by Monica Ali
‘I was thinking,’ said Dieter, stroking an eyebrow, ‘if you make the final payment in cash you can forget about the EVA, the tax. Save a lot of money.’ He shrugged. ‘If you like I will come with you now to the bank.’
‘But the fossa,’ Stanton said. ‘It leaks. The work’s not finished.’
Dieter worried tobacco into a paper skin. His fingers were callused and nicotine-stained. ‘This is a – what do you say? – bad understanding.’ He had a tall man’s slouch even when seated, and his chest, though broad, appeared concave. His hair, dark full curls, was cut into layers falling almost to his shoulders and brushed to a sickening sheen. Without glancing across the room, Stanton thought of the Potts girl’s mousy strings. ‘The septic tank is an open system,’ Dieter went on. ‘That is what we call this. Solid waste is kept inside. The water passes outside through a filter. No, it is a bad understanding.’
‘Misunderstanding,’ said Stanton. ‘But it isn’t. I didn’t choose to have that system because it was more expensive. I didn’t have enough money for that.’
Dieter produced a smile. ‘Lucky man,’ said the German. ‘You pay for closed but you get open. For you this is very lucky.’
‘The damn thing leaks,’ said Stanton. He knocked a fly away. ‘And there are no tiles on the bathroom floor.’
The builder shook his head. The curls bounced indecently. ‘The work is good. You don’t want to pay but the work is good.’ He lit his cigarette and sucked hard. He shook his head and sulked.
My new friend, said Stanton to himself. He thought with bitterness of the friends he had left behind though he had not been sad to part. Dieter touched his arm. ‘Look,’ he said, indicating the men at the counter. ‘Brandy before noon. Impossible in this country to get anything done. In Germany – the workers, they work. Here . . .’ He flicked his hair back in an odd feminine gesture, using the back of his hand. ‘You see the problems. You suffer, my friend, and I suffer also.’
‘So you’ll get it fixed?’ said Stanton. ‘And the tiles. You know none of the internal doors are on?’
‘Bastards,’ said Dieter. ‘Another drink?’
Stanton looked at his watch. ‘Why not?’ The day was ruined anyway. He would go back, tussle briefly with the computer, develop a fever, prescribe an afternoon of research, spend a listless couple of hours with his books, go for a walk to clear his head and return in time for sundowners. Each stage would develop inevitably into the next, all with equal futility. ‘If you don’t have any work to do,’ he said, not caring to hide his tone.
‘Too much,’ Dieter complained. He picked up the beer glasses and Stanton saw that the calluses were beginning to soften, white rings around the yellow. There was a commotion at the back of the room. Stanton turned and saw the Potts girl move across the café, something insolent in her walk. Behind the counter Vasco waved his short arms.
‘Ladra!’ Vasco screamed. Thief. He lifted a hatch and squeezed out, the operation hampered by his considerable size.
The girl turned at the door, donned a monstrous pair of sunglasses, flicked a V-sign and disappeared. Vasco stood panting. He had to have his trousers specially made but they did not seem large enough now that his belly heaved and shook with exertion and emotion. His customers – those who had risen – retook their seats clicking their tongues. Vasco trembled his way to the revolving rack over by the cigarette machine. He passed a hand over the postcards, comics, chewing gum, toy guns and sunglasses, perhaps to divine what else was missing, perhaps to comfort his remaining stock. It was some time before he grew calm enough to serve beer.
‘But they do not go directly to the police,’ moaned Dieter. ‘In Germany it would be – ja, ja.’ He broke off as if even he had heard it too many times. ‘But do you know about that family? They live one, two kilometres from your house. English neighbours.’
Stanton had heard some things. ‘Not really.’
Dieter rolled another cigarette, spilling tobacco over his jeans. ‘The father is, you know.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Louco. When they came here he had money. Maybe drugs money, who knows? He asks me to build a swimming pool. They are living in a caravan but he wants a pool. So I bring the diggers and before the pool is finished he says now we build the house. I stop the pool and I start the house but before the roof is done money has gone. The wife is like . . .’ Dieter thought for a while. ‘What do you call this piece of material for cleaning the plates? A dishcloth, yes, dishcloth. There is a boy, about eleven, twelve,’ he said quickly, anxious to pass on to the main topic, ‘and of course this girl, Ruby. She has left the school, she has nothing to do but make trouble. There was a fight between her and the whores up at the brothel. Know where it is? By the GNR – the police look out for the girls. This fight – I heard it was really something – the whores said she ruined their business, giving it away for free.’ He shifted his knees and bumped the table and steadied it. ‘That is the story. Probably it isn’t true. But it is the story.’
Stanton pictured the girl, her T-shirt sawn off below the breasts, her fuck-you walk, the ludicrous stolen sunglasses crusted with butterflies. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Anaemic skin and dimpled knees. Unattractive, uneducated, disabled. That hearing aid was prehistoric. ‘Poor bitch,’ he said and got up, deciding against another beer and for a Macieira.
He went outside to the pickup and pressed his hand against the door panel where the sun glazed the red metal white. He drove out of the village, past the lines of orange trees that bordered the narrow pavements, past the water pump where a bent old woman filled plastic containers, past the small square with garish flowerbeds and a dark green frog-plagued pond, and turned right after the traffic lights which were there not to control the traffic (of which there was a dearth) but to raise a flag to the future.
He entered the house and went straight to the computer in the bedroom. All the furniture had ended up there, apart from a couple of chairs and a stool on the terrace. In his mind a correlation had grown between the emptiness of the house and the quality of his work, the sparseness of one promising the fullness of the other. He read over the last few pages on the screen, making deletions and additions and willing himself into the story. He stood up and sat back down. He set his jaw and willed himself submerged. It was hopeless. It was like deciding to commit suicide and trying to drown with your face in the washbasin.
He closed his computer and resolved to suffer no more interruptions to his mornings. Taking his book he went to the terrace and looked out over the garden to the cork oaks beyond, the rich earth-red trunks where the bark had been harvested, the spreading mossy branches that reached back to some ancient time. Stanton sat down and opened the book and was immediately distracted by a lizard flickering in and out of an empty flowerpot. He returned to the book, trudged through half a chapter then hurled it down into the garden.
It was possibly the worst book he had ever tried to read. He decided this and instantly felt bloated with research. He was like a sumo wrestler stepping into ballet shoes and hoping to pirouette. What more, in any case, could he learn about Blake? If he knew less about him, it would be easier to write the novel. Hell, he might even be able to make some things up.
Without locking the door, a habit he had forced himself to break, he went down the steps from the terrace and turned out of the garden and along past the tender-leafed eucalyptus that said shush-shush and were still and stirred and quieted again. He walked his usual track into the cork oak woods that began where the eucalyptus left off, with no sense of relish except for the gin he would pour when he got home. There were pines dotted among the corks and he picked up a cone, carried it for a while and let it drop.
The trees spread thinly, giving way now and then to grass and sheep. Over his shirt the shepherd wore a sheepskin, a hole cut for his head and a string tied in place around the middle. Stanton waved. All day – the man spent all day watching sheep. The thinness of his own endeavour was shaming.
Coming into a clearing where some old tre
es had been felled and the spring flowers grew more intense, he paused. There were anemones here, cistus and soapwort and wild geranium. The gorse spurted yellow over the tree stumps.
‘You’re English,’ said the boy. Stanton had not noticed him approach.
‘Hello, compatriot,’ he said.
The boy grew unsure. He beheaded flowers with his stick.
‘We’re both English,’ said Stanton.
‘Watch this,’ said the boy and threw the stick. It arced high and landed a distance off in the silves.
‘Good throw.’
‘Yeah,’ said the boy. ‘Thanks.’ He smiled and rubbed a hand over his head which was just about shaved, the scalp showing pinkly through. Lice, thought Stanton. A sneeze of freckles covered the bridge of the boy’s nose and strayed to his cheeks. It was a nice face, open and willing.
‘You write books,’ said the boy. ‘I like your truck.’
‘I’m heading back,’ said Stanton.
‘Me too.’
They walked together in the rutted track. The boy stamped his feet in the grass to make the crickets jump about. His shoes looked as if they might not last the journey home. He found a piece of marbled stone, swooped and put it in his pocket.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Stanton.
‘Jay,’ said the boy. ‘Jay Potts. We used to have a truck like yours.’
‘What happened?’
The boy raised his thin arms. ‘Crashed it.’
‘Dad or mum?’
‘Me.’ He left a long pause and when Stanton did not fill it, he went on. ‘I only drive off the main roads. You know, on tracks like this round our house or in the field. Don’t know what happened really. All I know is it ended up smashed on a fig tree and I had to have one of those neck things for weeks.’
Stanton laughed. ‘What you driving these days then?’
‘Well, me dad had a tractor and he used to let me drive that sometimes but now he’s turned it over in the ditch and we can’t get it out. We’ve got the Renault 4 but I don’t drive that. Don’t ask me why.’
‘Why?’ said Stanton.
‘I don’t know,’ said Jay. ‘Don’t ask me.’
An owl flew across the trees, coming low against the path. ‘He’s up early,’ said Stanton. He thought about having orange with his gin this evening, getting some vitamin C. ‘So, do you go to school or do you have more important business to attend to?’
They came up to the shepherd and Stanton exchanged boas noites and the boy spoke Portuguese, his accent so thick that Stanton could not understand. They went up the hill towards the house, the eucalyptus coming into view, watery now in the lowering light. The evening lay in prospect and Stanton began to sag.
‘We don’t have to keep talking,’ said the boy. ‘I’ll just walk with you.’
A pair of rangy cypress trees marked the entrance to the property. ‘Funeral trees,’ Dieter had said when he came to give his estimate. They flanked every cemetery, growing tall and fat on the underground deposits. Jay stood with his hands on hips. He stared at the ground and kicked his heels in the dust.
‘Well,’ said Stanton.
Jay looked away as if a difficult issue had been raised.
‘I might have some Coke in the fridge.’
They drank on the terrace and watched the sun slide down the sky. At first Stanton was glad of the boy’s presence, as if there were something unpleasant he should be doing that he could put off for a while longer. Jay sipped his drink, making it last. His bare arms were thin but sinewy, blueprinted for muscle. He didn’t speak, barely moved, hoping perhaps to be forgotten.
Nothing changed but everything began to look different. The boy was in the way. Stanton focused on a distant hill, the one shaped like a pyramid, and tried to block out this singular oppression. Slowly the feeling grew that the boy was preventing him from getting on with his evening, though in truth he had nothing to do. He was about to speak when Jay jumped up. ‘Best be off.’ On the steps he turned. ‘I like your truck.’
‘You can ride in it one day,’ said Stanton, restored and generous. ‘I’m driving.’
He opened a bottle of vinho verde and went to the bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed he drank and watched the shadows on the wall. If a man is to have success, he thought, it is better for it to come later in life. Not so late that he has too little time to appreciate it. But not so soon that he has too little experience to appreciate it. It was not the first time he had thought this, but it was the first time today and that, he considered, was a sort of progress.
Stanton worked. As he had no curtains he woke with the sun and instead of turning the sheets up over his head he rose and went to the table. The days lengthened. Soon it seemed that he had hardly got to bed before the sun came calling. Still he rose and would not be beaten. In the afternoons he reviewed what he had written and held despair at bay with savage cuts and a bottle of the local brandy. Dieter learned to stay away until after five. Sometimes they drank on the terrace, more often they went to the village. Dieter found a woman. Dutch, big-boned, with a disappointed face. ‘It is ridiculous,’ she would say. ‘These Portuguese.’ Tapping two fingers on the table, Dieter nodding along. Stanton’s silence, he supposed, appeared as affirmation but he did not care. All their complaining was a tonic, an inoculation against this estrangeiro malaise.
The Potts girl haunted the village. She was always on her own. Even when she was with people she was by herself. Stanton saw her in the bar next door to the Casa do Povo, sitting on a table, feet on a chair, pretending not to notice the local lads looking up her skirt. She wore tie-dye skirts with tasselled fringes wrapped low on her darkening belly, a charm bracelet on each wrist and always the sunglasses. She never looked too clean. Stanton saw her in the pharmacy buying plasters and when he heard her speak it took a few seconds before he understood that it was not only her accent that thickened the words. She turned round and stepped right up to him. She smelled of earth. The sunglasses hid her eyes. There was a little mole right beneath her nose. She spoke to him in English. ‘You seen enough now?’ Congested vowels and macerated diction. She must lip-read, thought Stanton. ‘Yes,’ he said, without making a sound.
For a while Jay seemed to live in the woods. Stanton had to walk the other way if he wanted to be alone. Then school finished for the summer and the boy started dropping round to the house. ‘I’m working,’ Stanton said. ‘I know,’ said Jay. ‘I’ll just be in the garden.’ Stanton did not want him in his garden. ‘I’ll do some work for you,’ Jay said. ‘Clear some weeds or something.’ They looked down into the garden, the small orchard of lemons and oranges and peaches choked with brambles, the oleander collapsing under its own weight, the rest of the ground rubbed red and brown in the heat. ‘Or I can get your shopping for you. I’m good at shopping.’
Sometimes he hung around, climbing the fruit trees or bouncing a ball on the terrace. Other days Stanton sat with him and talked about football or Spiderman or animals. ‘When I grow up,’ said Jay with doomed earnestness, ‘I want to work with animals.’
‘Vet?’ said Stanton, being unkind.
‘No,’ said Jay. ‘I don’t think I’ll get all them exams.’
Stanton was sorry. ‘Ah, well. There’s lots of ways of working with animals. I bet you’re good with animals.’
‘I’ve got a puppy. Do you want to come and see it? I take the goats out sometimes, you know, graze them and I feed the pigs. Me mum feeds the chickens. Don’t ask me why.’
‘Why?’ said Stanton.
‘I don’t know,’ said Jay, creasing his toasted freckled face. ‘Don’t ask me.’
He always left before Stanton said it was time to go, as if he could see the clouds gathering. And he said little about his family. It was pleasant, Stanton guessed, to take a break from being the Potts boy.
Chrissie came looking for him one day. Stanton watched the Renault 4 splutter over the gravel and knew it would be her. ‘I’m Chrissie,’ she said, ‘Jay’s mum.’
‘Yes. Harry Stanton.’
They stood there. Chrissie held her head to one side as if listening for an announcement. She swayed slightly on her feet, though this may have been an illusion, a quality of her paper-thin body and the air she carried with her that she might at any moment melt away.
‘He’s not here, is he?’ she said at length.
‘No,’ said Stanton.
Chrissie perched on the stool. There was a light sheen of sweat on her upper lip and into the cleft between her breasts, her shirt unbuttoned almost below the bra. ‘He’s been bothering you. I’ve spoken to him about it.’ She was, Stanton realized, taking pains with her speech. Talking posh to the writer.
‘Not at all. Drink?’
When he came back with the beers Chrissie was scratching her forearms. They were pitted with scars and traversed with red and purple weals. She tugged her sleeves down. ‘He’s not such a bad kid. But he’s got no discipline. I try to tell him. But does he listen?’ She sniffed to indicate that he did not. ‘I do tell him to go to school,’ she said peevishly. ‘Did he tell you he’s being kept down a year?’
‘Oh . . . well,’ said Stanton. ‘He . . . loves the outdoors. And animals.’ He thought, if you fed her up and put her in decent clothes she would not be bad looking. Her mouth was fashionably wide and her cheekbones high. She was perhaps ten years younger than him, mid-thirties. In another setting, with another attitude, she could be attractive: fey and other-worldly rather than blown about. What was the word Dieter used? Dishcloth. Not the right word but not a bad try.
‘You don’t want to end up like your sister, I tell him, but what good does it do?’
‘Ruby, isn’t it?’ Those arms, though. What would you do with them?
‘Ruby,’ said Chrissie. ‘You know.’
‘She’ll grow out of it,’ he said. How banal he had become.
Chrissie looked at him sharply then lapsed into self-pity. ‘I’ve had a hell of a time with her.’
‘It’s difficult,’ said Stanton, wondering how to get rid of her. ‘These days, it’s difficult.’
