by Sue Gee
‘With what shall I fetch it, dear Liza, dear Liza …’
Jessica left a long pause.
‘With a bucket, dear Henry …’ She burst out laughing.
Oliver looked at her solemnly. ‘There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza …’
‘That’s much better,’ said Jessica, when he had finished. ‘You don’t look half as cross.’
‘Did I look cross?’
‘With Tom.’
‘Don’t your parents ever get cross with you?’
She thought about it. ‘Not quite like that.’
He didn’t answer.
‘And Frances, sometimes,’ she said. ‘Why are you cross with her?’
He didn’t answer that, either, but rowed on, the air a little cooler now, a breath of wind beginning to rustle through the maize.
‘Are you going to have any more children?’
‘I – no, I don’t think so.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s quite enough questions.’ He turned the dinghy round in a slow circle; she looked at him in consternation.
‘Where are we going? I don’t want to go back yet.’
‘I think we should, it’s getting on.’ They rowed in silence; every now and then a fish came up. He offered her the paddles. ‘Want to?’
‘No.’ She shook her head, gazing down into the water. ‘I like it when you row.’
‘Well I will then. It’s all right. Don’t look so stricken.’
Jessica didn’t answer, her mood changed, subdued. After a few moments she said: ‘Are we going back because of the questions? I didn’t mean to be rude.’
‘You weren’t. I want to find out about Tom, that’s all.’ He nudged her with his foot. ‘Come on, what’s the matter? Am I such an ogre?’
‘You can look terribly fierce sometimes.’
‘Well,’ he said, lifting the silver paddles high, letting the water fall in shining waves, ‘I can assure you I’m not feeling fierce with you –’ He broke off. ‘Look! Look – there’s a kingfisher!’
‘Where?’ She sat up quickly, rocking the boat. ‘Oh, yes!’
They gazed after it. A bright and glorious flash of blue streaked past the cliffs on the far side, followed by another, swift as light, vanishing, gone.
‘That was amazing!’ Jessica turned back to him, radiant, all smiles again.
‘Wasn’t it?’ He lowered the paddles and reached out suddenly, touching her sunburnt face. ‘Happy now?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and watched him lean back again and take the oars, rowing with the current now, but still going slowly. They still had plenty of time.
‘He’s here,’ said Claire, climbing the steps to the terrace. ‘I told you he’d be all right.’
‘Oh, thank God.’ Frances, following, came up beside her; they looked at Tom fast asleep beneath the gentle shadows of the canopy of the swing-seat, sprawled out, relaxed. ‘Well – let me get you a drink.’ She felt beneath the stone by the double doors for the key and went into the cool dark sitting-room.
Claire sank down on to one of the chairs at the marble table; below, in the garden, Jack had picked up a cricket bat and ball left outside the door to the cellar, and was swiping into the vines.
‘Don’t knock the grapes off,’ she called.
‘I’m not knocking them off.’
‘Good.’
She stretched, running her hands through her hair, feeling, despite the rest earlier on, like lying down beside Tom and going to sleep again. They had been looking and calling for over half an hour, along the paths, through bushes, up the steps to the village, barely talking to each other apart from that, restraining Jack from over-enthusiastic shouting. Now she just wanted to be left alone: no children, no difficult marriages, no problems. She leaned back on the hard white chair, looking out across the valley, noticing another forest fire raging along the mountain. I’ve had enough of this heat, she thought, for the first time since they arrived, and remembered the rain last year, sweeping over the rooftops in the village, falling steadily on the garden and the terrace, dripping from the lemon trees on warm damp afternoons while they all played games indoors with the windows open. I wouldn’t mind if the weather changed, she thought, and rested her arms on the table and put her head upon them, wishing, suddenly, for tranquil rain and tranquil companions, too.
And Frances, inside the creeper-shaded kitchen, which smelled, as always, faintly of gas, made tea and squash for the boys, found biscuits, put everything on a tray and carried it out to the terrace. Where she stopped, seeing Claire in that restful and picturesque position, reminded at once of the morning’s reverie, of herself at the weather-beaten table in the quiet secluded garden, her head on her arms, waiting in the warmth of early afternoon for Dora to come out from the house and join her. For a moment she stood there, pierced by feelings so powerful she thought she might drop the tray, and then Claire looked up, with her lazy smile, and said: ‘Oh, how lovely,’ and Frances stepped calmly towards the table, and put everything down, saying, as if it were nothing at all, light and remote:
‘I’m sorry about this morning – can we just draw a veil?’
The next day felt easier. They spent the morning down in the village, buying provisions from the shop, calling on the pig as they went past, visiting the butcher, who once a week opened a little shop eight feet square, white-tiled, the floor sprinkled with sawdust. Slabs of cheap meat lay in the window, hens hung from hooks above them. Claire glanced at Tom, gazing up at the limp bodies, but he, like Jack, was soon distracted by two wiry and bare-chested men over the road, who began sawing piles of pine logs, the branches brought in a wheelbarrow out along a path from the mountain. The activity and the sound felt soothing, and the air through the open door of the shop smelled sweet and fresh. The two boys wandered across and stood watching, joined in a little while by Jess and the grown-ups. Smiles and greetings were exchanged; the boys squatted down and ran streams of sawdust through their fingers, watching it fall.
‘We’ll need a lot of sawdust for my mouse,’ said Tom.
They walked on, round the outskirts of the village, taking the road which became a bridge over a dried-up tributary of the river, where children were playing among bricks and weeds. The road broadened to run towards the main road and the market town. The post office was on this road, and the little café next to it; they sat beneath the awning of vines, having coffee and ice cream, watching their corner of the world go by.
It felt easier, but Claire, from time to time observing Oliver and Frances, wondered at how little they spoke to each other, how much time they spent apart.
Back at the house they made lunch for everyone. Coming into the kitchen to fetch drinks for the children, who were up at the pool, she found Oliver chopping cucumber and tomato for salad, sprinkling in herbs she knew the children would pick out bit by little bit, and Frances laying a tray of plates and cutlery, in a silence that felt heavy with words unspoken.
‘That looks wonderful,’ she said brightly, as Oliver laid out pieces of fish, and he smiled at her, but she felt like a fool, and went out quickly, spilling squash on the floor.
After lunch, they all retired to rest. Claire felt grateful to be indoors in a shady room after yesterday’s heat and the long search for Tom, who seemed all right today, making his noises as usual but enjoying the pool, happy to go up with Jack after lunch and lie down. She settled them into their beds and crossed the rag runner to her own room, closing the door.
‘Come here,’ she said to Robert, taking off her shoes.
He turned from the window above the terrace, and swung the shutters to.
‘What has got into you?’ he said, as she lay down and held out her arms. ‘It must be the heat.’ He came across to the bed, and sat down beside her, laying his hand on her stomach.
‘It isn’t the heat,’ she said, reaching up to him, hearing Oliver’s heavy footsteps go past along the corridor, the door at the far end open and close. ‘It isn’t the hea
t, it’s you.’
Frances did not go upstairs with the others. She lay on the sitting-room sofa, with the long cotton curtains drawn, reading and thinking as Jessica slept in her room. In mid-afternoon, before anyone else was awake, she took her swimsuit and towel and walked down through the village and along the soft earth path beneath vines to the maize fields, where the heat was spread out like a blanket beneath the sky.
There was nobody down by the river: she swam and swam. The water was silken, yellow and green; it parted before her in a shining and gentle rise and fall, holding tree and rock and sky, broken, rippling, smooth again. She swam for perhaps half an hour, perhaps longer, and when she came out she felt calm.
It was cooler now. She walked along the paths of caked earth through the tall dry maize, crossing the little irrigation ditches, hearing water fall. She looked up to see a fine spray ahead of her, gleaming, pattering on to the papery leaves and the ground, and at the end of the row came upon an old sunburned man in a dark cloth cap and shirtsleeves, hosing his patch. He nodded to her; she murmured a good afternoon, although it was almost evening now, the sun beginning to sink towards the mountains.
In another place, she thought, walking on, in another country or even in England, I might be afraid to find myself alone in a stretch of field with a strange man, even an old one. Here, although the rows of maize made endless hiding places, she felt perfectly safe, the warm dry air all around her, no one to disturb her thoughts. And anyway, she was not alone; she was never alone: she was walking, as always, with Dora.
Frances left the field and returned along the soft earth path to the village, and the feeling of peace remained with her, until she reached the house again, and climbed the stone steps to the terrace, where Claire and Robert were sitting together on the swing-seat, reading, rocking slowly to and fro. She stopped, and the sight of such real and unquestioning companionship almost undid her.
They looked up and greeted her, and she smiled and said she had had a good swim, and asked about the children, who were up at the pool with Oliver. And then she went slowly into the house and leaned up against the first wall she came to, willing herself not to sink to the floor and weep.
That evening, they all ate early outside with the children, watching a tiny bat flit through the lemon trees as the light began to fade.
‘We saw a shooting star last year,’ said Jessica suddenly.
‘So we did.’ Robert was finishing a creamy vanilla pudding from the shop. He leaned back, scanning the sky. ‘Perhaps there’ll be one tonight,’ he said, but there wasn’t.
It grew dark; the children had baths and were read to; the grown-ups went to their rooms one by one. And when Oliver had gone, taking his book and his glasses, and the house was quiet, Frances, who had busied herself in the kitchen, tidying away every last cup and plate, came back to the empty sitting-room, sat down at the generous desk in the corner with its parchment-shaded lamp, and wrote her letter.
More posters appeared in the village for the fiesta, and on Sunday morning Guida presented Robert with a roughly printed handbill, which he perused with the aid of the dictionary. There was, he told the others over breakfast, to be a procession, bearing the Virgin Mary and assorted saints, as well as stalls and a band, the arrival of whose sound equipment at three o’clock was billed as an attraction in itself. It was generally agreed that they could give this a miss, but at five that evening they locked up the house and set out, walking up the mountain road towards the next village, some half a mile away.
The heat of the day was fading, though it was still warm. They walked slowly, in single file, over dry heaps of pine needles at the edge of the road, grown-ups putting arms towards the children at the hectic approach of motor bikes and, less often, cars.
‘I’m okay,’ said Jessica, irritably shaking off Robert. ‘Don’t fuss.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Oliver, from behind. ‘We have to keep you safe.’
She flushed, and walked on, looking down, her face invisible behind a falling screen of hair.
‘Look!’ said Jack. ‘They’ve done decorations in the trees.’
They looked up to see trailing loops of pink and white in the lower branches. ‘It’s toilet paper!’
‘So it is,’ said Claire. It grew thicker and more elaborate, although here and there single sheets clung roughly to twigs, or had fallen to the earth. They began to hear pop music, vastly amplified, and the boys began to jig.
‘Careful!’ said Oliver, as Tom danced out from the verge, and as a car approached from the opposite direction, coming towards them, he grabbed his arm. ‘Will you keep in!’
They passed a small concrete chapel, set back in a clearing, and rounded a bend, and then the music faded and stopped. Ahead they saw a line of parked cars and vans, propped-up bikes, and a throng of people, pressing back on either side at the approach of a bright procession. Children in cotton frocks and embroidered waistcoats followed the priest at the head, carrying flowers, teenage girls had ribbons in their hair, and embarrassed-looking boys walked with decorated crooks and sticks. Behind them all swayed a gaudy litter, borne by small men in hats. The crowd began to sing, there was a percussion of bells.
‘Come on,’ said Robert, ‘find places,’ and they hurried towards the edge of the crowd, reaching for the boys’hands.
The procession drew closer, the singing of the hymn grew louder; from the litter, piled high with dozens of plastic flowers, a large and tinselled plaster doll in blue and white smiled with crimson lips and gazed at the air with blank brown eyes.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Tom.
‘The Virgin Mary,’ said Oliver. ‘Our Lady, they say here.’
He frowned. ‘I thought she was in London. In church.’
‘She’s supposed to be in heaven,’ said Jack.
‘It’s just a model.’ Jessica was scathing.
‘It’s just a model,’ said Oliver, ‘but it means something to these people – you shouldn’t mock.’
‘I wasn’t …’ Jessica’s voice trailed away, and Claire, glancing at her from the other side, saw her eyes fill with tears. She put out a hand.
‘Jess … what is it?’
‘Nothing,’ said Jessica angrily. ‘Nothing!’
‘Oh, dear.’ Claire turned to Robert, then thought better of it: this was hardly the place. She saw one or two other English faces in the crowd across the road, people she had never seen down in their village, who must be renting somewhere up here: a tall fair man with a beard, a woman with cropped dark hair and glasses. Then the Virgin Mary drew alongside, and they were lost to view. Behind Mary were two more saintly plaster dolls, and she saw Tom bend down as they went past, picking up a fallen plastic flower and moving quickly to replace it on the litter in a gesture that surprised her – she’d have expected him to pull it apart and be reproached by his parents, but he looked awed and excited, clearly caught up in the atmosphere and the sonorous singing of the hymn.
Families moved to follow the retreating figures down the hill towards the chapel, and as they disappeared round the broad curve there was an agonising, amplified squeal from loudspeakers and they saw what had been mostly obscured before: a beer stall and then, set up next to a café, a raised platform, painted black and festooned with toilet paper. Three or four men in shirtsleeves were wielding electric guitars. There was another squeal and they all covered their ears, and with a violent twang the music began again, so loudly that they could not hear one another speak.
‘Wick-ed!’ Tom, in wild responsive excitement, leaped out into the road and began to dance, his whole body moving, clumsily enraptured. Jack took Claire’s hand.
‘He’s gone mad.’
‘What?’ She bent down, and he yelled it at her.
‘I said he’s gone mad!’
‘Ssh,’ she said, absurdly, and began to enjoy herself. People were moving out into the street in couples, dancing sedately; on the other side of the café a bar billiards table was almost invisible, surrounde
d by adolescent boys. Robert touched her arm.
‘Ice cream?’ he mouthed. ‘Drink?’
‘Drink,’ she mouthed back, and they began to move through the couples, beckoning to Jessica to follow them.
But Jessica was hovering, and seemed not to see them. She was standing near Oliver, who was looking at Frances. And Frances, it was apparent, was miles away. Claire tried to follow her gaze, to work out who or what she was watching, but gave up as Jack pulled at her hand. She followed Robert towards the packed café, leaving Tom whirling and leaping, Jessica, with exaggerated concentration, moving up and down on the spot, Oliver watching Frances and Frances lost in a dream, gazing across the street to where Dora, as if summoned here at last by an unposted letter, stood watching the dancers, smiling.
Of course, it was not Dora – but the hair, the glasses, that particular smile … That particular air, sufficient unto herself. Frances, whose heart had turned over when she first caught sight of this unknown woman, stood looking at her now, suffused with emotion, with longing. Turn again, she said to her silently, for there was something, too, of the way Dora moved in the way this woman moved, turning – yes, now – to the tall, fair-haired, bearded man beside her, saying something, taking his hand. They moved out on to the street with the other couples and began to dance, slowly, their arms around each other’s waists, casually intimate.
Of course, it was not Dora. Frances, able to observe her more closely, saw that this woman was younger, her face not as fine; the glasses, which Dora wore only when she was working, were not ones she would have chosen. There was only one Dora, there was no one else to touch her. And yet to see someone here who so resembled her, who both was and was not her … Frances closed her eyes, searching for the real, the original. And Dora came towards her, greeted her with a smile.
‘Hello, Frances.’
‘Dora …’
‘Frances!’ She was being shaken; she opened her eyes to see Oliver looking at her with bemused impatience. The music was deafening, vibrating through her; it had taken her over like a lover.
