Crime Beat

CHAMELEON is a story about trading on the JSE, white collar crime, teenage pregnancy and a career in the circus. Catch up on the connection between them by reading the BLOCK-BLOOK which is published every ten episodes to get both new and regular readers up to date.

INSTALLMENT TWENTY-ONE

My father wasn’t the only one to remind me of my schoolgirl indiscretions with Jerome. Beth also brought it up as we sat in consultation mode on our verandah, discussing the crisis.

‘You haven’t got much room to rant and rail about Lisa,’ she pointed out. ‘God, I remember how jealous I used to feel when you told me all the lurid details about the legendary Jerome. I used to lie in my bedroom every night brooding that it was never going to happen to me. I struggled to get anyone to dance with me at that stage – let alone seduce me…’

‘I know. I know,’ I sighed. ‘It’s not the actual sex that freaks me out. It’s just that it’s Lisa. She’s such a tiny, ethereal little thing. She always seems as if she’s floating. I can’t imagine her involved in anything as down to earth as sex. Especially with bloody Roger! This is his fault! He’s a moron! He’s twenty five, for God’s sake! How come he’s never heard of condoms? Jerome was only about seventeen and I think he had a packet of condoms packed in his lunch box!’

‘Well, he was so bloody gorgeous!’ Beth reminisced. ‘He had a good chance of seducing one of the mothers at the tuck shop. Or a teacher in the stock-room. Poor old Jolly Roger’s not quite in the same class. It probably never occurred to him that he’d get lucky with someone as lovely as Lisa.’

I sighed again and sipped my tea.

‘I don’t see Lisa as ethereal,’ brooded Beth. ‘In some ways, she’s more sensual than Felicity. I know Felicity looks more seductive at first glance but it’s just because she’s taller and more developed. But she’s cooler than Lisa. When Felicity hugs you, it’s very much a gesture. Lisa’s always flings her arms around me as if she really means it. I remember her when you were still reading them bed-time stories. Lisa used to fold right into you – like a cat. There’s always been something feline about Lisa. You can see it when she dances. She’s so abandoned. There isn’t a self-conscious muscle in her body I don’t think Roger’s the only one who finds her sexy.’

I poured myself another cup of tea. I’m surprised Lisa didn’t drown in tea while she was pregnant. It’s lucky I didn’t poison her baby with an overdose of tannin. I made Lisa a nice hot cup of tea every time she cried – which was all the time. I like to think I would have been more supportive if her pregnancy hadn’t coincided with my father’s death. As her baby grew, so his life ebbed away. It felt as if the only track on the CD player was The Circle of Life. Both events were completely natural but I struggled to find the strength to deal with either scenario.

I was so wrapped up in my father’s decline that I didn’t focus on what Lisa was going through as her pregnancy advanced. He looked less and less like the man who’d played such a pivotal role in my life. He was gaunt and thin and seldom said anything coherent. Sometimes he whimpered. It broke my heart that there might be something I could give him if only I could understand what he was asking for. He’d given me everything I wanted all my life and now the only thing I could do for him was to tuck in his blanket or bring him another cup of tea. When I think back to Lisa’s pregnancy, that’s about all I did to help her through it. I tucked her in when she cried and brought her endless cups of tea.

She did the same for me when my father died. He never met Angela.

*

Things might have been easier if I’d discussed the problems with Lisa and Eric but I found it less emotional to talk to Beth.

‘We must focus on practical issues’ I said determinedly, starting another list. Lists of options rivalled cups of tea in the Franklin household during Lisa’s pregnancy. It was as if I imagined I could write things down and tick them off and then it would all be over. I thought I could crumple up the list and throw it in the dust-bin and we’d all get on with our pre-pregnant lives. It didn’t turn out like that but it seemed a workable approach at the time.

‘The first thing is school,’ I said, writing it in big letters at the top of my page. I didn’t want my little girl to end up with Unfulfilled Expectations because she didn’t have matric. ‘She wants to leave,’ I told Beth.

‘Well, let her,’ she replied. ‘She’s never really fitted in at Milton anyway. Like me. Milton’s tailor made for jolly-hockey-sticks high achievers like you and Felicity.’

‘I think you’re right,’ I said. ‘She says her uniform’s already tight. The head will freak out if the sacred uniform is defiled by an extended stomach advancing down the corridor in front of prospective parents. But is it legal to just take her out of school?’

‘Home schooling’s perfectly legal,’ said Beth. ‘Thousands of people do it. Just tell them you’re getting tutors. You and Eric are so bloody clever – you could probably get her A’s in maths and science on your own!’

‘Tutors won’t be a problem,’ I said. ‘Eric will import the A team if necessary. He’ll probably put them up in a campervan on the front lawn. Or he’ll buy her a school of her own. He’ll do whatever she wants. I’m just afraid she won’t want to do anything. I know my daughter. I’m sure she thinks standard nine’s good enough to take on the world. She wants to be a band groupie, for God’s sake. You don’t need matric to follow the band. She’ll just have to learn how to smoke pot to drown out the sound of Roger’s singing!’

‘I don’t think school should be on the top of your list,’ said Beth wisely. ‘First and foremost, we must get her some counseling. Matric’s not going to be much use if this destroys her. And it could. I’m hardly a classic mother figure but I can’t contemplate how I might have felt if someone had taken Felicity away from me when she was born.’

My innards clenched and tightened when she said that. Lisa’s birth was an image I’d been trying to block from my waking moments. How I forgot all about the pain the minute she slid out. The miracle we witnessed as we looked at her tiny fists and her perfect wrinkles. Her uniqueness. How was Lisa going to feel when she felt her own baby growing and moving around inside her? Knowing she was going to lose her? I couldn’t have had my baby adopted. I would rather have had an abortion. If I couldn’t have her, I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to have her either. And yet that I was expecting that of Lisa…

I really do believe it’s insurmountably hard to have a baby with you when you step into your future. Even if you’re following a band or travelling with the circus. But there was something else that I hadn’t told anyone. I’d hardly whispered it even to myself. I thought adoption would be the best option for Lisa. .I want all her dreams to come true. I knew they’d be harder to achieve with a baby. I’d shelved my own career plans once I had my baby, even though I was married and financially secure. I know some women do manage a career and children but it must tear you in two at times. I’m no different from any other mother with her daughter’s future at heart.

But I’ve a secret layer I didn’t share with anyone. Not with Eric. Not with Lisa or Beth. Nor my parents. I was also thinking of myself when I urged Lisa to give away her baby. I’d just spent sixteen years bringing up my own baby and I knew with absolute certainty, that if Lisa had a baby, I’d have to spend another sixteen years bringing up hers. It was inevitable. Eric would go back to work and Lisa would go back to school. My mother would return to bridge and dozing in the afternoon. Beth would be safe and sound at Irvine Investments. I knew my father was dying though I shied away from accepting it. The thought of a world without my father was a prospect that I couldn’t face.

Like another sixteen years in the nursery with Lisa’s baby. I couldn’t face that prospect either.

*

Lisa slept away most of the hours in the day when we took her out of school. She quickly settled into a pattern which alarmed us. She woke up late, dozed in the afternoon and went to bed before us. Sleep disturbance is one of the signs which point to depression. Either too much or too little. With me, it was too little. Insomnia was a major issue when depression became a problem for me in the years to come. I’m sure I’m addicted to Stilnox. Those small white capsules are an essential item on my daily menu. I feel like leaping off a cliff if I discover that I’ve run out when I switch off my bedside light to face the night. I have to get out of bed to watch a string of ghastly movies on DSTV to make it through the midnight hours before the chemist opens his door next morning. It’s a bit better now that I’ve got a book of fiendish Sudokus to help me pass the time.

We didn’t know what to do about Lisa’s refusal to wake up and face the world. It was as if she’d turned into the Sleeping Beauty. I’m sure that half the problem was that Prince Roger had turned into the frog we’d always suspected him to be. He’d ridden off into the sunset. He hadn’t got the remotest interest in his growing baby. We were naturally glad to see the last of him but it’s different when you’re only sixteen and you think you really love him. We were terribly concerned. We discussed our problem with our friends and spent hours online searching for pregnancy crisis lines and adoption agencies in Cape Town.

We decided to try KPA. Another acronym. I could summarize my entire life in acronyms.
This one stood for Kerryn and Peta Adoptions. I was afraid it might be something kitsch like kittens and puppies. I hadn’t too much faith in social workers. I’d always thought of them as government employees who couldn’t do anything else because their parents had neglected to tell them that you can’t get a job with a degree in social science. I liked the sound of Kerryn and Peta. At least they’d been entrepreneurial enough to start up a private enterprise. Most of the other adoption agencies were affiliated to a church. None of us were born-again at that stage so I avoided them. I didn’t want some sanctimonious Christian preaching to my daughter about morality and the sins of pre-marital sex.

Lisa didn’t want to go to any of them. She said she didn’t care what happened. She had no opinion on anything to do with babies. I’d have been happy to go on my own. At least there’d be no witnesses if I said all the wrong things and stuffed everything up completely. But Eric thought differently.

‘My darling girl,’ he said. ‘The most important thing to remember is that nothing is carved in stone. If you decide you can’t go through with the adoption, you just have to say so. You can keep the baby if you want to. The woman who runs this agency has years of experience with adoption. She deals with both sides of the coin – birth mothers and adoptive mothers. She’ll have a good idea of what you’re going through. And it may be easier to talk to a stranger than it is to Mom and me. It’ll be completely confidential. You can see her on your own or we’ll come with you. It’s completely up to you.’

Lisa burst into tears. It took about a gallon tea to help her come to a decision. She decided that she wanted us both there for the initial interview after which she’d reassess the situation. We were all very quiet as we drove out to keep our appointment. It felt as if we were driving out to Pollsmoor to start a term of imprisonment in jail. We couldn’t know we’d have to do that in the future. I don’t know which trip was more traumatic.

We all liked Kerryn immediately. She elicited the same sort of response as Emma did after Eric got out of jail. Neither of them were the least bit judgmental about the situation which had drawn us into their orbits. In fact, she started the conversation with exactly the same line as Eric had used when he told me Lisa was pregnant.

‘This is not the end of the world,’ she said. She hardly mentioned adoption in that first interview. We chatted generally. She managed to draw Lisa into the conversation. I was afraid she’d refuse to say a word. As our interview neared the end, she said to Lisa that she might want to talk about everything on a one-to-one basis.

‘This is without doubt one of the hardest decisions you’ll ever have to make,’ she said gently. ‘It’ll have long term consequences for all of you. Is there any reason why you can’t keep this baby?’ she asked.

Eric and Lisa answered in unison. Their timing was as perfect as if they’d been rehearsing for a concert. – except that they said opposite things. Eric said she could keep the baby and Lisa said she couldn’t. I didn’t say anything. I sat there like a stone and handed over the tissues when Lisa started crying. I seemed to have specialised in tissues
at that stage of the saga. Kerryn asked us if an illegitimate grandchild would be a problem for us from a social point of view. That was my turn for choral verse with Eric, except that both of us said the same thing. We said it wasn’t a problem. And it wasn’t. I didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought. The only one I was worried about was Lisa.

And me. But of course, I didn’t mention that.

Kerryn ended off by saying that there was no reason for Lisa to make up her mind before the birth. And even afterwards, she’d have a chance to change her mind. Then she mentioned wretched Roger. She said they’d have to talk about him too. He was part of any conclusion they came to. We weren’t asked to fill in any forms. She said there would be plenty of time for that once Lisa had thought about adoption more carefully.

The trip home was even more silent than the one we’d made earlier that morning. The issues that we’d raised with a professional somehow made everything seem more real. I think we all started to feel that Lisa’s baby wasn’t a figment of our collective imaginations.

*

INSTALLMENT TWENTY-TWO

I realized how hard the adoption was for Lisa when I saw how much work she put into compiling a baby book for prospective parents. She’d had three more private consultations with Kerryn to talk about the choice she was making but she didn’t change her mind. She came home with a thick questionnaire that we had to fill in. It was about fifteen typed pages and it wanted to know every single thing about her. And about us. We agonized for hours about seemingly innocuous questions. What was her favourite colour? Was there a right answer? Would yellow seem too gaudy? Did blue suggest a tendency towards depression? Eric lost his temper completely.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ he shouted. ‘This isn’t a matric paper. Put whatever you like. I hope you put all the wrong answers! I hope they decide we have to keep her ourselves!’

After a short interval for tears and tea, we got going again. We had to make an album. It was basically a marketing tool to sell our baby to prospective bidders. To try and persuade someone to take her off our hands. I still go cold when I think of the hours Lisa and I spent on that bloody album. It was a work of art. There must have been a riot at the office of KPA as adoptive parents squabbled over who was going to get her.

Lisa had an ignominious record when it came to school projects. She spent no time on them at all. Fortunately for her, she had a project-orientated mother. I was so bored that the Phoenicians or global warming provided a welcome diversion from running the household. Her approach to the baby album was entirely different. She bought coloured paper and different trimmings from the scrap-book shop in Claremont. She opened every album we possessed and spread them out on the lounge floor. We paged through them, choosing the photos that Lisa thought would best sum up our family ethos. But it was her handwritten letter on the first page that really broke my heart. It broke my chameleon code of ethics too. I cried in public every time I thought about that letter. I cried in cafes as I sipped strong expresso coffee. I cried in the dark at movies. I cried in the queue at the bank or at the supermarket. It was a short letter so I still remember every word. They haunt me to this day.

Dear adoptive parents, it started. My name is Lisa and I’m sixteen years old. I was very much in love with Roger who is the father of my baby. But Roger and I aren’t together any more and I haven’t finished school so I don’t think I’m in a good position to bring up a baby. Then she went on to talk about her parents. She didn’t say she had an awful mother who didn’t want to be bothered with a grandchild. She didn’t say her mother thought only of herself. She said Eric and I were wonderful. She said she couldn’t be as good as us so she wanted to give her baby to someone who would. Please look after her very carefully because I know she will be special she continued. If she asks why I gave her away, please tell her that it wasn’t because I didn’t love her. It was because she was too special for someone as young as me to care for properly. Please give her this album. I made it for her more than for you. And she signed it with love from Lisa.

Eric also cried when he read it. He did what I should have done. He told her to tear the letter up and throw away the album. He told her to keep the baby. But when she asked me, I wiped away my tears and told her I thought she was doing the right thing.

It’s little wonder I was caught up in the coils of a black depression when Lisa followed the circus overseas and left us on our own. Depression is the darkest place I’ve been to. It knocked me off my feet entirely. I was particularly incapacitated because I knew I only had myself to blame.

Angela could still have been a part of our family without my intervention.

*

Lisa decided to opt for an open adoption. She said she couldn’t bear to think of her little girl going to people without names and faces. We knew the baby was a girl because of the scan. Kerryn told us to give her a name. She said there was no point in pretending that the baby wasn’t an individual. She kept pointing out that Lisa’s decision wasn’t final. No consent forms would be signed until after the birth. And even then, she still had six weeks to make up her mind. Jolly Roger had a say despite his lack of input. If she decided to go through with the adoption, he had two weeks to give his consent. If he hadn’t contacted the court by then, her consent would stand. Naturally, we heard nothing from him. Lisa never said much about him. Chameleon traits must be genetic.

Lisa decided to call the baby Angela. It seemed a good choice. Lisa’s always loved anything associated with flying. She became a flier herself in the end so it seemed entirely suitable that somewhere in the world she had a little girl with a name that suggested wings. The parents she selected were named Jessica and Juan. He was Spanish. That’s why we chose him. I’d always told Lisa she had a touch of Spain in her blood stream – a remnant from our distant honeymoon. It seems so far away after everything that’s happened in our lives but we thought we’d carry on the Spanish link with Juan. We also chose him because he was worked in the movie industry. Lisa and I share a passion for movies. It seems like fate that her career has also moved in that direction. There’s been no stopping her once she made the circus documentary with a passing stranger. Juan and Jessica were strangers too at that stage but we knew they’d always be part of our lives when they took our baby home with them.

I know now that adoption’s traumatic whichever side of the coin you look at. I’d seen everything from the birth mother’s point of view until I went to look through the four albums that Kerryn thought best matched our family profile. Those albums also broke my heart. Kerryn told us about the screening process. She said prospective parents often pitched up at her office expecting a basket of unwanted babies for them to choose from. As if it was the S.P.C.A. They seemed to think they could just pick out the one they thought was the cutest and take it home. She had to tell them it didn’t work like that.

There’s a shortage of babies available for class-conscious adoptive parents. Parents who want a white baby; a baby without AIDS; a baby whose parents have the same educational credentials as their own. The adoptive parents had to have been married for at least five years. They were couples who’d tried every thing they could afford with regard to infertility treatments. Some had lived through one miscarriage after the next. They were well acquainted with heartbreak by the time they made their way onto the final waiting list. I flinched as I paged through the albums. I could see they’d been compiled as carefully as Lisa’s. Their pages were drenched in the hope that somebody would choose them. I could imagine how they felt when they heard that they hadn’t been selected.

Lisa was thirty six weeks pregnant when she chose Jessica and Juan. They never do it earlier than that because it’s too traumatic for the adoptive parents if the birth mother keeps changing her mind. We were both sitting beside Kerryn when she phoned Jessica to tell her she was going to be a mother. We could hear her crying as we listened. I squeezed my own angel’s hand. I was already having second thoughts. I wondered what was going through Lisa’s mind. It got even worse because Kerryn told Lisa that she should talk to Angela. She suggested that Lisa put her hand on her stomach when Angela moved inside her. She should have some music in the background and she should tell Angela everything she knew about Jessica and Juan. She should explain why she’d picked them out from all the others. She told Lisa to tell Angela how much she loved her.

I thought I might die as I flattened myself against the passage wall that evening, listening to Lisa talking softly to her baby. It was almost as bad as the day we met Jessica and Juan in person. I’ve no doubt it was as bad for them as it was for us. We were all frozen like the statues in the fairy tale my father used to tell about the Snow Queen’s palace. Jessica must have known that Lisa hadn’t signed any consent forms. She would only do so after Angela had been born. And I couldn’t even imagine what the next six weeks would be like for them when Angela was lying in the room they’d prepared so carefully, knowing she could go at any moment. I think that’s the cruelest part of the whole system. Her body language exuded stress from every pore. One side of her was daring to hope. The other side was agonized that they were so close to having all their dreams come true – and yet it could still evaporate into the ether. Lisa was only sixteen and everyone knows how teenagers chop and change. I could see her hand was shaking as she placed it on Lisa’s belly and felt the baby she’d started to think of as hers kicking her feet inside someone else’s tummy. Someone who still had the power to say she couldn’t have her. It must have been as traumatic for them as it was for us.

We liked both of them but Kerryn reminded us later of what Eric had said from the start. There were no guarantees. You couldn’t know what fate had in store for the parents you picked out of the hat that you were offered. Imagine if someone had chosen Eric and me. We would have sounded pretty good on paper. No-one would ever have predicted that one of us would end up in jail

*

Angela was born on the 14th of October. Even now, I struggle to get through that day. Lisa went into labour in the early hours of the morning.

‘I think it’s started,’ she told us, materializing at our bedroom door like a pregnant fairy. Eric and I were awake and switched to overdrive in seconds. We leapt from the duvet and flustered around as if we’d never had a baby of our own.

‘Calm down, Mom,’ said Lisa. ‘She’s not going to arrive in ten seconds’ time. Go and make the tea. It’ll give you something to do.’ I was boiling the kettle when I heard her pick up the phone. She’d told Jessica she could be there at the birth. My stomach muscles were almost permanently in spasm during Lisa’s pregnancy.

The birth went as smoothly as one could expect in a situation as dreadful as Lisa’s. Roger was nowhere to be seen. The mother who’d advocated giving Angela away was on her left and the mother who’d be taking her was on her right. I’m surprised she didn’t demand a general anaesthetic to get her through the ordeal. The gynae obviously had no idea how complicated the situation was when he listened to Angela’s heartbeat with his stethoscope and said everything was going well. His stethoscope would have probably exploded if he’d paid any attention to the other heartbeats in the room.

I won’t forget the moment when Angela slid out and we heard her cry. Just like I’ll never forget Lisa. My arms reached out of their own volition to take her from the nurse when she cut the cord. I gasped with wonder and delight as I turned to show her to Lisa. But she turned away. The arms that reached out and took her from me were Jessica’s. I felt cold with fear as I watched. I’d done something irrevocable. My child was in despair as she curled away beside me. She looked like a foetus herself. And Jessica’s face was suffused with joy and wonder as she held Angela close and covered her with welcoming kisses.

Lisa’s birth was a time I associate with joy and elation. Angela’s held only despair. How was I going to unravel what I’d started? How could I let Lisa go home without a baby in her arms? And how could I take her baby away from Jessica?

*

INSTALLMENT TWENTY-THREE

Angela’s birth was a landmark event. Eric and his Christian crew have the same attitude to the birth of Christ. For them, history’s divided into BC and AD. My own life splits into two segments. BA and AA. Before Angela and After Angela. The BA segment is a sea of success. AA is a different category entirely. I know AA is an acronym that’s already been snapped up by both motorists and alcoholics. I’ve more in common with alcoholics than with motorists. The motorists hand out maps to show the direction which leads to a chosen destination. An alcoholic can’t do that and neither could I. Both of us struggle to control the route our lives are taking.

I hadn’t given any thought to teenage pregnancy until it happened to Lisa. Stupid girls I thought, in my street-wise way. It’s been so easy not to fall pregnant from as far back as the sixties when the pill first hit the headlines. And even if you did, there was always abortion or adoption. Two more A’s. AA must be the most versatile acronym in history.

I didn’t have a clue about the trauma involved once that random egg hit the jackpot.

I think abortion would be easier to cope with than adoption. I’m not burdened with Eric’s code of ethics about the sanctity of life. It’s got to be less traumatic to scrape away a faceless cell than to hand over a living baby. That’s another of my guilt trips. Lisa was reared according to my maternal gospel. She had careers and job satisfaction rammed down her throat since play-school. I’d watched her building Lego with an eagle eye in case she showed any potential for architecture. I’ve got a whole suitcase full of her early artworks. It’s never too early to pick up a flair for graphic design or engineering. I noticed her supple limbs on the jungle gym at play school but they didn’t make me think of the circus. In the BA era, I still thought that anyone involved with a circus was a gypsy.

Lisa was programmed to think of her future in terms of career options and motherhood wasn’t one of them. She must have been terrified when she suspected she was pregnant. No wonder she couldn’t bring herself to mention it until it became impossible to hide. If telling me hadn’t been such a frightening prospect, she’d have been able to think of abortion as an alternative to adoption. Everything would have been different. It would all have been so much less complicated. But of course I’ve never had an abortion so I can’t be certain that I’m right. I’ve become less emphatic about my opinions in the AA era. That’s some kind of progress I suppose.

I worry a lot more than I used to in the BA days. I worry about everything now. I worry furtively about Angela. We never mention her so I have to do that in the dark, curled under my duvet where no-one can see me. Lisa’s a lot closer to me than Angela so I worry the most about her. Eric and I are neurotic about Lisa. I don’t know which stage of her post-Angela days worried us the most.

When we brought her home from hospital, she was listless and pale like a drooping flower that hadn’t been watered for days. I drove her to counseling with religious fervour. I bit my nails and worried as I waited for her to finish. I prayed that she would talk about it on the way home but she never did. We were surprised and delighted when she told us she’d decided to go back to school. She refused to consider a return to Milton College so Eric dropped her off at Damelin every morning in her skin tight jeans. Lisa’s body slipped back into pre-Angela dimensions with all the flexibility of youth. She wore skimpy t-shirts and peculiar hairstyles. The crowd she mixed with at Damelin wasn’t like the Milton College girls Felicity brought home whenever we had supper with Beth and Keith. Milton College turns out well-spoken girls, all brimming with potential. Embryo stock-brokers. They reminded me of myself at seventeen.

Lisa’s friends looked more like Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. We could see that none of them was planning to become an accountant. Pregnancy certainly didn’t seem to have put Lisa off sex. Multiple males trooped through our door. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and all her other disciples. Most of them were only marginally better than the vanished Roger. I think Luke may have been marginally worse.

He was the one who introduced Lisa to the circus.

I’m amazed that there’s still a demand for circus entertainment in the high tech world of the new millennium. DVD’s have had a dire effect on cinema attendance but the circus seems to carry on regardless. Recently, I found an interesting book on the history of Boswell’s Circus in South Africa. It claims that high profile competition like the Cirque du Soleil in Canada isn’t really circus in the true sense of the word. It says there are more traditional circus tents and caravans than ever before travelling the highways and byways of Europe and the States. There are active circus schools in the major cities of the world. Moscow. Paris. New York. You have to train for four years before you qualify. That’s as long as Business Science took me at UCT. Some secondary schools in the states offer courses in circus techniques and Florida State University has presented its High Flying Circus since 1947. There’s even a sort of circus Oscar. Prince Rainier established an annual circus festival in Monaco – for several days in January, top acts and performers from circuses in the east and the west perform before a jury of knowledgeable experts. The prime award is the Clown D’Or.

It seems I underestimated the circus. Lisa’s not the only one with an addiction to a sawdust ring with lights and music and the soaring freedom of the high trapeze.

As one might expect, Lisa’s interest in the circus was fostered by my gentle father. When I was a little girl, he spent hours building a theatre for my puppets. He was very good with his hands and my theatre became a family heirloom. It has red velvet curtains and a carefully constructed screen to hide the puppeteers from the audience. My luckless parents had to sit through hours of the puppet shows that I staged with Beth. My father stored my theatre away when we grew out of puppets. He brought it out of mothballs for Lisa who was far more skilled a puppeteer than I’d been. Even then, I’d had an economic orientation. My major interest was in the cash returns. I sold tickets at the door and invested the proceeds in my savings account. Lisa didn’t charge admission for her shows. Maybe it’s just because she’s our daughter but Eric and I were entranced by her animated versions of ancient legends and her own whimsical tales. Even today, her primary interest at film school is animation. Lisa’s always been a dream catcher.

My father found the circus puppets at Hamley’s on a trip to London. Hamley’s must be the most remarkable toy shop in the world. It has whole floors specializing in teddy bears or model planes or whatever it is that’s dear to some child’s specific heart. It’s not surprising he tracked down a section selling puppets. I’ve still got a mental snap shot of Lisa’s face when she unwrapped her gift that Christmas. My father was ensconced under the tree looking annually ridiculous in his Santa hat. He didn’t have the build or personality but he was always Santa. We never disqualified him despite his limitations in the field of Ho Ho Ho.

He handed Lisa a large parcel wrapped in shiny red foil festooned with matching ribbons. Wrapping gifts was almost an art form for my parents. Lisa drove us mad at birthdays and Christmas. She collected paper and ribbons so she removed them as carefully as the crown jewels. It took bloody hours for her to find what was waiting underneath. But she lit up like carols by candlelight when she finally got there.

‘Puppets!’ she breathed. Her face was rapt as she unpacked them and jiggled their strings to her bidding. There was a clown with a white face and a red waistcoat and bright blue patent leather shoes. A ringmaster in a scarlet jacket with a top hat. And a circus pony. It demanded a high degree of skill to control that pony. He could trot or canter with his spangled rider gesturing on top. I could never get the timing right. The circus pony looked like a cart-horse in my clumsy hand but Lisa could pull his strings with perfect timing. It was her flair for tempo that made her such an agile performer on the high trapeze. She could swing in and out and go just high enough to release the bar and tumble in a cascade of somersaults. Somehow she still had time to seize the catcher’s outstretched hands. My heart used to stop beating entirely when I watched her. She’s so graceful. It seemed effortless as she soared above the mesmerized faces below.

She didn’t work in live circus in Cape Town. Circus isn’t as well established in South Africa as it is in Europe and the States. The distances between the larger centres are too great to make it really viable. The overseas artistes also liked to get paid in dollars which reduces profits considerably. Lisa started going out with Luke who was studying at Damelin for some managerial diploma. He’d been a gymnast at school and he wanted to maintain his fitness levels. He also wanted to spice up the daily grind. Add a few thrills. He said he felt he wasn’t destined to work in an office. Luke looked such a drop-out that I could easily believe he wasn’t destined to work anywhere at all but I didn’t mention that to Lisa. I tip-toed around her like a cautious cat. I was so guilty about Angela that no had become a word I seldom used.

Luke was a member of some flying school which had its rigs in the grounds of the old YMCA in Obz. Lisa often went to Obz with Sergeant Pepper and his band of Damelin students. She watched Luke working out on the apparatus and signed up on the dotted line before her bewildered parents could blink an eyelid. I’m amazed that she stuck to it. It was heavy going trying to practice for three hours at a time with matric on her immediate horizon. She looked exhausted when she came home but she said that inside her pulse was still racing. Flying was the most exhilarating sensation she’d ever experienced. She felt terror and delight in almost equal proportion. I think it would have been easier to wean her off an addiction to cocaine than to have made her give up flying.

We learned a whole new vocabulary from our excited daughter and her fellow fliers as they gossiped around the dinner table about the skills they were trying to master. We learned about the rigging. Eye bolts and welds. Wooden pedestals. Pulley blocks. We learned about French locks and toe hangs. My list of acronyms grew longer by the day as they tossed around the vocabulary of AT. Aerial Technique. We knew what they meant by CS – it’s a Cloud Swing with loops to secure hand and foot holds We understood the difference between DS and FT. Double Swing or French trapeze. The worst was SKS. That stood for Silks. We watched Lisa suspended by knots and wraps, plunging in a series of controlled falls. It was absolutely ghastly. I must have aged a thousand years since Lisa took up flying as a career.

And it is a career. I’m amazed at how many doors it opens. The websites are full of corporate options about team building exercises based around trapeze work. The blurb is all about changing the paradigms and building co-operation and trust. I don’t think I’d be willing to trust anyone to catch me. Lisa said the net looks remote from the pedestal when you first climb up there. Circuses also do conservation work with endangered species and there’s opportunity in film which is the route Lisa’s chosen. She started with documentary but they do a lot with stunt works and adverts. She and Luke had a lucky break just after she’d finished writing matric. Circus circles in Cape Town were all abuzz with the news that someone from Bertram Mills in London was recruiting South African talent which was much cheaper than overseas artistes. Lisa and Luke went along to the auditions along with a miscellany of hopeful clowns and jugglers. They were beside themselves with elation when they heard they’d been accepted.

Luke was right about not ending in an office. He and Lisa spent several years together on the European circuit, travelling around in caravans and trailers. I felt a lot better after we visited them. Their caravans were great. They have all the mod cons she grew up with in Constantia. And she was part of a more colourful family than she’d ever had at home. A global family. A couple of Russian Cossack riders. A Mongolian aerialist. A stunt motorcycle driver from Uruguay. It made me giddy just to read her e-mails.

I didn’t cry the night we took her to the airport when she and Luke left for Europe with the other acrobats and clowns who’d signed up with Bertram Mills. Not on the outside anyway. I was all vivacity and charm as I hugged everyone in the group and wished them a successful future in the sawdust circle. I don’t know how I didn’t wail and sob and tear my hair out when they called her flight. I held her tight and close. I told her that I loved her. I told her to fly safely like one of grandpa’s fairies. We always said that. It was a family saying. Another piece chipped off my heart as I watched them walk through emigration and out of sight.

A different airport scenario crept insidiously into my tumbling thoughts as I stood there, hand in hand with Eric. I imagined that Lisa and I had come to the airport for a different reason. What if we’d been there to meet my parents after their annual summer jaunt to Durban. What if Angela was standing between us, jumping up and down with excitement as my present-laden father walked towards us? What if she broke away from us and ran towards him? Maybe he’d toss her in the air when she reached him?

But I knew that would never happen. Because Lisa was flying off to Europe. My father was dead and I’d given Angela away.

A few tears would not have been out of place at the airport that morning.

*
INSTALLMENT TWENTY-FOUR

Lisa said she didn’t regret the adoption. That’s another conversation I have filed in my memory bank of landmark occasions. We’d flown her back from Europe to celebrate her twenty first birthday. Lisa’s not one for gala functions but we’d had a dinner on our flowered patio with fifty of the special people in our lives. It was a memorable evening. It felt as if the traumas of the past had been wrapped up and thrown into the dustbin when Eric proposed a toast to his daughter, all aglow with circus sparkle beside him. Lisa and I poured ourselves a final glass of wine as we sat down at the cluttered table after the final guests left that morning. It was my first conversation with my newly qualified adult daughter.

‘It’s after two,’ I pointed out. ‘The first two hours of your twenty first year are gone already! A toast to your future my darling!’ I said proudly, lifting my glass. ‘It just seems so full of promise. After everything. In spite of everything…’

My voice trailed away. It had been a festive evening and I’d downed numerous celebratory glasses. They loosened my tongue. The adoption topic was taboo when I was in an entirely sober frame of mind. She smiled at me – her magic smile which lit up every aspect of her face. My daughter’s smile has always knocked my socks off. She was also feeling mellow. She gave me one of the impulsive hugs that she bestowed so freely on everyone who came into her orbit.

‘I don’t regret the adoption Mom,’ she told me. ‘I know it still eats you up. You exude anxiety every time you see me. I was angry with you at the time – but I was angry with everyone. Especially with Roger. Especially with myself. The only one I wasn’t angry with was Dad.’

‘I wonder every single day how things would have turned out if I’d listened to Dad,’ I admitted. ‘I worry every day that maybe I gave you the wrong advice. I feel so guilty that I pushed you into something you didn’t want to do. And it’s a huge thing. I was so bent on you being successful that I let it overshadow what would make you happy.’

‘I also wondered if it was the right decision. I still wonder. I guess I’ll always wonder.’ said Lisa. ‘But then I think what I would have missed. I wasn’t ready for a baby. I can’t tell you how well I fitted in at the circus. More than I ever did at school. And flying’s unbelievable. I really do feel like one of Grandpas’s fairies. I think of him every time I get on the pedestal. It’s like a superstition. It’s my ritual. I never fly without him. And now there’s film school! I love it. I absolutely love it. I can’t tell you how it feels to translate an image with a camera and see it take shape on the screen. To play with colour and angle and perspective. I would have missed all that if I’d been at home bringing up a baby. I’ll always wonder what Angela’s like. Where she is and what she’s doing. But only in theory. I’d have missed all my new dimensions if I’d kept her.’

I hugged my wise and lovely daughter. She was already wiser than her mother and she’d only been an adult since midnight. I wished I could make myself believe that she was telling the truth. I dared to hope that her train had somehow made its way back onto the rails. I didn’t anticipate what was coming next. We might have put the past behind us but the future was coiled up and waiting to pounce like a feral tiger.

*

Beth phoned to tell me when the Cape Attorney General arrived at Irvine Investments to speak to Eric about alleged irregularities on the JSE. Dread snaked through my limbs like a hooded mamba or something equally lethal. I’d assured him so often that it would never happen. We knew the trading world was buzzing with rumours that an investigation was afoot. Speculation about what it might uncover hummed across coffee tables, bars and corridors.

‘It’s obviously a formality,’ said Beth, blithe with the confidence that only the ignorant enjoy. Eric was the least likely person in the firm to be involved in anything risky. He was often mocked in the staff pub for his lack of gambling instinct. His checks and balances were always firmly lodged in place, as solid as the Great Wall of China. Beth was a far more likely candidate for suspicion when it came to risky deals that might damage Irvine’s name and reputation.

I told Eric not to panic as we sipped our wine at dinner. More wine than usual. We were both nervous. ‘Ninety percent of brokers do this all the time,’ I pointed out, sucking statistics out of the ether. ‘It’s part of the JSE culture, for God’s sake. Why would you be singled out?’ I asked him.

‘Because I’ve broken the law,’ said Eric soberly, despite the fact that we both getting drunker by the minute.

‘It’s not the bloody law!’ I protested. ‘It’s just a little loophole that’s always been there to be exploited. What’s the worst that could happen? You’ll get a rap on the knuckles. Maybe a suspension for a couple of days. Everyone will thank God it wasn’t them and that will be that. There’s no need to worry.’ But I didn’t protest when Eric got up and opened another bottle of wine. Those were the good old days when a stiff drink made everything seem manageable.

They sent the big guns to our house the night that Eric was arrested. I got a few more acronyms to add to my list. The one guy was the head of the SAPFS. The South African Police Fraud Squad. He was accompanied by an innocuous looking man with sandy air and a badly maintained moustache. He said he was in charge of the newly established office for SEO. Serious Economic Offences.

‘Would you like some tea?’ I asked them in a reflex action as I ushered them into the lounge, pulling the sash on my dressing gown closed more tightly. Old habits die hard. I was a sublime hostess, even in the direst of circumstances. But they declined. They said Eric would have to come with them. They had a warrant for his arrest. We stared at them. We were both rendered completely speechless. My hands were shaking as I read the warrant Eric passed me after he’d skimmed through it in a cursory way. It said a bail application wouldn’t be opposed but the amount would be high because of the gravity of the charges. Eric would have to come up with half a million rand before they’d let him go. It’s not the sort of money one has lying around the house on Sunday night. I looked at my watch. It was 11.30. I still don’t know why they came then. It felt as if we’d been written into the script of a soap opera.

It felt even more like that when Lisa came down the stairs in her skimpy nightie to see who’d arrived. It was the only time that year that she’d been at home. It was three weeks after her twenty first birthday. Cruel timing by the gods.

‘Dad?’ she asked. ‘What’s going on?’

Eric’s face tightened. How do you tell your daughter that her father has been arrested?

‘Nothing’s happened darling,’ I said hastily. ‘It’s just some questions about one of Dad’s accounts at Irvine’s…’

She stared at the strangers as they stood rather awkwardly in front of the fireplace. Thank God they weren’t in uniform. They were wearing ties and jackets which looked somehow sinister on a Sunday evening. Eric was in shorts and Lisa and I were in our pyjamas. It was like a scene from Fawlty Towers. I should have whipped out the camera and snapped a photo for the family archives.

‘But why are they here on Sunday evening?’ she asked me. It seemed entirely natural that she didn’t ask them direct. It was as if they were cardboard cut-outs. It didn’t seem possible that the police were in our lounge waiting to cart Eric off to the charge office at Caledon Square for fingerprinting. I suppose we must be grateful there were no hand-cuffs. And it was a normal car they drove away in. Not a police car with lights flashing like in Miami Vice. He had to spend the night on a court bench. He said he was aware of people coming and going all night with complaints that hardly made sense to him as he listened, unable to do more than doze as he waited for the clarification that morning would bring. He told me to contact Keith. He said he’d need a lawyer. He didn’t want Lisa and me to go with him to Caledon Square. He said he’d see us in the morning as he held his tearful daughter before he closed the door behind him.

I didn’t cry until I’d made the obligatory tea and tucked us both up in bed together to try and get through the inching hours until tomorrow came. I wiped my tears away with the corner of my sheet and smoothed a wisp of hair from my daughter’s flushed cheek as she slept restlessly beside me.

I’d tried to reassure her but she wasn’t a child. A girl of twenty one knows that no-one gets arrested in the middle of the night unless it’s a serious offence.

*

INSTALLMENT TWENTY-FIVE

Lisa and I were both awake by 5.00am. A cup of tea didn’t prove an adequate antidote for the way we were feeling.

‘Let’s just go to Caledon Square,’ I suggested. ‘I can’t bear to think of him sitting there alone.’

I’d never been to a charge office but I knew instinctively that it would be awful. I imagined that the walls were blank and the benches hard. The personnel wouldn’t be angels of mercy. I had a dreadful fear that they might have put him in a cell. A cell conjures images of rats and vermin. Scurrying feet. And worse. Far worse. I couldn’t contemplate what a South African police cell might hold for Eric. We slipped into our jeans and made our way to central Cape Town. The dawn crept up behind the mountain as we drove along the silent, empty freeway.

‘Tell me what’s happening Mom,’ said Lisa as we pulled out of the driveway. ‘You have to know more than you’ve told me. You’re not some dizzy housewife who hasn’t got a clue what her husband does at the office. What exactly is Dad supposed to have done?’

My hands tightened round the wheel. I felt my stomach muscles churn and clench. I knew she’d ask. And so would Beth. And Keith. I’d already phoned him to organize the bail application. I’m sure they’d spent the whole night asking each other the questions. I’d shied away from answering on the phone. I said I’d tell them later.

And I knew that later was now.

It wasn’t that I was unprepared. Eric and I weren’t a pair of romantic dreamers who imagine they’re invincible. Eric told me that he thought he’d gone a step too far the last time he did it. He’d gone directly against the market trend and it would have raised a few eyebrows for anyone with their eye on the screen. He’d have queried the irregularity himself if he’d been watching. We learned our words carefully so we’d know exactly what to say when the questions started.

‘I’ll start at the beginning,’ I said carefully. ‘You need to understand that Dad hasn’t committed a crime. He may have breached a few JSE rules but he’s done nothing that half the brokers in the country aren’t doing. Everyone does it. It happens all the time. It’s all part and parcel of the culture of the JSE.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ protested Lisa. ‘You keep referring to ‘it’. What’s this ‘it’ that everyone is doing? Why is Dad the only one being arrested in the middle of the night? Why isn’t Beth also behind bars if ‘it’ is such common practice?’

‘OK. OK,’ I said. ‘I know I’m being obscure but I’m in a panic. I’m trying to reassure myself as much as you. Just let me explain it my way. I need to practice so I know how to put it if those dreadful men want to talk to me.’

And so I tried to tell her. I explained that in South Africa, unlike most places in the world, the Principle of Agency was still in place. It was one of the core rulings for traders on the JSE. A broker could act only as an agent. If he wanted to buy and sell on his own behalf, he had to do it through another broker.

‘That’s all Dad’s done,’ I assured her. ‘He’s acted on his own behalf and hasn’t disclosed it. It’s not outrageous and clandestine. On just about every other exchange in the world, it’s perfectly legal. Believe me darling, lots of other South African brokers have undisclosed accounts. But the JSE’s trying to tighten up its image. I have no doubt that they’ve singled Dad out because he’s a big deal. You know he looks like a bloody film star. He’s the prime target for every social calendar in town. It’s going to make a huge impact if they arrest someone like him. No-one will feel safe if they target a high profile figure like Dad. People will think more than twice about what they do. I can see what the authorities have to gain.’

I was glossing over the details of course but I sincerely believed what I said to Lisa that morning. It was early in the post-election era. A brave new world was scheduled to arrive when the ANC took office after years of oppression. The government was eager to show the world it was going to fulfill the election promises it made as the country formed long queues to vote for change and freedom from the corruption of the old regime. Eric was a perfect choice as an example. He was white and wealthy and he’d broken the law purely to enrich himself. He was a golden opportunity for any judge to demonstrate that a white skin and a healthy bank account no longer provided a ticket to escape the consequences of fraud.

Ironically, they’ve since changed the regulations. The JSE is now in sync with the rest of the world. It’s now accepted practice that a broker can act both as agent and principal. But Eric had already been in jail for eleven months by the time the new regulations came into practice. Keith immediately lodged an appeal against Eric’s sentence in the light of these changes. The wheels turn slowly in the South African justice system. Eight months had passed by the time the appeal was heard. It was inevitably upheld. No other verdict was possible and Eric was released four years before schedule.

But he’d been in Pollsmoor for nearly two years by then. The damage was irretrievable.

*

Lisa’s no fool. She knew there was more it than I’d told her. Like the JSE, she wanted full disclosure. She suspected that her beloved father’s fall from grace couldn’t have been quite as simple as her mother made it out to be. She wanted all the messy details. I was reluctant to tell her. It puts things in perspective once you realize how much money Eric made.

‘Well,’ I started. I usually start like that although it was an incongruous word to choose in circumstances which were obviously far from well. But I said it again anyway. ‘Well…’

‘Well what?” said Lisa impatiently. Temperatures were rising as the sun came up and we neared a destination that frightened us both.

‘You know Dad’s head of Proprietary Trading at Irvine’s. It’s a big job because it gives him access to Irvine’s biggest clients. And Union Corp is one of the biggest. It handles billions of rand of public money though pension funds and unit trusts etc. Dad’s empowered to buy and sell large parcels of shares on their behalf. Without reference to anyone. He’s one of the biggest dealers in the whole country. Not just in the Western Cape. He’s got an enormous amount of influence. He can actually create a market around the shares he deals in. Last year for instance – he persuaded Union Corp to buy twenty five percent of Chemcon which then bought out the remnant of some food product company that had decided to disinvest. It’s turned into a major food chain and the shares have soared. Union Corp made a windfall profit of nearly three million virtually overnight. Dad’s their blue eyed boy. He’s a legend – and not only in Cape Town’

‘But nothing you’ve said sounds the vaguest bit illegal,’ protested Lisa. ‘I still have no idea why he’d been arrested.’

Well,’ I said again, taking a deep breath. ‘I suppose it’ll be classified as insider trading. Dad saw an opportunity to make some money trading on his own behalf using his Union Corp contacts. He knew what shares they were planning to buy. He started to accumulate them in an undisclosed account. It’s illegal for a broker to have an undisclosed account – although many do. Because he was buying large parcels of shares, the price went up. By the time Union Corp was ready to buy, he had a whole bundle of shares to sell them at the prevailing market price. Which was a lot more than the price he’d paid when he bought them. He sold them to Union Corp at the going rate and kept the difference,’

‘How much was the difference?’ said Lisa.

‘Well,’ I said evasively. ‘It was a lot.’

And then of course, she asked the one question that I knew I couldn’t answer. She asked me why he’d done it. We obviously didn’t need the money. Why on earth would her conservative father risk his job and reputation for some money which he didn’t need?
Fortunately, we’d arrived at Caledon Square by then. I told her Eric would explain once we sorted everything out.

Because I was convinced at that stage that it would be sorted out. Caledon Square with its fingerprinting and its criminal aroma was a minor blimp on our screen. We’d just re-tune and it would all go away. Beth and Keith would sort out the bail and this whole misunderstanding would vanish into the blue where it belonged. That’s what I told my daughter. And myself. It was just a temporary blimp on the radar.

We would all be home soon.

*

INSTALLMENT TWENTY-SIX

Lisa’s pregnancy was an ordeal but it only lasted forty weeks. And seventeen had already passed before she told us. We only had twenty three left to live through. It’s a negligible amount of time compared to the months that separated Eric’s arrest and his subsequent conviction. Even an elephant isn’t pregnant for as long as it took the courts to decide on Eric’s crime and punishment.

It was an enormously stressful time for all of us. It was like living in Siberia where the sun never shines completely for a single day. A twilight world. People weren’t certain he was guilty but they weren’t sure he was innocent either. The media had a field day debating the possible outcomes, not to mention the possible cause of his demise. I can’t believe some of the distortions that appeared in the local papers. It made me wonder why the freedom of the press is considered a cornerstone of the civilized world. I’m surprised Eric wasn’t head-hunted by the Mafia. Some of the articles portrayed him as a criminal with the potential to excel on a global basis.

There was endless speculation on what he’d done. How much money did he pocket? Was he working on his own? Was he the scapegoat for an entire syndicate of crooked brokers? Irvine Investments fell under a cloud. They’d been shattered when Eric was arrested and issued an immediate statement supporting him. They had to withdraw it when he said he was guilty. Eric said he felt like Judas the day that happened. The ramifications of what we’d done began to sink home. It had seemed so simple. Eric’s a cautious man so he’d thought further ahead than I did.

‘And what happens when this becomes public knowledge?’ he asked me when he’d finished his nightly sleight of hand at the computer.

‘But it never will!’ I assured him.’ It’s such a small amount in the scale of transactions at Union Corp. And it’s only short term. It’ll be paid back almost immediately and no-one will be any the wiser. Don’t worry so much!’ I begged him. ‘I think the gods forgot to insert a dash of gambling instinct in your DNA. It’s such a tiny risk to take…’

And so he took it, thanks to my wise counsel.

That’s how he ended up on a bench in the foyer of the charge office in Caledon Square in central Cape Town. He looked totally out of place. Lisa and I put our arms around him and he sat between us until Beth and Keith arrived to help. They arrived at the same time as the first reporter who snapped a shot of our family trio before we’d had a chance to register who he was. It appeared on the front page of the Cape Argus that evening. I’m sure they sold out of copies as our extensive social circle poured over the details printed below the grainy image of the photogenic Franklins.

Beth and Keith stayed with us as we somehow got through that endless day of forms and questions. We had our first i