by Sarah Hall
It’s because they’re around children. It’s the paedo aspect, Joe was saying.
He’d stopped walking again suddenly and was gesticulating. Becca stopped too.
Subterfuge, he continued. They have big floppy feet and silly honk-honk noses, but what’s behind the mask is a man who can’t get proper work. So he has to resort to going to screaming kiddy parties twice a week. It’s supposed to be a stopgap. But he never looks for another job. Bottom line is he enjoys frightening children.
No, no, no, said Zach. It isn’t an abuse thing, Joseph. I didn’t get fucking fiddled. You can knock that idea right out.
Zach kicked a loose stone on the tracks. It skittered ahead, curved left, and hopped over the cliff edge.
OK. Well it’s Shakespearean then. Sadness and truth behind the comedy. Feste and Lear. Who is the fool? Psychology. Think about it, Zachary.
No, no, no, said Zach. It’s their mouths, I’m telling you. It’s the giant red lips.
Below, the ocean hoved in and exploded against the cliff base. Vapour drifted upwards smelling of rotten crustaceans and tonic water.
Maybe it’s It, Becca said.
Zach leaned out, seaward, and looked around Joe.
What’s that, hon?
It. The killer clown film. Sharp teeth. Jaundice. Stephen King. Maybe you’re thinking of him?
He shrugged.
Haven’t seen it. I don’t like horror.
Zachary’s a gargantuan poes, said Joe.
Oh, that’s nice, boknaaier.
The boys – men as they were – had been bickering this way for two days. Becca didn’t know any Afrikaans, because Joe didn’t speak it usually. He and Zach had known each other since school in Pretoria. They were maybe even best friends. But the testiness between them sounded real, she thought, not fun banter, so something else was going on. She’d known Joe for six months and back in England he had seemed pretty relaxed. Here, home, he was different.
Up ahead a tunnel had been blasted through the cliff. There was a little white hole at the other end, maybe a few hundred metres away; it was hard to tell. Zachary stopped walking and took a joint out of his pocket. He tried to light it, but the wind was all-directional.
See, said Joe. Afraid of the dark. Big poes.
Bats, man, said Zach.
There are no bats in there.
Not the flying variety.
Zach crouched down behind a bush until the flame took and the spliff began to smoulder. He was growing the stuff in the garden and selling it to friends who took it back to Cape Town, mostly to the university. He and Lizette were saving to send the kids to private Catholic school, he’d said, to explain the bad little enterprise. But the stuff he was on with now, that he’d been on fairly persistently with since Joe and Becca had arrived, was pruned from a reef of plant growing wild on the mountain, a more potent species. They’d all had some the previous night after the kids had gone to bed. Lizette had smoked too, despite her religiosity, or maybe it was OK because it was God’s own weed. Then she’d gotten weepy about her life and talked about how she was nothing now, and how Jesus was forgiving her for what she’d been before. The crimes were unspecified. Marrying Zachary, maybe, or getting banged by multiple Boden photographers at the age of sixteen.
The mountain bud had been damp and sticky, unlike anything Becca had tried before. It’d kept going out, but when lit it was head-slammingly strong. Fugue-inducing. After a minute Becca felt like her eyes were melting. Time felt so slow she could write a song in her head between everyone’s sentences, then it sped up and almost a year passed while she was trying to ask where the toilet was to be sick. A full-blown whitey; it was like being a teenager again.
*
She stepped towards the cliff wall and leant against the rock. Heights: that was her phobia. Some nights she dreamt of falling, falling and falling endlessly. The shooting in the head thing was Joe’s; she didn’t quite know what it meant about him. Some kind of trust issues? She didn’t like standing still on the cliff – moving was much better than not moving, but the boys were now occupied with the smoke. Joe took the joint off Zach, pinched a cat’s anus with his mouth and inhaled. He held it in, and exhaled theatrically.
Kif Dagga, Zachster.
Ja. Got to dry it out more, but the kids keep coming in the workshop and asking, what is that funny moss, Dah? Fucking Rufe is like Poirot.
You want some, Becs? Joe asked. Take the edge off the edge?
He laughed dumbly at his own joke. She shook her head. The walk was pretty scary. The ledge wasn’t that narrow; whoever had laid the track had at least followed a sensible engineer’s manual, but the drop was sharp enough to make her stomach pitch each time it became truly apparent. She didn’t want to float off. She breathed in the marine air. The boys squabbled about clowns again for a minute until the argument became ridiculous and ended.
Come on, Becs, said Joe. Don’t you want some for crossing Kaaimans?
She shook her head.
No.
It’s pretty fucking high.
It’s not that high, man, said Zach.
She’d been warned about the bridge when they were deciding which walk to do that morning. The Kaaimans river viaduct. It was famous. Zach had shown her a picture online – a big, leggy-looking structure with an old piston train crossing it, the passengers leaning out of the windows waving, billows of jolly steam above. Below the structure was a wide estuary. It didn’t look that high, so she’d said she could manage it. Lizette hadn’t wanted them to do the walk. She had a thing about the viaduct. The kids were forbidden to go anywhere near.
It’s a devilish place, she’d said. You should walk on the beach.
Devilish? Don’t be a crazy bitch, Zach had told her.
Moenie so met my praat voor Jesus en vreemde mense nie, she’d replied.
After that she’d refused to speak in English.
That’s just fucking rude, ja, Zach had yelled. Becca’s from London.
Yorkshire, Becca had said.
The kids, at separate ends of the house, had sensed domestic pressure mounting like barometers, and had started crying independently of each other. Zach had gone to the little girl’s room, his wife had gone to lie down, and Rufus had stormed out into the garden with a toy and started pathologically bashing the windows with it. A long walk was essential.
Becca looked back along the coast towards Wilderness. The hills unwound, green and bluegreen. There were enormous rock buttresses, crescents of sand in the interstices. New houses were being built along the shorefront, huge modern boxes geometrizing upwards among the old gables. Driving past the beach on the way to the train tracks Zach had pointed out structures that were contravening planning laws, which he was officially protesting. His big arm hung outside the car window like a gangster’s.
This one has paved over all the old milkwoods. Three-hundred-year-old milkwoods, and the guy tips a ton of concrete down like a total moron.
A few houses later:
This one has built a patio onto public beachfront. It’s public beachfront. It belongs to the public. The guy is trying to get heavy with me. He’s come up the mountain a few times in his larnie four-wheel-drive yuppie fucking aeroplane and parked in front of the house. Like that heavy shit’s going to work, right. Banker. Thirty-seven and retired. Who retires at thirty-fucking-seven, hey? Who needs a three-storey house?
You always were a pedantic dick-swing, Zachary, Joe had said.
No, no, no. We might be a corrupt nation, Joseph, my friend, but someone has to point out the truth to these Towners. No one owns the sea. I’m challenging every single one of them, all the right channels, so they can’t just pay someone off.
He was still pointing accusingly in the direction of the offending residence. Joe laughed.
Yeah. They have to go to court and then pay someone off.
Maybe, Zach said, bringing his arm back inside the car. We’ll see.
They’d driven on. Then he’d braked hard,
throwing them forward off their seats, and had reversed back fifty metres or so.
This one. This clever shit cut down the dune brush to get a better view. It’s a protected species. Now his house is being eaten by sand, so he’s building a fifteen-foot arsehole’s Perspex wall – a Perspex wall!
And so on.
*
They passed the joint back and forth. Becca moved as close to the edge as was bearable and looked down at the water. Waves kept coming. Spume leapt up then dropped away in frothy white clods. The wind sailed around her legs. It was, as her granddad would have said, a narky bit of coast. She stepped back. How hard could it be to walk across a railway bridge, devilish or otherwise? She looked down the tracks. Ten years’ disuse, but it seemed longer. Where they were standing the ties had been pried up and removed. There were small orange flowers embedded in the rock soil, flickering in the breeze.
Becs, said Joe. Look. You are really not going to like the crossing. After the tunnel we can go back. Zachster, we should go back after the tunnel, ja?
She’ll be all right, man, said Zach. I take the kids over it all the time. Rufe walks it backwards like me.
Joe snorted again. The snorting was becoming a habit.
I know he does and I wish he wouldn’t. It makes me incredibly nervous.
You just don’t like Kaaimans yourself, Joseph. Confess.
Zach was smirking. Joe held up his hands. His two pinch fingers smoked.
That’s because I’m not a death-wish psychopath, like you. That thing’s going to come down one day. Piece of creaking junk.
It’s fine, Becca, said Zach. Don’t worry, there’s a handrail and everything.
Joe’s snort was a kind of horrible, snorking, mucal sound. It was driving her mad.
Yeah, right. There’s a handrail on a hovering platform separate from the actual fucking bridge – you have to squirrel along it like a yellow-foot!
Zach held up his hands too.
Hey, that is not cool, you’re freaking your lady out. It’s really safe, Becca. No one’s fallen off, like, ever. Not even on purpose.
He put a hand on his woollen hat and rubbed it back and forth against his head, scratching the scalp underneath, then straightened it over his brow. Joe held out the joint.
You want some for the bridge, Becs? Go on.
She shook her head.
No.
He passed the joint to Zach. The coiled cardboard gerrick was damp and loose. Zach scrubbed it out on the wall, then flicked the stump off into the sea.
Oh, shit, he said, under his breath. It’s a crackhead. Swerve.
Joe and Becca turned to look. A man was walking up the tracks behind them. He was tall and thin, the brilliant, salt-scoured thin of driftwood, nothing left on him but hard knots. He was wearing combat shorts and a navy waistcoat, old military boots strapped up his shins. He was swinging a see-through plastic carrier bag with something dark and smeary inside. They watched him approach and stepped aside to let him pass.
Howzit, Zach said.
Oh, fine, fine, the man replied. Beauty, yes, indeed. I’ve got mine here, thank you.
He shook the bag and the thing inside chunked about. His eyes were bright without any kind of reason, and slid off everything as soon as making contact. He was gurning a big smile, the teeth brown and gapped. As he passed by Becca got a big crackly feeling off him, a whiff of ancient sweat, and something foisty-smelling, like wet fur. For a moment he looked like he might stop and deal out some nonsense, but instead he shook the bag again, muttered something, and carried on up the tracks. The dark of the tunnel swallowed him. There was a pause, then Joe said:
Great. Is he going to knife us if we go in there?
Stop with your relentless anxiety, man, said Zach. You’re killing my mellow.
Well, I’m giving that guy a wide berth.
Right, and I’m the poes?
They waited a little while and then went into the tunnel. For a moment it was total pitch; Joe said a few echoey woahs. They walked slowly and the darkness softened until Becca could see the sloped walls of the tunnel, the glimmer of track and silver graphite particles. Their feet crunched on the clinkery floor. There was no sea sound. Now and then came a hollow fluting noise, like someone blowing across a bottle top. She could smell coaly deposits on the surfaces, cordite, paraffin, like fireworks in the park on bonfire night, or northern streets in December. Soot. Christmas.
She suddenly missed Whitby, with its tides of goths and lopsided abbey and sad little fishing fleet, though she’d been in London the last five years, struggling with the band. Nostalgia could come on her momentously, it had been coming on her a lot since she’d left with Joe, and it came on her now, made her want to turn and run. South Africa had been a mistake. Prospects here were no better, even though Joe had said they would be, that there’d be cool influences, and that it was cheaper to live. A musical odyssey, he’d said. The country was as tense as a nail, there were rules about race and language that she didn’t understand, and Joe was either angry or stoned.
So far the road trip hadn’t been fun. Shortage of funds meant they were mostly staying with friends of Joe’s along the way: all of them were stressful to be around, except Kavi, a drummer from Durban whom Becca found very attractive, to the point of a near miss in his kitchen when Joe was passed out one night. There hadn’t been much songwriting, like they’d planned. The sex was a bit dull, Joe kept trying not to use condoms, and he was a really bad driver. He’d driven them over an insane mountain pass in the Little Karoo. The road had been a joke, wall-less and untarred. Sheer canyons of red stone dropped thousands of metres and stacked red pinnacles rose, like something out of Middle Earth. After begging him to slow down she’d shut her eyes and resorted to singing her comfort song in her head, usually reserved for the dentist and flying.
The railway tunnel had a strange industrial eeriness, a primed feeling, like its memory of trains hadn’t faded or it was convinced trains were still coming. The clinker ground underfoot like old bones. She looked back a few times towards the entrance and tried to judge their progress. Halfway. Two thirds. The central section was dark enough a man might be crouched in the shadows, or flush against the walls. Now she was getting paranoid. She reached out for Joe’s arm but didn’t make contact. Joe and Zach were squabbling about phobias again, their voices bouncing off the walls.
It’s instinctive stinctive when you think think. Maybe we even evolved volved from being nocturnal urnal. Fear of the dark ark ark is because we’ve forgotten.
Evolution! Volution! Lution! The first person was black ack ack. What’s that, that – camouflage arge?
The tunnel opening began to throw brightness inside and the wind blurred past Becca’s face. Her eyes started to readjust. There were no figures lurking. They emerged into unglazed, grey daylight. Up ahead the tracks rounded the spur of the headland and disappeared. The boys were still at it.
It doesn’t count if your eyes are shut and your brain is on standby. You can’t be afraid if you aren’t conscious.
Goat shit. You can be afraid in a nightmare.
That doesn’t count. It can be broad daylight in the nightmare, man.
What?
Like you’re dreaming of an animal chasing you, getting really close, big beak, hideous nails, like some kind of wyvern, but it’s the middle of the afternoon …
What the fok is a wyvern?
Becca wanted to yell at them both to shut up. Just have a fight, or kiss, do something other than blether on. To the right was a large cave cut in the cliff, or maybe partly natural. Candles were placed at the entrance and puddled from use. Plastic furniture teetered on the uneven platform of rocks at the cave mouth, bistro-style, a broken table and chairs. The thin carrier-bag man was standing outside the entrance talking with another man, a horrendous man, even more gaunt, who looked like he’d been resuscitated from the cemetery. His face was almost skull, and there was a hanging garden of scrotum-like skin on the side of his neck. Some
kind of tropical disease. A yellowed T-shirt hung from his collarbones.
Howzit, Zach said, and kept walking.
Joe and Becca followed and said nothing. The men stopped talking and stared at the passers-by, then at the table top, where a brown furry mass was lying in its own gross leakage. A matted tail dangled over the edge. After they’d passed by, the men began calling out.
Hello, bless you! Hello, bless you!
The calling went on a few seconds.
Bless you, hello, bless you!
Becca hurried after the boys.
What do they want?
Money, said Zach.
Was that a cat?
No doubt, hon.
Probably a dassie, Joe suggested.
It looked like a cat, she said. It had a tail.
Zach sniffed and nodded.
Ja. When those nutters are not cracking their tits off and remember they have stomachs they’ll eat anything. I mean anything. Towners are always complaining about pets going missing. But since they let them run around and shit on the beach, what do they expect. They’ve got a petition to clear these guys out.
Do they live in that cave? Becca asked.
In winter.
Jesus, she said.
For a moment Zachary looked forlorn.
Welcome to Wilderness.
They got a nice view though, said Joe. Better than those rich bastards down there.
Becca sighed. Her boyfriend could be, no, he was, a total twat. She knew it. She looked back down the tracks but the cave-dwellers had moved inside and their dinner table was empty.