The Last Summer of the Water Strider

  I swigged at my wine again. I suddenly felt unprotected, and in a strange place where I did not know the rules.

  ‘Which team do you play for?’ I said, slurring slightly.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Are you that way inclined?’ I said, struggling to find a way of putting it delicately. I was vaguely aware that I was lifting these euphemisms from sitcoms I had watched. ‘I don’t particularly mind if you are. I just want to set the record straight.’

  ‘Which way inclined is that?’ Henry raised an eyebrow. He clearly knew what I was talking about and was teasing me. The knowing expression on his face sent a bolt of irritation through me.

  ‘What I’m asking is: are you queer?’

  I immediately regretted the brutality of the question. But Henry simply took a swig of his water and smiled at me, apparently unconcerned by my rudeness. He made no reply. This annoyed me more than his teasing.

  Convinced now, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that Henry was, as I thought of it then, a sexual pervert, I rose, went back to my room and sat mutely on the bed. I felt very hungry and I had to admit that the smell of the food was actually extremely good. But I wasn’t prepared to surrender, although I had no idea what it was I would be surrendering to, or where the lines of the battle had been drawn.

  Just before I fell asleep, I heard Henry call to me from outside the door.

  ‘Goodnight, stupid.’

  ‘Stupid yourself,’ I muttered, this time not loud enough for him to hear.

  Six

  The first few days I spent on the Ho Koji were unremarkable. I was bored in Buthelezi House and I was bored on the boat.

  My History revision books sat in a pile in the corner, still untouched in their plastic supermarket bag. I passed the time dozing, listening to music or reading pulp in one form or another – I liked science fiction and Henry had found a pile of DC and Marvel comics somewhere and dumped them on my floor. I read a lot of Superman adventures. It struck me at one point as significant that green Kryptonite, the only thing that could kill Superman, was actually a piece of his home planet that had broken off and floated into space.

  His own home was the only thing that could destroy him.

  During that first week, Henry made no special attempt to accommodate or entertain me. He was neither hostile nor particularly convivial. He ventured a few exploratory queries about school, friends and so on, but he didn’t press very hard when I proved consistently reticent. I was determined not to display any positive signals that might encourage him in my seduction.

  The days were long – and there was no television to watch in the evening. Henry showed me the larder and the fridge, both of which were well appointed with eggs, cheese, bread, butter and all the staples. I was left to fend for myself.

  To pass the time, I sunbathed on the upper deck during those first, hot days. It was a pleasant enough kind of boredom. There was no requirement for any activity here – Henry seemed to expect nothing of me at all except that I remain reasonably clean and tidy. One of my few virtues was that I was someone who liked order and almost instinctively cleared up after myself.

  Henry, on the other hand, was clean but messy. I often found myself picking up his detritus – scraps of paper, fountain pens, even laundry – from the floor and placing it out of sight. Also, he snored at night, so loudly I could hear him, the walls between the rooms being thin. He smoked heavily, both pipe and cigarettes, so that even with the windows and doors open the place reeked of tobacco.

  We quickly settled into a routine, with barely a word being spoken between us. I would rise mid-morning, around ten o’clock. I had always been able to sleep for long periods without any trouble.

  By the time I made my way into the main cabin, Henry would have been up for hours, clacking away at his typewriter and coming to the end of his first pack of Luckies. He would beam at me vaguely if I looked into his office, and make a gentle attempt to engage me in conversation, which I usually rebuffed.

  I would fix myself some coffee, help myself to one of his cigarettes – there were several cartons of 200 stacked under the bench seats – and make myself a couple of slices of toast. Then I would put on my Speedos and go and stretch out on the sun deck, where I had decided to build up a record-breaking suntan. I slathered myself with coconut oil, given to me by Henry. It offered me no protection from the sun, and I burned myself quite badly on the first day. But I persevered. Although I was gangly and thin – and, partly as a consequence of this, a virgin – I was not beyond teenage vanity, nor its shadow, insecurity.

  On the fourth day, as I was settling into a kind of timeless zone that made the boredom palatable, Henry appeared on the deck where I was stretched out in the full heat of the sun, even though my nose and back were already red and peeling. I immediately assumed that he was ogling me, but then I heard a woman’s voice from behind him, mellow, with a slight American flavour.

  ‘So this is the kid, right?’

  A young woman appeared from behind Henry. She had long, straight, chestnut hair halfway down to her waist, a galaxy of heavy freckles decorating her improbably symmetrical and tanned features, and a pair of blue jeans indistinguishable in style from Henry’s. She was wearing a yellow scoop-neck blouse with long, flared sleeves. She was small – maybe five foot two – stick-slim and golden like dreams, and not so much older than me. Early twenties, I guessed. Her hair kept falling across her face, and she kept pushing it back behind her ears, where it would never stay. She looked vaguely familiar. She also looked like Ali McGraw. Maybe that was it.

  I covered myself with a towel.

  She smiled and held out her hand. ‘Hello. I’m Strawberry.’

  I sat up and took her hand. She pulled it back and inspected it.

  ‘Ew.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m afraid it’s a bit slick. From the tanning oil.’

  I handed her my towel and she carefully wiped her hand, concentrating on the space between the fingers. I felt embarrassed.

  ‘Your name is really Strawberry?’

  ‘As in the fruit.’

  ‘That’s an unusual name.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Sure. I suppose. My name’s much more boring. I’m Adam. Adam Templeton.’

  ‘I don’t have a surname,’ she said. ‘I had it changed by law. It’s just Strawberry. Or to be precise, since the passport authorities insisted on something like a surname, Strawberry Shortcake. But I think that’s just my full first name’.

  She giggled in a way that made me think she was even younger than I had guessed.

  ‘That’s a joke?’

  ‘No, that really is my legal name. I mean, sure it’s a joke, but a joke on the passport squares. The government. You know?’

  ‘So what was your name before?’

  ‘Nothing interesting. Susan, actually. Strawberry’s much better, isn’t it? Always gets a conversation going.’

  Her voice was cultured despite the American twang. She had an air of powerful self-possession, laced with a certain obscure fragility.

  Having offered my towel to Strawberry, my body was exposed again. I thought I saw Henry gazing at me, and started to pull on my jeans.

  Strawberry looked at Henry and began to laugh.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.

  ‘You are,’ she said.

  ‘Me? You think I’m funny? With your name?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be a sour lemon. I’m not laughing at you. I just think it’s funny that you think Henry’s a fag,’ she said, still smiling.

  So this was what the visit was about.

  ‘He’s not. I know that for certain. From my own personal experience.’

  She kissed Henry, and flung her arms around his neck.

  Henry smiled at me and said, ‘I thought you’d be more comfortable if you knew.’

  When I came down from the roof, an hour or two after Henry’s theatrical attempt to offer proof of his heterosexuality, I went to my room and put N
ick Drake’s Five Leaves Left album on. His voice hung suspended in sadness like a skeleton leaf on a cold winter pond. I lay there in my room until the late afternoon, floating with the leaf, when I became aware of a gentle knocking at my door.

  I ignored it at first, having been embarrassed by the double-act on the sun deck. My feelings of vague hostility towards Henry had not been allayed. It had seemed that he was mocking me. Also I felt humiliated that my admittedly absurd presumption had been proved wrong so forcefully. The knocking continued. Then I heard the sound of a woman’s voice.

  ‘Adam?’

  I uttered a sullen acknowledgement. The door inched open. A sliver of a face appeared. Shining, burnished. The hinge creaked as the door completed its parabola. Strawberry was standing there, smiling lazily, her left leg bent slightly so that she stood just off centre. Her head, too, was cocked to one side. The effect was inviting without being necessarily sexual. I could smell patchouli oil, cloves and something else. Iron? Old pennies?

  I blushed and avoided eye contact. She had changed. She was now wearing a simple white linen dress, embroidered with a fine pink and blue looped pattern across the bust and, it seemed, nothing much underneath. I could see the caramel darkness of her nipples through the material. No shoes. She was carrying two of the green ceramic cups from downstairs.

  She gave a small cough, which quickly developed into something more serious – a hacking rasp that shook her tiny frame. Her body was underdeveloped – I hadn’t realized how much so when I had first seen her. Her calves and thighs, exposed beneath her buttocks – where in fact, there was barely any curve – seemed to be no more than the circumference of a sturdy table leg. ‘Spindly’ was the word that crossed my mind. It made her seem vulnerable, even in her beauty.

  The coughing was so extreme that I thought she was going to drop the cups. Then, as suddenly as it had arrived, the fit ended. She had tears in her eyes, presumably from the seizure, which she was unable to wipe away because of the cups in her hand. She held one of them out to me. I took it, tearing my gaze away from her body, and nodded acknowledgement.

  ‘Coffee,’ she said. ‘Instant. Not that tar water Henry cooks up.’

  She wiped the teardrops from her face with her free hand.

  ‘I sort of like Henry’s coffee,’ I answered.

  ‘I only drink green tea. You get it in health-food stores in the States. And spring water. Or rainwater. I’m very strict. Green tea helps to remove impurities. The pollution is everywhere. Invisible rain. Even here we’re not safe. Right out here in the boonies, that shit still comes down. That’s why I get these terrible coughs. Charged particles. Radiation. You know about the radiation? But it’s better here than in the Smoke. It feels clean. Even if, really, it’s not. You know?’

  I didn’t know how to respond, so I didn’t answer. I expected her to withdraw, but she didn’t move. She adjusted her posture slightly, leaning forward as if inviting herself in further. She sipped her tea, leaving a trail of moisture on her ghostly lips, whose paleness contrasted sharply with the rest of her body. It occurred to me then that she was waiting for an invitation to sit down. I was slouched on my bed. On the wall above it, a large poster of Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead, in mid-solo, was stuck with drawing-pins at four corners: bearded, ecstatic, the neck of his red guitar pointing to heaven.

  The only place to sit, other than the severe chair at my desk, was the rumpled and stained purple beanbag. I nodded faintly towards it. Delicately she sat, cross-legged. Despite myself, my eyes darted towards the inner apex of her thighs. She noticed – I saw the slight raise of an eyebrow – and I immediately looked away. But I had time to take in that she was wearing slight, filmy pants, stained slightly with something dark.

  She didn’t speak again for some time. Perhaps a whole minute passed. She gazed out towards the window, as if I weren’t even there. I was worried that I had offended her by the intemperance of my gaze. Disconcerted, I asked her if she wanted something. She shook her head, the wings of her long brown hair like thin curtains in a breeze, but remained silent, apparently staring at the slight movement of the trees outside the window. A big white bird – an egret? – swooped down from one of the branches and snapped up something small with its beak. I shifted my position on the bed uneasily, but could think of nothing else to say.

  Eventually, after about two or three minutes, she spoke – so quietly that I had to strain to hear her.

  ‘What do you think of Henry?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  ‘You must think something.’

  ‘He’s very different from my father.’

  ‘He really isn’t a faggot, you know. Far from it.’

  ‘I get it.’

  She looked at me directly for the first time.

  ‘He’s on a very strange journey. A long road. You know? Sometimes I think he’s like . . . ’ – she glanced down at my pile of comics – ‘. . . Superman. No, that’s not it. Atticus Finch. You know Atticus Finch? I don’t know. That sort of guy. And he is. He’s really a trip. Like no one else. But inside. There’s . . . I don’t know. He wants to be something. But he isn’t really it. Do you see what I mean?’

  The question didn’t seem to require an answer. She took a sip of her green tea.

  ‘Have you ever tried it?’ She held the tea out to me.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Go ahead. You should. It has remarkable properties. I have nine, ten cups a day. It cleans you out. Of course if you do it properly – Henry does this sometimes – you’re meant to whisk it for ages. But I just sling the leaves in and pour on hot water. It’s very lazy of me. Yeah. I hate the way I’m such a slob.’

  She looked suddenly depressed. Then she propelled the tea an inch closer.

  ‘Go on. I dare you.’

  I took the cup. Our fingers momentarily touched, and I felt a thrill. Then her hand withdrew and I sipped the tea.

  ‘It’s horrible.’

  Strawberry laughed – a tinkly, silvery jingle.

  ‘It’s good for you.’

  ‘It tastes like medicine. Or wood bark. Bitter. Maybe you should put sugar in it.’

  ‘Sugar is poison. It’s like, I don’t know – honestly, you should read about it. There was this piece in the Village Voice. You know the Voice?’

  ‘I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Oh, it’s like, the bible and all. Greenwich Village. You know, in New York? I lived there awhile. Not literally though. Not “the gospel”. It just tells the truth, you know? Real stuff, real stuff. Not this bullshit government propaganda.’

  She frowned fiercely as she pronounced the word ‘bullshit’, as if she was suddenly very angry.

  ‘Anyway, the big sugar corporations, I mean from the eighteenth, or was it the nineteenth century? – shit, I can’t remember – have peddled this to the people to make bucks. It’s like a whole thing. Conspiracy. Same old, same old. Fucking everyone over. I feel sorry for them, actually. To be that greedy. All the same, they got the whole Western world hooked. Ask Pattern. He told me all about it. What was it built on? Slave labour. That’s right. You know? Anyway, I just take honey sometimes. You know, from bees? That’s OK. It’s different.’

  ‘Who’s Patton?’

  ‘Pattern, not Patton. Patton was a fucking general. Pattern’s more like an annoying Boy Scout.’

  I was having trouble following her, but I remembered a few facts from my science lessons.

  ‘Actually, chemically, honey is more or less the same as sugar.’

  ‘That’s what they teach you in school, right?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Yeah. And who pays the schoolteachers? The government, right? And who controls the government?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Think about it.’

  Strawberry stood up, smiled at me and held out her hand for my empty cup. ‘How was the coffee?’

  ‘OK. Not great.’

  ‘Shit. You really are Henry’s nephew, aren??
?t you? You like your poison pure. Intense. Well, maybe that’s why he’s so fucked up. All those toxins.’

  ‘Henry’s fucked up?’

  ‘Everyone’s fucked up.’

  She paused, and her face changed again, as if her internal self was resetting in the space of a moment. Having been playful, she looked sad again.

  ‘You’ll let me know if anything happens, won’t you? I mean, if he stops being . . . all right.’

  I nodded as if I understood her completely. She seemed to take my acknowledgement as confirmation that I had fully appreciated her concerns. Her sadness slipped away again, and she smiled gratefully.

  ‘He’s been good to me.’

  ‘Has he?’

  Now she leaned forward. What followed came out in a torrent.

  ‘I was so strung out. Everything you could name. Coke, hash, DMT, acid. Not to mention sex. Can you believe it? That’s pollution, right there. That’s right. You know? He took me in. Came and got me out of the Valley. Once they got me back here – him and Troy, between them, they put me straight. Henry doesn’t like Troy – of course he doesn’t. Perhaps he’s jealous, I guess. But Troy taught me where else to go after I’d left where I was. What I’m into now is such a positive place. I’m working on art. Not figurative, you know. It comes from the inside. It’s like feeling on paper. Like giving form to thought. Like Pollock, you know? I’m teaching myself yoga. Yeah. Shows you how to breathe.’

  ‘I already know how to breathe.’

  She ignored me.

  ‘I’ve started this macrobiotic diet. I found out about it in LA. I met the guy who devised it. Kenzaburo Suzuki? You know about macrobiotics? Amazing. Really. It’s helping me. I got this book, Macrobiotics and the Zen Way. Grains and green tea. That was it for me. Some raw vegetables. Fruit, if it’s properly grown and properly washed. Really clean. It has to be clean.’

  ‘Who’s Troy?’