The Mall (30 page)

‘You really want to know?’ I say.

‘Yes. I really do.’

I decide to tell her the truth. ‘I tell everyone it’s a burn scar, but it’s not.’

‘Why do you do that?’

‘Shuts them up. Means that I don’t have to go into the actual story.’

‘Why didn’t you get it fixed?’ she says.

‘Because I’m a bitch,’ I say.

She smiles at me. ‘I’m all ears.’

Should I?

Fuck it. She pours me another drink, and I find myself telling her the whole fucked-up story. How Mum and Dad were driving home after they’d dragged me along to one of their literary
parties. How they’d both been drinking, in high spirits, Dad celebrating his new position at Brighton University. How the car had come out of nowhere, spun towards us in slow motion.

How they were both fine, not even a scratch, not even whip-lash. How I was anything but fine. Flung through the windscreen. Should have been dead. Shattered hip, dislocated shoulder, and not
forgetting the jagged tears in my back, and, of course, my face.

‘When did this happen?’ Rose says, suddenly sounding way more sober.

‘Five years ago. I was about to start university.’

‘You were? What were you going to study?’

‘English. At East Anglia.’

‘So why didn’t you go?’

‘Good question. I was angry. Still am. And… well, look at me. I was in hospital for ages.’

‘Skin grafts?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How awful for you. But surely they offered you plastic surgery?’

‘I was sick of operations by then. And anyway, I guess I wanted them to remember what they’d done every time they looked at my face. What a bitch, huh?’

‘Makes two of us, Rhoda,’ she says. ‘It’s understandable.’

‘Is it?’ I look up at her in surprise.

She waves her drink again. ‘Sure. Never underestimate a person’s propensity for revenge. But, Rhoda, no parent can live with the thought that they’ve hurt their child.
It’s unbearable.’

We sit in silence for several minutes, both of us lost in our own thoughts.

‘Rose,’ I say, draining my drink. It goes down easier this time. ‘Can I use your phone?’

She’s waiting for me in the lounge, the half-empty gin bottle and a fresh can of tonic on the coffee table.

‘How did it go?’ she says, although she’s now so pissed the words sound more like: ‘Hozs shiir go?’

I smile at her. ‘Really well.’ I wipe my face again. Shit. My cheeks are still damp.

‘Oh, don’t worry about that, Rhoda,’ Rose slurs. ‘I’m a veteran of crying jags.’ She takes another slurp. ‘What did your parents say?’

‘They want to help me out. They’re sending me some cash.’

‘Good.’

‘They want me to go back to the UK.’

‘And what do you want to do?’

‘Can’t stay here for ever, can I?’

She hands me a drink. ‘Well, I think it was brave of you to call. Cheers!’

She clanks her glass against mine. My head’s beginning to swim, but I take another sip. Pure gin. I down it anyway.

‘Jolly wolly good,’ Rose says. ‘Shall we have another?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. The alcohol is really going to my head now. ‘Why the fuck not?’

Rose starts laughing and I find myself joining in.

‘Why the fuck not indeed?’ she says.

So when Dan comes home, he finds me and his mother in the lounge dancing to ‘Copacabana’, the overturned bottle of Tanqueray dribbling the last of its contents into
the carpet.

chapter 26

DANIEL

For fuck’s sake.

I barge past Rhoda and Mom doing their fucked-up woman bonding whatever it is, take the stairs two at a time and slam my bedroom door shut. I’m hungry, but now I can’t very well go
downstairs to raid the fridge. I take a cigarette out of Rhoda’s pack and light it. I stand by my window and look out over the walls and gardens. The old couple next door are sunbathing by
their splash pool. They’re crinkly and red and I can just about hear the cancer munching at their age-spotted skin.

I fiddle with Rhoda’s knife in my pocket. What’s happened to her? Or is this who she really is? Were the street-smarts and anger just a façade to cover up her boring
middle-class self? I watch the leather corpses turn themselves over to roast their backs. Clarrie pisses against a bush in our yard. This is it. This is the rest of my life. I stub out the
cigarette on the window sill.

I grab my wallet and my old phone – the dead gelphone on the night stand now looks like a deflated grey balloon – and head downstairs again.

‘I’m going out.’

‘But you just came in.’ Mom tries not to slur. Rhoda stands watching, unsure. ‘Have something to eat.’

I walk up to Mom, brushing past Rhoda without acknowledging her – I can’t deal with her and Mom at the same time; they shouldn’t be occupying the same space.

‘Mom. I love you. Thank you for taking care of me.’ Where did that come from? I was planning on saying something else entirely, but that just seemed the right thing to say. I leave
before she can say anything in response.

I stride along the pavement, not really knowing where I’m heading. I see Florence ahead of me, on her way to the Sloane Street taxi rank. I check my phone: it’s five fifteen already.
‘Hello, Mister Daniel,’ she says as I catch up to her. Now that she’s out of her lavender polyester housecoat she’s different, more relaxed, and she gives me a slight smile.
The fact that I’m walking along the pavement – something only workers do in Bryanston – seems to put us on common ground, and for a moment we inhabit the same world. I wonder what
she thinks of Rhoda, whether she feels more connected to her because she’s black, or whether Rhoda’s outlandish clothes, her English accent, just make her another one of us.

‘Have a good evening, Florence,’ I say, realising as I say it that I’ve never imagined what Florence’s home is like. I know she’s got two grown-up kids and a
grandchild living with her. But what does she do when she goes home? Who cooks, who cleans, how many rooms does her house have, does she have a TV? Do her kids work? Who gets up for the baby? Is
she the same bleak and silent woman at home, or does she sing songs to the baby? Does she tell stories? I can’t imagine her sitting around a table with her family and laughing. Florence
starts existing at eight in the morning and blinks out of being at five. And as I pass her, she leaves my mind just as quickly.

The sun is sinking into the dust and car fumes on the horizon are turning the sky and its cloud scraps pink and orange; the remnants of blue are luminous. I stop walking. I watch the colours
mixing, the rays shifting and the clouds moving. I want to save that light, take it with me. I stand on the pavement, staring, ignoring the rush of luxury cars, taxis and bakkies grinding past;
they are just a hissing soundtrack to the light show above.

When I snap out of my trance I realise that I’ve fiddled Rhoda’s flick-knife open and nicked my index finger. While I walk, I suck on it to stop it bleeding, and the taste of blood
in my mouth reminds me of kissing Rhoda yesterday. I remember the feel of the scars on her back. I want to believe that she is still dangerous, that she’s not a suburban princess who lives to
buy clothes and get drunk with old women.

At Sloane Square I wander into a pool bar. It’s still quiet this early, just a group of boys playing at the table nearest the bar, a rock band warming up in the room upstairs. I buy a beer
and sit at the bar. I look at the bar-top slot machine blinking away and the strips of biltong packets hanging on a rusty nail gouged into the bar’s strut. Is this me in twenty years,
escaping the repetitive duties of my home and my family and coming to drink and waste my pocket money on a pathetic corner-pub gamble? The idea horrifies me. Have I forgotten how to be happy? If I
allow myself to admit it, that’s all I want: to be happy. It’s not very hardcore, but it’s true.

I flick out Rhoda’s knife and gouge my name – Dan, not Daniel – into the wood of the bar top. The barman is unpacking crates of beer and doesn’t notice my vandalism. Out
of the window across the bar, the sun has set and a deep, dusty blue replaces the psychedelic stain. I’m leaving a memorial, proof that I was here. I test the knife point against my finger,
and then stash the blade back in my pocket. Suck the blood again, think of Rhoda.

‘Dan.’

It’s Rhoda. Of course it’s Rhoda.

‘How did you find me?’

‘Followed you, didn’t I?’ She’s wearing a pair of jeans, one of my black T-shirts and her shitty Converse. Much better than that fucking dress. As she steps up to the bar
stool the denim tautens around her hips and arse. I signal for two more beers. The band upstairs lets out a squeal of feedback. A cymbal crashes.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asks.

The old Dan would whine: What’s the matter with you? You’re the one who’s betrayed me. Blah blah blah. But I don’t feel like it. She doesn’t owe me anything. She
never promised me anything.

I shrug.

‘You’re pissed off because I’m getting on with your mum?’

‘As long as you’re not like her,’ I mumble.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You seem very comfortable in Bryanston. For a crack-whore.’ I try to stuff the word back into my mouth, but it’s too late. She winds up and gives me the biggest smack across
the jaw I’ve ever had. Bigger than any of the punches she dished out in the mall. I reel off the bar stool and crash into two others, cracking the back of my head and my spine on my way down.
I land square on my shoulder. Rhoda is up and over me, ready to pile in and smack the shit out of me but the barman restrains her.

‘Cool it,’ he shouts, but I can see he’s enjoying the spectacle of a guy being beaten up by a girl for a change. The pool players gawk across at us.

Even as the pain adds up to an excruciating seethe around my back and neck and head I’m looking at Rhoda and thinking, That’s more like it. I lie there and look at her struggling in
the barman’s arms. I would smile if it weren’t so sore.

‘I’m sorry,’ I groan. ‘I deserved that. Evens?’

She stops writhing and the barman gradually lets her go. ‘No more bullshit, okay, or you’re out of here,’ he warns as he goes back around the bar.

Rhoda helps me up, the cords in her arms tightening, the dark skin over them stretching satiny. We take our beers across to the far end of the bar where it’s unlit and empty and sit down
in a skanky black leatherette booth. The band is belting out a bad metal cover and the lead singer is screaming to mask his awful voice. Rhoda still hasn’t said anything, and I wonder if I
really hurt her feelings.

‘Sorry. Really. I didn’t mean it. I was just…’

She still says nothing, smiles vaguely as if she’s not listening.

‘I was just feeling… you know,’ I try.

She looks like she’s about to say something, but doesn’t. Instead, she takes a gulp of beer, looks out the window.

‘You know you’re not…’ I say, digging myself deeper into the hole. ‘And anyway, you’ve never cared about what I called you before. We had plenty of fights
in… there. We’re still friends, hey?’

Nothing. She just fiddles with the beer bottle.

‘I hurt your feelings, huh?’

She takes a large gulp and puts the bottle down, and suddenly she’s alive again. ‘Wanker. You couldn’t hurt a fucking fly’s feelings. You’ve got to try harder than
that. I’ve been called plenty worse before. By people who meant it.’

I smile, relieved. ‘You look nice tonight. More…’

‘More myself?’

‘Ja.’

‘How’s your head?’

‘Sore, thanks.’ I rub my hand over the back of my head, and my fingers brush the scab under my ear. It’s healing quite well. ‘What happened today? Are you
okay?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You look sad.’

‘No, actually. I’m… You know I told you I haven’t spoken to my parents for ages?’

‘Ja?’

‘I called them today.’

‘Oh, well done. Was it okay?’

‘Yeah, it was. I…’ She takes another slug of beer.

‘That’s good. I’m happy for you,’ I say when I realise she’s not going to say anything more.

‘You working tonight?’

‘Nah. Day off.’

‘Great. Let’s have some fun tonight,’ she says, and she puts her hand on my leg. Then she turns and kisses me, smooths her hand along my thigh, getting closer and closer to my
crotch, just stopping short each time. For a bit, I’m worried that she’ll feel the knife in my pocket and ask me where I got it. But just for a bit. Her mouth tastes of cigarettes and
beer and gin. And I can taste that her life was hard, I can taste that her life was rough, I can taste blood from her gums, I can taste her pain: this is who she is, not some mallrat, poolside
lapdog; not some suburban bridge-playing mother.

I move one hand to her back, under the shirt, feeling those scarred ridges as her hand finally reaches my dick. I pop open her fly and she bites my tongue and undoes mine. We’re working
each other and trying to suck the life out of each other, and my head is throbbing like it’s going to shatter and every nerve is screaming and alive, and I’m kneading my hand over those
scars, mixing the scar tissue with her living tissue, merging it and her and me, and I’m fingering her and she’s pumping me and I come all over her hand, over my hand, up onto her
shirt. And she slumps over my shoulder, her neck slick against mine, the scar on her face rubbing against my stubble. It’s heavy, it’s sore, it’s real; it’s who we are.

‘I thought you’d… become… that you’d changed. That you’d become… like them,’ I say.

She blows some breath into my ear, still holding me. ‘You don’t listen, do you?’ She takes another breath in as if she’s about to say something, but doesn’t.
Instead, she wipes her sticky hand on my T-shirt, buttons up her jeans and climbs over me and heads to the toilets. My head is pounding now, my shoulder already stiffening into a spasm. My tongue
is bleeding and my cock has been grazed against my zip.

That’s more like it.

When she comes back, we sit drinking, not talking much as the bar fills up with students and embryo salarymen, as the music gets louder, as the band starts playing, as the pool balls clack and
the beer bottles crash. We don’t talk much, except about the next beer, or to swap comments on the chick with the whale tail or the guy with the mullet. We don’t say much, but I’m
planning the future. I can see it for the first time. I wonder if she can too.