I went after them. I saw them stop – under the central whale, just where I first saw her – and then they did say something to each other. I couldn't see her face; she had her back to me. He went off then, on his own, out through the main entrance, quickly, and she sat down on a bench. For a moment or two she just sat staring at that wretched whale, and then she felt in her bag and got out a comb and did her hair, as though that might help. And then she dropped the comb and didn't seem to have noticed, even, because she just sat; she didn't bother to pick it up or anything. I could see her face then, and I hope I don't ever see anyone look so unhappy again. I truly hope that.
I don't know what had happened. I never will. Somehow, I don't think they were ever going to see each other again, but why … well, that's their concern, just like the rest of it was, except that in this peculiar way I'd come to feel it was mine too. I didn't think there was anything disgusting about them any more, or creepy – I hadn't for a long time. I suppose you could say I'd learned something else in the Pitt-Rivers, by accident. I never did go on with that poem. I tore it up, as far as it had got; I wasn't so sure any more about that conversation, that there could even be one, or not like I'd been imagining, anyway.
Nice People
JAMES WINTON, in faded drill trousers and flowered shirt, his bathing towel and trunks in a roll under his arm, a large, battered straw hat on his head, walked slowly up the path from the beach. He took it easily, in stages, a fifty-yard leg at a time, and then a pause to look back at the sea, which glittered in the late afternoon light, quilted by the wind, roving through all the blues from pale turquoise to the darkest midnight. He sat, breathing a little heavily, on a slab of rock, and saw that he was accompanied by the children and the goats. They moved up the hillside parallel to him, not using the path, flitting through the scrub, the prickly pears and small thorny bushes and striped green and yellow cacti that furnished the island's landscape.
The children came down to the beach every day at this time, as he did. He was never clear why. While he swam and sunbathed, they squatted at the back of the beach, in the scruffy hinterland of rusty tins, seaweed and snatches of torn plastic – chattering, throwing stones, and occasionally chivvying the goats. They paid no attention to James. Once, they had watched and commented, giggling behind their small brown hands, fleeing in simulated panic if he approached them. They would never respond much to his attempts at conversation, refusing to be drawn on the subject of names and ages, glancing shyly at each other and shaking their heads though he guessed that they knew quite enough English to understand. But nowadays they hardly seemed to notice him; the goats swarmed up the hillside, sharply black and brown, surprisingly clean, their udders huge and swinging, and the children swarmed with them, calling to each other, ignoring the more slowly moving James. This pleased him: he felt accepted.
Though, heaven knows, one should be accepted now. Two years it would be, this summer. He sat in the sun, relishing the heat, the rasp of grasshoppers around him, the whiff of some aromatic plant, the sight of his own body, burnt as dark as the children. One had made absolutely the right decision, no question about it, the island was (except for a few small things) an earthly paradise, hot, cheap, the people so nice, and oneself quite amazingly fit for one's age.
A plane flew low overhead (packed with holiday people, their fortnight done, bound for Heathrow, poor things) – the six o'clock one presumably, which reminded him that he must pick up a bottle of gin at Mary Vella's on the way home, so he got up and set off again, his heart thumping a little uncomfortably. The hill was steep, of course, which accounted for that, but it might be wise all the same to lose a bit of weight.
He reached the car, and sat for a moment to rest before starting the engine. Heat quivered off the seats, although he had left all the windows open (quite all right to do that here, not like Spain or Italy, the islanders were quite staggeringly honest). The children were all around, foraging in the litter that accumulated everywhere (their honesty, unfortunately, was not matched by tidiness). James watched them for a moment, thinking that some were undoubtedly old Mary's progeny, Lucia's brothers and sisters. He searched for a family likeness, but truth to tell they all looked much the same, thin and dark with boot-button black eyes. ‘Lucia?’ he said encouragingly, ‘Lucia Vella?’ and they scattered with smiling, backward glances, clambering over the stone walls that divided the neatly terraced fields. The sight of their bodies, their graceful brown limbs, never failed to give them a sense of well-being; they were most attractive in youth, the islanders, less so, alas, as adults. That boy in particular – the thin, very dark lad perched on the wall now, looking back – sad to think that he would mature into someone like old Joe Vella in the bar. Starting the car, James waved a friendly hand, but the boy, staring, did not wave back.
He drove to the village, noticing with distaste that a great ugly board on the outskirts heralded yet another burst of new buildings. There was always the nagging fear that this place might be spoiled within a few years, like the Spanish coast after the war, like some of the Greek islands. Of course, there was no airport, nor any possibility of one, people would always have to come by ferry from the main island, which was a help, but even so, the danger was there. Oh, he thought, it'll last my time, with any luck.
They were obviously going to be hideous, too, the new houses, from the garish illustration on the agent's board: cheap, vulgar little boxes. That, of course, was what was a pity about the island, that almost everything – except, of course, its natural assets of sun and sea and rock – was aesthetically unpleasing. The islanders, somehow, had never been blessed with that lightness of touch of most Mediterranean peoples; they had, one was bound to admit, unswervingly bad taste. Their houses were ugly, plonked down without regard for the natural contours of the landscape, uncompromisingly squat and dumpy – a little like the people themselves, who were also without the physical grace of Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, stout and temperamentally a little dour. A bit, James sometimes felt in irritation, like displaced English. That was one of the minor snags tempering the island's paradisial quality: it was always slightly mortifying to see one's visitors' expressions as they surveyed, on their first day, the scene, noting the banal villages, the unappetising little bars plastered with Coke and beer advertisements (no gay pavement cafes), the ubiquitous photographs of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. He had then to point out the older farmhouses, like his own, with their pleasantly pink-washed walls and more graceful arched windows, stress the quality of the light (which one's painter friends, of course, were always quick to appreciate), the variety of vegetation and amusing local quirks like the ripening pumpkins that decorated the rooftops, the roadside shrines (garish, but fun) the marvellously pagan and atavistic bull-horns above the doors. And, of course, the cheapness of everything: wine, cigarettes, labour.
The restoration of the farmhouse had cost considerably less than he had expected; it was always pleasing to detect the gleam of incredulous envy as he detailed the cost of the new flooring, electricity, plumbing, pretty wrought-iron balconies, terrace overlooking the valley, construction and paving of the garden. Really, James? they would say, but it's amazing, in England you'd have paid three times as much. I know, he'd say, I know, the thing is, you see, that they are quite unspoilt, as yet, these people, they are not grasping, not ambitious, they are simple people leading simple lives and satisfied with what they have. The great thing, he would say, is that they should stay like that, not be spoiled, I do so pray this place doesn't go the way of so much of the Med. They are such nice people. And his visitors, watching Lucia wash the chequered black and white stone floor or potter in the kitchen, would say yes, they do seem to be, I must say I envy you, James.
Lucia was Mary Vella's daughter. James, crossing the village square towards the Union Jack Bar outside which Mary sat, her enormous bottom quite engulfing the three-legged stool, reflected that she could not be much more than forty. She looked sixty. They aged so young, the
island women. A brief slim girlhood, then fifteen years of child-bearing, and a precipitate middle age. The Church, James thought severely, has a lot to answer for.
Mary was conducting a conversation at the shout with a neighbour on the other side of the square. What the islanders lacked in Latin gaiety they fully made up for in stridency of voice; the women screamed to one another all day long. James had had to be firm with Lucia about that, right at the beginning. No bawling to the neighbours or passers-by, and when you have something you want to ask me, Lucia, you come to me and say it quietly, do you see, not shout from the other side of the house. And Lucia, in the first flush of submission and anxiety to please, had nodded and smiled and remembered for at least two days.
It was not that they were stupid; child-like, more. Not childish, but child-like – which was what, of course, made them so attractive, in many ways. If somewhat exasperating. You had to tell them everything two, three times. The training of Lucia had been a long, laborious affair of many recessions, many defeats. Now, at last, one was beginning to reap the fruits.
Mary Vella had seen him, and was heaving herself to her feet, yelling to Joe her husband back in the dark gorge of the bar that Mr Winton was here, and where are the crates? and get a beer from the fridge, Mr Winton is tired, will want a drink.
‘Not now, Mary,’ he said – Tom Harley was coming in for supper, and the Pierces – ‘I haven't time. Just the crates, please, and a bottle of gin.’
She bustled about him as they went together through the bead curtains and into the stuffy gloom of the bar, children attendant at her heels. ‘Lucia is good, yes, you are pleased? She do her work well?’
Lucia, of course, was the eldest. ‘Yes, fine, fine,’ said James abstractedly. He was trying to remember if he had some whisky for Tom Harley, or not. ‘And a bottle of Scotch, Mary, and twenty Embassy. Perhaps I will have a beer after all, while Joe puts the stuff in the car.’
He sat outside, on Mary's stool; that, of course, was one of the pleasant little things about the island, people being so willing and helpful, Joe taking the stuff to the car, not those wretched impersonal supermarkets that were everywhere in England now. Mary was standing beside him – at a level with his eyes, the varicose veins coiled like vines around her legs, poor old dear, now the Health Service is something they really could do with out here – wanting to know about groceries for next week: the bar's function extended beyond that of an English pub, dealing in foodstuffs as well as drink. He remembered the time Mary had brought Lucia for interview, toiling up the hill to the house with Father Grech in tow, like, he had thought in amusement, some kind of chaperon. As though one might pounce on one or the other of them, though heaven knows the choice was not really to one's taste, either way …
It would have been a relief to her – and a local scoop – to get a daughter placed in a secure, well-paid job. The island was overpopulated; there was widespread unemployment; the young left for Italy, Australia, England. The airport on the main island teemed, day and night, with excited, distraught relatives, entire families seeing off departing members, welcoming returning ones home on a visit. Mary Vella, standing foursquare in the middle of the terrace, Lucia at her elbow, Father Grech lurking in the background, had depicted Lucia as the domestic paragon of all time (not, of course, that one had been in the least taken in, having observed the islanders' home habits), in ferocious pursuit of a job that scores of local girls would jump at. And the deal had been struck, the priest nodding approvingly, assuring James of the wisdom of his choice. (‘Very nice people, Mr Winton, a very good family, good mother, a good girl, she will work hard.’) James had been quite firm and sensible, not offering more money than was proper, the girl must not be spoilt – ‘Five pounds a week to start with, and in a year's time, when she's learned what to do, we'll think about it again.’
And he would, he thought, put it up to six, in all probability. She had turned out well. She cleaned assiduously, washed and ironed exquisitely, cooked – well, cooking was the main stumbling-block (their own cuisine, of course, was non-existent) but even that, with constant guidance and instruction, she was picking up. You had to keep on at her all the time, but she could do a few dishes quite passably now, salads and pizzas could be left to her, her cold soups were not bad at all.
Oh yes, she was worth six pounds a week, well worth it.
Six? – friends from England would say – Nan Chalmers, Roger Bates, Six, James, you must be joking. Goodness, you are pampered out here.
He finished his beer and drove home. Things seemed to be under control. Lucia was laying the table – on occasions when people were coming in for supper she had a few hours off in the afternoon and came in for the evening instead – and appeared not to have made too much of a hash of it. She was wearing one of the striped cotton frocks he had got Roger to bring out from Marks and Spencer for her and looked reasonably neat. Her appearance had been a problem, at the beginning. She had arrived in her own tawdry ‘best’ clothes, which were of distressing vulgarity – shrill and cheap of texture and design. He had toyed with the idea of putting her into a simple little uniform, but had thought that might seem a bit affected. Finally he had solved the problem with plain, inoffensive cotton frocks from England. Lucia, he knew, did not like them; she thought them dowdy, and changed into her own clothes to go home. She was not a pretty girl, but there was a certain attractive oddity to her face, something to do with an unevenness about her large dark eyes. Lopsided, Roger had said, she looks like a Picasso, charming – and for a while they had called her La Demoiselle d'Avignon. How is La Demoiselle? Roger would say, in his letters, still trying to polish the silver with Windolene? It was Roger who had set what had become the accepted tone of visitors towards Lucia – quietly teasing, making a bit of fuss of her, even, sometimes, James feared, spoiling her rather with little presents. One would have to watch that; Lucia, of course, loved it. Her eyes would light up at the sight of air-mail envelopes – ‘Mr Bates, he is coming to stay, yes? Mrs Fletcher – here is a letter from Mrs Fletcher, perhaps she is saying she will come back soon …’
There was a letter from Roger now, and one from Nan Chalmers. He sat on the terrace reading them, while Lucia hovered, anxious to share the contents. ‘What? Yes, I'll get the wine out in a minute, see that there are glasses at every place, the green ones, not the plain. No, Mr Bates didn't send any message and no, he isn't coming for his holidays.’
Good luck to him, James thought, with a spurt of malice, with his film friend who has this villa on Spetsae, and yes of course I understand, only too well, as it happens. He put Roger's letter aside and turned to Nan Chalmers's, perking up as he read that Nan would adore to come out in June, for a good fortnight if he could bear her for that long, she couldn't wait to see the house and …
One did feel just a tiny bit cut off, sometimes, on the island. Of course, with everything being so cheap it was possible to be extravagant with subscriptions to papers and periodicals, so that really one had all the advantages of London life – of English life – without having to live there. No, it was just that when the summer visitors had gone, the island could seem just a bit restricted, despite all its advantages. But things were bound to improve; the English community was growing all the time, with one or two live wires who were really getting things off the ground a bit – a Dramatic Society that might be rather fun, and a literary group with visiting speakers from time to time, and so on. And the mechanics of life were looking up, too, the little things that had seemed, initially, part of the island's appeal – the bad roads and uncertain services – but which had begun to pall after a few months. Most of the roads were being surfaced now, and the telephone exchange no longer remained incommunicado for half the day, which had been so infuriating when one was trying to arrange a little dinner or something.
So Nan would be here in June. And then in July there would be the Fletchers. Restored, in pleasant anticipation of the evening, the next few weeks, he set about the necessary briefing o
f Lucia. ‘And you hand the dishes from the left, remember, Lucia, the left side of people – which is the left? Oh, Lucia, how many times have I told you? The side they wear their watch, the side ladies have their wedding ring.’
Mary Vella sat outside the bar and continued the shouted conversation with her neighbour; the conversation distracted her in no way from her own anxieties, which were several, or the pain in her legs, which was habitual. She was pregnant, though she did not count that among her anxieties, and indeed had hardly registered the fact; fertility was something to be proud of, especially a fertility as proven as hers. The anxieties were matters of money, spiritual offences, a discrepancy between the number of crates of Double Diamond there ought to be in the store and the number there actually were (and the part that her husband Joe might have played in this), and her daughter Lucia.
Lucia would be twenty-two next birthday. Mary herself had been married and a mother by that age. Lucia was no prettier than the next girl – indeed rather less so; there were fewer marriageable men on the island every year. A Lucia with a small nest-egg accumulated by the judicious saving of several years' wages, or the best part of them, on the other hand, was a marketable proposition. Mary Vella, totting up figures in her head, shifting her weight from one ham to the other, screaming tit-bits of information across the dust and the parked cars and the playing children, considered all this and balanced it against the risks, the imponderables, the unknown quantities.
She did not like Mr Winton. She did not like his clothes (shabby, for a man so evidently rich, and more suitable for a woman, often, and a young woman at that, flowered shirt, bright colours …) or his way of talking or, most particularly, his friends. It was his friends who worried her where Lucia was concerned. There were young men whose winning smiles and overfriendliness made her uncomfortable; one, once, had brought Lucia home in Mr Winton's car, late at night, after she had helped at a party. Appalled, Mary had screamed at the girl for half the next day; a Lucia whose morals were open to doubt would not be a marriageable prospect at all. And there were women as distasteful as the men – women as old as herself and older who would stroll into the bar with blouses unbuttoned over bathing-costumes, with bare legs, with skirts as short as a child's. One of them, once, had given Lucia a discarded dress; it was indecent and Mary had thrown it angrily into the dustbin.
Pack of Cards Page 14
