The Memory of Water

³⁷ THE GOLDEN GIRL, OR, ^{AN OLD SECRETARY TRICK}

I chew through an awful fried breakfast at the steakhouse while I plan the day. The obvious thing to do would be to go to the schools in the area and try to access Eve’s records. Her parents weren’t at her funeral, so I guess they must be dead or otherwise lost, but there may be other clues. I can’t help thinking that I am being an idiot. How will this amateur sleuthing help the insane situation I am in? Why would anything in Eve’s childhood be an answer to who is responsible for framing me? So I am an idiot, but I have no other leads. I can’t bear to go to jail, and I can’t sit around in fear and loathing. What I wouldn’t do to be in Vegas instead of this backwater town.

Without finishing my bacon I throw some cash on the table and duck out. The light is whitebright outside and, fresh out of the hobbitwarren, it takes me a while to adjust. I get into my father’s car and start cruising, my new, cheap sunglasses feeling strange on my skin. You’d expect the houses to be quaint here, but they’re squat and ugly and I feel I have gone back in time to when this country wasn’t a nice place to be. No wonder Eve and Denise hightailed it out of here and didn’t look back. I expected a gold mining town to be a bit glam, a bit bling. The way you can tell that Jo’burg was built on gold: everyone is obsessed with materialism, fast cars and diamonds. Cape Town is a lot more down-to-earth: they were given the mountain and the sea. Bald and boring Nigel looks like it was given short shrift.

I drive past church after church. At the hotel reception this morning there was a list of Nigel’s ‘attractions’ pinned to a mutilated cork board: six out of the ten were Afrikaans churches, and the rest were the Spar, the local butchery, the steakhouse and a bird sanctuary. I relax back into the seat and turn on the radio. It feels good to be in a place where no one knows me, knows I’m wanted by the police, knows I’m wanted by people who mean me harm. To these people I am just an ordinary man, driving an ordinary car, on an ordinary day. Out of the corner of my eye I see a sign that says ‘Ferryvale’. There is something distantly familiar about the name. I roll to a stop and try to think where I may have heard or seen it before. The car behind me, a grey Datsun, slows down too. I think the driver is going to offer me help or directions but instead, he picks up speed again and roars past me and out of sight, covering my car in the fine white dust that seems to suffocate everything in this place.

I start the car again and enter Ferryvale, sure there is a reason I am drawn to the name. An image shimmers in a far corner of my mind, too far for me to make out what it is. The area seems a little more upmarket than I have seen so far, but not by much. Soon I am driving past the much-lauded bird sanctuary. It looks like they have filled up old mine shafts with water and reeds and called it a sanctuary. Still, it provides a pleasant break in the hot powder that makes up the rest of the scenery. A good place to dump dead bodies. My writing hand itches.

Soon enough I drive past a school called, imaginatively, Ferryvale High. It is fenced, unsettling with razor wire. It must be first break on a school day because the place is squirming with white limbs sticking out of teal uniforms. I consider staying in the car until the bell rings but anyone who sees a man in a day-old Hawaiian shirt hovering here will surely call the police. It’s steaming. I get out of the car and am thankful for the cheap breeze on my back and neck. I walk through the front gate and over the peanut-brittle walkway, into the building. I jump as the bell rings, right next to my ear, which sends my heart dashing. I didn’t realise I was so on edge. An overweight woman peers at me, adjusts her glasses, licks her coral lips. I walk towards her. I can tell immediately that she is not married and has no close friends because she is wearing a vast turquoise blouse that can only be described as a disaster, and clearly no one has told her. I remember then that I am wearing flamingos, so I guess I am not in the best position to judge. She looks me up and down, as if she knows I am a fornicator, wear old Metallica T-shirts to bed, or both, and doesn’t approve, either. She peels her lips off her horse’s teeth in an attempt at a smile and greets me with an Afrikaans accent. I put on my best face.

“I was wondering if you could help me,” I say, in my Polite Voice. “I’m doing some research for a friend of mine.” The desk fan against the wall slowly rotates to face me, causing all the papers on the wall to flutter.

“What can I do… to help you?” she asks, breathless. I’m guessing it’s because of her size, not my good looks or sense of style.

“If you could allow me access to previous class lists from the early 1990s I would appreciate it. I assume you have a… system,” I say, and look in the direction of the dinosaur PC.

She shakes her head. “We haven’t archived that far back.”

I wait for her to offer another solution but she just stands there and looks at me.

“Right,” I say. The papers pinned to the wall are whispering again.

“Do you have the lists as hard copies then, in a file, in the library perhaps?”

Again she shakes her head.

“Old yearbooks? School magazines?”

She narrows her eyes at this. She does everything unhurriedly. It’s irritating. She takes a few steps towards the phone and punches the keys with the back of a pencil. An old secretary trick, so that you don’t ruin your nails, but her nails are short and square. Maybe she learnt it from a movie, or maybe she has given up wearing nice clothes and having nice nails. Maybe someone broke her heart. After chatting in what sounds like baby-Afrikaans she hangs up and says that I can go to the library and look at the old school magazines. She tells me the way, I thank her and I walk away. She calls after me: “I can’t promise you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

Story of my life, I think, without turning around.

The library is cool and neat, apart from the wall-to-wall bald blue carpet. The librarian is expecting me and shows me to a seat and a pile of books. She is ancient and tiny, a pocket granny. She’s very talkative for a librarian, and for someone without any of her real teeth, but when I ignore her she doesn’t seem to take it personally. I start whipping through the books, starting with 1993 and going backwards. Eve wasn’t in matric in ’93 or ’92, but a photo in the 1990 magazine catches my eye. Standard seven class, it says, above a messy collage of athletics, science projects and fun days, and right in the middle is Eve, smiling shyly at the camera. Bingo. I check the subsequent editions again but she has disappeared. I page to the standard seven class list and there’s her name: Evelyn Shaw. I check all the other classes but there is no Denise Shaw. I take the magazine up to the librarian.

“How long have you worked here?” I ask.

She seems thrilled at the prospect of a conversation.

“It’s coming up for thirty years,” she says, fingering the gold chain around her neck. I guess she had limited career opportunities.

“Is there any chance,” I say, “that you remember the Shaw girls? They were here in the early nineties.”

“I’ve seen thousands of children here,” she clucks. She smells like baby powder.

“The Shaw girls,” I repeat, “Evelyn and Denise.” She closes her eyes and breathes through her nose. I show her the picture of Eve in the magazine. When she shakes her head at it, I pull out the family photo I have.

“Oh!” she exclaims and gives a little jump. “The Shaws! Of course I remember them… Mister Shaw was the most famous man in town.” Then she drops her voice: “More famous than the mayor.”

“So you remember the girls? Eve and Denise?”

She looks confused. I’m sure her memory is not what it used be, being a century old, and all.

“I remember the daughter. She was called the golden girl. They were a prominent family. Mister Shaw was the manager at AuruMine.”

Yes, I think. Aurumine and the Golden Girl. I jot it down in my Moleskine.

“She has – had – a sister, Denise,” I prompt.

“No,” she says, “That girl was an only child. That’s what made it so hard, you know.”

“Made what so hard?”

“Pardon me?” she says.

“You said that’s what made it so hard. Made what so hard?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, pulling on her chain.

“The Shaw family,” I say, “What happened to them?”

“I don’t know any Shaws,” she mutters. “I’ve seen thousands of children here.”

I can see she is agitated but I need an answer. I jab at the photo with my finger. “Mister Shaw,” I say, “More famous than the mayor?”

She cowers, bewildered, and I realise I have raised my voice. I take a step back. She shakes her head, mumbles something to herself, has tears in her eyes. I walk back to the table and rip out the pages I need, put them in my pocket, and stalk out.

Out of the school buildings I see the grey Datsun parked under a pine tree a little way down the road. I get into my car and slam the door. I take out my phone and Google ‘Aurumine, Shaw’. Nothing. A knock on the window makes me almost shit myself. It is the turquoise receptionist. I wind the stubborn thing down.

“I took the liberty,” she drawls, “of calling someone about you.”

Fuck. It’s always the quiet ones you have to beware of.

“Who did you call?”

She rests her fat forearms on the car door as she leans in.

“Mrs X,” she whispers, then gives me the benefit of her horsey smile.

I feel I am in a particularly bad episode of an outdated local soap opera.

“Mrs X.” I sigh. Of course.

“She said that she would see you.”

“Nice of her,” I say. “Who is she?”

The woman hands me an address scribbled on the back of a photocopied work sheet. Geometry.

“She likes to be known as The Oracle.”

You have to be kidding me.

“But we sommer call her the Town Gossip behind her back.”

I look at the crouching car in my rear-view mirror and put my foot down.

The address is in the suburb of Sub-Nigel, which makes me think there is a whole parallel-universe version of this town: deeper, darker, stickier. Sub-Nigel. Sub-human. Creatures which have chosen to inhabit the other side of the tracks and perhaps only come out at night. I drive past houses with pre-cast front walls that wouldn’t keep anyone out, some shaped like picket fences, some like mining wheels and painted pink or aquamarine. Houses with their fronts falling off, watermarks on their walls like muddy waterfalls, rusted steel roofs and peeling concrete planters holding on to their long-ago perished plants. Sunsleeping dogs, broken down playsets and feral-looking barefoot kids who stop playing to look at me as I cruise past.

I use the GPS on my phone to find my way. When I arrive at the address I see the house I have been looking for since I arrived. It is the size of a mansion and looks like it was designed and decorated by someone whose wealth is indirectly proportional to his or her good taste. On top of the high walls, on watch and ready to swoop, are statues of eagles, painted gold. The walls themselves are embellished with every pre-cast detail you can imagine, and then some. There are concrete ties and bows and bowls of grapes. I ring the bell and as the giant black gates swing open I see a water feature on the front lawn the size of the Trevi fountain. I can’t help smiling.

A tall black gentleman with high cheekbones walks out to greet me. I stick out my hand.

“Mister X, I presume?”

The man smirks and leads me inside. It turns out he’s the butler. He purses his lips at the shirt I’m wearing, then hands me a jacket off the coat rail. It’s the right size. The interior décor is as deliciously hideous as the exterior. Italian renaissance meets Parisian whorehouse. The walls are covered top-to-bottom in maroon brocade damask wallpaper. The pattern is broken up only by the over-lit Roman statues and mirrors framed in golden waves. If Francina ever won the Lotto this is how she would decorate her house. The butler (A butler, really? In Sub-Nigel? I couldn’t believe my luck) escorts me down a long passage. I try to walk slowly so that I can peek into the adjoining rooms but he will have none of it and I have to hurry to keep up with him. I have the distinct feeling that I am a hare hurrying down the rabbit hole. There are paintings of toy dogs on the wall and the carpet pile is so lush it seems as though I’m tripping. Eventually the dark passage brightens and the butler disappears. I pick up my pace and get to the spot where I saw him last: there is a velvet-curtained entrance to a drawing room. I duck inside.

“Mister Harris,” booms the voice that is Mrs X.

“How did you know my name?” I ask.

“She knows… everything,” purrs a small man to my left whom I hadn’t noticed.

“I prefer not to reveal my sources,” she booms, “I’m sure you understand.”

The butler motions to a chair with his white glove and I nod at him and sit.

I look around the room, as it glitters and glints and shines at me. Mrs X adjusts her feather boa.

“Why have you requested an audience with me?” she asks, showing me her little teeth. It occurs to me that she thinks she is the queen. The queen of Sub-Nigel is, after all, still a queen.

“I need information,” I say. The little man nods furiously. The Pomeranian next to my chair yaps at me. Was he there before? He looks like a Chihuahua fresh out of a tumble dryer.

“I need to know about a family that lived around here twenty years ago. The Shaws. The father was the mine manager at…”

“Yes, Mister Harris,” she says, “the Shaw family.”

The dog yaps.

“He comes from royal blood,” she breathes.

“Mister Shaw?” I say.

“Ha!” she laughs. “Ha! Ha!”

The little man laughs. “Ha! Ha!”

She puts a taloned hand on the shimmering lamé of her jelly breasts, then fondles her pearl necklace. She dresses the way she decorates.

“Dasher.” She says.

“Sorry?”

“Dasher, the dog.”

“Ah.”

I look down at the dog.

“What do you want to know about the Shaw family, Mister Harris?”

I sit forward on my chair.

“I want to know what happened to them. Why they disappeared.”

“No one disappears,” she says, taking a drag of a cigarette I never saw her light. “They always go somewhere.”

“I’d like to know what happened to them and where they went.”

Dasher barks and we stare at each other.

“That, Mister Harris, is a seedy story of which I desire to reveal no part. Ask me something else. Like who will assassinate Obama, or what you had this morning for the breakfast you couldn’t finish.”

“I need to know about the Shaws. Someone is trying to kill me.”

“Yes,” she sighs, “I saw The Mark.”

Oh God, here comes the mumbo jumbo. She wants me to ask what mark. There is an uncomfortable silence.

“What mark?” shouts the little man.

She’s going to say: The Mark of Death.

“The Mark of Death,” she says, and Dasher begins to growl.