The moment Jem was in the grave, however, Sam thought: I can’t.
There was no way she could cover him up and have him gone for good. Sobbing, she tried to lift the body out again. Bits of the wet sheet came unwound and slapped against her face. She slid and slipped on the mud, and then went crashing down onto the soil herself. There she lay beside the wooden, discoloured body in its inadequate shroud, staring up at the darkening sky.
It was the call of a bird that forced her back into action. Something about the sound made her think of Sussie’s ‘koewee’, and although her aunt hadn’t set foot here since the desecration, Sam imagined her arriving and seeing the piles of muddy-toed roses lying on the ground with the great big gaping grave in the middle, and peering in…
At the thought, she scrambled out of the hole and began to push the clumps of earth back into it, aware all the while that she was sending bits of her crumbling heart in along with it. Once it was finally done, and the roses were back in their places, night had cloaked the garden in black, and the temperature plummeted. Sam lay on the cold ground beside the rose garden until her whole body was shuddering and aching with chill.
Finally, she went back inside the house.
Inside the bathroom, she caught sight of herself in the medicine cabinet mirror, and paused, transfixed. Her face was almost featureless with mud and her eyes were bloodshot pink from crying. I’ll have to go to school tomorrow and pretend that nothing has changed. The reality of the deceit she’d now have to carry hit home and she drew back from her reflection, sick with horror. I can’t do this.
The wind rattled the branches on the trees outside the bathroom window, and amid the clatter, an exhausted Sam thought she could hear her grandpa’s voice:
Have a bath and get warm, my love.
She obeyed, turning on the hot tap and pulling off her mud-caked clothes before climbing in to the water.
Tomorrow you can take the Yamaha motorbike to school. Lucky thing we got it going last month, hey? She nodded, staring at the islands of her kneecaps rising up out of the brown murk. Just take it one thing at a time, dear heart. Everything is going to be fine.
But even as she heard the words and lay back in the warmth, Sam knew that this was a lie. Grandpa, as always, even from beneath the rose bushes, was just trying to be kind.
CHAPTER THIRTY
‘WELL, IF IT isn’t the lesser-spotted Sam Harding,’ Mrs McGovern says as Sam walks in to the classroom carrying her motorcycle helmet under one arm and her book bag over the other. Sam shifts beneath Mrs McGovern’s gaze. It is the first time in all their years together as pupil and teacher that she can remember being greeted without a smile.
‘I’m really sorry, Mrs McGovern.’
Sam tries to tread quietly as she approaches Mrs McGovern’s desk, but both Dale and Keegan have looked up from their work and are watching her every move. Sam doesn’t look at Keegan. She has no idea how she’s going to deal with him, but she knows she’s got to make it through this first.
‘And?’ Mrs McGovern looks stern, but her voice is soft with concern. ‘What happened to you, Sam?’
‘Did you get my biology assignment?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it OK?’
‘It was, but that’s not what we’re talking about and you know it.’
Now. She has to do it now. Sam fumbles inside her backpack. She is not breathing. She pulls out a beige envelope and hands it to her teacher with shaking fingers.
‘It’s from my grandpa,’ she says in a voice that’s little more than a whisper. ‘It explains… stuff.’
When Mrs McGovern takes the envelope, Sam feels a dark seam ripping open inside her, spilling soil and leaking watery fluid into her chest cavity until she is filthy inside. She busies herself with her bag so as not to have to watch the reading of the letter. She imagines the lies it carries as a thick smearing of bitter-molasses-black over the page. After Keegan’s visit yesterday, she’d sat up for hours composing what it would say, working and reworking it until the words made no sense at all. To get the tone right, she’d lifted and changed phrases from Jem’s letters to Anneke. Being love letters, there was not much she could use directly, but she hopes that they’ve made this forgery appear genuine.
After that, she’d practised her grandfather’s handwriting over and over, forcing her hand to follow loops and jags of his familiar scrawl.
When the letter was finally done and sealed into its innocuous envelope, she’d run to the bathroom and vomited, heaving and gasping over the toilet bowl until all she could throw up were thin green strings of bile and spit.
And now, here in the classroom, Sam imagines her grandfather’s corpse, all run through with the roots of roses, jerking and twisting on the end of wires like a terrible marionette. It feels as if she’s dug him up and brought him to hideous life, and now she’s holding the strings, making him dance as soil crumbles from his shoulders and dark, shiny beetles crawl out of his ears. The weight of this is almost harder to bear than the act of burying him itself. Sam stands before Mrs McGovern’s desk as darts of agony shoot up from her fingers and into her skull, blinding her. What is she doing? What has she done?
‘Did you read this before Jem sealed the envelope, Sam? Do you know what it says?’
‘Yes.’ Speaking this small truth is a rush of relief. Sam blinks, and the blinding shadows scatter. She’s just here, in this bright familiar room. And the look on Mrs McGovern’s face makes her think that her plan may have worked. The hellish dance of the marionette was not for nothing.
Dear Meg,
I was appalled to hear of Sam’s recent lapse in both her school work and her communications with you. I must confess that I have been down with the flu recently, and was not paying quite as much attention to Sam’s needs as perhaps she was of mine, nevertheless, that does not excuse the fact that I was so unaware of what was going on with my granddaughter of late. It took some courage for her to come to me and tell me that she was in trouble for having ‘dropped off the radar’ as she put it, and that her being in constant touch with you was a condition of her being able to continue her studies at home, which as you know, suits us both far better since my health has not been so great.
When pressed, Sam finally confessed that she has been suffering a sudden relapse of the old ‘technophobia’ that you will no doubt remember was such a feature of her childhood at one stage. Apparently, the reawakened, irrational fear of having to touch the computer sent her into a downward spiral. This meant that she was unable to respond to your communications, and felt unable to speak to me about it, due to her resulting guilt. Sam’s recent relapse is over, and I assure you that I will watch out for any signs of it rearing its head once more.
I am getting the landline phone bill sorted out too. It seems that Sam forgot to pay it when I asked her to do so at the post office, as she has been, as she puts it, ‘out of it’.
Please accept my apologies for any worry that this episode may have caused, and be assured that it will not happen again while Sam continues her studies from home.
Kind regards,
Jeremy Harding
‘The technophobia thing just suddenly happened again,’ Sam says into the silence. ‘Like he said.’
‘What brought it on again, Sam?’
‘Don’t know. Stress, maybe?’
‘Because if it is going to continue to be an issue, we may have to rethink your doing your school via correspondence.’
‘I know.’ Sam arranges her face to give the impression that this could be a real possibility. Just another move in the dance.
But if I’m the puppet now, who’s pulling the strings?
‘Well.’ Mrs McGovern puts the letter back into the envelope. It’s a relief to have it tucked away again, out of sight. ‘We’re going to have to monitor this more closely from now on.’
‘OK.’
*
‘Wait.’
Sam stops on her way to the gate and turns to see that
Keegan has followed her out of the classroom. He trots towards her, shielding his eyes from the sun.
‘Hey,’ she says. It’s hard to make a smile happen after what she’s just been through, but Sam manages. She must be getting good at this. ‘Sorry I ran out. I didn’t want to disturb your studying and cause even more trouble.’ Little lies spin from her mouth and fill the air as if they’re windborne seeds. They melt on her tongue, sharp and sour, and tickle the sides of her throat. Keegan breathes them in without seeming to notice.
‘I overheard you and my mom talking in there. What you said about the technophobia stuff.’
‘I figured. Not exactly a private discussion.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me all that yesterday?’
‘Don’t know.’ Sam clutches her backpack against her belly so that it bulges out between the two of them. She wraps her arms around it. ‘I was embarrassed, I guess.’
‘So instead you…’ kissed me. Something about Sam’s expression, shut down and carefully impassive, makes Keegan suddenly afraid that she did nothing of the sort, that he imagined it all. She’d tasted slightly of toothpaste. He wouldn’t make up that sort of detail, would he? Her eyes are steady on his, as if daring him to mention it just so that she can deny it. Keegan’s head swims. The smell of lemon thyme crushed beneath their feet and the white hard sunlight pressing down on the top of his head is overwhelming.
‘Anyway,’ Sam hugs the bag closer, ‘I wanted to say thank you. For coming round to see that I was OK, and stuff. You’re a real friend.’
It’s a good word, it shouldn’t sting, but Keegan can feel the burn as the soft syllable burrows into his skin. He turns and glares up the road, squinting against the light that rages off the orange dirt. Nathan’s sneering voice echoes through his head, but for once, his brother is right: You need to get out of this dump and meet other girls and get a life and get laid. This shit is getting old. A sob-shudder builds behind his breastbone, and he fights to keep it down.
‘OK, well I guess I’ll see you in two weeks for the next bunch of tests,’ Keegan says, and before the tears have a chance to come, he dashes back to the classroom.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
‘HEY, SKANK.’ THE voice barely swims in to the edge of Yolande’s consciousness, but the jolt on her shin fires pins and needles up through her body and into her brain. ‘Wakey fucken wakey.’ She draws her limbs inwards, protecting, and forces stitched-together-feeling eyelids to part. A big white trainer with red laces blurs into view. She watches it pull back and bounce into her lower body again, not too hard, but insistent.
‘The fuck? I was sleeping.’
‘You weren’t fucken sleeping, Ratty, you were cased-out.’
‘So?’ Yolande drags herself into a semi-sit, legs still pulled in close. She rubs the spot where the trainer made contact. She blinks. ‘What’s the problem? It’s what keeps you in business, isn’t it?’ In the gloom of the abandoned parking garage, she can see the slumps of clothes and hair that indicate fellow users, still in dreamland. ‘This is your empire, Sterre.’
‘Not mine, Ratty, not mine.’ Sterre’s gold front teeth gleam as he grins. ‘You know who I work for.’ He wipes the tip of the trainer that made contact with Yolande on the ankle of his tracksuit. ‘And I’m here with a message for the “missus”.’
‘I was going to pay. Tonight I was going to come. I am.’
‘Well then, how about paying up now?’ Sterre holds out his hand, waiting. It’s thick-knuckled with a scar along the palm, a shiny, puckered ridge bisecting the coffee-stain brown. Yolande thinks it looks like the scar could be the lair of some terrible, flesh-eating demon-worm. She pulls back and away from the hand in case something hideous shoots out of it.
‘It’s my fist you need to worry about, Ratty, not my old cut.’ Sterre beckons, and the poorly executed gang-tattoos of a star on each of his fingers twinkle at her and then vanish. ‘Come on, pay up.’
‘I don’t have—’ Yolande’s sentence is squeezed short when Sterre’s hand shoots out and grips her around the throat.
‘Then you’d better get,’ Sterre whispers. Yolande squirms as the hard cord of the worm-scar digs into her flesh. Sterre releases his hold, dropping her like a soiled rag. ‘Make a plan.’
‘I—’
‘You’re not making friends in this town, lady. Just remember where your sweetness is coming from, hey? You pay what you owe or you’re going to have the worst comedown of your life.’
Yolande lifts her fingers to her throat, swallowing down acid as she watches Sterre walk away.
‘Can’t treat me like your shit,’ she mutters at his retreating back, her voice low to ensure she won’t be heard. ‘I’ve got inheritance, and one of these days I’m gonna get what’s mine and I won’t buy from you fucks any more. I’ll take my business elsewhere.’
She shuts her eyes, but her body is buzzing and her skin itches. No more happy for Ratty today. Fuck.
Yolande pictures her shiny rings, can feel their weight in the warmth of her hand. She heaves herself up off the floor, dusts herself down, and walks towards the grey light of the street.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
DRIVEN BY AN even fiercer need to keep protecting her secret, and haunted by the possibility of having to raise the awful zombie marionette again, Sam studies every night for her end-of-year exams. The week before they begin, she works through into the early hours, and only wakes late when the sun is high and hot above the hills. After that, she bathes and eats her oats and bits of fruit that she’s saved from the ants and beetles in the garden, and only then, as the day slips from morning to afternoon, does she hike over to Charlie’s.
His evident relief at her arrival always brings a steady wave of delight that rises up inside and seems to slosh over the edges of her, spilling joy all over the floor at her feet. But on the day of her first exam, when she has to ride back home from town on the old Yamaha and only makes it to the barn after four, Charlie’s expression is full of reproach, and the hunger with which he pulls off her clothes feels a little like fury. For the first time, Sam feels small in the hard brown circle of his arms.
‘I’ll be late all this week,’ she whispers when they are done, and the sweat sticks her arms to the back of his neck. Charlie pulls away a little and looks at her then. Something softens in his eyes as if he realises, suddenly, how rough he’s been. ‘But I will always come here. Never think I’m not going to,’ she says and he smiles and kisses her, and then kisses her again.
*
Keegan sits on the warm grass outside the classroom and waits for Sam to finish writing her geography paper. He presses his back against the cool plaster and looks up at the sky. It’s the colour of dirty metal and makes Keegan think of a lid slamming closed on a cooking pot. He scowls, and tugs at a shred of lawn by his knee until it comes free from its brothers, then he begins the methodical process of tearing it to bits.
When Sam exits the classroom, she comes and sits down beside him in silence. Keegan glances at her to see that she’s looking to the far side of the garden where cool blue agapanthus flowers are blooming on the ends of their long straight stems.
‘Agatha’s panties,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘It’s just what Nathan and I used to call them.’ He chucks a bit of ripped-up lawn in the direction of the flowers, and immediately searches out another to keep his fingers busy.
‘I remember you telling me that once.’
‘I mean, what kind of a daft name is agapanthus anyway?’
‘It comes from some Greek words, but I can’t remember what they are now.’ Jem always used to tell Sam this sort of thing, and it seems that despite all that’s happened since he last said anything at all to her, the facts are still inside her somewhere, waiting to spill out.
‘Right, I forgot, you’re a botanical genius.’
‘I know they mean love flower.’
Love flower, thinks Keegan, what a load.
‘Speaking
of flowers, how’s your garden doing, by the way?’ Keegan immediately wishes he hadn’t asked. Thinking about that strange, dense, scented wonderland reminds him of the kiss, and the kiss reminds him of everything that is wrong with him that will never be right. A whole chunk of lawn is tugged from the ground then, scattering sand over his jeans.
After a long time, Sam answers ‘OK,’ in a voice that sounds strange, as if she’s lost all the air in her lungs. Keegan dares another peek at her. Does she remember too? Does she think of it and regret it, or… No, he knows she won’t kiss him again. There is something new about Sam, something changed, as if, somehow, she’s moved into a separate atmosphere and is breathing different air.
‘How did you find it? The geography?’ Keegan tries a change of subject, but his fingers still brutalise the tuft of grass. Rip, shred, break.
‘Fine,’ she answers.
‘Just one more year to go, hey, and then we’re grown-ups.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Don’t suppose you and your grandpa have any plans for the holidays?’
‘Nah. You?’
‘We’re going away. To Betty’s Bay with Nathan and his new girlfriend. Her folks have a place there or something.’
‘That sounds…’
‘Horrible?’ Keegan asks, but he doesn’t mean it. He can’t wait for the clean tang of salt in his nostrils and the punishment of the ice cold Cape sea on his skin. Most of all, here in the still hot bowl of the valley, he craves the ocean breeze.
‘I was going to say, refreshing.’ Sam went to the sea once with Anneke and Jem. She was about nine years old. She remembers being astonished by the waves, which never took a break from their endless moving and crashing, and digging her toes into the soft, warm sand. She remembers watching the ceaseless rush of the water, and missing the green silence of their garden back home. Now Sam pictures walking along a beach with Charlie, her hand in his. ‘It would be nice to get away for a bit.’
Bone Meal For Roses Page 21
