Janita Lawrence - The Memory of Water

“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.

This is a David Lynch movie and I have stepped right into it. All I am missing is a giant and a midget who talks backwards. I decide to play along.

“I know I am marked,” I say, “and I need to find who is behind it.”

The butler arrives with a tray of Piña Coladas and cashew nuts.

“She has passed,” Mrs. X hisses. “The Shaw girl.”

“Yes,” I say. Mr X throws his drink back and I follow suit.

She strokes her chin.

“I am a good Christian woman, Mister Harris, and I don’t partake in gossip mongering.”

“How much?” I sigh.

“Five thousand, for starters,” she sighs, “I usually charge more but I know you don’t have it.”

“Five THOUSAND?” I splutter. “Rand?”

“For starters.”

“For a shred of information that may or not help me?”

“It will help you,” she says.

“It’s extortion.”

“I prefer the word ‘donation’. Do you think,” she says wildly gesticulating, “that this lifestyle comes cheap?”

She looks around, as if for something to eat. I look at Mr X who is scrunching up his eyes and upper lip in a smile. The butler reappears with a tray of dirty Martinis and a bowl of pretzels.

“Okay,” I say, “I don’t have it on me. Can I come back later?”

“Come for dinner. Entrées will be served at five. We’re having pigeon.”

Dasher pants and paws his pillow.

“Dasher likes pigeon,” twinkles Mr X.

The butler shows me out. I start to shake off the jacket but he insists I keep it, saying it’s mine.

I attempt to race to the hotel to get the money, but Sub-Nigel will have none of it. There seems to be some kind of signal interference and the map on my phone confounds me further. Despite taking different turns I end up going past the same pylon again and again. The road names are like something out of Alice in Wonderland : Right Way; Left Avenue; This Way; Ring Road; Wrong Boulevard. I haven’t felt this frustrated behind a wheel since I ‘borrowed’ Dad’s car when I was fourteen and then couldn’t find my way home. I’m in the same car now. Karma is a bloody bastard. I look at my watch: it’s already 16:45. My reflection in the rear view mirror is shiny. Eventually I see a road that looks different and I take it. It is windy and seems to go in circles but soon I see houses I remember from the journey in.

“Bless you, Jesus,” I mutter, not without sincerity.

I screech to a halt outside the hotel and run up the stairs. The envelope is where I left it, wrapped in a plastic packet and stuck to the underside of the cistern lid. It’s an old cliché but seems marginally safer than under the bed. I empty my wallet out on the dresser – the money my father gave me – and count out the notes with shaking hands. All together it comes to five thousand, four hundred Rand. I put the four hundred back into my wallet. If I pay Mrs X what she wants I won’t have enough to pay for this room or for petrol for the trip home. I imagine being marooned in Sub-Nigel for the rest of my life. Then I imagine being dead, and shove the envelope into my jacket pocket. I throw my toiletries into my bag, stealing the mean bar of complimentary hand soap in the process and giving the shower one last glance of malcontent before slamming the door behind me. I leave the door key at the empty reception desk. In seconds I am outside and I throw my bag in the car, then jump in.

The sun is still high in the sky but my watch says 17:02. I drive as fast as I can to Mrs X’s house, this time only making a few wrong turns. I panic a little while finding my way. What if there is no Mrs X, no house and no Pomeranian? The whole experience felt like a dream and I wonder if, cracked by desperation, I have just made it up.

I am elated when I park outside the manor house at 17:14. So much so that when the gates sweep open, I see a new charm in the concrete relief bowls of grapes. The cherub pissing water makes me want to sing. I bound out of the car and through the gates that close behind me, tapping my rib to make sure I still have the envelope of cash. I approach the oversized front door and lift the lion’s head of a knocker but before it has the chance to make contact, the door is opened by the cheekboned butler.

“Mister Harris,” he says, with a distinct Nigerian accent which makes me take an involuntary step back. If anything I expected him to be Kenyan, or at the very least, Mozambiquan. Did he have an accent before?

“Hi,” I shout, “sorry I’m late.”

“It’s not a problem. I have a message for you from Mrs X.”

“Oh? She can’t tell me herself over the… pigeon?”

“The pigeon is no longer on the menu,” he says.

I nod. I understand. Not everyone likes pigeon. Unless he’s trying to tell me something. Is the pigeon is no longer on the menu a code for something? It sounds like it. I try to think of an appropriate response.

“What is on the menu?” I venture.

“Nothing, sir, the dinner has been called off.”

Now that could mean anything.

“Are you saying that the deal is off?”

“No, Mister Harris, only that dinner is off. If you hand me that envelope in your pocket the deal is still very much on.”