Alentejo Blue

by Monica Ali

  ‘Church or registry?’ said Eileen. He looked a solid sort, proper haircut, the type who’d stick around. She realized she might have a son-in-law, sort of, one day.

  Sophie twisted her ring round her finger. She mumbled something that might have been church.

  Huw looked at Eileen as if to say sorry. ‘You see, we agreed we wouldn’t discuss the wedding on holiday. The planning gets quite stressful. Worse for her, of course.’

  ‘Quite understand,’ cried Eileen. ‘Goodness, yes I do! You want to relax on your holiday. We’ll talk about something else. I’ll tell you about this place that I saw, a ruin, but it had the most marvellous view . . .’ She carried on talking to smooth things over, and then because there seemed no natural place to stop. All the while she was thinking how highly strung the girl was, nice but highly strung, and how – though it seemed a little harsh to even think it – maybe Huw was making a mistake, and also a thought pushing in there about how brilliantly Huw would get on with Richard, she was sure they would get on, and she had this daft, this wild idea that the two of them could be an item, Huw and Richard, and she was stupid, really stupid and having a hot flush as well.

  Vasco rolled over, fanning his face with a napkin, saying, ‘Yes, yes, too hot in here. Too hot for the dancing. It would be my pleasure to sit with you.’

  Eileen turned to the table and grabbed a napkin and began fanning herself too. ‘Senhor Vasco, I’d like you to meet my new friends Huw and Sophie.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Vasco, ‘they’re renting Armenio’s old house.’

  They sat and watched the dance floor and Chrissie and China danced by. Chrissie had heels and tights and a shapeless peasant skirt and a blouse that did up to the chin. China wore a suit. The jacket had lost all its buttons and the trouser hems were ragged, but a suit it was nonetheless. They danced cheek-to-cheek, China stooping, and moved with no regard for the music, simply swaying and gliding as though rocking each other to sleep.

  Maybe, thought Vasco, this evening I will put it to Marco straight. If it is a business partner you are looking for, then, my friend, I am your man.

  ‘Let me ask you something,’ he said, opening his palm to Huw. ‘When you come here, what are you looking for? Do you want internet in the café?’

  ‘Er, not really.’

  ‘That is my point exactly. On the one hand, age and experience,’ he dropped the palm down low, ‘on the other youth and ambition,’ he opened the other palm. ‘Which side the scales are tipping? It is not too hard to see.’

  Vasco looked round to determine if the food had been brought out yet. He saw Marco sitting with Armenio, and Eduardo standing behind Marco’s chair, dripping poison, no doubt, in his ear.

  Not a crumb of food on the tables. Pathetic, unacceptable and corrupt. The Junta gave the contract to Armenio and Eduardo said it had nothing to do with him. Nepotistic, corrupt and criminal. And Marco could see the result.

  Anyway, it was to Vasco’s advantage but if he didn’t eat soon he might faint.

  ‘You would like food?’ he said to the English woman who looked also a little faint.

  ‘It’s ready? How wonderful!’ she said, sounding truly oveijoyed.

  Vasco sighed. ‘No, not ready. But we are all so hungry now.’

  It was well past nine o’clock when Eduardo took the stage. ‘Friends,’ he said, ‘good friends, cherished friends . . .’

  ‘He has none,’ said Vasco in English, ‘a traitor never does.’

  ‘What?’ said Eileen. ‘What was he saying?’

  Vasco flapped his hand. ‘Rest easy. If he utters one word of any importance I shall faithfully translate.’

  ‘. . . join together with me in thanking our local musical legend, Senhor Nelson Paulo Cavaco. If anyone would like to hear more from his golden lungs you can see him in Santiago do Cacém tomorrow evening . . .’

  ‘Still rubbish,’ Vasco informed the foreigners loudly.

  ‘. . . and in a moment . . .’ Eduardo patted his excuse for a stomach, ‘we shall all eat but first I would like, on behalf of the Junta, to thank everyone who worked so hard towards this very special evening. Please give yourselves a clap . . . And lastly . . .’

  ‘The power,’ said Vasco, ‘has gone to his head.’

  ‘. . . I am sure you will agree that we have here this evening a very special guest. Yes, Marco Afonso Rodrigues, come up here. I propose a toast to my cousin and a friend to every one of you, who has achieved so . . . so many things, and who has finally decided that there is no place like home.’

  Marco, propelled by many hands, found his way to the foot of the stage.

  ‘To Marco,’ said Eduardo and raised a glass.

  ‘To Marco.’

  ‘We met him last night,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Why does he shave his head?’ said Huw. ‘Makes him look like a convict.’

  ‘It does not,’ said Sophie. ‘Don’t be an idiot.’

  Marco weaved back through the tables. Telma Ervanaria blocked his way. ‘A speech from the honoured guest would have been welcome.’ She folded her arms and trained her formidable breasts directly on the man.

  Marco smiled and shook his head. ‘I’m not one for speeches. I simply extend my humble thanks.’

  ‘Marco,’ said Telma Ervanaria, ‘when we were children I used to dangle you upside down by the ankle. Tell me, has such a distance grown between us that you cannot say a single thing?’ She smiled too but, like a dog whose tail has been docked, she seemed ready at any moment to spring.

  Those people who were closest tuned in to the conversation. Some stepped a pace or two forward so that Marco and Telma Ervanaria were enclosed. Vasco bashed Bruno on the leg to make him give way, so that he got an unobstructed view from his seat.

  ‘I do not choose to make a distance,’ said Marco. ‘I am here with you all.’

  ‘Tell us a simple story, then. The story of your life.’

  Cristina was there and Dona Linda, and Stanton with his hands in his pockets. Eduardo looked on anxiously, bending his wrists back and forth.

  ‘Is it true,’ said Vasco, ‘that you were once in Angola? My uncle Henrique went there.’

  The party went on around them, in the low-ceilinged whitewashed room. There was the muted buzz of adjustment and expectation such as was natural after their attention had been released from the stage.

  ‘A life is never simple,’ said Marco. ‘A story is never true.’

  ‘Fooey,’ said Telma Ervanaria. ‘You went here, you went there, you did this, you did that. Simply give us the facts.’

  ‘I could tell you some stories. Stories are what we use to cover things up.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Telma Ervanaria, her pug face becoming squarer by the second as she adjusted her chin. ‘Only if you tell lies.’

  João came out of the toilet and limped past, smiling left and right, to acknowledge whatever was going on.

  Telma Ervanaria seized his arm. ‘Every honest man will tell you what his life has been. Senhor João here would tell anyone, if he wasn’t shy. And those of us who have been abroad are not too proud to speak. Senhor Vasco I can personally vouch for – he is only too happy to talk.’

  There was laughter and a substantial amount of coughing to disown entirely the laugh.

  ‘What’s happening?’ said Eileen to Vasco.

  ‘A joke,’ said Vasco, gravely. ‘Jokes are not possible to translate.’

  Marco waited a few moments longer, allowing a level of uncertainty to build. ‘Maybe, then, you know him. Maybe, though, you don’t.’

  Manuel, who had interrupted his pilgrim’s progress across the room drinking to everyone’s health, shouted, ‘I know what he’s hiding. He’s not rich at all. Look at that old cape he’s wearing. The clasp is not real gold.’

  ‘No,’ said Dona Linda, who had learned it from Telma Ervanaria, ‘that means he’s very rich. So rich he doesn’t have to care.’

  ‘No, no, no. A failure and he doesn’t want to say.’
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  ‘Listen,’ said Telma Ervanaria, finally releasing her grip on João. ‘We can see you are a private man.’

  ‘That’s right,’ shouted Eduardo.

  ‘Shut up, Eduardo,’ said Telma Ervanaria. ‘Let me speak.’

  Eduardo looked reluctant but under the circumstances, chiefly of Telma Ervanaria’s glare, he gave way.

  ‘As I was saying, you are private about your history but do please tell us your plans. Those – you cannot deny it – we have a right to know.’

  Marco shrugged his shoulders. He gave a laugh. ‘I have no plans.’

  ‘You have no plans.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He has no plans.’

  Until this moment there was a sense that Marco was carrying the audience with him, all those present eager to hear and see. The mood changed now, swiftly and without commotion, but nevertheless there was a change.

  Telma Ervanaria, sensing the turning of tables, strode up and down like a prosecutor with Marco in the dock.

  ‘He denies it. He denies that he has any plans.’

  ‘I prefer,’ said Marco, drawing his cape about him, ‘to live in the present. This is what I can say I have achieved.’

  ‘He says he is living in the present,’ whispered Vasco to the English woman. ‘That is the luxury of wealth.’

  ‘What about us, senhor?’ said Telma Ervanaria, instinctively adopting formality as a method of attack. ‘We who must look to the future, with families to protect.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Marco evenly. ‘Perhaps you should have faith.’

  ‘Faith,’ said Telma Ervanaria, with a dangerous rise in her voice. ‘Our faith is strong.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes!’Telma Ervanaria wheeled about to target her allies. ‘Cristina,’ she called, ‘come here.’

  Teresa slipped in with Vicente and leaned against the side door. He picked a white oleander from a chipped vase on the windowsill and tried to fix it in her hair. Teresa witnessed her aunt pushing her mother towards Marco.

  ‘My sister, Cristina, and I myself have never missed Sunday mass. Isn’t it true, Cristina? We practically live for the Church.’

  ‘I see,’ said Marco, smiling. ‘Would you like to speak on your beliefs?’

  ‘Oh, I can do better than that. Father Braga is here. Father! Where is he hiding? Father, come and speak for us.’

  Father Braga had been loitering at the back of the circle, keeping this little flock under review. He liked, naturally, to speak of faith; indeed there was nothing he liked more, except perhaps a detective novel and a sheepskin rug in which to bury his feet. But he felt the time was inappropriate, the place was not quite right and the earnestness of that fellow filled him with deep unease. In any case, he thought, pushing at the door, he did not hear his name called, having been thinking of higher things. By the time he reached the blackly glittering street he realized also that he had been called away earlier to a neighbouring hamlet to minister to somebody very sick. At home he hung up his cassock and thought how pleasant it was finally to be left alone.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Telma Ervanaria, as Cristina slunk off to the side, ‘nobody can doubt it. We are certainly devout.’

  Oh please, thought Cristina, please don’t let her go on. She reflected on Woman of Destiny, how the characters said so much with a look.

  ‘We speak of our dear Pope and pray for him every day.’

  ‘What?’ said Senhora Carmona, popping up from behind Eduardo and shuffling through. ‘What’s that about the Pope? He’s dead, you say?’ She put a gnarled hand beneath her ear as though expecting it to fall off.

  ‘We pray for him, Senhora Carmona. That is what I said.’

  ‘I know that,’ snapped the old woman. ‘But is he dead?’

  ‘He’s sick again, Senhora Carmona.’

  ‘Sick?’ snarled the widow. ‘Of course he’s sick. I’m not an imbecile, you know.’ She had dressed up for the occasion in a gown of shocking pink that gaped fearfully at the front where her chest had once been, revealing thermals and multiple strings of beads.

  ‘Sit down, Senhora Carmona. Take the weight off your feet.’

  ‘Very kind,’ said the merry widow. ‘I’ll sit with you,’ she said to Vasco and sat down and patted his knee.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Telma Ervanaria irritably, hoisting her bosom. She felt she was losing the thread. ‘Can’t you see you make everyone uncomfortable? How do you feel about that?’

  Marco took his time. He wasn’t a man to be rushed. ‘I think that it is easier to be with another person who is unhappy. Happiness we always mistrust.’

  ‘Santa Maria,’ cried Telma Ervanaria. ‘He accuses us of being unhappy!’ There was no mistaking now that she might bite; in fact she showed her teeth. ‘We are very, very happy, thank you. Thank you for your concern.’

  Vasco tipped towards the foreigners, who were, like animals or babies, distressed by the atmosphere. He sought to reassure them. ‘He says that we are all unhappy. But naturally he doesn’t include you.’

  ‘Happy?’ piped up Senhora Carmona. ‘Who says so? I haven’t been happy for fifty years.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Telma Ervanaria, hefting her breasts almost up to her chin.

  It dawned on Vasco that he would have to do something, especially if they were ever to eat. ‘Now, now, Senhora Carmona, are you alive . . .’

  ‘How dare you!’ gasped the unmerry widow. She took her rosary from her pocket and waved it around as though she meant to whip his legs.

  ‘Are you alive, Senhora Carmona, to the fact that Telma Ervanaria was simply pointing out that on the whole we are content and that on this evening, of all evenings, we are here to enjoy ourselves?’ Vasco reached round his neck to find his cloth, but had to make do without it. ‘And also that it is high time – past high time, some would say – that dinner was served.’

  Eduardo clapped his hands and said dinner would have been served long ago if only some people hadn’t got in the way.

  Senhora Carmona turned her little head so that she could view Vasco through the good part of her eye. She removed her vibrating hand from his knee and placed it higher up on his thigh. ‘When I was young,’ she confided, ‘I could make a man like you happy just with a toss of my hair.’

  Vasco began with fried liver with chilli and moved on to the baked tripe. Both dishes he would concede as competent while being in no way inspired. He ate steadily and also ruefully, thinking how little he had eaten today. The cataplana he admitted was decent and though he didn’t fancy the rice with mixed seafood he took some so nobody could accuse him of spite. The green beans needed more garlic and the broad beans were unconscionably tough.

  He spied on the gathering between mouthfuls and it seemed not a person could be still. They passed to and fro through the constellation of tables, the men constantly patting their pockets, the women finding business with hems and jewellery and hair. The children added greatly to the traffic, gnawing barbarously on chicken wings and swinging round grown-ups’ legs. The noise level rose and kept rising. Everyone, it seemed, was exceptionally gay.

  Some small beast had wormed under the table and was wrestling with Vasco’s shoe.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Clara, getting down on the floor. ‘Hugo, come out of there.’

  There was singing next by the schoolchildren, but they were giddy and out of tune. The adults applauded every song with increasing fervour. The cheers grew so loud it frightened the children and some began to weep. Mothers stormed the stage to withdraw their offspring and looked about for someone to blame.

  The dancing began again, this time to Nelson’s recorded interpretation of Rolling Stones and Beatles hits.

  Vasco took a deep breath and a gamble. ‘Dona Cristina, would you consider, by any chance – I hope it is not too unwelcome – that is to say, do me the honour of taking to the floor with me?’

  Dona Cristina was pleasingly flustered. She pulled her necklace and twisted it on her finger. The risk of s
trangulation Vasco assessed as minor but the emotional turmoil was real.

  ‘Yes,’ she said eventually, unable to produce more than one word.

  He wiped his fingers on the back of his trousers even though he’d done a thorough job already with the napkin. Her dress was pale silk and he was afraid to touch it. He decided it couldn’t be helped.

  They turned a couple of times in a small circle. He wondered if they would just keep going round. He was pleased that he’d worn his best shirt. It was mustard yellow, the best colour for hiding sweat stains.

  Dona Cristina seemed to be sagging. In fact he felt like he was holding her up. Lili used to dance like a dervish. She said, ‘Tarzan, move over. I need space.’

  ‘Excuse me, Dona Cristina, do you mind if we stop now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, you’re very kind.’

  He was feeling, perhaps, a bit queasy. He sought a solution in the buffet. He passed over the salt cod options and sampled the pork and clams, washed down with a glass of sparkling sweet wine. What a good time everyone was having. Even that goat Eduardo and his sinister cousin had not managed to ruin the night.

  ‘Senhor Stanton! I was just thinking, what a good time everyone is having.’

  The writer nodded morosely. ‘Is that what it is? Having fun?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Vasco expansively. ‘Now, why do you think it was that Marco refused to speak?’

  Stanton smiled with his mouth but not with his eyes. ‘It’s a trick used by old hippies. To make you think they might really have something to say.’

  ‘I must ask you,’ said Vasco, pulling up a chair to the English woman, ‘about something.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Eileen.

  Vasco assured her there was no need to be alarmed. ‘It’s about what I was reading in the newspaper about your government . . .’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it. Nothing at all, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It’s about . . .’

  ‘I definitely don’t know about it. The more I read the less I knew, so I decided to stop reading. It’s quite refreshing, you see.’

  It was a clear rebuff and Vasco retreated once more to the buffet and consoled himself with goose barnacles and spider crab. The bottle of sparkling wine he had opened still stood on the table and it seemed a shame to let it go flat.