Garden of Stars

by Rose Alexander

  Scott had booked a table at his favourite restaurant and as they ate, Sarah could not help but voice her continued puzzlement over the reason Inês had given her the journal.

  “I don’t know what it’s all about,” ventured Scott, cautiously. “It seems that she is leading you somewhere but perhaps the mistake you are making is thinking that it is the destination, rather than the journey, that is important.”

  Such perspicacity took Sarah completely aback. She would never get an insight like that from Hugo; he would just insist on asking Inês straightaway for an answer, would have no understanding of the subtlety that was demanded. And then she chastised herself for making such a meaningless, and mean, comparison. Hugo had his way and Scott had his and it was pointless and unproductive to play them off against each other.

  As they were finishing the meal, Scott announced his surprise. He had managed to get hold of tickets to see Lucia Delgada, one of Portugal’s most famous fado singers, knowing that Sarah shared his love of this traditional music that sang of saudade, of nostalgia, loss and longing. He hoped she was up for coming along. Sarah eagerly accepted and as the city lights came on and illuminated both banks of the river, they headed for the bar where Lucia was to appear. It turned out to be hard to find, and as they retreated from yet another dead end, a cluster of dark shadows detached from an unlit corner, illuminated by a flash of light from a discarded cigarette. Sarah felt a frisson of fear as her eyes made out the silhouettes of three men; there was something menacing about them, their ghostly forms in the blackness. One of the men uttered something, his heavily accented Portuguese unintelligible to Sarah. His companions laughed, unkindly. Sarah’s step faltered, not sure whether to proceed or retreat.

  Instinctively, Scott reached out for her hand, steering her away from the men whilst blocking them from her with his body. They fell silent once Scott’s height and bearing was revealed by the light from an open window. Sarah glanced up at him. His face had an amicable, non-confrontational look about it, but the set of his jaw was steely. The men melted back into the gloom.

  Reluctantly, several minutes later, Sarah withdrew her hand from Scott’s grasp.

  By the time they located the bar, tucked away down a tiny back alley, it was packed, noisy with the hum of incessant chatter and thick with the smell of beer and red wine. Sarah stared around at the throngs of people. All ages were present; flocks of students, the boys neat in roll-neck tops or shirts and jeans, the girls dressed up in high heels and pretty dresses, along with elderly couples and groups of middle-aged men and women having a night off from the children. Waiting for Scott to bring the drinks, Sarah twisted her wedding ring round and round on her finger. She looked down at it, where it had been for ten years, and was surprised to find it looking the same as ever, familiar and normal, when for the last twenty-four hours she had almost ceased to recognise herself, had begun to forget who she, Sarah Lacey, really was.

  Scott returned with a carafe and glasses, and they wedged themselves into a corner where two seats were still available. He handed her a glass. “I didn’t splash out, seeing how you reminded me that you have no palate,” he joked.

  Sarah took a swig of the dark, treacly liquid and smacked her lips. It was rich and spicy; delicious, despite how Scott had denigrated it. “Too right! I’m the last person you should waste an expensive bottle of wine on.”

  All around them, excitement was mounting in anticipation of the arrival of the fado star.

  “This place reminds me of those clubs we used to hang out in.” Sarah spread out her arm to indicate their surroundings. “All spit and sawdust, sweat and sleaze.” She hesitated. “Do you remember the one where we met?” Her stomach turned a somersault at the memory.

  Scott nodded, slowly, but took his time to speak. “Yup. I guess it was the sort of place that I’d find my kids in these days.” He sipped his wine thoughtfully, placing the glass deliberately back onto the table. “That’s a sobering thought, isn’t it?”

  A hundred replies flitted through Sarah’s mind and were dismissed; too trite, too boring, too long-winded. The silence seemed painfully long.

  “Do you still love to dance?”

  The question flew towards her as if shot by an arrow. It felt so personal, intimate, intense. If she said no, it would reveal how diminished her life had become, how eroded she had let herself be. She drank a slug of wine to cover her confusion before replying.

  “Do you know what, Scott? I’m not sure.” She ran her fingers slowly up and down the stem of her wine glass. “I think I still do,” she said, thoughtfully. “In fact, yes, I do, for certain. It’s just that – well, family, kids, work, being a grown-up…and Hugo’s not a dancer, it’s not his thing at all. So all in all – I hardly ever get the chance to, now.”

  But maybe that could change, she added, silently, to herself. Maybe it already has.

  A buzz of anticipation ran round the room. All eyes turned to the stage, where, with a dramatic sweeping back of the curtain, Lucia Delgada finally appeared. She stepped out in front of the microphone, wild dark hair piled up on top of her head, dressed all in black, prisms of light sparkling from her brightly bejewelled fingers. A crescendo of applause broke out. She surveyed her audience, smiled, took a bow and started to sing. Her voice filled the room, bouncing off the walls and the ceiling, flooding the entire place with sound and vibration, haunting and melodic. Sarah let herself become lost in the music and it seemed no time at all before Lucia was singing her last song, and then bowing to the rapturous applause of the audience who clamoured for more.

  Instead, recorded music began to pound from the speakers and couples moved onto the dance floor. Scott and Sarah looked at each other. The rhythm of the music was beneath their feet, vibrating upwards through them from the battered wooden floor.

  “Will you do me the honour?” Scott was already standing, arms held out to her.

  Sarah took his outstretched hand and joined him, and they forced their way through the throngs and into the middle of the dance floor. Scott had never been someone to linger at the edges. They spun around, swept along on a tide of euphoria and alcohol. Sarah looked into Scott’s brown eyes and smiled, letting her body relax despite Scott’s erratic movements. He was a terrible dancer, all feet and clumsy arms and legs whose motion never matched each other, his partner or the music. He seemed to be totally unaware that he resembled an inebriated arachnid, never missing an opportunity to take to the floor. Scott’s lack of coordination notwithstanding, it dawned on Sarah that she definitely did still love to dance.

  The music stopped.

  Sarah sprang instantaneously away from him, as if the rhythm had been some kind of sorcery and with its cessation, the magic was broken. The other dancers wove back and forth around them, with mutters of apology, desculpe, and request, faz favor, and thanks, obrigado, whilst Scott and Sarah wordlessly faced each other. And then the crossing and re-crossing of the crowd moving back to their seats prompted them into action and they too retreated.

  Lucia re-emerged from behind the curtain at the back of the stage, resplendent in her impenetrable black. A technician was fiddling with her microphone, and an ear-splitting, bone-rattling slither of feedback rent the atmosphere. And then she was singing again, this time slow laments that carried the audience along in their mournful wake.

  Sarah couldn’t follow all of the lyrics, couldn’t pick up the meanings or understand everything that she heard. Lucia announced her last song, a reworking of an old classic, first paying credit to its composer, and then letting rip, the cadences of her voice ascending, wheeling and floating like the gulls that glided above the river outside. Sarah begged Scott to translate.

  “It’s called ‘Rain’,” he told her.

  “OK, I got that bit, Chuva.”

  “She’s saying memories are what make us hurt,” Scott continued. “Some people stay in our life story forever and others we let go.”

  He took a swig from his glass. “We all have our own sauda
de.” There was a minute pause before he looked back up at her, into her eyes. “My saudade is about you, what I shared with you and lost.”

  A knot formed, insidiously and painfully, in Sarah’s stomach, accompanied by a sinking, sliding feeling.

  “You left without telling me why. You stole my life and my soul. I will never forget the day you went away.”

  Sarah shifted awkwardly in her chair and opened her mouth to speak, to say that she had wondered if he was going to bring it up, had wanted to talk about it.

  Then Scott faltered, added, “It’s really hard to keep up with what she’s saying, you know. I’ll buy you the CD – you’ll be able to understand the lyrics if you see them written down.”

  The knot untied itself, spontaneously. A wave of heat flooded over her.

  For one crazy moment, I thought he was talking about us – about me. But it’s just the words of the song. That’s all.

  The moment passed. “OK. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be a pain.” Sarah grimaced apologetically.

  Scott raised his eyebrows exaggeratedly. “All right, I’ll carry on.”

  The music had reached its climax now, the room throbbing with sound, Lucia’s soaring voice reaching new heights.

  “The fire of love has gone out because of the rain, and the rain knocks on my window bringing saudade.”

  Wild clapping, whistling and stamping greeted the end of the song.

  “So I suppose she mourns her lost lover to this day?” Sarah spoke quietly, to herself as much as to Scott, but despite the uproarious applause, he heard her.

  “I think so, Sarah. This is fado. There are no happy endings.”

  Walking back to the hotel, their footsteps fell into time upon the cobbles. They paused at the terreiro da Sé and sat in silence for a while in the darkness. Below them, the shadowy forms of cats picked their way across the red-tiled rooftops with delicate stealth. Sarah looked at Scott as he ran his hand through his thick brown hair and then down at her own hands, busily twisting the ends of her cardigan sleeves round and round. She studied the progress of an ant across the stone balustrade; it seemed to know exactly where it was going. She sensed Scott moving, in the corner of her eye glimpsed his hand reaching out to her, and then he was stroking her hair, a long, languorous movement that started at her crown and finished at her shoulder blades. Sarah shivered and bent her head forward to feel the full firmness of his touch. Did he really recall how much she loved him to do this?

  And then they were kissing, and his lips were firm and warm as he kept on running his hands through her hair like silk through water. Afterwards, she couldn’t remember if it were he or she who had started it. Afterwards, she couldn’t remember if it mattered, or if anything mattered at all.

  12

  “I’ll show you to your room.” Scott gestured her inside the lift ahead of him. Sarah avoided her own reflection in the mirror, not wanting to know if her mascara was halfway down her cheeks or her hair a mess, wanting to feel beautiful, desirable, even if she were not.

  The lift doors clunked shut behind them. And then he was kissing her again and never, never before had she wanted so badly to be kissed. It was only a few seconds, the shortest of Sarah’s life, before they got to the third floor. The bell dinged and the doors opened. Scott followed her out of the lift, and they walked to her room. Outside the door, he put his hands on her shoulders.

  “Can I stay the night with you?”

  Sarah’s stomach back-flipped.

  “I, I don’t know… I mean, Scott, I can’t…” Her hands, which had been gesticulating wildly, flopped wearily to her sides. “No. No, it’s not possible. It wouldn’t be right.”

  Scott ran his fingers through his hair. “I just want to be with you. That’s all. I want to hold you and be close to you.”

  Sarah stepped towards him and he wrapped his arms around her body. To be held by him in this way felt wonderful. She loved how his height made her feel so small and safe. She craved it; the intimacy of him, the comfort he gave her.

  “The problem is that it’s not just about what you or I want, is it? You’re married, I’m married. We’re both married, and not to each other.” She repeated the words she had said that morning to Carrie, which already seemed half a lifetime ago. If she said them often enough, would it make them more, or less, real?

  There was a long silence.

  “Sarah?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could I at least just come in to take a leak? I’m bursting and it’s a long walk back to my room.”

  Sarah couldn’t help but laugh. She opened the door and turned on the lights. Once he’d left again, she flicked the lock decisively behind him.

  On her pillow lay the ancient, shapeless T-shirt she wore to bed. She took it into the bathroom to put on, glad of its dreary unsexiness that was the perfect prophylactic against straying. All the ingredients were in place – the solitary business trip, the lonely hotel room with too-large bed begging to be filled, the handsome…what was Scott? Not a stranger, but… Sarah threw water onto her face, picked up the flannel and roughly scrubbed her skin. Whatever Scott was, she had not fallen prey to temptation; she had not become a cliché.

  But however hard she tried, she could not stop thinking of the hand that had so assuredly held hers in the dark alleyway when danger threatened, how she had wanted to seize it, lift it to her face, brush it against her cheek. Had wanted to clasp it tightly the way she always used to, stroke it, feel the life coursing through every sinew, nerve and vein, had wanted to possess his vitality and intensity.

  Her skin throbbed to recall his caress.

  It had done so on the very first night she had slept with him, when she had lost her virginity. Take off your watch, she recalled him telling her so clearly, in the one room of the tiny pink and blue house in Alcantâra. And her reply, But I feel naked without it that had led him to gently undo the strap himself whilst whispering in her ear, That’s the general idea, isn’t it?

  Tears pricked afresh behind Sarah’s eyes. She looked around the room, distracting herself by checking that her mini voice recorder and notebook were ready for her visit to the port wine lodge the next day, the final appointment of the assignment, that she could just fit in before she flew home. Everything was in order. Sitting on the edge of the bed in the stuffy hotel room, she reached for Inês’s journal. She needed it, needed Inês near her, Inês who had always been her confidante and her champion and whom she was beginning to realise she knew so little about, but whose troubles could perhaps help Sarah find a way through her own.

  Porto, 1936

  Edmund came for our lesson today, on time as usual. I couldn’t stop myself from flinging my arms around him and hugging him, crying “I loved it! I loved it so much!” all the while. He was, understandably, somewhat taken aback – and in those situations I have noticed that he always reverts to extreme Britishness, expressing himself in a reticent and understated way which on this occasion manifested itself as, “Steady on, Mrs Mor…I mean, Inês, I really don’t know to what you are referring.”

  Once I had explained that it was my recently completed reading of the novel Jamaica Inn, which I had found utterly gripping, that had so transfixed me, he unwound enough to enter fully into my ebullience. For a while, we both talked nineteen to the dozen, outdoing each other in expressing our enjoyment of the book and the craft and skill with which it was written. Edmund asked me what John had thought of it and I had to inform him that John thought it a woman’s book and had not read it – he favours biographies and military histories. It was noticeable that Edmund became rather quieter after I had revealed this fact, and I asked him why. I did not get a clear answer but I fancy that perhaps he felt that his own enthusiasm marked him out as less masculine than John, too fey and feminine. I tried to reassure him that a love of literature in a man is the most powerful aphrodisiac in the world. That seemed to make him feel much better.

  Eventually, we both calmed down and then Edmund announced that he h
ad some news. There was to be an event in the city today, something quite remarkable. He suggested that we take a break from our English lessons and go to watch. I was happy to agree but I demanded to know more. Patience is not one of my virtues.

  “A young American man is in town,” Edmund explained. “He’s a sort of athlete or gymnast, and he climbs steeples. He’s going to climb the Torre dos Clérigos today, at half-past eleven. He uses no ropes or clamps or anything – just climbs with his bare hands and feet.”

  I could not see how that were possible and having articulated this, I left the door wide open for Edmund to insist that we find out by seeing with our own eyes. It was only as we were getting ready to leave the apartment that I thought about what John would say about me being out in such a crowd without him, about me being with Edmund and missing my English lesson.

  “We’ll speak English the whole time,” said Edmund, eagerly, as if reading my mind. “You’ll still be learning – we’ll call it a conversation class.”

  With that, I was persuaded. I would worry about what to say to John later.

  We set off, walking briskly to the open space in front of the Torre, dodging the trams and cars, pony carts and donkeys that thronged the streets at this busy time of day. By the time we got there, the area was already packed, the jostling crowd expectant, everyone talking excitedly about what was about to happen.

  At seventy-five metres high, the tower dominates the Porto skyline. When it was first built in 1763 it was the tallest building in the city. There are two hundred steps inside which anyone can climb if they are willing to make the effort and attracted enough by the thought of the view from the top. I wondered why I had never done it – I was in the church of Clérigos only the other week, after all – and resolved to do so before too long.