The Viewers

The afternoon had slipped from the house without saying ‘Goodbye’ - Clement could see it through the frosted glass of the front door, just hanging around, loitering in the street. He sat on the stairs watching the blurred shapes of people passing. Periodically, people would come up the path to the door.

‘We have more visitors,’ Uncle Pieter would say, at the jangling of the bell. Aunt Cecile would appear again from the back parlour, stand at the hall mirror and raise her hand to adjust her hair as necessary.

Uncle Pieter would open the door and greet the visitors, taking hats and coats and laying them across his arm.

‘Thank you for coming,’ he would say. ‘Thank you indeed.’

‘We wanted to pay our respects. Such a lady, such a lady.’

‘Thank you, thank you. Cecile will take you in.’

Aunt Cecile would greet them then, and guide them along the hallway into the gloom of the back parlour. Clement could hear the door opening, the creak of subtle hinges and a silence descend upon the party. The door would close and then after a moment, low, indistinct voices would rumble around the room - a reassuring rumble, like the rumble of the weights in the sash window in Clement's bedroom. After a few minutes the rumble would cease and the hinges of the door would creak again as the party re-emerged. Breath would be released and the visitors would move slightly more quickly towards the front door.

‘So peaceful,’ one would say, as Uncle Pieter returned his coat.

‘As if she had just fallen asleep.’

‘Such a lady. Such a lady.’

And the visitors would wish Uncle Pieter ‘goodbye’ and tell him how sorry they were that Mutti was gone.

‘Oma,’ muttered Clement to himself. ‘She is my Oma.’

Sometimes someone would see him sat there upon the stair, running his fingers around the turns of wood of the bannister. They would see him and grant him a soft, sad smile. Maybe they would turn to Uncle Pieter and ask ‘And how is...?’ but they would never say his name, but simply angle their heads and slip their eyes sideways that Pieter might fathom their enquiry.

‘He... he is calm. He is young.’ Their eyes would drift up towards Clement. ‘Cecile will take him.’

‘Good. Good. Well, if there’s anything...’

‘Thank you, thank you.’

And then the hallway would be empty again, and through the frosted glass Clement would watch the blurred shapes of the visitors move swiftly down the path to the road and away.

The clock in the front parlour counted out eight soft chimes.

Uncle Pieter came through from the back parlour where he had been sitting with Oma and Cecile. There was a practical energy in his movements that Clement knew from when they had gone fishing together, or from last Christmas when he had watched Uncle in Oma’s back yard splitting wood on Christmas morning.

‘There can be no more tonight, surely,’ he said as he swept the heavy woollen curtain across the front door. He turned and winked up at Clement. ‘Are you still there, young man. Time for bed, is it not?’

Clement stood and climbed the stairs. He lay on his bed feeling the ceiling solid against the evening sky. Usually his mind would float through it to distant shores. But not tonight. Oma was gone and tonight the ceiling was fixed and heavy and would not release him. There were cracks across the plaster, and a grey cobweb wrapped around the chain that held the light. Tonight the brown mark that spread from above the window and across the ceiling was just an old water stain, not the cloud palace that Clement always dreamed it to be.

Oma had shown him places in the photograph albums in her study. Places she had seen - desert places, high mountains and dark ravines. Places with exotic names - Samarkand, the Hindu Kush. Cities in the sand. Black and white photographs of Mahouts upon stately elephants, of Bedouin nomads and their caravans of camels, people wrapped in strange clothing with dark brooding faces. Photographs of children with gaps in their teeth and earrings in their ears.

‘You, too, will see these things,’ Oma told him, ‘for you are an explorer of worlds. And this world will open to you just as it has to me.’

He felt her eyes settle upon him and her hand upon his head - the aged hand, the ringed fingers and the gnarled knuckles - gently stroking his hair across his forehead.

‘But you will go further than I,’ she said, ‘for you are stronger and braver and cleverer than I.’

But now Oma was gone. And the young woman who had taken the photographs, who had ridden the camel, had smiled at the children with gaps in their teeth and earrings in their ears, was now lying in a wooden box on the table in the back parlour. And Clement was no longer sure, and did not think he was brave and strong and clever. And now, nothing that Oma had said, would she ever say again.