Bone Meal For Roses

by Miranda Sherry

  ‘Oh thrills, the so-called deflowerer of first years is gracing us with his presence,’ Keegan says, although his ears have turned almost luminous pink. ‘When does varsity half term end, again?’

  ‘Don’t worry, little brother, I’ll be out of your nerdy way by the weekend.’ Nathan seems to sway on his thin legs in their skinny jeans, bending towards Sam like a stalk in the wind. ‘Hi, Sam, how’s it going?’

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘I think she can speak for herself, there, kiddo.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she echoes, turning back to the business of getting her file into her bag.

  ‘You look… fine.’ Nathan’s grin looks like a slice of some wet and slightly rotten fruit peeking through the stubble of what he’s clearly hoping is going to end up being a trendy beard. Sam shrugs as if to slide the laden word from her shoulders. ‘I hear you’ve gone all lone wolf now, hey? What’s the deal with you studying from home? You’d better watch out being stuck away like that, or you’re going to turn out even more socially inept than my dear brother here.’

  Sam raises her eyes at last. Her expression is flat and cool. ‘So great to know you’re looking out for me.’

  Nathan refuses to be ruffled. He rubs his long fingers through the sparse hairs on his chin.

  ‘Do you have a Facebook profile?’

  ‘Christ, Nathan, Facebook? Have you actually met Sam?’ Keegan can see that Sam is edging her way to the door.

  ‘You should get one. It’s a great way to stay in touch. Oh, and it’s excellent for spying on people.’ At the word ‘spying’, Sam suddenly sees herself as she was yesterday afternoon, crouched down on the le Roux side of the hill. She remembers how the wood-man had looked bent over his workbench, so intent on his measuring of something that he’d no idea she’d crept right up to the side of the barn to see him better.

  Spying on people.

  She blushes and turns away, but not fast enough. Nathan catches her eye and raises an eyebrow at the flustered expression on her face. For once, he keeps his mouth shut, but she can just about smell him wondering: what’s up with you?

  *

  Later that evening, despite promising herself and Jem (but only silently, inside her head) that she wouldn’t, Sam crouches down behind the boulder to watch the wood-man work.

  He is planing a selection of planks that have been set up across two trestles on the patch of dirt outside the barn. The power tool whirs and buzzes in his hands, and each time it touches the wood, it whines into a scream, echoing something winding up inside her. Sam feels as if an unseen hand is pouring some kind of molten metal between her legs, letting it run into her in a steady stream. She can feel it filling her up with heavy heat till her whole body aches. When she shifts a little to try and find some relief, pins and needles rocket up her released leg, and she has to clutch at the cooling rock to stop herself from falling over. She’s been here, on her haunches, for far too long.

  I should go. Now, while he’s busy and the noise from that thing can give me some cover.

  But she doesn’t. She watches.

  By the time the man goes back inside, and Sam finally scrambles up the hill, darkness is seeping into the valley and filling the fynbos with shadow.

  Snakes. They must be everywhere. What were you thinking, Sam? Jem’s voice scolds inside her head.

  Nothing. She wasn’t thinking at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘THESE ARE BEAUTIFUL, Charlie. I can see why you’ve been in here every hour God sent. The workmanship is…’ Liezette runs her fingers over the immaculate joins in one of the occasional chairs that she’s helping Charlie wrap for transport.

  ‘Are you going to help bubble wrap, or are you going to just stand there and stroke the thing?’ Charlie grins. He’s holding out the scissors, waiting for her to snap out of her reverie and take them.

  ‘Seems a pity to cover up this loveliness.’ Liezette uses the scissors to slice through a piece of plastic, and the large sheet comes away from the roll and flaps around her like a futuristic cloak.

  ‘Are you talking about yourself or the chair?’ Charlie’s laughing now, and Liezette joins in, aware all the while that she can’t remember the last time she heard him do so. ‘I’m happy to take you to Cape Town with me in the cabin, Liez, you don’t have to bubble wrap yourself up to go in cargo.’

  They work in silence for a while, side by side beneath the hard fluorescent lights of the barn. Even with the white glare and the dead blue shadows everywhere, Liezette can tell that the pieces they’re packaging are sensual and extraordinary, and she feels vindicated about insisting they move out here to the farm. The orders are only going to increase once they’ve delivered this lot to De Waterkant tomorrow. She’s married to an artisan rock-star.

  She’s been feeling giddy and girlish at the thought of the upcoming trip. It will just be a day in a car driving to Cape Town and back, nothing to get excited about, but the idea of just the two of them together has a sheen about it, like something treasured that she thought was lost, poking unexpectedly out of a pile of junk.

  But when she glances across at her husband, whose skin looks greenish in the awful light, Liezette can see that the joking and laughter just lie like a thin, trembling skin over the new, roiling deep that has opened up in Charlie. From the look in his eyes she knows that he’s already moving off some-where she cannot follow. Christ, can’t you give the tortured-artist thing a rest for a minute?

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK with me coming?’ As soon as the words are out of her mouth, Charlie’s lips tighten.

  ‘God, Liez, I’ve already said it’s fine. What do you want, an embossed invitation with gold frigging edges?’

  ‘No, it’s just…’

  ‘Why are you making such a big deal about this?’

  ‘I’m not, you just seem…’

  ‘What?’ He rounds on her, roll of packing tape in one hand like a shield. ‘What have I done wrong now?’

  ‘You have to admit that you’ve been bloody distant, Charlie,’ she snaps back. ‘I barely feel like I’m married at all any more.’

  ‘Look, do you want me to work, or do you want me to bound around your ankles like a needy puppy? A month ago you would’ve given anything to have me chained up in here, slaving away like a demon, and now that it’s flowing in to me, now that I’ve got it back…’ Charlie breaks off. He can’t talk about what has happened to him since his dream about his mother and the yellow craft table. Words might shatter the spell.

  Since driving to town to buy beer that one time, Charlie has been focused on only the work, whereas before he couldn’t even see it through the tight, knotted mesh of responsibility that has been steadily obscuring his process for years. He feels as if he’s returned to something he once had as a child, something precious that he was entrusted with before his mother passed away. It feels as if he’s fought a long, aching and bloody battle to reclaim it, and that his tenuous grasp could slip at any moment.

  He turns his back on Liezette and winds packing tape around a wrapped pedestal. He’s pulling too hard, rucking up the bubble wrap, using far too much tape and making a big plasticky mess. This is going to be a nightmare to get into on the other side.

  ‘Babe, calm down.’ Liezette’s touch on his arm makes him jump as if burnt.

  ‘Jeez, you startled me.’

  ‘Sorry, I was just…’ The fright evident in her large eyes makes Charlie hate himself just that bit more.

  ‘No, it’s OK. Ignore me, I’m just tired, Liez.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘Forget it.’ It takes all his effort for Charlie to pull Liezette into a brief, hard hug. Even though he knows it’s crazy, he can’t help thinking, She did it. She took it away from me.

  *

  When Sam creeps round the last bend on the hill and sees that the barn doors are shut and the yard is silent, a strange hollowness yawns beneath her ribs. She crouches behind her boulder and waits. The morning is giv
ing way to noon, and the sun burns down on her scalp. Sweat seeps out all over her skin, and dust and bits of dried vegetation stick to it and make her itch. Her nose is running. The surface of the rock sears the palm of her hands.

  No one throws open the barn doors.

  A sunbird flits past, so fast that she barely has time to register the frantic beating of its iridescent green-black wings before it is gone again.

  Long minutes tick away, and the hollow feeling inside her grows until Sam is nothing but thin, hot skin surrounding emptiness. She imagines herself with a puncture somewhere, slowly leaking stale air, finally folding up on herself and drying away to nothing under the baking sun.

  She begins the hike back home.

  *

  ‘The wheels on the bus go round and round, all day long!’ Charlie sings, with Delia joining in from her kiddie seat in the back of le Roux’s double-cab. They’ve borrowed it from Liezette’s father for the trip as it’s far roomier than Charlie’s old beat-up one, and the bubble-wrapped pieces were bulkier than he thought. Because this van has a back seat, Charlie suggested they bring Delia along.

  ‘I’ve been neglecting the poor little moppet,’ he’d said to Liezette when she reminded him how trying their daughter could be on long car journeys. ‘I really need to spend some quality time with my kid.’

  And now it’s late, they’re almost back at the farm again, and the day that Liezette was so looking forward to has passed in a churn of engine noise, Charlie’s off-key singing and Delia’s bright chatter from the back seat. Liezette hastily tamps down the thought that she might be jealous of her own little girl, and chooses instead to fume about Charlie’s rudeness at the store earlier.

  Just as she suspected, the pieces were received in Cape Town with wide-eyed looks of wonder and little ‘oohs’ of delight, but Charlie had been offish, refusing to talk about his work or his process when asked, and then running off to play catch with a shrieking Delia inside the store. She and the other ‘grown-ups’ had stood around making polite conversation and pretending not to flinch each time the pair careered close to one of the expensive hand-blown glass vases or glazed ceramic pots. After a day swinging between irritation, loneliness, and rigid embarrassment, Liezette has a vicious purple headache pounding behind her left eye.

  ‘Daddy, are you going to stop working so much now that you’ve taken your things to Cape Town?’ Delia asks through a mouthful of gummy bears once the ‘bus’ song has reached its merciful conclusion.

  ‘No, my angel. I’m afraid there’s still lots and lots to do.’

  ‘But why?’ Her little face crumples, and Charlie’s heart responds in kind when he catches sight of her expression in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Ag, I’m sorry, my moppet. I know it doesn’t seem fair. I’ve missed you too. I have an idea: why don’t I take over bedtime story duty from now on, hey?’

  ‘Ooh, yes yes, the one about Kipper, read that one first.’

  ‘That OK, hon?’ Charlie finally addresses his wife.

  ‘You’re never in by bedtime story time.’ She stares straight ahead, face set.

  ‘I can change that. I can always pop out again to the workshop for a bit afterwards, if I need to.’ Charlie glances at Delia in the mirror again. ‘Can’t I, Delly?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Liez? You don’t mind me hijacking story time for a bit?’

  ‘Sure,’ Liezette says with a shrug. Her headache blooms out behind her eye, trying to push out tears. She clenches her hands into fists against her thighs.

  ‘You don’t think I’m going to manage it, do you?’

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘You’ll see, I’ll be there like clockwork. Every single—’

  ‘Ja, right, I get it.’ She cuts him off. ‘Clockwork, story time. Whatever.’

  ‘Are you a clock, Daddy?’ Delia seems to find the idea hilarious for some mysterious, gummy-bear-addled reason.

  ‘You tell me, Delly. Do I look like one?’

  ‘No.’ Giggles.

  ‘You mean I don’t have numbers all over my face and big pointy arrows sticking out of my nose?’

  ‘No.’ Shrieks of laughter from the back seat.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes!’ Delia can barely breathe now. The child’s going to wet herself in a minute. With each delighted yelp, Liezette’s headache sends out tongues of dark flame to lick at her temples.

  ‘Because if I have—’

  ‘Enough.’ Liezette’s command slices through Charlie’s words and kills the laughter. A shocked silence fills the candy-scented cabin. In the back seat, Delia’s eyes go very round.

  ‘What the hell, Liezette?’ Charlie finally mutters. ‘What’s up with you?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Her eyes never leave the darkening road ahead. ‘It’s just… enough.’

  *

  After a day away from the workshop, Charlie is cautious when he returns to it the following morning, but after five minutes, it’s as if he was never gone. Relief softens his muscles and makes his movements fluid, perfect for the new work he’s starting on. Against one wall of the barn wait chunks of trunk with knotholes and roots, twisted branches, and misshapen boles of bulging timber. Rather than sketching out the designs first and then measuring and cutting and working the wood to fit the plans, he’s been collecting this selection of offcuts and oddities, and finally feels brave enough to use them. He is going to allow each one to tell him what it wants to become.

  Hours pass. He feels none of them. He is nothing but the singing surfaces and hollows beneath his hands. At last, Charlie raises his head to look outside. Beyond the doors, the day is brightly coloured, as if someone has just finished painting it. The long grass moves in languid strokes and each leaf on the bushes growing up the hill seems sharply outlined. But then he freezes. He’s staring straight into another set of eyes. The strange eyes are wide open and a very pale blue, and as soon as their owner realises they’ve been seen, they vanish behind a boulder. Charlie blinks at the solid, red rock. Did I just imagine that?

  Charlie steps outside, and a cool breeze slides over his sweaty skin like a caress.

  ‘Hello?’ he says in a cautious voice, feeling daft.

  Nothing. The hill is decidedly lacking in blue eyes. Just as he’s about to turn and go back inside, the wind snatches a strand of blonde hair from behind the boulder and waves it aloft like a strange, pale flag. There’s someone there, all right.

  ‘Hey!’ His sudden shout, which comes out louder than he intended, startles the intruder from their hiding spot. Charlie watches in astonishment as a slender person with a long blonde rope of hair dashes out from behind the boulder and up the hill, slipping and scrabbling in her haste to make her escape. ‘Stop, please!’ Charlie cries out, but while he can hear her panting, frantic breath over the sound of the loose sand and stones that she’s sending skittering down the slope behind her, she gives no indication that she’s heard him.

  He watches the creature, who is wearing an odd combination of an old floral blouse, men’s shorts that are far too big for her and hiking boots, vanish behind a clump of vegetation and then reappear again, further up the hill.

  ‘What are you doing here? Where are you going?’

  But his call goes unanswered. The strange girl keeps on running. In moments, she is out of sight, and there’s nothing for Charlie to see but a big brown hill rearing up against the sky.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  FOR THREE WHOLE days, Sam stays away from the wood-man and the barn on the far side of the hill. Each morning, she wakes exhausted, enmeshed in sheets that are twisted and damp from the exertions of her dreams. She sits at the kitchen table with one of Jem’s old le Carré novels and drinks black coffee and eats oatmeal with cinnamon and sugar but no milk. Dairy has been a luxury ever since she’s had to bring it back on the motorbike in the sun, and it doesn’t keep long enough to make the effort worthwhile. She’s gotten used to being without it.

  See, I told
you, it’s better black. Jem’s voice inside her head makes Sam think of how she betrayed him every time she climbed that hill. Her oatmeal becomes a solid lump in her mouth.

  And now you’ve been seen, Sam. Now you’re in trouble.

  When she’s finally managed to force her breakfast down, Sam goes straight into the corner of the lounge where she’s set up her laptop on Anneke’s old writing desk, plugs in the 3G dongle, and checks to see if she has any new email assignments from Mrs McGovern. This is where she stays, researching and writing a paper on the Treaty of Versailles and the causes of the Second World War. She crunches through the dusty old facts like dry autumn leaves, enjoying the relief they bring from the pulsing heat that has taken up permanent residence inside her mutinous body.

  When the effort to resist is too much, Sam reaches for an old tin box that has lived on the top of the desk since she can remember, and pulls it towards her. The stamped metal surface, a raised pattern of flowers and leaves that have tarnished black in the grooves, is cool beneath her fingertips. She opens the lid and takes out the bundle of letters that lie within. They’re love letters, all addressed to Anneke, all written by Jem in the months before they married, when he was wrapping up his life in Cape Town in order to come and be with her. A letter a day. Sam has read each one over and over in secret during the years since Anneke’s death, and now she knows her favourites by the feel of their creases and the velvet of the much-touched, yellowing paper.

  My dearest-heart, she reads. Jem’s handwriting is a mixture of jagged slashes and long swoops. The moon is a thin little slice over the city tonight, like a cut-out piece of cloud, barely visible. Does it look the same to you?

  Further down the page: It comforts me to think of you in your parents’ kitchen, laughing over roast chicken with pumpkin and peas drenched in that gravy which your mother makes and you love to pour on everything…