Bone Meal For Roses

by Miranda Sherry

  He forgets the measurements he’s supposed to be marking out.

  She’s so close, he can hear her breathing. Her eyes are wide in the lowering light, the dilated pupils deep puddles of black surrounded by translucent blue, and the look in them is unmistakable. Hungry. Charlie feels the blood rushing to gather in his groin. He moves out from behind the bench, stepping closer to where the wordless girl leans up against the wall beside the peg board where he hangs his tools. Her eyes widen further. He reaches across her to take something from the board. A slender metal rasp with a wooden handle. It doesn’t matter what he picks, it’s the proximity he wants to test. Her breath comes in a little gasp but she doesn’t move back from his outstretched arm. His elbow is centimetres from her face. He can feel the puff of her exhale along his skin.

  Charlie’s heart pounds. Carelessly, as if it’s an accident, he brushes his wrist against her arm when he moves back. The bright curtain of her hair shimmers as a shudder vibrates through her body.

  She doesn’t draw away.

  Suddenly, a violent, mechanical beeping screeches through the silence. It’s the alarm on Charlie’s mobile phone. The shock of the sound makes them both jump as if scalded. Sam bangs her elbow into the wall, and Charlie stumbles backwards before racing across the room and grabbing his phone. It slips in his grip and his clumsy fingers battle to silence the racket. On the little screen, the bright letters beam up at him: Delia’s bedtime story. He’s set the alarm to go off each night so that he has enough time to clean up and get back to the house to put his daughter to bed.

  ‘I have to finish up,’ he says, but when he turns back to the room, the girl with the pale hair is gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ‘COME, MY LITTLE moppet!’ Charlie lifts his daughter into the air and over his shoulder. Delia yelps with delight and bangs her small fists on his shoulder blade to urge him on. ‘We’re going on an adventure, just you and me.’

  ‘Daddy and Delia, Daddy and Delia,’ she chants, and Charlie feels a spike of guilt at the fact that a trip into town in a van with her father can bring such delight to this vibrant little person whom he’s managed somehow to neglect, without realising it. He’s been too full up with the work.

  Be honest, Charlie.

  And with the presence of someone else.

  Two days have passed since the girl from the hill with the pale watching eyes was last in the workshop alongside him. He wants to be able to tell himself that her absence doesn’t matter, but he can’t shake the worry that he needs her eyes on him to be able to bring the wood to life the way he’s been able to do lately. This morning, he was reluctant to go down to the barn for the first time in months. He suggested an outing with his daughter instead: ‘I’ll take her out of everyone’s hair for a bit,’ he’d said to Liezette, who now stands with folded arms, watching him buckle Delia into her kiddie-seat. Liezette is wearing her riding boots and an unreadable expression.

  ‘You’re sure that’s fastened properly?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure.’ The air between them has become brittle with invisible little shards of things unsaid. He gives her a clownish grin, ducking and weaving to avoid being sliced by one of their merciless edges. Liezette ignores the smile and brushes past his capering to plant kisses all over her daughter’s smooth-skinned face.

  ‘See you later, my little angel,’ Liezette says in Afrikaans.

  ‘Bye, Ma.’

  Charlie bounces the car keys in his hand. His wife and daughter have been speaking to each other in Afrikaans all the time lately, making him feel even more of an outsider. We’ve been in this place too long. But Charlie no longer wants to leave. He opens the driver’s door and pauses, held in the thrall of a sudden mental image of bright hair cascading down a slender back.

  ‘Daddy?’

  ‘Righto, off we go,’ he chirps, and slides into the driver seat.

  ‘Off we go!’ Delia echoes. And they do.

  *

  Liezette waits until the van is well out of sight. In the ensuing quiet, she digs her own car keys out of her back pocket where they’ve been hiding since Charlie suggested his outing with Delia. She unlocks her little French city car and climbs in. For a moment, the familiar musty smell of its interior transports her right back to Cape Town. She hasn’t thought about the ocean in who knows how long, but now she aches for the crash and the spray of it. There’s a fine dull film on the inside of the windscreen, and she resists the urge to wipe it with her finger and taste it to see if it’s still salty.

  The engine starts up with a cough, and Liezette drives off in the opposite direction to the one Charlie took, making her way towards the barn at the base of the hill.

  A strange tightness has recently taken up residence in Liezette’s back, and as she navigates the farm road, she feels as if there are steel wires running all the way up it and into her neck. She shakes out her shoulders but it makes no difference. Apart from when she’s riding Rolo, the feeling is always there. Some days, she can even feel it pulling from her jawbone and all the way down into her stomach. She’s taken to eating her food in tiny bites to try and get her swallowed mouthfuls past the cables.

  The closer she gets to Charlie’s workshop, the more the tension builds, and by the time she parks the car and climbs out into the dusty silence, her whole body is thrumming. She enters the barn by the smaller back door, on the side furthest from the hill. It’s been weeks since she last set foot in here. It feels as if she’s trespassing, breaking in like a criminal.

  Without the big double doors open at the far end, the workshop is dim, and strange shadowed shapes seem to coalesce and disperse in air thick with wood dust and silence. The heels of her boots send sharp cracks of sound bouncing through the vast space. Liezette walks and stops, walks and stops.

  Oh my God.

  The moment Liezette sees Charlie’s latest pieces, the steel wires pulling on her insides go slack as if sliced clean through. An extraordinary occasional chair emerges out of the gloom and seems to be reaching out with curved arms as if it’s been waiting, for so, so long, to embrace her. She sinks down into it, holding her breath. The wood has been sanded and rubbed so satin-fine that the bits beneath her exploring fingertips seem to be spun from petals.

  ‘Jesus, Charlie,’ she says out loud, and a laugh bubbles out of her as she looks around and sees more and more of the work he’s created. Each piece reveals some intimate secret about the tree it once was: this unique curve whispers of how it feels to dig roots down into the depths of cool earth while singing at the sky, and that whorl right there is about birds tickling your scalp with their twiggy, clawed feet. Liezette, breathless in her embracing chair, suddenly lifts her arms above her head and imagines her fingers grazing the bottom of clouds. ‘Magical,’ she says, and in the strange presence of these pieces, the word seems to dart from her mouth and dance along the lengths of timber. This isn’t furniture, this is sculpture you want to sit on.

  Folks are going to claw each other’s eyes out to have one of these in their homes, she thinks. My husband’s going to be famous. Never mind the shop in De Waterkant, her Charlie Rowan is going to take the international market by storm.

  It’s been a long time since Liezette has allowed herself to imagine playing the role of ‘wife of the artist’, but now she slips on the fantasy like a familiar, luxuriant velvet coat. She closes her eyes and smiles. She’ll need a new wardrobe, for a start. She can see herself in something linen, well-made and deceptively simple-looking. Something that shows off her legs, now leaner thanks to all the horse riding. The impetus of her imaginings push her from her seat and send her pacing through the still workshop. In her mind, she’s stepping out of aeroplanes in exotic destinations, being welcomed wherever they land. Liezette has always craved the kind of adulation she imagines is given to a successful, talented artist, but has never had the goods to get there herself. Now, at Charlie’s side, she’ll be able to taste a bit of it.

  She places her hand on the bolt that cl
oses the large double doors at the end of the barn and pauses, the metal chill seeping into her fingers. Charlie and Delia could be back soon, and she doesn’t want him to find her in here. Besides which, what’s the point in opening the place up any further? There’s no furniture out there in the yard. I’ve seen what I came to see.

  Liezette trots back through the workshop and out into the bright day wearing a smile of intense satisfaction. It’s all been worth it, she thinks, all Charlie’s distance and strangeness doesn’t matter. She’s going to be the wife of an artist, an admirable man. Until this moment, sliding on to the sun-warmed fabric of her car seat, Liezette has never quite realised how much she’s wanted this all along.

  Did she do this? Did she make these incredible pieces happen by bringing Charlie out here to this beautiful valley? She wants to dismiss the thought, but it’s too delicious to abandon that quickly. She allows herself the treat of believing it for a little while longer. She smiles all the way to the stables.

  *

  Charlie opens the doors to let the summer cacophony of morning birdsong and cicadas flood in to replace the stale, woody night-breath of the barn. He scans the hillside for signs of the ‘water-eyed-girl’. It has been four days. Her continued absence distorts his week like a thickening scar, each new layer of discomfort hardening over the last. He takes his time filling an old metal watering can at the borehole pump, and uses it to water the strange garden. He found the can dented and abandoned in the far back corner of the barn along with some other old junk. It has a hole in it, but it’s still usable. He pays special attention to watering the lavenders, which seem to be losing some of their oomph. The flower heads sag on the end of their grey-green stems.

  Don’t die. Charlie makes a silent plea as he watches the water soak into the orange earth. He sits on the stool that he still places ready for the girl, and watches the bees explore the little garden. He’s biding his time, reluctant to go back inside and face the piece he’s working on. Without her watching, he’s unsure of how to approach the timber, and this realisation makes him want to leap up and kick the plants to pieces. He clenches his callused hands into fists, and forces himself to stand up, nice and slow.

  ‘You’re a first class fuck-up, Charlie Rowan,’ he hisses through clenched teeth. ‘You scared her off, shouldn’t have touched her.’ But he remembers the way her eyes had locked onto his as he brushed his arm against hers. She hadn’t been afraid. She’d been something else. His body warms at the memory, and he lifts his eyes once more to scan the clumps of fynbos and orange rocks. Nothing.

  Damn it.

  *

  Sam stops past the graveyard on her way back home from the Super Saver. Despite the fact that she hasn’t been here to water or weed since she followed that horse over the hill, the roses around Anneke’s grave are thriving. The limbs seem to have swelled and tangled themselves into a protective thicket, and their luxuriant coating of green leaves is studded with bright flowers. Sam touches a peachy petal with caution, half expecting the rich colour to rub off on her fingers like fresh paint.

  She works steadily in the heat, filling the old bucket she’s kept hidden in the bushes for years with water from the collection tank and carrying it into the graveyard to moisten the thirsty roots. Load after sloshing load. Sam’s aching with exertion by the time she’s finished watering. The skin on her nose and the back of her neck is stinging from too much sun, but she’s not done yet.

  Sam takes the secateurs from her backpack and approaches the plants, aiming to snip off the browning spent blooms, but when she leans across to reach one, she gasps at a sharp, sudden pain on the inside of her wrist. She jerks backwards and inspects a glowing bead of blood seeping from her torn skin. She peers closer at the thick foliage to find that beneath the leaves and flowers, each stem is bristling with an armoury of huge, sharp points. She’s never seen rose thorns so big. And so many of them.

  The rose leaves rub their green selves against one another, and it seems to Sam as if their rustling has become a wall of whispers. What are they saying? Sam takes a small step back. The flowers shake admonishing heads on the end of their stalks, and the whispering seems to build. Betrayer. A clump of red petals suddenly come loose from their calyx and fall to the damp ground with a soft fleshy plop. Sam stares at the scattered, crimson blobs, very aware of the feel of the blood from her cut arm sliding down over her hand and clinging to the ends of her fingers. She lifts her wrist to her mouth and sucks to stem the bleeding. Slowly, with the taste of metal coating her tongue, Sam walks back to her motorbike, packs her things, and rides away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  JUST AS CHARLIE has begun to wonder if the girl from the hill with the water-cool eyes is real, if he didn’t perhaps make her up in a fit of overworked lunacy, she returns. It happens on a clear November morning when the air has a certain thin quality that promises a scorching day. Charlie steps out of the barn with the watering can only to find that the garden has already been watered. He sets the can down on the damp ground and scans the whiskery hill scrub for signs of her. He can’t see anything but rocks, bush and grass, but just knowing she is out there somewhere makes his muscles surge like water beneath his skin as if a tide is swelling within, pushing him towards the pile of timber that he’s neglected for too long.

  It is only hours later, when he finally looks up from the lathe, that he sees the girl. She’s standing in the dark corner of the barn. Regardless of the shadow, her extraordinary pale braid glows, as if drinking the light into itself and burning it back at him.

  ‘I’m glad you came back,’ Charlie says, and the wood shavings at his feet rustle at the sound, echoing their agreement.

  Sam doesn’t reply. She is motionless, unable to breathe. Her heart is hammering so hard at the wonderfulness of his words that it blocks her throat.

  *

  The next day, Sam stands by the open barn doors and looks in to where Charlie perches on a stool at his workbench, working on something with a hammer and chisel. There’s a hot wind streaming through the valley, and she can feel it pushing against her back and rushing around her, like a boiling river. Sam is caught up in the pull of the current, barely aware that she’s moving closer to the wood-man with each breath until the wide curve of his shoulder fills her vision. The ring of the hammer against the back of the chisel stops, and in the silence, she’s aware of heartbeats: hers is violent thunder, Charlie’s is a pulsing in the veins of his arm which rise up beneath his skin like cords in the heat. Sam is sure she can almost hear the beating heart of the workshop itself, thudding in time with the battering of the wind on the tin roof, and slow and almost indiscernible in the whorled core of the piece of timber that’s gripped in the workbench vice.

  She is now close enough to realise that, despite her imaginings, Charlie doesn’t smell like wood at all. There’s something richer there, like freshly baked bread spread with butter. Something edible. She gazes at the slick of sweat on the back of his wrist. If she tasted it, would it be sweet or salt? Her mouth floods. She swallows.

  ‘You want to know something?’ Charlie’s voice is hushed. ‘The wood is different when you’re watching. See?’ He unwinds the vice and holds up the freed piece. It is a pale ashy beige and, although she knows it’s Charlie who has worked it, it looks as if it has been shaped over time by the slow rub of running water. Waves and streams and rivers have carved this timber, licking it into fluid form. ‘It’s glowing. It doesn’t do that unless you’re here.’

  Sam holds her breath. The hot wind river has turned the wood-man around in its swell and shifted him closer to her. She flicks her gaze up just long enough to see that his eyes are dark blue-green and his lashes longer than she would’ve thought possible. ‘You see,’ he whispers, ‘that’s why you mustn’t vanish again. I need you.’

  The air shivers in the small space between them. A strand of his hair flops down and brushes her forehead.

  A sudden gust of wind whips through the barn, knocking tools
off their shelves and sending a cloud of sawdust swirling upwards into their faces. Sam takes a step back, and then another. Charlie squeezes his eyes shut and picks shreds of wood from where they’ve stuck to his lips. When the wind dies down again, Sam is back on her stool by the door.

  Her eyes stay on him, though, cool and hot at the same time.

  Charlie slots the wood back into the grip of the vice, tightens it, and picks up his chisel.

  *

  Because the days are summer-long now, it’s still light when Sam returns home in the evenings, the low sun whitening the sky as she makes her way down the path she’s worn in the side of the hill and enters the garden beneath the vast, shadowy arms of the oak tree.

  Sam-the-horse’s grave marker is overdue for replacing, and the letters she chipped out years ago have vanished into moss and rotting wood. The reeds around the pond have thickened with no one cutting them back, and weeds have sprouted in the flower beds. A massive marrow has seeded itself in the compost heap and now blankets the whole mound with a snaking grid of vines and yellow trumpet-shaped flowers. As Sam tiptoes past the vegetable beds, she sees that the snails have ravaged the spinach, the onions need to be pulled up before they ruin, and the fruit is reddening and rotting on the tomato plants.

  This is precious food, Sam. Jem’s voice echoes in her head. The vegetables are one thing that you can’t just keep ignoring.

  So she fetches her trowel and a basket, and digs up the onions. Most will be salvageable, if she lets the skins dry and stores them correctly. She collects what tomatoes she can, inhaling the pungent green smell of their leaves, and for a while, she almost loses herself in the familiar, steady work of picking and cutting and tying up and pulling weeds from between the toes of the vegetable plants.

  But as she makes her way to the house with her full basket, Sam notes that the lavenders are leggy and dry and need cutting back. The leaves on the summer bulbs are browning because they haven’t been watered. There are weeds everywhere she looks, and clouds of fruit flies hover in clusters over the mush of fallen plums beneath the fruit tree. There’s so much to do, so much that she’s neglected. Sam resolves to stay home tomorrow and get stuck in, but even as she thinks this, she knows that she won’t. She knows that she can’t. She knows that she will go to Charlie.