdair, his voice rising questioningly.
“We ran into him. I think you were off getting drinks. I remember Seb saying something like, ‘Seriously, boet, you packing? For clubbing?’ And I felt Eleanor recoil next to me.” Alasdair cocks his head to one side. “Yeah, Alasdair, I can hear body language, one doesn’t have to see it. Like, I can hear your eyebrows just shot up to the ceiling right now.” Alasdair chuckles ruefully. Meredith and he go way back, to elementary school. She knows him so well.
“And Chester, that racist slimeball, said something like ‘Well, if they’re going to release that murdering fucker McBride3, we need to watch out for ourselves. And he better watch out too. If he dares show his fucking Colored face in Durbs, I’m gonna show him what I think about what he did.’ His voice was just dripping with menace. It sent a shiver down my spine.” Meredith shivers in her chair. “Then you came back and he scarpered off. You know how he detests you ever since you landed that punch at school that put him on his racist ass, and the school only gave you detention, while he was suspended for a week, and missed playing in rugby finals.”
Alasdair nods with grim satisfaction. Chester had deserved that. He was just a bullying bigot, always spoiling for a fight. If he’d heard Chester say that last night, he might have punched him in the face again. Good thing that the cooler-headed Seb had been the one to hear it.
He thinks of Eleanor, sleeping off last night in her room. Not being from Durban she might not know just how visceral the hate towards McBride is. The speculation that he is going to be released along with other political prisoners is re-opening very raw wounds around here. He’s not comfortable with the idea of McBride being released either, but Chester packing a gun? To a club? Then mouthing off like that? And he knows how sensitive Eleanor can be. There’s almost a fragility to her sometimes. She feels things so intensely. It’s part of her charm, but it can also be wearying. How did his father describe Eleanor? Oh right, “a high strung thoroughbred filly”. Crass. But not necessarily inaccurate.
“Thanks Merri,” he gets up and pushes his chair back in. “I better head back to her now. Not sure if she’s ever had a hangover before—and this is likely to be a mother of a one. Can I get you anything before I head out?”
“Blood transfusion?” Meredith grins back at him hopefully. “Nah, I’m good. Nothing that water and Panado4 can’t take care of.”
“See you, later then, sis,” he gives her a hug as he leaves.
Eleanor stirs as he comes into her room. He leans down and gives her a kiss. She groans. “Can you stop the room from spinning around and around?”
“Put a leg out, see if that does it.”
She does. “Nope, still spinning.”
“Have some OJ, Enos and Panado then. I brought some.”
She pushes herself upright, feels for her glasses automatically. He reaches behind himself to the desk and hands them to her. She puts them on and then peers at him bleary eyed. She’s rather a disheveled mess. “Which way did that truck go?” she asks him croakily.
“Right through your liver,” he laughs. “Here,” he hands her the OJ and two Panados. She gulps them down greedily.
“Thanks, I needed those.” She looks down, pulls a strand of hair up to her face, sniffs and pulls a face. “Phew, I stink.”
Alasdair throws up his hands in mock surrender. “I plead the fifth, ma’am.”
“Alright. Shower first. Then maybe I’ll feel human again.” She fumbles out of bed. “I’m starving,” she adds as she grabs her shower stuff from the cupboard. “Any chance you’ve got food? I could eat a horse,” she glances at her alarm clock, “and the dining hall is closed.”
“Nope, sorry. How about Nando’s?” He knows she loves their chicken.
“We have a date, then,” she winks at him. “Back in ten.”
Book Club #2: The Messy Middle, with Guests
Saturday, December 7 10am ET (US) 5pm South Africa
The real-life inspirations for Alasdair and Meredith will be joining us, as well Kate Webster, the daughter of the Canadian Ambassador to South Africa at the time (who also attended St Anne’s).
Boipatong Massacre, 17 June 1992. Supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), rival to the ANC for political power, massacred 45 residents of Boipatong township. The ANC claimed that the South African Police Force was complicit in the attack. The ANC withdrew from the negotiations on the new South Africa as a result of the massacre.
Bisho Massacre, 7 September 1992. 28 members of the ANC were shot dead by the Ciskei Defense Force during a protest march to demand reincorporation of Ciskei into South Africa. The Bisho massacre led to the ANC and apartheid government resuming negotiations.
Robert McBride, also known as the Magoo’s Bar bomber. He was a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress. He was convicted of terrorism, and sentenced to death in 1986, after he bombed Magoo’s Bar, a busy Durban night club, in an attack that killed three white women and injured 69 people. He was released from death row in October 1992, as part of the release of political prisoners that the ANC demanded.
Common South African brand of paracetamol (acetaminophen).