Alentejo Blue

by Monica Ali

  Oh, I can see him crossing the square now, heading towards me. He must have looped down another way to the Gaip station and come back up again. He’s seen me now; I can tell by the way he’s shifted down a gear, pretending he wasn’t at all worried. I hadn’t noticed how shabby that seersucker jacket had got. I’m going to take it down to Oxfam when we get home. It looks too big for him anyway, and his trousers are hanging off him too. A proper Jack Sprat he is!

  ‘Eileen,’ he says, taking off his hat, ‘you’re here.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I am.’

  ‘Clearly. Well, what do you want to do?’

  ‘It’s my holiday,’ I say.

  ‘Correct,’ he says and looks straight at me so I look straight back and see the sun light up the stray hairs on his cheeks, the red glow behind his ears, the dark shadow of his eyes.

  ‘And I’d like to sit here and do nothing.’

  He looks around him like a man who has entered a room and realized he is in the wrong place. Then he sits down next to me on the bench, takes out a handkerchief and wipes his head.

  The parrot scratches its chest and in its drag-queen voice says, ‘Obrigado. Porfavor. Obrigado.’ The canaries glide back and forth like trapeze artists. I lean on my husband, or he leans on me. We are, in any case, girded together. I smell the jasmine now on the pergola. It is always stronger later in the day. I look out across the praça, at the winding street, the red roof tiles and rusting iron balconies, and watch the human traffic: a policeman kneeling to polish a shoe, a young girl in white fluttering up towards the church, housewives dipping in and out of shops and doors, the old men gathering, with barely a nod, on the stone bench by the fountain.

  ‘You see,’ I say to my husband.

  He does not answer and we just stay like this, watching. I think, now is the time to say something. Now is the time to talk. I don’t say anything. But I feel I could. I could talk about anything: Aunt Betsy and her blue legs, the old woman sweeping and closing the door, the house martins or swallows and how I really want them to be swallows. I could say too that I’ve had enough of ‘my’ holidays and ‘his’ holidays, that from now on they’ll be our holidays if he wants me to come. I don’t say anything though because we’re staying another week and there will be time. Maybe tonight, over the Mateus Rosé. Maybe then.

  He’s heavy on my shoulder and I think perhaps he’s dropped off to sleep but then he stirs and says, ‘I do. I do see.’

  So we stay as we are, and watch the shadows lengthen and smell the evening loaves being baked and feel the sun, slipping low, blushing over our necks like the first taste of wine.

  6

  THE LETTER WAS IN THE BACK POCKET OF HER JEANS AND if she shifted her weight as she did now she could hear the sigh and release of the paper. She determined not to think of the letter, but this was plain conspiracy: it would return to her mind and she wanted the shock, the thrill of it.

  Teresa glanced up at the clock, a habit she could not break though the clock had for several weeks been resting at twenty past three. She stood up, leaving the cashier’s chair swivelling at the till, and patted a stack of long-life milk cartons into symmetry on her way to the door. Taking hold of one half of the blue plastic strips that kept the flies from the shop she stepped into the doorway and pinned them aside with her shoulder.

  The square was empty save for a tan and black dog jumping up at the rubbish bins. His claws clattered along the side each time he slid down again. He looked around briefly before making his next assault and his long muzzle parted in a sheepish grin. The dog is excited and also a little embarrassed, thought Teresa, pleased with this formulation. She twirled her ponytail and tapped her sandalled toes on the doorstep to mask a flush of pride. Today she was alive to everything.

  When she came into work this morning, the letter crackling in her back pocket, she slipped on the pink-and-white check nylon coat and the static along her arms ghosted around her body for minutes afterwards. She unpacked a box of tinned soup and marvelled at her arrangement of the cans on the shelf, detecting there an industrial beauty that would otherwise go unhymned. As a matter of routine she switched on the lights at the back of the shop but then turned them off again because the gloom over the cold counter wrapped the fat dangling hams and wrinkly smoked sausage in an inviting layer of tradition. When Senhor Mendes came in for a packet of rolling tobacco she saw at once that the way he scratched his ear had nothing to do with an itch and everything to do with the fact that she was twenty years old and – nose aside – not bad to look at. Dona Linda came in for washing powder and Nutella and said, ‘What are you hiding back there? A dead body? You’ll take your finger off on the meat slice, my girl.’

  ‘Yes, Dona Linda,’ said Teresa.

  Dona Linda leaned across the tower of wire baskets on the counter and Teresa smelled eggs and the faint carbolic scent of freshly dyed hair. ‘Has he told you to keep the lights off?’ she said, referring to Senhor Jaime. ‘Next thing, he’ll start charging us to breathe the air.’

  ‘Yes, Dona Linda.’ Teresa rang the prices up on the till and put the washing powder and the chocolate spread in a plastic bag.

  The woman clucked on, her voice a scattering of affront, alarm and inquisition, so that all by herself she managed to sound like a shed full of chickens.

  ‘And it won’t be long before you and Antonio tie the knot, I expect. Bless you, there, I’ve made you blush. Well, it’s a sign. I’ll say nothing more. My lips are sealed on the subject. This village could do with a good wedding. Look at my lips. Closed, closed, I’m saying nothing, you see.’

  ‘I see, Dona Linda,’ Teresa replied. ‘Will there be anything else?’

  She jumped out of the doorway and stood with one foot up against the whitewashed wall. Summer was coming to an end and it was possible now to be outside in the late morning without being punched by the sun. The square was a large patch of dusty gravel broken only by a gathering of hard-leaved bay trees and a couple of cars parked at careless angles.

  Teresa stared across the square after the dog, which had run off seeming to think she would chase him. She looked right, towards the back wall of the Casa do Povo, and left towards the hardware shop and butcher’s. She reached up for her ponytail, which she wore high on the crown so that it spurted like a black fountain from her head. Sighing, she twisted it round her finger. It was all very well, she thought, to be alert. But what was there to see?

  She often felt, and she hoped it was not conceited, that her powers of observation were somehow keener than those of other people. In the spring, when the wildflowers came, she never said in that cheap way, oh how pretty, to hide the fact of indifference. How many others, in all honesty, had noticed that SenhorVasco was building a wall of fat to conceal his deep, deep sadness? It was possible that she was the only one to shiver inside when Dona Linda licked the tip of her finger and stroked her son’s moustache.

  It was a blessing and also a curse and there was nothing she could do but live with it.

  She wished someone would come and see her now. She took the letter out of her pocket and tapped it on her sleeve as if it were bait. Her spirits ran so high she could scarcely breathe. She wanted someone – Clara, Paula, anyone – to see her and wonder what it was that was making her glow. Of course she couldn’t tell them, she couldn’t say, not before breaking the news to her mother, and to Antonio – oh, how would she tell Antonio? – but she needed a witness now, someone to declare that something was up with Teresa.

  ‘Senhora Carmona! Good morning.’ Teresa sprang off the wall and stuffed the letter back in her pocket. Senhora Carmona had arrived silently like an old black cat, whiskers twitching.

  She came forward and held Teresa’s wrist. Teresa felt the tremble in the old woman’s hand. ‘My dear, my dear. But is it closed?’ Her face shook with the effort of speech.

  ‘No, no,’ said Teresa, guiding her inside.

  Senhora Carmona stood by the counter. She was about the same size as the childre
n in the top class of the elementary school but much less substantial. Pointing to her stomach she said, ‘I need something for this. Be a good girl, Teresa, give me something.’

  Teresa looked at Senhora Carmona’s loose black stockings and thought, yes, you need to eat more. ‘You have indigestion?’ she said.

  The old woman adjusted her headscarf and muttered something that Teresa did not catch.

  Years ago, when her husband was one of those who had gone abroad to work, Senhora Carmona did not do as the other wives and wear widow’s black.

  ‘The pharmacy, Senhora Carmona. They will have everything you need.’

  Senhora Carmona spoke louder, as if to answer, but the words were meant for someone else. ‘Sorrowful Mother, pray for us. Sighing Mother, pray for us. Forsaken Mother . . .’

  A note of scandal would creep into Teresa’s mother’s voice when she described how Senhora Carmona wore flowered skirts and lacy blouses while her man was as good as dead, toiling across the border. She was a racy woman, some said worse.

  Teresa regarded what remained of the scandal: Senhora Carmona’s childish black plimsolls, the tremor in her arms, the cataract clouding her left eye, the crabbing way her mouth bit around the words of the prayer, and wondered if she remembered those times, if she dreamed of them still.

  It was a hundred years ago, anyway. Senhor Carmona was dead, really dead, before Teresa was even born.

  ‘Desolate Mother, pray for us. Mother most sad, pray for us.’ Senhora Carmona had her hands in her apron pocket, turning the prayer beads.

  Teresa would have to go to the pharmacy herself. She didn’t mind. She didn’t want Senhora Carmona wandering around and forgetting where she was going. ‘Wait here,’ she said, taking her bag down from the peg. But as she moved towards the door the old woman’s good eye met hers and she thought she saw something there, a flash of coquetry, an edge of steel, a hint of the woman that was.

  As she waited to pay, Teresa became aware that Doutor Medeires, moving around in his dispensary, was keeping tabs on her between the shelves of bottles and tubes. Probably he had noticed something. She turned her face to the ground and bit her lip. Bending her knees slightly she pushed down on her heels and straightened up. It was a wonder she didn’t rise off the floor and float up to the ceiling. There was a huge hot bubble inside her and no way of letting it out. She glanced up at the pharmacist and there he was, peeping at her over the top of the cold-sore creams and aspirins.

  Someone in the queue laughed and Teresa laughed too, though she had not heard the joke, and turned round briefly to spread a little furtive radiance.

  The doutor would say, ‘What has happened to you, Teresa?’ and she would reply, ‘Oh, nothing special. Why do you ask?’

  She thought of Senhora Carmona, reciting the Litany of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, and then adapted the words to her own. They became lodged in her brain. The phrase repeated itself over and over, why do you ask, why do you ask, so that by the time she had paid and reached the cardboard cut-out of the woman with cellulite-free thighs by the gleaming plate-glass window she knew she had to let it out or die, and when she felt a hand on her shoulder she turned and opened her mouth with the words pressed up against her teeth.

  ‘For your mãe,’ said the pharmacist, handing her a small paper bag. ‘It will save her calling back again.’ He nodded and patted the pockets of his white coat as though he had nothing else to say.

  Teresa stood on the pavement and looked along the road. People in Mamarrosa, they did not have eyes to see. Sometimes she could scream, she really could. A lorry loaded with half-sleeves of cork bark, stacked like roof tiles, came slow and ponderous down the road, dogged by a truck of rattling Calor gas bottles. In London, of course, it would be different.

  A man, one of the estrangeiros, came towards her, ducking to clear the orange trees. The black and tan dog was with him. Would everyone in London be so tall? The man wore a filthy vest and he had not shaved. Teresa stepped back to let him pass and for a moment was covered in confusion.

  She focused on Vasco, who had dipped out of his café across the road and bobbed about picking up the plastic chairs strewn around by the wind. Next door, at the mobile phone shop, a sign flashed on and off: Vodafone. At the other side was Armenio’s house, a grand two storeys high, tiled all over in green and white and glittering so much it was hard to look at. When she came back she would not think it grand at all. But maybe she would love it, love all this, more. She spread her arm weakly to encompass the three more modest houses that stood alongside, the sheep in the garden, the small square with its brassy marigolds and tender amaryllis, the village trailing off, the houses spreading further and further apart, the lapsing into fields and woods, the hills rising up to seal away the world.

  By the time she turned into the side street that climbed to the centre of the village, Teresa had forgotten the estrangeiro. She bounced on the balls of her feet and felt the swish of her ponytail and relished the flack-flack of her sandals on the road. The doors to these houses opened directly on to the street and one flew open now. Clara folded her arms across her chest and said, ‘Well, it’s you!’ as if Teresa were the last person she was expecting to see. Teresa could hear Clara’s baby brother bawling his head off and knew Clara had been at the window, looking for any excuse to step outside. She had prepared her face, anyway, one eye narrowed and a cheek pulled back to show how strange it was, almost comical, that she should find herself in a place like this.

  ‘Got to dash,’ said Teresa, waving the bag with Mãe’s prescription.

  ‘Me too,’ called Clara. ‘Actually, I’m meeting someone.’

  At the corner Teresa risked a glance over her shoulder and was rewarded by the sight of Clara gazing after her, wondering, quite clearly wondering, what on earth was going on.

  Senhora Carmona had disappeared and Teresa’s aunt, Telma Ervanaria, was behind the cold counter, slicing chouriço.

  ‘Teresa,’ she cried, ‘it’s darker than the Day of Judgement back here. Get some lights on.’

  Teresa hurried round saying, ‘Let me do it, please, you’re not supposed to be on this side.’ But her aunt flapped her hand and shooed her away.

  ‘Listen,’ said Telma Ervanaria, when she had weighed and packed her cold cuts, ‘I’m not saying Mamarrosa is bad, but for a girl like you, a bright girl like you . . . phut!’ Holding her stout hips she made a sound that indicated that this kind of girl could simply go up in smoke.

  Teresa slid a foot in and out of her sandal. Telma Ervanaria was the one who had written her reference for the au pair agency. She was crazy to have trusted her. Teresa wanted to run home right away and confess everything to Mãe.

  ‘I was in Paris for fifteen years,’ said Telma Ervanaria. ‘Unless you saw for yourself you wouldn’t believe what it was like.’

  It’s not on the moon, thought Teresa sourly. When she had been to London she would not speak of it that way. She made a mental note to always speak of it casually.

  Telma Ervanaria examined her hands. ‘It’s not for everyone of course.’

  Teresa heard the paper crease and tick in her back pocket. She was suddenly stricken with the thought that Telma Ervanaria would hear it too and demand to see what she was hiding.

  Au pairs, the letter said, encounter a lot of new situations. Some might even experience culture shock.

  ‘In France, I might have told you, the men don’t sit in the cafés day and night. They work and then they go home to the family. Day and night, night and day,’ said Telma Ervanaria, whose husband had not worked since they returned from Paris. She touched her hair, which she kept short and forced with hot irons to curl around her square, pugnacious face.

  You are considered, the letter went on, to be a member of the family. This is a great opportunity to make new friends.

  It was a miracle that her aunt had kept her word and had not told Mãe about the application.

  ‘Ah, Telma Ervanaria,’ sighed Telma Ervanaria. ‘Don’
t waste your breath. People do as they will. That Antonio, I don’t know what you see in him.’

  Behind the counter Teresa made fists. She dug her nails into her palms. She wanted to defend Antonio, who was sweet as can be, but she wanted also to say that he was not the measure of her, she who was going to London. Her aunt had forgotten about the au pair agency, or thought Teresa would never make the grade, and either way, honestly, it was typical of people round here.

  ‘Antonio,’ said Teresa. She shrugged. She did not know what to say.

  Telma Ervanaria patted her on the arm and sighed again. ‘Teresa Maria,’ she said, ‘we are two of a kind.’

  At lunchtime Teresa locked the shop and went to drop off the tablets. She left the Vespa running to show she didn’t have time to talk but Senhora Carmona grabbed the bag and slammed the door and there was no chance even to ask for the money. Teresa sounded the horn, three quick quacks, to say goodbye. She felt like making some noise.

  Outside the church she saw Father Braga, walking along with his face turned down. Father Braga would keep the secret, but only if she confessed it as sin.

  Driving to Senhor João’s place, the scooter drilling lightly over the unmade roads, she summoned a vision of London, turning the tracks into esplanades, the cork oaks into marble pillars, the mossy well into a fountain that leaped and dazzled, and revelled in its own unnecessary life.

  Senhor João stood outside his one-room house with his hands at his waist, elbows held out, as if the music had just stopped.

  ‘Good afternoon. I’ve brought your shopping,’ called Teresa. Senhor João had hurt his leg and could not walk all the way into the village.

  João nodded and touched his hat. His face was as hard and brown as a nut but gentle too, tentative, as if apologizing for being so old.

  Teresa walked up the path worn by João’s feet and set the shopping on the backless grey bench. ‘Milk, bread, matches, three tins of sardine paste, strong glue and two beers. You need something for tomorrow?’