Almost Grace

by Rosie Rowell

  Rory was a man of quotes. I was impressed until he started reusing them. One of the all-time favourites he would pull out was ‘What is most personal is most universal’. Thinking of it now makes me laugh. Shows how much you know, Rory. I get up quickly. I am not going to sit alone outside and think about his nuggets of wisdom.

  The empty sitting room feels full of departed voices. How can you choose to be alone one minute and truly hate it the next? I switch on a standing lamp near the sofa and lean across the coffee table for a pack of cards. Solitaire. The cards hurt the cuts on my palm. It’s a crap round. I think about cheating, but what would be the point? It looks very dark outside. There are no streetlights. Is this a conscious hippy-organic decision by the residents? It’s far more likely that no one’s bothered to fill out the streetlight application form. Spook has left his jersey behind. I pick it up and sniff it, expecting a smoky, sweaty smell, but find none. ‘Huh,’ I say. I like jerseys. I put it on and tug the sleeves over my wrists. It feels as if I’ve crawled into a cocoon.

  This is the kind of night that needs opera. ‘Dido’s Lament’ from Dido and Aeneas to be specific. Dido rejects Aeneas for having thought of leaving her but is so heartbroken that she decides to die. It’s very beautiful. Opera is the only thing in the world big enough to hold all emotion. It is bigger than the deepest despair or most frivolous fantasies. You can hide in it.

  Despite being definitely ‘fine’ all the time, if Mum gets home and blasts opera through the house, I know to leave her for a while. If she puts on anything by Wagner, I may end up having to cook my own supper. For as long as I can remember, Mum has dragged me to every operatic staging at Artscape, ‘pitifully few that they are’. Even though I’d simply curl up and go to sleep next to her, it was always me she took along. Yet despite the fact that she was training to become an opera singer, she doesn’t sing. Sometimes I think she stopped singing the day she got pregnant. I once asked her why she didn’t name me Dido or Carmen or Violetta or Isolde. ‘They’re all so tragic,’ she smiled. We are not tragic – we are fine.

  I could have done with an unusual name like Isolde – instead she gave me a little old lady’s name, after a singer so obscure it in itself is tragic. Gracie Fields. Wartime entertainer of troops and general cat’s chorister. I’ve never understood Mum’s devotion to Gracie Fields, but it has something to do with the Christopher Robin song. This was the only song Mum ever sang to me. She sang every night as she tucked me up. It never ceased to thrill me how such a deep, rich voice came from her small body. It would make my scalp tingle. I used to wonder where she kept it for the rest of the day. She’d sit on the side of my bed, scoop her long hair, twist it around her finger a few times, and begin. ‘Hush, hush, whisper who dares, Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.’

  That was a long time ago. Nowadays it’s all frown lines and that forced bright tone. Until the night before we left. I was in the kitchen when she got home from yoga. I’d been packing for our week away, trying to find some jeans that would fit. Right at the back of the cupboard I’d pulled out my favourite jeans of all time.

  She dumped two bags of food on the counter. I helped her unpack, looking out for anything I could take on the holiday.

  ‘I’ve joined a choir,’ she said as she opened the fridge and poured herself a glass of wine.

  I frowned. I had a bag of carrots and some fat-free yoghurt. ‘But you’ve always only sung to me.’

  Mum’s face softened, which made me wish I hadn’t said that. ‘You outgrew my singing a while ago.’

  Still, for some reason I felt uneasy. Even wanting to join a choir seemed distinctly out of character for Mum. It was the kind of thing Theresa’s mum Janey would encourage her to do. ‘Wow. A choir. That’s very hip.’

  ‘I think so,’ she agreed, happily ignoring my sarcasm. She was about to walk out the kitchen when she stopped. ‘Are those the jeans I got you from Gap?’ Her tone was of someone coming across a long-forgotten photo.

  I looked down and without thinking answered, ‘Yup.’

  When she spoke again, her voice had changed. It was small and worried, like a child who doesn’t understand. ‘But we got those when you were twelve.’

  Shit. ‘They’re very stretchy,’ I said and left the kitchen.

  From my bedroom I listened to her walking around the house, up and down, as if she was looking for something.

  Then she was at my door. Her body was rigid underneath her yoga pants and sweatshirt. ‘For the last six months I have been walking on eggshells around you. No more.’ Mum doesn’t shout. The angrier she is, the quieter her voice gets. Her words came out clear and dangerously measured. ‘I want you to think very carefully this week about what it is you’re trying to achieve. Because the way I see it, you’re stringing us all along in a very elaborate game.’

  ‘What game?’

  ‘I am not finished. I will support and love you through whatever it is that is causing you anxiety but I will not follow you down this road of self-destruction. If you insist on continuing like this, Grace, I’m afraid we are not on the same team.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Mum took a deep breath. ‘It means that you will attend the three-month outpatients’ programme. If that doesn’t help we’ll try something else.’

  I looked up at her. ‘What about varsity?’

  Mum shook her head. ‘That will have to wait.’

  I felt my mouth drop open. I laughed. Ninety-five percent of me was convinced she’d never be that cruel. ‘You don’t have the right to decide that.’

  Mum seemed to grow taller. ‘Yes, Grace, I do.’

  ‘That course is the one good thing in my life and you’re going to take that away? I won’t go to that stupid place. I’d rather die.’

  Mum’s pupils contracted. For the first time I seemed to have rattled her. ‘You don’t mean that,’ she said and left the room.

  I shake away the memory and Mum’s words. She’s just trying to scare me. But I’m stronger than she thinks. I won’t answer her calls and I won’t go on any programme.

  At the sound of Louisa and Brett returning I get up quickly and slip away to my room. Somewhere at the back of my mind I know I should take the jersey off, but it’s too warm. It would be like peeling off a layer of skin.

  1. A street version of crystal meth manufactured locally

  SUNDAY

  Spook is leaning over me, shaking my shoulder gently. He’s switched the bedside lamp on; it feels like the middle of the night.

  I sit up, groggy. ‘What?’

  ‘Get dressed,’ he whispers and leaves the room.

  When he returns with a mug of tea, I haven’t yet made it out of bed. He looks at me and I suddenly remember I’m still wearing his jersey.

  ‘Outside. Five minutes. Put your costume on and dress warmly.’

  It is not yet light. The air is sharp and salty. The waking birds are the only indication that dawn is approaching. I grasp the mug of tea and shiver in my track pants and sweatshirt. ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘Let’s go,’ he replies.

  ‘Spook, it’s dark.’ But I follow him nonetheless down to the car. He has two boards strapped to the roof-rack and is bundling wetsuits onto the back seat.

  ‘Jump in,’ he says cheerfully.

  Spook drives quickly through the sleeping streets. The sky is lightening into a purpley blue.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  He rubs the back of his head and grins at me. ‘Church.’

  ‘What? With surfboards?’

  He laughs.

  ‘Do you belong to some freaky sect?’

  He shrugs. ‘Some people think so.’

  I’ve been abducted by a madman.

  He looks over at me. ‘Relax, the first time is always the best.’

  We leave Baboon Point and follow the dirt road Louisa and I drove back on from Lambert’s Bay. I’m about to demand to know more, but suddenly the train is approaching, a great dark hulk
looming through the pre-dawn haze. It speeds by, metres from my side of the car, the sound deafening. ‘Jeez,’ I say as the endless line of cargo carriages charges past, ‘why put a track through the middle of a seaside village?’

  ‘The train was here first.’

  ‘It’s ugly.’

  Spook finds this funny. ‘It’s delivering iron ore from the Northern Cape to Saldahna. Three hundred and forty-two carriages, each carrying one hundred tonnes of ore. You’ll see the tankers lining up on the horizon, waiting to collect it.’

  ‘It’s still ugly.’

  ‘Capitalism is ugly. You can walk along the tracks all the way up to the tunnel that goes through Baboon Point.’

  ‘Have you been in there?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘At the same time as a train?’

  Spook frowns at me. ‘You really do have a death wish.’

  Being back on this road reminds me of the black car yesterday. The memory of those two men’s menacing expressions, as if they were delivering a message. Should I tell Spook, despite what Louisa said? But what if he laughs at me?

  The sky is brightening, revealing the world in sleepy colours. I don’t want to ruin it by bringing up us taking his car again.

  Spook pulls over on the side of the road and jumps out. I look over the deserted beach, wondering why the hell I agreed to this, when he opens my door and chucks me Brett’s second skin and wetsuit. ‘That guy has got enough kit to open a surf shop,’ he remarks, holding what looks like a rubber balaclava and booties.

  ‘Uh, Spook – I don’t surf.’

  ‘Good, ’cos it’s a lake out there this morning.’ He watches me, but there is no way I’m undressing in front of him. The thought of walking around in a wetsuit in front of him is bad enough. As if he suddenly understands, he drops the kit and walks away.

  ‘If I get hypothermia, I’m blaming you,’ I call, as I’m hopping on one leg, struggling to pull the suit on. What if it’s too small?

  ‘It helps to wee,’ he says, returning with his suit on up to his waist.

  ‘What?’ I ask as he zips me up.

  ‘It warms the suit up,’ he replies, fitting the rubber balaclava over my head. Our faces are inches apart. His face looks younger in the soft light; his greenish eyes have brown flecks in them.

  ‘I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,’ I reply.

  Spook carries both boards across the white sand to the water’s edge. His body seems more athletic in a wetsuit; he has beautifully shaped legs. But his stomach sticks out like a pregnant bump. He hands me Brett’s board. ‘Got it?’ he asks.

  Of course not! I want to shout, I don’t get anything about this. But I smile.

  ‘Follow me.’ After a few strides, Spook launches himself onto his board and starts paddling. The board is surprisingly heavy. I take a few tentative steps forward and almost topple over. Despite the suit, the freezing water takes my breath away. For a while all I can do is gasp repeatedly. It takes every ounce of bloody-minded determination to keep me from turning around and making for the car. The board is heavy and awkward in the water. I try to copy him as best I can by lying on the board, but despite the wax I slip about, like a soaped-up seal. The apparently flat sea shoots up at me, dumping water into my face and stinging my eyes.

  He looks back at me. ‘Paddle.’

  My hands burn from the cold. The next time he looks back I’ve fallen off. I’m so cold I can’t even cry. My head aches. He comes back alongside, gets off his board and stands in front of mine to steady it. ‘Relax,’ he says.

  I make a face at him. ‘The waves keep knocking me off,’ I say through chattering teeth. ‘Why am I doing this?’

  Spook laughs loudly. ‘There are no waves. It’s unnaturally flat this morning. And you’re doing it because it’s magic.’

  ‘This reminds me of that scene in Titanic, you know, where Leonardo Di Caprio dies of cold and sinks to the bottom of the sea?’

  He grins. ‘I’m not that good-looking.’

  He walks alongside, holding the board. ‘See – no more “waves”. OK?’ I nod, out of humiliation more than anything. ‘Let’s go.’ He returns to his board, graceful as a dancer. Now that I’m steady, I find the rhythm and paddle behind him. After a few minutes he sits up on his board. When I catch up, he reaches out and takes hold of mine.

  ‘Now what?’ I ask, as I clamber into a sitting position.

  ‘Nothing. Now we sit.’

  ‘You’re joking.’ I’ve lost all feeling in my feet. The rest of my body is shaking. ‘A shark could have bitten my legs off and I would have no idea.’

  ‘Shhh,’ he replies.

  I look around. The horizon is backlit with an orangey-pink layer. The rest of the sky is a hazy yellow. The quiet makes me nervous.

  ‘Stop wriggling,’ he says.

  I sit next to him on Brett’s board. ‘Where are the waves?’

  ‘The swell hasn’t pulled in yet.’

  ‘It’s peaceful,’ I comment. Apart from the bobbing kelp in the water nearby that looks horribly similar to seals. Or worse.

  ‘Do you feel it?’ he says. ‘It’s epic.’

  I try, but I feel coerced, like when I get trapped in one of Mum’s meditation sessions at home. ‘It’s difficult to tap into the majesty when I keep feeling things touching my legs,’ I say.

  ‘Put your feet up. I’ve got you.’

  I glance at him. His eyes are big and genuine, so I do as he says. ‘We’re drifting,’ I say after a moment.

  ‘It’s cool,’ he replies. ‘Close your eyes.’

  I hear gulls that I hadn’t noticed before and the water lapping. It’s gently shifting us all the time, almost like rocking. Spook’s firm hold on the board is like being adrift and moored at the same time. The smell of kelp and salt wash through me. I am intensely aware of how cold every cell in my body is.

  When I open my eyes, he is smiling at me. ‘It is kind of like church, huh?’ He pulls my board closer and takes hold of my hand. The beach is deserted. The small curve of white sand is bordered on each side by flat rocks. ‘No better place on earth than this coast.’ Spook’s voice is soft. ‘Look at those hills in the distance; in this light they’re almost … tender.’

  Watching him, I catch a glimpse of both the very small boy he was and who he’ll become as an old man. In the water, in his element, Spook becomes almost mythical.

  ‘The one thing that Muizenberg has that this coast doesn’t is great coffee,’ I comment on the way back up the sand.

  ‘Balls,’ Spook replies. His face is still glowing, and he shakes the water out of his hair like a dog.

  Once I’m back in my clothes and not shaking quite so violently, I go and find him at the back of the car. ‘I thought Louisa said the boot was broken.’

  ‘Call it kiddie-locked,’ he replies.

  He has set up a gas canister and a small coffee roasting pot. Out of a crate in the boot he lifts a bag of coffee beans and a grinder. ‘Seriously?’ I say, leaning over his kit.

  ‘Third best thing in the world is fresh coffee,’ he replies. My heart skips at his words, but I’m too shy to take him up on them. Instead I watch him work, his brow slightly creased in concentration.

  ‘You’ve got it all figured out,’ I comment.

  He looks up. ‘Nah, I just know what I like.’ He holds my gaze until I blush and look away. I wander down to a rock. The sky is a fresh morning blue, the ocean is resting, playing sleepily with the morning light that bounces off it. The only sounds are those of Spook whistling tunelessly behind me and the indistinct hum of a coastline waking up. Our footprints are the only ones to mark the white sand – it could be the first day of the world. For the first time in my life I feel like there is a chink of light, another way. Spook’s world is raw, cut down to what matters. He is the first person I’ve met who seems free.

  Spook sits down next to me with two steaming mugs. When he hands me one, my heart drops. ‘I should have said – I don’t drink condense
d milk.’ Once upon a time it was my favourite thing in the world; there was always a can in my Christmas stocking. Louisa and I used to buy tins of it, punch two holes in the top and carry it around in our school bags. Sipping at it was the only way to survive Chemistry. When did we stop doing that? Last year, sometime between Louisa’s watermelon diet and our decision to only eat green things.

  ‘Everyone likes condensed milk,’ Spook scoffs.

  ‘No.’ I shake my head vigorously, feeling panic rising. ‘It’s just –’

  ‘What?’ he asks, his bush-coloured eyes challenging. ‘I dare you.’

  I take a sip of the most delicious coffee in the world. I hold the mug near my lips a moment, devouring the smell, then put it down on the rock. ‘I just don’t like sweet coffee.’

  I feel Spook studying me for a moment. Then he reaches out and rubs my back. The tenderness of the action makes me want to climb into his lap and howl but instead I straighten up and smile. ‘When did you learn to surf?’

  He gives my shoulders a gentle squeeze. ‘I was surfing as soon as I could carry a board.’ He drains the last of his coffee. ‘Never much going on at home so I was always down at Bayworld.’ He laughs at the memory. ‘There were about six of us laaitjies1 there. Causing mayhem at every opportunity.’

  I can imagine him with his blonde hair and surfer’s attitude. He and his friends would be the type of boys who hang about at the top of the beach and laugh loudly every time you walk past. He wouldn’t give me a second glance if he were eighteen now.

  Seagulls overhead break the silence. The sound triggers an inexplicable sense that I’ve been expecting this moment. Something has prepared me for it, not the place but the feeling. ‘I have the perfect music for this morning, for this moment.’

  Spook looks at me.

  I laugh, delighted with myself. ‘You’ll see.’ I take out my phone and scroll through my songs. ‘It’s one of those “hidden” tracks, kind of appropriate.’

  Spook leans over to my phone and snorts. ‘Bunch of nancy boys.’

  ‘Listen.’ I hold the phone up between us. The piano melody floats up and down, soaring and swooping. The sound of birds on the track echo the gulls in front of us. The notes are weightless, as endless as swells on a calm sea. I close my eyes and am back on the board, water lapping, Spook’s firm hold keeping me next to him. The voice is naked but strong. The words are about letting go, taking flight, a love song to freedom. It is as if we invented this bit of paradise, this bit of morning. If only I could bottle this moment and carry it with me everywhere, it could be my protection against Mum and Rory and the rest of my life.