Almost Grace

by Rosie Rowell

  There is a playground further down the road. The merry-go-round is full of teenagers. Why aren’t they at school? A couple of smaller kids in school uniform play on the slide. A dishevelled middle-aged man is sitting on the only unbroken swing. I rest my head back on the seat and close my eyes. That brings back the dizzy feeling. When Louisa arrives back to find both me and the bag missing, she’s going to go ape-shit. I hope Spook left her a message because I can’t face explaining this to her. I wouldn’t know what to say.

  There is a girl walking towards me. She is wearing tight purple hot pants, and a white T-shirt vest that struggles over her boobs. Her thighs cushion out from the shorts. If she were white, her thighs would look terrible with all that pale, veiny flesh, but somehow she looks ripe. Is she a prostitute? Do prostitutes work in the day? As she nears me she catches my glance in the mirror. Her expression isn’t hostile, but it’s definitely a ‘what are you doing here?’ look. I blush and sink lower into my seat. Once she’s past I squeeze down the lock on the door.

  Where is Spook? What is taking him so long? Why has he left me in the car, like a dog, guarding a gun?

  The hot pants girl has settled on a white plastic chair on the pavement in front of the next-door house. Another girl in a shiny blue tracksuit walks up to her. They talk for a while, they laugh. Tracksuit sits down on Hot Pants’ lap. Tracksuit says something, which makes Hot Pants shriek and push her off. A boy rides by on a bicycle. He slows down as he passes them and yells something I don’t catch. Hot Pants shouts in indignation. ‘Your mother!’ she yells after him, which makes me smile.

  The minutes seem to pass in slow motion, as if everything is happening under water. Women pass with Shoprite bags, kids on their way home from school cluster around each other. A car drives by. The world seems heavy with the weight of everybody going about their business. A door bangs on the other side of the wall. I swivel around in my seat, hoping to see Spook, but no one appears. As I turn back, a black car is pulling up, directly in front of me. It’s the car that followed Louisa and me on the Main Road, the car that I saw on my walk with Spook, the car that came to the house.

  The sluggishness gives way to a high-pitched alarm in my head. Where the fuck is Spook? A man gets out from the driver’s seat; he looks over at the girls. They return his gaze but with none of their earlier banter. He glances at our car. Then he looks at me and stops in recognition. He is small and scrawny, like an old piece of rope. He saunters over to the driver’s side. With his arm resting on the roof, he bends down and knocks on the closed window. In his mirrored aviator sunglasses I see a glimpse of myself. Wide-eyed. When he lifts them onto his head, his eyes are small, hiding behind creases of skin. There is a tattoo down the side of his neck, letters I can’t make out. He lifts his chin and knocks again. I can’t ignore him; he’d probably break the window. I unwind it, my hands slipping over the plastic handle.

  ‘Lekker flas’ new wheels,’ he comments.

  Although I keep my eyes fixed ahead, I can feel him studying me. ‘Where’s Gavin?’ His breath smells of tobacco and gum.

  I swallow. ‘Who?’ The girls are watching us. Would they help me if this guy did something?

  ‘Don’t be cute.’

  ‘You mean Spook?’

  This amuses him. ‘If you say so.’

  I point in the direction of the steel gate.

  He takes his time to consider this, then straightens up and stretches his arms above his head. His torso is skinny; his baggy jeans show red underpants and a slash-shaped scar above his belly button.

  He glances towards the house, then leans inside to unlock the door. He sits down next to me. My stomach heaves impotently. He reaches towards me and fingers the silver ‘G’ pendant on my necklace. ‘Pretty,’ he says. ‘Is Gavin your boyfriend?’

  ‘What?’ It takes me a moment to follow his train of thought. ‘He’s twice my age.’

  He leans towards me. ‘Some like it old.’

  I picture the gun inside the glove box, less than a metre away from me. Don’t be ridiculous, Grace. I tuck my hands under my bum.

  ‘Don’t be scared of me.’ He leans closer. ‘I’m not the bad guy, I’m jus’ the messenger. The bad guys are behind that there wall.’ His laugh is high-pitched, like the jackals in The Lion King.

  ‘Why are they bad?’ I ask. I’m as surprised by my question as he is. Am I crazy? I stare straight ahead.

  He tuts at my question. ‘They’re only bad if you fuck with them. But you look like a good little girl.’

  I try to swallow, but my throat is too constricted.

  ‘See, your boyfriend took what didn’t belong to him. So in actual fact, he’s the bad guy.’ He laughs again and moistens his lips with his tongue. ‘Vooitog2,’ he says. I look down.

  A phone rings, a tinny version of ‘Where have you been all my life?’ He fishes it out of a back pocket, and listens for a moment while watching me. But when he replies, his tone is different. ‘What? Where must I now go? Jirre3. Why me?’ His voice is whiny. ‘Ja, OK, gotcha.’ He hangs up and leans towards me. ‘Tell Gavin to stop fucking with the big boys,’ he says, then disappears.

  The driver’s door is still open when Spook reappears. I’ve been meaning to close it, but my hands are still tucked under my thighs and my arms seem incapable of moving. Spook gets back in the car and bangs the door shut. He looks back over his shoulder as he reverses. The car hiccups and jolts as he misses the gear change.

  After three blocks I look at him. ‘Gavin.’

  Spook wipes the sweat off his face with his T-shirt. He doesn’t register that I’ve spoken. He swallows a few times then wipes his face again.

  As we turn out of D’Almeida, I clear my throat. ‘Your name is Gavin,’ I say loudly.

  Spook does not reply.

  ‘So while you were catching up with your buddies inside, this guy, this gangster guy comes up and gets into the car, sits down next to me and, and touches my necklace, and is saying he’s not the bad guy, you’re the bad guy and by the way your name is Gavin. He could have done anything to me!’ My voice hurts from shouting.

  Finally Spook looks at me. He seems surprised that I’m there.

  Something snaps inside. I have spent too long in this car that smells of old men. I need space. I open my door. Air and dust and car fumes rush up at me.

  ‘What the fuck!’ Spook swerves around an oncoming car, at the same time trying to lean across me.

  ‘Let me out!’

  ‘Shut the door!’

  ‘Not until you tell me what’s going on.’ I have to shout over the noise of the car.

  ‘Dammit Grace! Close the door.’ Spook pulls to a halt on the side of the road.

  My hands are shaking. I feel out of control.

  Spook sits back and rubs his eyes. ‘They’re not gangsters, Grace. They’re poachers.’

  ‘Same difference. Anyway, what does that have to do with you?’ Nothing makes sense today.

  ‘I needed the money.’

  ‘For what?’

  Spook looks at me like I’m stupid. ‘To live.’

  ‘You’re an abalone poacher?’

  He doesn’t reply, not because he feels bad or angry, he simply doesn’t care either way. We sit in silence on the side of the road, while an endless procession of cars stop-start past us. I wait for my heart to slow, wait for his words to make sense.

  After a few minutes he adds: ‘I poached in the wrong patch.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They “own” that area of coastline. I took a chance. Thought I’d got away with it.’

  If only he’d left me in the bath, I would have woken up and gone to bed.

  ‘The money was for them,’ I say needlessly, trying to make sense of everything. But as hard as I try, I can’t picture Spook as a poacher. ‘So that’s it, you’ve paid them back, they’ll leave you alone now?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t they?’ snaps Spook. With this comment he jumps back into action. He picks up his phone, types a me
ssage, then starts the car. He forces his way back into the traffic and turns up the radio. This day has turned out far worse than I could ever have imagined. But at least we’re going home.

  I think back to Mum and Julia’s argument about poaching. How ironic – here I am next to an actual poacher and he doesn’t give a shit about either ‘social upliftment’ or ‘entrapment’. He simply wanted to make some money.

  It’s as though I’m sitting at the optometrist wearing those funny glasses. As soon as something comes into focus, the lens is changed and everything returns to being blurry. Nothing about Spook or Gavin or whoever he is, is true. I bite down hard on my bottom lip as the realisation settles. How could I have believed him? But it’s worse than that – I believed in him. I believed in a guy who had chosen to live outside the ‘chains’ of society; who had found a better way. My fingernails dig into my palms. And the surfing! Sitting on the board, half-frozen from the cold, spellbound by his connection, his devotion to the sea. How can he plunder the thing he loves the most? ‘People come into your life for a reason’ – one of Mum’s favourite mantras. The reason Spook appeared in my life was to highlight what a big fat idiot I am. The very worst of it is that if I hadn’t met Spook I’d never have had that argument with Louisa; the argument that has probably ended our friendship forever. We’d be in Baboon Point, lying in the sun, being eighteen.

  Spook’s phone rings. He picks it up. ‘Marvin.’ He listens for a moment. I feel him looking at me. ‘Because that’s what you said. No. Jesus Christ! No, Marvin, you sort it out.’

  He chucks his phone into the back seat. A moment later he bangs the steering wheel.

  Closing my eyes is a mistake. It is like opening the moving car door again, this time on the events of the last day. The brownies and the pills and the bath and the stale breath of the gangster guy rush at me. I’m stuck. I’m stuck inside my head and I’m stuck inside this horrible car and inside this endless day. My palms are wet, my breath feels too thin. Think of the beach, Gracie. Think of that lovely, long beach and the nippy air chasing you on. We’re going home.

  We pass a signboard. ‘Did that say Oudtshoorn?’

  ‘Short cut,’ answers Spook.

  ‘Shorter than the N2?’

  Spook grunts in reply.

  That’s not right. My sense of direction is rubbish but I can’t see how heading north to Oudtshoorn instead of south or west counts as a short cut. Since leaving Mossel Bay we’ve been driving across flat green farmland. But now the road has begun to snake around koppies 4 as we start to climb out of the valley. How can a twisty, narrow road be quicker than a motorway? I glance sideways at Spook. His face is set. Every few minutes he shifts forward in his seat, as if willing the car to go faster. The car fan is on full, pumping out hot, dusty air onto which heavy male sweat clings. The claustrophobic atmosphere is giving me pins and needles in my brain.

  ‘Can we stop?’ I ask.

  ‘Not now,’ he replies. His eyes flicker towards the rearview mirror. We haven’t seen another car in over ten minutes. I don’t see why we can’t stop. If he were in that much of a hurry he’d not have chosen this back road.

  ‘Just for a bit? I want to –’

  ‘No, Grace!’ Spook shouts.

  I jump involuntarily at the impact of his voice.

  I turn away to hide the tears that have sprung up again, but somehow Spook catches them.

  ‘Enough with the crying.’ The ferociousness in his voice is neither Spook, nor Gavin. It’s simply mean.

  The ordered fields have taken on irregular shapes as we dip in and out of a series of valleys. Spook’s gear changes around the corners are jerky, making me feel sick. I look down at my phone. No signal. ‘Missing girl, eighteen, believed to be travelling with notorious poacher.’

  Stop being hysterical, Grace, I hear Louisa saying in my head. The authority in her voice makes me feel more teary because the last time she’d told me I was hysterical was on the beach when I told her my suspicions about the black car. I was right.

  Spook drums his fingers on the steering wheel. I feel him glance over at me. He sighs. ‘We’ll stop at the next petrol station.’

  If the digital clock would only switch from eleven fifty-nine to twelve o’clock it would be a sign that things would turn out fine. But it sits there stubbornly holding back, keeping us locked in the mid-afternoon heat, driving around endless bends in the road. I force myself to think about something that exists outside this car. The beach. But I can’t stay on the beach forever. Rory, in his short-sleeved checked shirt, leaning back into that poor, overburdened chair. ‘You have such steely determination, Grace. Such willpower. You can achieve anything you put your mind to.’ I will. Once I’ve got myself back home I will make things better. I will find a way to make it up to Louisa, I will convince Mum to let me do my course this year; I will come top of the class and no one will ever have to know about the Myprodol.

  There is a figure standing on the hard shoulder of the road, waving a red flag as we approach a bend. ‘What now?’ mutters Spook and slows. We round the corner to find a long line of stationary cars ahead. Spook curses as he comes to a stop. I sip at the bottle of Energade.

  A man and woman are leaning against the side of the car ahead. The man’s sleeves are rolled up; he’s smoking a cigarette. The woman is fanning herself with a magazine. They are both thickset and could be anything between forty and sixty years old, the type of person that would be impossible to identify in a police line-up. They ignore each other deeply the way married people do.

  Spook gets out. ‘What’s going on, boet?’ he calls.

  The man looks up. ‘Been here ten minutes already.’

  Spook whistles. He crosses to the other side of the road, looking for signs of movement. The woman is silent. She studies Spook quizzically – his flip-flops, boardies and grubby T-shirt – an overgrown boy. Then she turns to me.

  Spook walks back. ‘D’you think it’s an accident?’

  The man shrugs. ‘Haven’t seen any cop cars come past.’

  ‘Fuck,’ says Spook and folds his arms around his head. The woman’s face pinches in disapproval. Spook walks around to my side. ‘You wanted to stop, so we stopped.’

  I turn away from him. I feel the woman watching us.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ He shrugs and walks away. The woman says something to the man. He looks at me and also shrugs.

  Spook digs around in the back of the car for his cell phone. He stares at it, seemingly reading a message. ‘No, no, no,’ he mutters, shaking his head. ‘Get your shit together, Marvin.’

  ‘Why are you so stressed?’

  He looks at me. ‘I should have left you in the bath.’ He crosses to the other side of the road.

  I find myself blinking repeatedly at the impact of his words. Even the woman, who has no idea what he means, looks surprised. She steps closer, flagrantly trying to get a better view of me.

  I have my phone – I could ask the woman for a lift to the nearest town and call my mum. The idea seems drastic. I would have to come up with a plausible reason for not being in Baboon Point, accompanying a complete stranger on a bizarre road trip. But then again this could be the gut feeling I’ll spend the rest of my life wishing I’d listened to. I look back at the woman, but she’s lost interest in us and I feel my resolution waver.

  Finally an overburdened lorry drives towards us at a funereal pace, followed by a long stream of cars and trucks. Ahead of us people are turning their engines back on. The woman and man climb back into their car. This is your last chance, Grace. I can see myself sitting in their back seat, calling my mum. But how do I know they are not a pair of psychos? It would be even madder than staying where I am. As the lorry passes us I see it is transporting cattle. Through the air vent along the side of the long trailer bovine noses stick out. Big, dark eyes look straight at me.

  Spook is back in the car, muttering. I bite my lip. From the position of the overhead sun, it’s obvious that we will be driving in the
dark. Were it the old Spook, I’d ask him how long it should take, but I have had enough tongue lashings for one day.

  A few minutes on we reach the cause of the hold-up – workers have been digging up a long stretch of the road. There is no sign of the big machines today, only a man wearing a yellow traffic vest leaning on a green sign that says ‘Ry/Go’. On the side of the road is a portable hut where two other men are chatting. One is sitting on a white plastic chair, holding a walkie-talkie. The other is sitting on a tree stump.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ Spook breaks the silence. ‘Bunch of clowns.’

  ‘They’re fixing the road, earning an honest wage. Contributing to society,’ I mutter.

  My phone falls out of the car as I open the door. I chuck it back on the passenger seat.

  ‘Be quick,’ says Spook. I swing the car door shut. At last we’ve pulled into a petrol station. The afternoon sun has started to slip. But if anything, it feels even hotter. The smell of petrol seems to be rising from the concrete slabs of the forecourt. There is a small garage shop and next to that a cafe that looks like the Wimpy’s poorer cousin. Apart from the two petrol joggies5 and the shop assistant, the place is deserted. I quickly dismiss my idea of phoning my mum and waiting for her here. In a few hours we’ll be back at the house.

  The loos are around the back of the building. I have to collect a key from the shop assistant to unlock the door. The key ring is a smooth piece of wood that has the word ‘Dames6’ written on it in felt tip. The thought of all the hands touching it before mine makes me feel queasy. Inside the loo the only light comes from a barred window. It is heady with disinfectant, the floors damp in a way that makes you curl up your toes. I glance at myself in the mirror. I look shit. My eyelids are puffy from crying. My eyes seem to have withdrawn almost completely into my head.

  ‘Awesome,’ I say and turn away. As I do, I remember standing in front of the mirror last night and find I’m shivering again.