Alentejo Blue Read online

  He had always been lucky so far but today, the day when he was thirstiest of all, he could not get caught. He ate a peach and trod the stone right into the earth so another tree would grow. ‘Somebody in your garden,’ he sang. ‘There’s somebody here.’ He walked beneath a pergola, getting closer to the house, and picked some grapes off the vine. ‘Look what I’m do-ing.’ Jay heard the fly curtain tinkle and turned towards the door, but only the wind had stirred it.

  Stuff everyone, thought Jay. Nobody wants to know. He sat down to think about what it was that nobody wanted to know but he soon gave up. He thought about Chrissie and the way he could go and stand in front of her sometimes and not a thing in her face would change and then he’d see how she worked to make it change like she had to force each muscle to move, had to put a real hard effort into making her eyes look at his. She could fight off the spell most of the time, only sometimes she couldn’t. He had this dream a long time ago where she was dressed up as a princess in a long floaty pink dress and she was running around everywhere with a big bottle of medicine that was a cure for spells and everyone who came near her begged to be given some and she just laughed and blew kisses and didn’t care at all about anything. It was a dream he had just once but he turned it into something else, a kind of daydream or fantasy he could play and rewind and repeat when things got too boring. China was in this one too, dressed in some sort of uniform, the colour of olive leaves. He sat in a chair with a high, carved back and said, ‘You’ll have to kill me first,’ and four men lifted him on the chair and carried him to Chrissie, who didn’t laugh like she did when she saw the others but stroked his hair and held his hand and said, ‘Who did this to you?’ That’s where the thing got stuck. It wasn’t supposed to end there but he didn’t know how to make it go on. That black and white film filled up with music and you knew from that what was going to happen. Jay thought China should get out of the chair, but he never did, not even when Jay said, practically out loud, for him to move. It showed you it wasn’t all make-believe because China really was like that. Chrissie said that he’d never done anything he was told and she’d wasted enough breath on him to last the rest of her life.

  There was nowhere to go so he rode out towards Covo da Zora and into the woods. Some of the cork trees had been freshly harvested. They looked like old men who had rolled up their trousers, fallen asleep in the sun and had the skin cooked right off. The numbers which the corticeiros painted in white stood out brightly against the dried-blood bare trunks. The numbers told you which year the cork had been cut. You counted forward nine years and you knew when the tree would be ready again. Sometimes you got a band of the same numbers together, most often they were all mixed up. Jay played a game where you had to ride between one tree and another, counting down the numbers from nine to one. You weren’t allowed to stop until you found the last number. Sometimes it took ages.

  By the time he got to number one Jay was sweating. Even his bum was sweating. His shorts were wet, like he’d sat down in a puddle. He let the bike drop and collapsed under the tree.

  China was still on the floor when Jay had gone to bed last night but he wasn’t there this morning. There was a jug of amber liquid on the table. Jay got rid of it so his mother wouldn’t have to see. He bet the World War II pilot never peed in a jug when he could have walked a few yards and peed off the side of the terrace.

  There was a beetle with beautiful green-black wings crawling along a rock just next to him. Jay put out his finger and let the beetle walk over it.

  China wasn’t like the World War II pilot anyway. Jay never thought he was. It was stupid.

  The beetle reached the end of the rock and Jay cupped his hand and moved him back to the beginning.

  That pilot wasn’t even a hero. All he did was get captured and then run away and go mad.

  Jay sat up to get a better look at the beetle. The markings on its back were like eyes.

  Chrissie wasn’t a princess. She had lines on her face. She had tea-breath. She had hair under her arms. A prince wouldn’t kiss her and wake her up.

  For a brief moment the beetle whirred its wings and hovered.

  Stanton came into his mind. He had not realized it before but Stanton had fat hips like a woman and his lips were far too red.

  Jay held his thumb over the beetle. All around the crickets called out and the birds answered. He brought his thumb down and pressed until it hurt.

  Where the ground turned steep he dumped the bike and scrabbled up the rocky slope, using his hands when his feet began to slide. He paused and took off his T-shirt and tied it over his head to stop the sweat dripping into his eyes. When the path levelled out a bit he stopped again and looked back down over the trees and the road beyond. It wasn’t a path he was on really, it was a firebreak. You saw them on lots of the hills: parched orange streaks set into the scrub.

  Jay picked up a stick and bashed at a prickly bush. Ruby used to do races with him through the silves. They had a big stick each. The rule was you had to go in a straight line and if you got scratched you had to take it like a man. If you cried out the other person won.

  He walked through the scrub taking swipes at everything. He came up to a young pine and parried and feinted and thrust and then jumped up to knock off a cone. ‘Ha,’ he said, ‘got you.

  ‘Got you,’ he said louder. ‘Got you,’ he said again.

  If there was a fire up here now it wouldn’t spread too far because of the firebreak. He wondered what it would look like to see a fire spread across the hill. How high would the flames go?

  He squatted down on the floor of brown pine needles. They would light pretty easy. He imagined the needles on the tree sparking up and showering down like one gigantic firework.

  He would run to the nearest house – there was one down by the road where he’d come off into the woods – and then he’d run back with a blanket to start beating out the flames. You’d probably see the smoke from the house.

  The bombeiros would come and when they heard the siren other people would come as well. They might let him hold the hose. He’d definitely get a ride in the fire engine. His face would be black with soot and streaked with sweat. He could almost feel the hands on him, clapping his shoulders, patting the back of his neck.

  Jay took the box of matches out of his pocket. There was a picture of a hedgehog on the top and its spines were all red-tipped matches. The first match was a dud. He took a second and struck it and held it up level with his eyes. The flame was weak yellow, a sickly thing. All he had to do was drop it. And stand back when the fire caught.

  He blew out the flame and put the match carefully back in the box. He stood up and dusted off his hands on his shorts. Looking round he calculated the shortest route back to his bike. When he got home he would feed the animals, maybe clean out the chicken shed.

  Those were the things that needed doing. Somebody had to get them done.

  5

  MY HUSBAND HAS A PARTICULAR WAY OF DISAGREEING with me. He’ll say, ‘Any sane person would see that’s complete rubbish and utter codswallop.’ Sometimes he just says, ‘Any sane person, Eileen,’ and leaves it at that. Which is rich coming from a man who can’t open a book without first holding it under his nose and giving it a good sniff.

  He’s here somewhere, marching around the town with a panama on his head and the Insight book in his hand. I’m supposed to be sitting in the café by the Galp station writing postcards. ‘Hot flush?’ he said. I said that’s what it was.

  I’m walking (aimlessly, he’d say) around the main square which is only about the size of our garden at home, though I suppose our garden is quite large. It’s hot again today but fresh. The sky is the exact same shade as a bowl I cradled all the way back from Agadir – one of his holidays – only to drop it the next day on the kitchen floor.

  Yesterday it rained. One of those rapid drenchings you get when everyone’s just about at the point where they can’t breathe any more and then it buckets down, like God emptying his b
athwater on your head. This morning I opened the window and I couldn’t help it, I said, ‘Lots of air today.’ He was still in bed, fighting with the map and being cranky. ‘Is there really, Eileen? How much air, exactly, would you say there is today?’

  It’s lunchtime but I’m not hungry. I am hot though. I’m going to sit down for a while. There are two benches but they’re not in the shade. I’m going to sit on the grass under that big fan palm.

  From down here I can see a long line of mud nests under the eaves of the municipal building across the square. House martins or swallows. A flash of red at the throat means swallow, but all I can see at the moment is a host of glossy dark backs. If I look the other way – through my eyelashes because the sun is pretty strong – I can see the town climbing up above. All those white houses standing on each other’s shoulders and some leaning out to the sides like they’re trying to get a better view. I like the pavements here too. Chunky cobblestones in black and white laid in diamonds and squares and zigzags. They’re very uneven though. In England I expect there’d be lawsuits.

  All the shops are closing for the two-hour lunch break. A cashier just came out of the Crédito Agrícola and checked her hair in the window. She was very smart. She looked like the kind of woman who would never leave her cereal bowl in the sink all day. The sound of her heels on the cobbles made me feel lazy, and rather disorganized. I fussed inside my bag, but why I should pretend to be busy, goodness only knows.

  Next to the bank there is a motorbike repair shop on one side where the pavement has turned dark and oily and a furniture shop on the other. The man in the furniture place has turned the sign and lowered the blind but he hasn’t pulled it all the way down and I can see him taking off his shoes and lying down on a bed. He’s got his knees drawn up and is kind of hugging himself like he means to settle down for a good long sleep rather than – I heard this phrase the other day – a power nap. I think they used to be called catnaps, but that’s a bit lacking in executive tone.

  Speaking of cats, I discovered a litter of kittens in the grounds of our pousada, right behind the shed where they keep the garden tools. The mother had left – just for a minute as it turned out – and there they were, turned into this little heap of struggling flesh that gave me pins and needles in my heart. The errant mother, a tabby with a white-tipped tail, hopped back on the double when she saw me and crashed down on her side with her teats in the air. The kittens all got stuck in and she gave me a long sideways look with her slanty golden eyes and I thought don’t stare at me that way, you’re just a bloomin’ cat.

  The bank has got these browned-out shiny windows, like sunglasses, and I’ve taken a glance (a bit more than that actually) at myself which was a mistake. I look like a suet pudding in a sundress. And I deliberately didn’t tuck all my hair up into the hat but left some strands coming down around my face, thinking it would be what the hairdressers call softened. I can’t say I’m pleased with the effect. The polish on my toenails is unbelievably garish. Did I do that?

  When I couldn’t get into my favourite black trousers I said to my husband that I was going low carb. He said, ‘Any sane person, Eileen.’ Then he put his arm around me. ‘It’s what every woman goes through.’ He kissed me, just missing my lips. ‘Frankly, I’m surprised you kept the weight off as long as you did.’

  I think I might be having a hot flush now.

  This, as my husband keeps reminding me, is my holiday. For once it really is. I dug my heels in this time.

  ‘But what are we going to do there?’ he said.

  ‘Break bread and drink wine.’

  He sniffed the Portugal guidebook. This was just before he opened it up and realized there were only nine pages devoted to our entire region. ‘That’s what we do every day,’ he said. ‘We do that at home.’

  I had to get away from that window. It was like an achy tooth, I couldn’t leave it be. I’ve walked round to the front of the municipal building but I still don’t know what it is. Law courts perhaps. A library?

  I hadn’t realized how white my legs are. Practically blue.

  There are pink marble steps up to the entrance and green metal fretwork doors. Left and right are big primary-colour murals painted on white tiles. One is of the town; the bridge and the river and the white-cube houses stacking up and up. The other shows workers – peasant women in flowered skirts and scarves and the men all in hats and knee-length boots – gathered in the field looking over wheat and olives to a distant village.

  My aunt Betsy’s legs – she was my great-aunt really – were blue. I’m talking about the last year of her life when she went to live with Nana McGowan. She had venous ulcers and it made the skin on her legs turn all duck-egg and shiny. They’d swell something rotten, even with the bandages on most of the day. She used to say, ‘Never mind me, dear,’ and hobble about getting under everyone’s feet. It’s awful but that’s all I remember, an old woman with bad legs muttering never mind me and getting in the way. I said so once to my mother. ‘Sad to think that’s how she was fixed in people’s minds; a whole life diminished.’ My mother didn’t even look up from her tapestry. ‘Betsy,’ she said, ‘was a horrible woman.’

  I still don’t know what it is, this place. I can’t see any signs anywhere. I like that. I like it better than all those delightful Tuscan towns we ‘did’ the year before last. All that history and architecture – it gives you a headache just shuffling past on sore sightseeing feet, trying to blot out the English voices everywhere.

  That was one of my holidays. So-called. He, my husband, says, ‘A bit of shopping, a bit of pottering, a bit of sightseeing. That’s what you like.’ And buries the dining-room table with maps and leaflets and brochures and books while he plans the invasion strategy. ‘May as well learn something, Eileen. If you don’t it’s not sightseeing, it’s gawping.’

  You don’t see many old women here. The only reason I’ve noticed is because of the old men. They seem to be everywhere and they hang out in gangs in their jumpers and old suit jackets, fanning themselves with newspapers or warming their backs in the dying sun or propping up the bars, or just walking about, spread across the road, holding up the traffic. But the women don’t do any of that. If you see an elderly woman she will be in a doorway, broom in hand. I saw one yesterday and she swept the dirt on to the pavement, kissed the plaster saint in the alcove and closed the door without looking out.

  I’ve just passed four old men on my way up this street, Rua Souza Prado. In England only teenagers hang about like that. The post office has a red sign with a white horse and Pan-like figure flying across it; there’s a Mini-Mercado grocery shop, a shop that sells clothes, another that sells shoes and a hardware shop with a poster in the window advertising the forthcoming shows of a singer called Nelson Paulo Cavaco. Nelson has an accordion and eyebrows that could double as ear muffs and a way of gazing into the lens that tells you a lot about what he thinks of himself. My favourite shop so far (they’re all closed so I’m only looking in the windows) is Casa Rita. It sells everything. Watches, scarves, lipsticks, vases with hideous gold paint, Benfica baseball caps, penknives, antimony picture frames, Drakkar Noir aftershave, ships in bottles, necklaces, children’s bikes, toy cars and B.U. Eau de Toilette. If I took my husband in there he would turn purple.

  Squished between two of the shops, both of which are fresh and sparkly with new awnings, is a tumbledown house properly flayed by the sun, with blistered paint and a chewed-up old door and weeds and even what looks like a little tree growing out of the roof tiles. On one of the deep windowsills there is a lilac pair of little girl’s shoes with white laces, three peaches in a line and, propped up against the shutter, an unframed painting of potted geraniums. On the ground, below the window, is a terracotta pot of the same flowers in a deeper shade of red. The way the sun spills over the street it divides the window into two triangles, one dark, the other bright.

  I stood there for quite a while feeling, I don’t know, happy. The peaches and the shoes and t
he flowers. I thought, there’s a moment, there’s a sight. Of course that spoilt it so I started walking again and now I’m coming up to another praça, another square, though there’s still a distance to climb and I can see the big church up above with its two crosses, one plain, one lacy. I’m feeling a little giddy, happiness or exertion, I don’t know. But I think I could be here. I could run away and be here. I could be one of those English women with fat ankles and capillaried cheeks and hair coming down from under a tattered hat who set up in places like this, to keep bees or grow runner beans or save donkeys. I could ride into town on a donkey, barefoot on a donkey with a wicker shopping basket, and everyone would know me and say in a fond sort of way, ah, there she goes, the crazy English woman.

  I might just do it too. Why not? I’d like to see his face.

  When he catches me checking the horoscopes he either smirks and says something like, ‘So what’s written in our stars today?’ or he blinks very, very slowly and says, ‘Reason and rationality. Couldn’t you at least give them a try?’

  Before he gets into bed he has to tuck one slipper inside the other and place them just so beside the chair. If I walk past and knock them he gets out of bed to put them straight.

  What’s rational, anyway? This world we live in. Who’s to say?

  I read the other day in the paper about this woman, she was American, she murdered this other woman and stole her baby. The baby hadn’t even been born. She killed the woman and slit her open and took the baby and kept it for eight days before she was arrested. You can’t even imagine that happening but it did. The next day there was another article and it said that there had been twelve cases just like it in America. Twelve cases!