‘I’m losing it, babe,’ he’d said to Liezette as she lay beside him in the dark, her musky-grape scent already infusing the new Egyptian cotton sheets she’d purchased that morning.
‘Oh Charlie, you’re being daft.’ She’d brushed his hair back from his furrowed forehead and laughed off his doubts. She seemed to believe that continually telling him how talented he was would bind the cracks that he was battling to keep in check. But each word of praise was a wedge being hammered in, splitting him apart.
And then, he noticed that Liezette had started dawdling in the infant section of Woolworths whenever they were out shopping together, holding the tiny flannel suits to her face and breathing in as if she could somehow inhale a new baby into being.
‘It’s not going to fucking happen, Liezette,’ he’d snapped one terrible winter afternoon. The lashing rain had trapped the three of them indoors for the entire day, and Delia’s ear-splitting three-year-old shrieks seemed set to shatter his skull bones.
Once her shock had subsided, Liezette’s tone had become soothing and honeyed: ‘We’ll get away from all this, Charlie. You need somewhere where you can work properly. My parents have been begging for us to move out to the farm with them. There’s a barn that they no longer use. It would make the most perfect workshop for you. It’s huge. You’re always saying that you don’t have enough space in your dad’s old garage.’ Liezette was really the one who’d complained about this. She was often on at him about getting more professional premises. ‘The business will thrive in all that space. You’ll thrive. Not to mention what all that clean air will do for Delia.’
And yes, in that tiny apartment with the endless flotsam of plastic toys forming a candy-pink crust over every surface and his little daughter leaping from the back of the sofa and yelping like a basket of poodles, he’d been too ragged to think of an objection.
But now, each morning after coffee and rusks in the farmhouse kitchen served by Liezette’s silent, smiling mother, Antoinette, Charlie approaches the workshop that Liezette’s parents have set up for him in one of their old barns with an escalating sense of dread. Despite the fresh air rushing down from the mountains, the rows of vine stalks in the late winter sun, and the space so wide beneath the sky that even Delia cannot fill it, Charlie knows that he has lost his way with wood.
It no longer wants him. Simple as that.
*
Charlie stands in the barn and clenches his fists. On the floor at his feet lies the chunk of tambotie that he ordered last week. He stares at the rich, two-toned, chocolate-coloured grain, but just cannot fathom how on earth it could possibly become part of the chair that he’s been asked to make. The design is simple, he’s made many like it over the years, perfecting each joint and curve, but right now, the concept of turning this into that seems ludicrous. Laughable. He’s astonished to see strange, dark spots suddenly appearing on the surface of the wood, and it’s only when he looks up and feels the wetness on his cheeks that he realises he’s been gazing at his own tears. He steps back, rubs his hands over his face and then walks out of the barn, closing the large doors and bolting them behind him.
Right outside the back of the barn there’s a patch of dirt, and then the land slopes up and soars into a large raw hill that marks one edge of the farm boundary. Unlike the startling green of the lucerne fields, the groomed fruit trees, the rows of immaculate vines, the grand whitewashed homestead and surrounding cluster of well-kept utility buildings, this little piece of land has a refreshing wildness to it. The fynbos fights with the weeds at the foot of the hill, and then gathers confidence, marching up its slopes towards the sky. There’s something of a relief in the chaotic scrubby mass of it, interspersed with long, beige grass and bleached rocks. Charlie would like to sit in the sun and gaze up at the hill for a while, but the empty hum of the workshop at his back won’t let him.
He strides around the barn, away from the hill, and makes his way to where his van is parked beside a small orchard of plum trees. The farm is so huge that the best way to get from the house to the barn and back again is to drive there. Charlie doubts that he’ll ever get used to it.
As Charlie nears the van, he sees Liezette walking towards him, squinting into the sunlight. She’s wearing riding boots and dusty jodhpurs, and an old tracksuit top that looks like it belongs to her father.
‘Hey, I was just coming to see how you were doing.’ The Liezette that lived in Cape Town with him wore silky printed tops with skinny jeans and ballet pumps and always looked immaculate. This version could do with a hair wash.
‘Hey, Liez.’ He leans in to give her a kiss, but she turns her head and he bumps into her jaw instead. She smells ripe, but no longer of grapes. She smells of horse. The first thing that Liezette’s father did when they moved here last month was reward his beloved daughter for returning to the fold by buying her one. Turns out, Liezette is horse mad. He’d had no idea before. From what he’s gathered, the first time she ever climbed down off one of the things was to go to university in Cape Town.
Since the massive, nut-brown animal made its appearance at the farm, Liezette has spent hours grooming it and cleaning its tack and walking beside it and riding it, fast and wild, along the farm roads and between the rows of trellised grapevines. Even Delia has been sidelined, somewhat, although his daughter is only too delighted with her new occupation: bossing her devoted grandmother around.
‘Where the hell are you going? I thought you’d be working, Charlie,’ Liezette scowls. ‘There are three orders that need to go out, quick-quick.’
‘I know that. Jesus, Liezette, can’t a person take a break?’ He moves past her towards the van.
‘So, where are you going now?’
‘Into town.’
‘Why?’
‘To buy something from the shops, if that’s OK with you.’ He climbs into the driver’s seat and slams the door. He rolls down the window when she raps on the glass.
‘What’s your problem, Charlie?’
‘Ag, forget it.’
‘No I won’t “forget it”. You’re being a total prick.’
‘Thank you for the update.’
‘And anyway, what could you possibly want to buy? There’s nothing in town.’
‘They’ve got a liquor store, don’t they?’ he yells over the roar of the engine as he turns the ignition.
‘Of course. But—’
‘Well then, I’m going to get some beer. There’s only so much bloody wine a person can drink, you know.’
*
There’s been so little reason for Charlie to drive anywhere since they moved here, that as soon as he turns out of the farm gates, he’s not sure which way to go. The vehicle vibrates, pent-up and eager to run. He takes in the scattered blue mountains and the miles and miles of stunted-looking, leafless, winter vineyards. The whole landscape looks as if it’s been neatened by a giant with an enormous comb.
Which way?
He notes the same ragged hill that he can see from the barn in the rear-view mirror. Surely that means he needs to go left? The tyres spin in the dirt as he urges the van onwards. It doesn’t really matter where he’s going, as long as it’s away.
Twenty minutes, and a couple of double-backs and wrong turns later, he sees the tiny town approaching on the horizon. As the van jolts over the bump where the tarred road begins, a small, dirty motorbike zooms towards him in a cloud of dust.
‘Hey, slow down, moron!’ Charlie yells. He’s not going to be driven into the ditch by an asshole on a shitty old bike. Not today. As the motorbike nears, he sees that the rider is small and light. Just a kid. The roads out here are full of kids on motorbikes. They use them to get around the farms and stuff because it’s too damn far to walk anywhere.
The motorbike passes. Was that a braid snaking out from under the helmet? He looks in his rear-view mirror to be sure. Yup, there’s a thick rope of blonde hair streaming out behind the rider.
It’s a girl, all right.
There
’s no way in hell he’s going to allow Delia to ride around like that when she’s that age. If we’re still living here then. His guts lurch. He flattens his foot on the accelerator, trying to outrun the spectre of the empty workshop. He’s surprised to note, however, that its screams at his retreating back have lessened, softened by the new memory of that flying braid, pale, like a piece of turned ash glowing in the sun.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SAM DOESN’T HEAD straight home. Instead, she rides to the little graveyard that huddles in the hollow behind Sussie’s farm. When she switches off the bike engine, the silence swims in like a caress, heavy with the scent of flowering bulbs. It’s now almost impossible to see Anneke’s grave through the thick-stemmed tangle of exuberant bushes that surround it. It’s still too early for roses, but spring daffodils and freesias bob their bright faces in amongst the green. Sam moves between the plants, checking the tiny new rose leaves for signs of aphids, and remembering that night long ago when she and Jem first drove down here in the dark with a bakkie-load of twigs.
Over the years, they’ve had to replace some of the plants that didn’t take, and heap mulch on the ground between the ones that did to help keep the soil cool around the roots. Water has always been a problem in midsummer, especially when the plants were first struggling to establish themselves. Jem and Sam have spent many night hours over the years ferrying buckets of water from the old collection tank on the hill.
This early in the season, though, the ground is still spongy from the winter rains, perfect for pulling out the numerous sprouting weeds. Sam crouches down amongst the bushes to do so, using the old hunting knife that Jem once gave her, and which she now always wears on her belt when she comes to town, to lever the deep ones out. She is so absorbed with weeding that she doesn’t hear the car. It’s only when the sound of a heavy door slams the silence in half that she realises she’s no longer alone. Sam freezes with her hands pressed against the moist earth, heart thumping, poised as if about to start a race. Only there’s nowhere to run.
Damn it.
‘Sam?’ Well, at least she didn’t say ‘koewee’.
Sam doesn’t move. A rose leaf tickles the back of her neck.
Desecration, Sussie had spat at Jem when she first realised what they’d done to the graveyard. My family’s remains, our heritage, lying undisturbed for centuries and then you come along and you just have to have your bloody way. Nothing is sacred to you, is it? Nothing anybody else cares about matters nearly as much as you getting to stamp your precious mark all over everything. Jem had been shocked at the accusation. Stupefied. He’d been shaking. Sam can still remember it. His big, worn hands, trembling against the worn green of his muddy trousers. How are roses and dahlias and freesias a desecration? They are part of who Anneke was, Sussie. I planted them to honour her. Jem had started shouting too. Sam remembers that, because it’s one of the few times she’d ever heard him do so. Unforgivable, Sussie had said, weeping with fury. And that had been that. No more Sussie in their garden, no more Sussie in her big car bringing vorm koekies for tea on the stoop, no more Sussie in their lives at all.
But she’s here now. Sam dares a peek. And she’s not going away. She can see Sussie’s sensible sandals and sky blue trousers through the leaves.
When she realises that she has to move, to do something, Sam stands, wiping her dirty knife on her jeans and tucking it back in its sheath. Although she’s spotted Sussie from a distance over the past five years, it’s the first time they’ve been face to face since ‘the desecration’. How fitting that Sussie should accost her here, in the midst of the crime scene. Did she follow me here? Has she been waiting for me? Sam’s breath squeezes in her throat. She knows she’s being paranoid, but paranoia has become necessary.
‘My God,’ Sussie breathes, ‘you look just like her.’
Sam is not expecting this. She is ready to carry on Jem’s fight, but Sussie looks limp and wide-eyed, staring at Sam as if she’s seen a ghost. Sam notes that some of Sussie’s immaculate gloss has worn away. There’s a slight stoop in her shoulders and her hair has thinned so that, with the bright sky behind it, Sam can make out the vulnerable shape of her great-aunt’s skull beneath the carefully styled helmet.
Sussie covers her mouth with a trembling hand. Tears collect in the creases of her face before dripping down to join the pattern on the fabric of her blouse. Sam doesn’t move. The air is still and dense with hush. Sussie drops her hand, opens her mouth to speak. Nothing.
At last, she turns and makes her way back to her SUV. The engine starts up with a diesel roar, and the vehicle reverses and then drives off. The mud is drying on Sam’s fingers, tightening her skin and pulling them into stiff claws. She waits, motionless, amongst the rose bushes until the dust cloud has moved along the farm road, over the rise, and away.
*
Sam parks the motorbike in the barn beside her grandfather’s old bakkie, and unlocks the padlock on the door separating the barn from the courtyard beyond. The padlock is a recent addition, one of her ‘extra precautions’. Sam locks it behind her with a click. The wind that blew up while she was riding back from town has ushered in a leaden sky. It presses low over the garden with a belly full of waiting rain. A sudden gust whips the lavender stalks back and forth and curls around her back, chilling the sweaty patch caused by the backpack.
A distant crunch of thunder churns around the valley and an answering whisper seems to rise up from the shadows beneath the greenery. Sam glances back to the barn door with its gleaming padlock, unable to shake the feeling that she has locked herself on the wrong side of it.
Don’t be an idiot. There’s a chunk of softening cheese in her backpack that needs to be put in the fridge. Come, on, get a move on. Sam marches into the gloom. Her boots sink into the wet ground and the leaves that brush her jeans release a herby-bitter smell. She glances across to the darkening pool of shadow beneath the oak tree with its proud new coat of bright leaves. Sam-the-horse’s grave marker could do with replacing again. A fat raindrop splats down, followed by another.
Sam holds her breath as she passes the rose garden. Unlike the ones planted in full sun around Anneke’s grave, these in the cooler valley are only just showing signs of coming back to life. The pruned stalks poke out of the mulch like clawed hands, and new maroon-coloured nodules that promise spring leaves are popping up all over them, like little blood-filled sacks.
Sam runs. She crashes into the kitchen and shuts the door behind her.
‘I’m home!’ she calls out to banish the silence.
*
The rain has left the sky clean and pale, and from her seat on an old cane chair in the lookout shelter, Sam can see where the lowering sun tinges the edges of it with stripes of lemon. With Jem’s help, she’s rebuilt the structure twice since Anneke’s death, and it now sits squat and solid on the hem of the hill, blending in to the surroundings thanks to her much-discussed sod roof with its indigenous plantings.
‘Why do we need a lookout?’ Jem had asked as they had worked together to nail the thick plastic over the split-pole ribs of the roof to create a waterproof layer beneath the soon-to-be-laid earth. ‘Expecting an army to invade?’
‘I just like to see the road,’ Sam had replied, pointing out to where the track wound into their valley. ‘In case someone’s coming. It’s impossible to see anything from down in the garden.’
‘That was the whole idea when we built the place,’ Jem had said with a grin. ‘Nice and private.’
‘I like that,’ she’d agreed, pulling the plastic taut and hammering in a panel pin. ‘I don’t want people to see me, but I want to see them.’ She’d folded the plastic over and hammered in another pin to ensure that the nail holes wouldn’t result in leaks. ‘First, at least.’
Now Sam leans forward in her chair and rests her elbows on the wooden rim of the window opening. She closes her eyes as the clean breeze blows across her face, carrying the faint herbs-and-honey smell of wet fynbos. There’s a deeper
layer of scent in the wind, something new. Her eyes open with a start and she sucks in her breath. She leans out of the window and stares into the murk of the evening garden. It’s impossible to make out the wooden grave marker through the oak leaves. She can smell it, though. The unmistakable, gamey scent of horse.
*
When the valley is dipped in black and the garden beyond the kitchen window pulses with the song of frogs and the whirs and clicks of nocturnal insects, Sam heads back down towards the house. Her stomach growls. She’s planning on making macaroni with cheddar grated from the block she bought earlier, and although she tries hard to concentrate on how it will taste, she can’t ignore the whispers.
The garden is full of them.
Sam can hear the hiss of voices beneath the splash of the fountain in the herb bed, and the rustle and rattle of branches in the wind. She stops for a moment, heart beating fast, and looks back the way she’s come. There’s no moon tonight, and she can see the dark shape of the oak, the hump of the hill, and the pale points of stars reflected on the still surface of the pond. Macaroni. Cheese. She swallows, and forces herself to keep moving. As Sam gets closer to the pruned roses, her ears begin to hum and her heart gives a strange gallop in her chest, and before she can stop herself, she begins to run.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
AT THE LE ROUX dinner table that evening, Charlie Rowan drinks his fourth newly purchased beer straight from the bottle. He gets a bitter little stab of satisfaction each time he raises it to his lips, somehow vindicated by the disapproving look on his wife’s face. Feeling righteous about drinking beer at his wine-growing father-in-law’s table is pathetic and he knows it, but Charlie is too panicked by yet another day having passed without him completing a stitch of work to care. Tonight, he’s letting the downy brown haze of the alcohol do the thinking for him.
He thunks the bottle down on the white tablecloth, then tries, and fails, to suppress a beer burp.
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