Dub Steps (5 page)

‘Sure. I know.’ Tears welled. I stood to return my mug to the kitchen. ‘Don’t worry,’ I called back over my shoulder. ‘I know how freaky this is. I know exactly how freaky.’ I placed my mug overly carefully into the sink and turned on the red tap. The pipes groaned, then screamed. I turned it off, then hung my head over the sink.

Babalwa’s feet flopped down the ancient wooden floors to the kitchen doorway.

‘Look, it doesn’t mean—’ she offered eventually.

‘Leave it,’ I said to the sink. ‘Trust me, I know what you mean. I’m as scared as you are.’

‘I just need—’

‘Trust me, Babalwa, I understand. I really do understand.’

‘I’ll help you move?’

‘Sure. Let’s do that.’

I kicked down the door to the adjacent semi, carving up the skin on my right ankle as it caught on the edge of the broken Yale lock. ‘Fuck! Fuck fuck fucking mother of God! You got first aid?’ I bellowed at Babalwa, who was standing in the street behind me, arms folded, amused.

‘Actually I do, Chuck. Stay there. I don’t want you bleeding in my house.’

She came back carrying a full see-through medical box with a red cross on the top. She dropped it next to me and retreated.

‘The cross glows in the dark. Found it in a 7-Eleven just after—’ She broke off mid-sentence.

I opened the box and used some of the contents to bandage the wound, which wasn’t as impressive as I had first thought. A scratch with some blood really. ‘Where do the larnies live?’ I asked. ‘Clearly nowhere around here. I need supplies.’

‘Walmer. Big walls. Swimming pools. Golf.’

‘Perfect. How do I get there?’

‘Seriously? You’re not even going to clean that out with salt water or anything? You’re just gonna wrap a bandage on like that? Damn, who raised you, boy?’ Babalwa knelt down next to me, unwrapped the bandage and said, ‘Wait – I’ll be back.’

She returned with a bowl of salt water and proceeded to clean and bandage my foot as I hopped around on my other leg, painfully aware of the sparse nature of my boxer shorts.

‘Roy, you stink. I mean, you really, really smell. You should have bathed last night. When last did you actually wash? Like, with soap?’

‘A while back, but chill. Chill.’ I felt defensive. ‘Soon as I’m done here and I’ve got some supplies I’ll clean up – proper.’

‘Bullshit. I’m getting you a bar of soap right now and when you
find one of those larny swimming pools, you use it, right?’ She was laughing as she looked up at me. ‘And see if you can find some actual underpants. I’ve seen too much of you already.’ She patted my freshly dressed ankle wound and packed up the first aid kit. ‘I’ll draw you a map to Walmer. It’s easy. You won’t get lost.’

Babalwa’s map included these directions:

‘Target Kloof?’ I asked as I stepped up into the van.

‘It’ll make sense,’ Babalwa replied. ‘Big S bend. People always wrapping their cars around the poles.’

‘Sounds exciting. See you now now.’

I drove away, up Parliament Street. At the top of the road I looked in the rear-view mirror to see Babalwa waving goodbye.

I waved back.

Target Kloof was as she had described it, a sweeping downward S bend ending in a little bridge over a valley, the road dividing two lush halves of suburban jungle. I drove at a crawl. A troop of monkeys watched me from the tops of the trees, a large male scratching his balls as the van passed. I waved at them.

Once through Target Kloof I took the right where Babalwa suggested, although at this stage I was already where I needed to be: fences, signature gates, walls, swimming pools, satellite dishes. I cruised, looking for easy targets.

Eventually I settled on River Road, a strip of double- and triple-storey houses facing onto a golf course, a few of them gabled, a few done out in mock-modest homey style and a few completely
walled off. I smashed the van through a relatively humble black-and-white gated entrance, and then straight through the wall of a family entertainment area. A flat-screen TV – a relic or family keepsake of some sort – fell forward from its cabinet and shattered on the van’s bonnet.

I kicked through the thin, locked inter-leading door with my good ankle and headed into the main house. This, the bills on the entrance hall table said, was the residence of the Cotton family. Mr Ken Cotton. His wife, Barbara.

Hallway family photos. Their two girls, bright teenagers, arms around parents, themselves content in plastic pool furniture. The girls playing tennis in all-white, alluring outfits. The wider Cotton family on Christmas Day, lined up in two rows, arms linking, each combination telling its own story.

I pissed over the photo collection and the bills, soaking the Cottons as thoroughly as possible. Then I walked, dick out, as far as I could into the lounge proper, hosing the off-white lounge suite and the expensive wooden coffee table. It was a relief to be able to slip back into my habit. I zipped and thought of Babalwa’s request that I secure clothing, and then of her wrinkled nose at my stench. Too lazy to go back to the van, I searched the Cotton house looking for soap, finding a spicy underwear collection in one of the girl’s bedrooms instead. Pink G-strings. A studded bra with fake gems on the rim. Suspenders. I stopped awhile on her bed, running my hands through the teenage fabric, my erection throbbing half-heartedly at the loss.

The wall above the bed was covered in photos stuck onto the wall with Prestik, the montage carefully constructed to portray the life of a young PE debutante and her beau, who looked, in almost every respect, like a fool. He posed in each shot – sometimes pulling muscles overtly, or simply beaming far too intensely into the camera. Throwing a rugby ball to his mates. Running. Jumping. Pointing. He was on the ugly side and wouldn’t have aged well at all; but in the pictures the ugliness was light, a hint beneath the dominant, metallic veneer of youth.

I spat at him first, then at her, both lugs finding their mark on
the wall and slowly dribbling down over their young faces.

In her cupboard I found a bar of Reece-Marie herbal soap (coarse rosemary, sage, lemon grass, teatree oil, aqueous cream and glycerine). The packaging promised it would lather exceptionally well.

I turned into Ken and Barbara’s bedroom, a typically dull set-up attempting to mimic magazine style. Creams and off-whites, wooden-framed pictures of Cotton life through the ages. Young Ken making his way in the world with a fishing rod and a smile – about twenty years old. Young Barbara gazing with measured effort to the horizon from what looked very much like the same beach Babalwa and I had visited. Ken and Barbara must have been, I guessed, around my age: the grain on the photos matched the scant remains of my own past.

I found a fluffy off-white bathroom towel in the en-suite bathroom and, even better, a key to the door leading out to the pool.

The back garden was ominous. Vast lawns tracked away from the pool, down a series of mini rolling hills, but they were out of control, the grass wild and angry. Shrubs and bushes created a barrier between the kitchen and the pool which, back in the day, would surely have been cut back weekly. But as I stood there the Cotton family entertainment zone hummed with decay, reinforced by the green skin on the pool and a layer of aqua-bugs and insects dancing on the corpses of drowned colleagues.

I sucked in a deep breath, dropped my towel and my threaded pants, and jumped.

Ken Cotton, it turned out, was pretty much my size. I pulled everything he owned out of the cupboard and onto the bed and selected a hardy range.

I stuffed the lot into the carry-on bag, save for a pair of khaki shorts, a brownish-red T-shirt, long white socks and the hiking boots, which I wore as a joke I hoped would impress Babalwa. As I stood in front of the mirror, now more Ken Cotton than myself, I wondered what she might find funny about it, other than my shockingly grey hair, which looked, well, funny. My long, freshly clean, grey flyaway hair, the big grey beard, the hiking gear … I was a caricature of myself and Ken.

I loaded up a second bag on exit. A printed photo album from the saucy teenager’s room; the bra, G-string and suspenders from the same; her mobile and Kindle; a bunch of toothbrushes and toothpaste from the bathroom. I dumped the bags in the hallway and went back to clean out the kitchen.

Next I reversed the van from the rubble of the family room and rolled it around to the edge of the front garden, where the garage adjoined the kitchen. I put my seat belt on and smashed the van through the reinforced garage door. Reversed, and smashed again. Reversed, and smashed again. Reversed, and again. The van was shrill now, the engine and chassis moaning together. I parked in the driveway, walked back and checked out the Cotton garage, which contained, predictably, a BMW and a ladies’ 4x4, a RAV4. My heart leapt. The RAV’s metallic-blue shimmer was evocative. Neater than the cash-in-transit van, far less aggressive, it probably handled better on the road too. My heart still lifting, I stomped through the rubble in my new hiking boots to look for keys, which were hanging dutifully on a hook on the side of the kitchen cupboard, but which, of course, also had the biometric logo on the ring.

I went back to the saucy teenager’s room, pulled her queen
mattress off its base, dragged it out to the driveway and pushed it into my beaten van.

‘Honey, I’m home!’ I shouted as I hopped out in front of my new apartment: 1B Donkin Terrace.

There was no reply.

In my charged and refreshed state, I had expected Babalwa to come out and greet me. To laugh – possibly – at my bizarre new attire. Instead, I dragged all my new stuff into the flat on my own. I pulled the hiking boots off when I was done and sat for a while on the white rail of my flat, which was really a stinking ghetto apartment with a teenage girl’s mattress and bedding dumped in the hallway.

I had, I now realised, neglected to bring any cleaning materials from the Cottons.

I wondered where Babalwa was.

I waited most of the morning for Babalwa’s return, dawdling around the front entrance of 1B, but there was no sign of her. Eventually I drove all the way back to the Cottons’ house, emptied out their cleaning cupboard, and then went back and scrubbed my new flat. Or at least the important parts of it. I would not, I suspected, be entertaining vast crowds.

The rooms were mostly empty. One had what looked like the remnants of a mattress on the floor, an overflowing ashtray, and a litter of broken and abandoned quart bottles. What passed for the lounge was really just a collection of beer crates, bits of wood and other odd seating devices on top of a morphing, interlocking spread of floor stains. I threw all the shit as far down Donkin Hill as I could, then went back to deal with the toilet, which I treated initially by hurling three buckets of Babalwa’s collected water over everything in the place, and then attacking it with Handy Andy and rags until it looked like somewhere I might be able to shit.

She returned a day later, by which point I had been back to the Cottons’ place too many times to count. Towels. The family book
collection. A pillow. Another pillow. Another swimming-pool bath.

‘Nice,’ she said, using her big toe to mark areas still needing attention as she walked through my renovated digs. A mouldy corner of the bathroom. A light tickle against the grime on the bottom row of the stack of bean and tuna cans. ‘Not bad. Like a home, nè?’

‘So where you been?’ I trailed expectantly behind her.

‘Ah, I went home for a bit, you know, just … just to see. I dunno. Had some thinking to do. You know …’

‘We haven’t talked about it yet. I mean, we need to. I need to. I need to find out what you know. Jesus. I need to tell you what I know.’

‘Sho.’ She opened the door to the spare bedroom, then closed it again. ‘Limiting your range. Fair enough.’

‘So, fine. Can you tell me what happened? What happened to you? Or should I tell you what happened to me first? Maybe that’s better. Me, I was going through a bit of a life crisis that involved a serious need to sleep, which I did for a few days, and then I woke up and—’

‘Everyone was gone.’

‘Ja. All gone.’

‘Did you dream?’ In the kitchen now, Babalwa turned to face me, arms folded. ‘I dreamed.’

‘No – nothing. But, I mean, I wasn’t really in a condition to dream. Or maybe I dreamed and didn’t remember anything. Totally possible. One thousand per cent possible. In fact, very likely. What do you mean, dream?’

‘Let’s go to church.’ Babalwa marched out the front door.

I followed her over the crest of our hill to the Hill Presbyterian Church, an 1800s classic, replete with huge spire and broken front door.

‘Took me days to get this open,’ Babalwa said as she pushed the oak door gently forward. ‘Beat the lock with a hammer. Tiny thing. Took forever.’

We headed into the interior carefully, respectfully. Babalwa lead
us to a front pew, where we sat in full view of a struggling Jesus.

‘I don’t know why. It makes me peaceful, this place,’ she said softly, still not looking at me. ‘Silly, I know. But—’

‘Christ, there’s no silliness left any more,’ I offered.

‘Sho. Sho.’ She folded her hands into her lap, priest-like, and looked me in the eye. ‘I was really tired that night. You know, beaten. It was a Thursday; I remember being rude to my mother and going to bed early. I was in that way, you know. Just kind of hating everything, but I couldn’t sleep either. I remember lying there and looking at the ceiling and questioning whether this was it. You know?’ Her eyes darted between me and her lap. I nodded encouragingly. ‘Anyway, do you know what lucid dreaming is? Ever had a lucid dream?’

‘Babalwa, I was a bad drunk. To be really honest about it, I can’t remember dreaming at all, ever. I passed out every night for over twenty years, so … no. Until it happened, nothing. After that, of course, I’ve been dreaming like a wild man. All over the place. But I can’t say any of them were lucid. The normal stuff, hard to keep a handle on when you wake up.’

‘I’ve heard the term before,’ Babalwa said, ‘so I’ve been wondering since I had the dream if that was what it was. A lucid dream. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep so I just let myself drift, wallowing in being awake, or half awake, or drifting. Whatever.’ She looked up at Jesus, then back down at her lap. ‘So at some stage I’m definitely not awake any more, I can’t be, but I don’t feel like I’m dreaming either. I’m alert. Even now, when I think back I can remember the small details, which is strange, because who can ever remember the details of a dream?