by Helen Walsh
She watches him and Emma conspiring; they’ll be off to do their own thing. She tries to close herself off to the notion stirring within, and yet she cannot stop herself. She cannot stop thinking about the way he rescued her yesterday. Why does she imagine that, almost too briefly to register, he’d pressed his pelvis against her? Why can she not drive that impression from her mind? It is madness. It did not happen – not intentionally. Perhaps his dick grazed her bottom, but it was the tide that pushed him; it’s impossible to balance on those slippery stones. Why was he hard, then? No. It did not happen. And yet the fact that no one registered her struggle, that she’d managed to swim out so far, unnoticed, and that no one thought to look for her; that did happen.
Jenn watches Emma lean her head against his arm as they walk, and notes that he flinches a moment, before pecking her on the head. Emma faces him for a kiss. The way she looks up at him, God …
They share a joke about something. He has her head in a lock for a second, then he shoves her away, and slaps her bottom. Emma flips her head over her shoulder, laughing, as though the butt of their joke lies somewhere back here. They gradually increase their pace until it’s fait accompli that the four has become two. Greg is more cross than deflated.
‘What happened to the plan? We all agreed, didn’t we? Market; monastery; lunch?’
‘We’re not cool enough.’ Jenn smiles. She says it in jest, but she’s bruised by the reality all the same.
She lingers on it for a while, tuning out from Greg’s commentary as they amble down the town’s narrow streets, past blond stone houses towards the shadows of the monastery. She can hear the market, a low hum of chatter like an intermission between a play. The air is cooler here; Jenn’s disquiet calms. The cobblestones are waxy underfoot, centuries of footfall polishing them to a dangerous sheen. Greg extends an arm for her to hold on to. He casts her a look that is pure affection, his face creasing into a crinkly smile.
‘Never tire of this place, you know? Never.’
She strives for the appropriate degree of empathy.
‘Me neither.’
Greg is drawing himself up to make some grand philosophical pronouncement when he’s interrupted by his phone. It has rung off by the time he’s able to prise it out from his breast pocket.
‘Work again?’
He nods; stares at the screen.
‘Phone them back.’
‘I thought you said—’
The voice-mail clarion blares out. He juts his jaw from side to side, still staring at the screen. Jenn hooks an arm around his waist.
‘Look. Go and sit on that bench. Call work. Whatever it is, sort it out, then have a little wander. Soak it all up.’
She goes on tiptoe and kisses his cheek.
‘I’ll meet you back here in an hour.’
She turns and heads down a short flight of steps and goes into a trot, lest he call her back. In the distance, she can still pick out Nathan’s T-shirt.
The hippy market is busy with tourists, young folk, mainly, and a few wizened old men wearing sarongs and sandals. She feels out of place for a minute as she pauses at a stall whose sole output is wood-carved wind chimes. The young assistant with dreadlocks tells her they’re carved from the wood of ancient olive trees from the garden of Jaime I de Aragon. He says it with conviction, but it’s tinged with embarrassment, as though he understands how ridiculous he sounds, and yet how often it works. She nods her head, slowly, casting her eyes out to see where they went. They’re over by the jewellery stands, heading towards a stall specialising in tie-dyed tees, but there is something about the set of Emma’s shoulders that tells Jenn all is not okay. She tells the assistant she’ll give him ten euros for the wind chimes and when he laughs in her face she doesn’t hang around to barter; she positions herself at the next stall along, this one specialising in hand-woven rugs. She tucks herself behind a stripy kilim, almost identical to the ones that adorn the walls of the villa, and observes.
Nathan is holding up a T-shirt. Even from here she can tell that it’s made from the cheapest fabric possible, yet he’s handling it as though it were an object of beauty, holding it in front of him and nodding his appreciation. Emma stands a little way back from him, her arms wrapped around her ribcage, her face tilted to the ground. There is something unnatural about Nathan’s posture, it’s a little too masculine and contrived – and Emma seems threatened by it.
The vendedora leans across the rows of ruched and marbled fabrics at the front of the stall and offers Nathan a different-patterned T-shirt. Jenn can make out no more than her slender, brown arms and the beaded ends of her hair as they swing forward, yet there is something queasily familiar about her; something in Nathan’s smile and the self-conscious ruffling of his hair that is priming her for something unpleasant.
This particular design is a garish kaleidoscopic, but Nathan takes time to consider it carefully before declining with a tactful shake of the head. Jenn slips in and out of the rugs till she’s close enough to get a proper look at the girl. It takes a moment for the penny to drop, and when it does she is blindsided with a furious envy. It’s her, the hippy girl from the cave yesterday. She is flirting with Nathan and he is flirting right back. And in an instant her jealousy turns to anger, directed not at Nathan, nor the hippy girl, but at herself. It’s obscene, it’s ridiculous, that she’s standing here in the first place, spying on them. And yet now that she is, she cannot prise her eyes away. She watches Emma fixing her hair and letting it down as she tries to effect nonchalance. She wants to go to her. And yet, coiling around her protective instinct, slowly strangling all parental concern, is a smug and sinister satisfaction at the sordid role play.
The transaction seems to be drawing to a conclusion, the hippy girl is bagging up a T-shirt, and Nathan is shaking his hand to indicate that she should keep the change. Jenn feels her bowels loosen a little, her throat start to prickle. She moves in the opposite direction, back towards the road, past the wind-chime guy who, on seeing her, repositions himself at the side of the stall and holds out the chimes, already bagged up. She pushes past him and crosses the road back onto the cobblestones, and hard right into the alleyways. She can see Greg, right at the top, walking in slow, deliberate circles, still on the phone. He looks stooped; smaller, somehow.
8
The teenagers are late. Jenn has offered to wait up in case they need a lift back from the village. She’s promised Greg that no more than one small glass of Rioja will pass her lips, but one glass has led to another and she’s flopped out on the dusty sofa. The crime thriller, beach-wrecked, has been slotted away in Benni’s library. She will never finish it. On her lap, in its place, is Walden, a book she adored in her youth; a book of which she’s been a fierce champion in debates with Greg. She is revising her opinion, now, as she drifts off.
She sits up: something innate and chemical tripping her from sleep. Dry-mouthed, and feeling the first seeds of a hangover she hasn’t really earned, Jenn gets up and goes to the sliding doors. A pair of headlights are moving closer to the villa, and now she can hear the diesel thrum of the car’s engine. Out there, the darkness is as dense as a coma. There is no moon. Way beyond the ravine, the clap of a hunting gun reverberates through the mountains. It was sounding off early this morning but in the darkness the shots seem more pronounced. As the ricochet echoes to nothing, she abandons Thoreau and takes herself upstairs before they stumble in.
She is brushing her teeth when she hears the slam of the taxi’s doors, the scrape of the gate below. There is a sniffling from outside. Is that Emma crying down there? She steps up onto the bath and peers down through the window’s grille. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust: one, two silhouettes. Not human, though – a couple of donkeys have strayed into their garden and they are standing beneath a tree with their heads lowered to the ground; possibly asleep. Way up in the hills, as though flying through the rolling slabs of black, the receding taxi’s brake lights blink red at each twist of the switchback. She h
ears it again – not tears, but laughter. Emma is giggling and the knowledge of it plants something raw and uneasy in her stomach. Jenn snaps on the air conditioning and climbs into bed. Gregory stirs. His boozy, stale breath asks:
‘They back, darling?’
She squeezes his hand. He’s flat out again within seconds. Jenn lies there, unable to shut down, listening to the wind rise, the crash of the waves; the hiss as it sucks back through the shingle on the shore. The sound and fury of the tide takes her back there once again. Thoughts of the cove; thoughts of him. She bumped into him in the corridor before, on his way out. Handsome in his jeans and white vest. Brown arms. From Nathan, there wasn’t even a flicker. He’d smiled as he passed her, and a pain like a hunger pang shot through her.
It’s a while before they come inside the house. What have they been doing out there? They do not bolt the kitchen door. She hears the skid of the refrigerator door. A stool knocked over – more giggling – then footfall on the stairs. They seem to hover outside his room for a while. Jenn torments herself with the image of his hands on her tiny waist. No soft padding on Emma’s hips; skin as smooth as a newly laid egg as his fingers prise their way under the hem of her denim shorts.
But then Emma is passing – no, she is stomping past – their room. Is she imagining this? No. Her bedroom door slams and she hears muffled sobs, as though Emma is buried beneath her sheets. Should she go to her? No. Jenn shuts her eyes and tries to shut it out – all of it. She craves the sobering reality of a new day. But she’s thirsty now; her brain is fully engaged and she can’t shut down. She fumbles out for the glass on her bedside table, tilts it right back; it yields but a dribble. She lies there, staring out into the dark, but she knows she won’t sleep until she’s cleared her throat.
She gets out of bed, irritated by her husband’s snoring. The bedroom floor is cold, the air cool. She switches off the air con and goes downstairs. As she steps into the kitchen she sees that the big oak outer door has been left wide open. She curses the pair of them as she heaves it shut, slotting the big iron cross-bar in its groove and planning the conversation she will have with Greg tomorrow. Will he rebuke his daughter as he would her? Of course not.
As she comes back into the kitchen she smells the drift of tobacco smoke before she sees him. He’s there with his back to her, sitting on the steps below the back door, staring out at the night sky. She’s unsure whether to say something or to inch back upstairs unannounced.
‘Hello, Jenn,’ he says. He doesn’t move. A jet of smoke sails upwards.
She freezes, says nothing. He stays dead still for a moment longer, then flicks the cigarette out onto the back garden and twists his upper body round. He gets to his feet. His eyes are black sockets in the darkness but she can feel his gaze all over her. He stumbles slightly as he advances towards her. She can smell beer on his breath. She knows she must speak up soon or her silence will be misconstrued. She struggles to inject authority into her voice:
‘Make sure you lock the door.’
He is less than two feet away. She takes control, turns and walks to the foot of the stairs. He hesitates, then kicks his shoes across the kitchen floor. Sure, now, that he has her attention, he walks over to the big oak door, unlocks it and steps out onto the terrace. He heads down the steps. The terrace light trips on, isolating him in a bright white halo. She should go upstairs, back up to bed to where her husband sleeps in deep oblivion. But no – she goes back to the kitchen to slam the terrace door shut, to let their house guest know he’s overstepping the mark. As she grabs the handle, he turns to face her. He tugs off his T-shirt, peels down his jeans with his thumbs, drops his boxers. She does not look away. Naked, he crosses the terrace to the pool’s edge, his muscular bottom backlit in the neon blue of the underwater lights. He hesitates on the lip of the pool and turns, just long enough for her to see his dick, before gliding cleanly into the water.
Jenn takes the stairs two at a time, closes the bedroom door, leans against it, panting hard. It’s nothing her inhaler can temper, this time. She climbs into bed, stricken by the proximity, the very presence of her unwitting husband, queerly reassured by the barrier he forms. Greg’s long arm loops around her and pulls her close. She lies very still, her thighs squeezed tight, ankles locked together. She tries to snuff it out. No use. Her stomach flips her over and inside out, the pulse between her legs fervent, painful.
She drags and guides his hand, moves it down and under the rim of her shorts. His fingers hang there, too somnolent to submit to her need. She ducks down beneath the covers to rouse him, hearing the kitchen door slam shut as she takes him in her mouth.
9
The shutters are closed but as soon as she wakes, Jenn senses a full-bellied sky out there – she can feel it in her chest, too. The peal of goat bells on the hillside confirms what she already suspects: there’s a storm brewing.
Jenn drops an arm down the side of the bed, fumbles for her morning inhalers – two blasts of pink, then one of the blue.
She pads out to the balcony. The tiles underfoot are cooler than usual. The grey weight of the sky seems to hover just above the sea, and way up beyond the village, a veil of black grazes the mountain like a gauze. From inside the bedroom she hears movement: the rustle of sheets, a hard stream of piss hitting the toilet basin. Her stomach tightens. Seconds later, he stumbles out to join her.
‘Morning!’ Greg trills. He is grinning at her. He ducks down and kisses her deep on the mouth. Jenn stops short of flinching away from the stark unfamiliarity of her own embarrassment. ‘Sleep well?’
There is devilment in his eyes, and something else, too; awe? Whatever – last night’s exploit has blown his mind. Greg is gay and light of step and she cannot stand it. Fearing a reference to the blow-job, or worse, expectation of a repeat performance, Jenn extricates herself from his grip and leans over the balustrade. She looks out to the horizon.
‘Not really, actually. My chest was awful. Must be a storm due.’
‘It’ll be the pollen, darling.’ He advances on her again, kisses the back of her neck. ‘It’s going to be dry but overcast this morning; blazing hot sunshine by this afternoon.’ He slides a hand under her top, squeezes her breast too hard. She squeals and jerks away – if Greg takes umbrage, it doesn’t show. He slaps her bottom playfully. ‘Perfect weather for the walk. We should do it today.’
She nods. ‘Sure.’
Her attention has been snagged by movement on the terrace down below. Greg follows her eye line.
‘Morning!’ he shouts down.
The boy looks up to them – at her – nods, then carries on to the pool. He is carrying her novel.
Jenn drives up to the village for supplies. Emma has not emerged from her room – still sleeping, or sulking, she supposes. Nathan is lapping the pool. As she reverses out of the path and turns into the dirt track, she spies him in her wing mirror levering himself out of the pool on the flats of his hands. He stands, poised, watching the car. She rounds the first bend – out of sight, out of mind. The boy is Emma’s problem, not hers.
The village shop is opening as Jenn pulls up on the single yellow line outside. The papers and fruit have not yet been laid out. Jenn decides that, today, they can do without both. She shuts down the engine and goes into the shop. A boy no older than Nathan stops her on the threshold, a palm held up like he’s stopping traffic.
‘Diez minutos,’ he says, rather brusquely.
‘Oh, right,’ she says, more inconvenienced than annoyed. Can she be bothered going back to the village car park? It wasn’t just finding the coins for twenty minutes’ parking, it was the whole rigmarole involved in turning the car back round. She might as well just carry on towards Valldemossa and use the mini-market instead. She pictures Greg’s face as he unpacks the bags and finds prepacked croissants rather than the oven-fresh bread and pastries he’s been coveting. She strikes a deal with him in her head: she’ll grab a coffee in the bar across the road while she waits for the shop to open;
but if the parking wardens arrive on their mopeds, she’s off. Greg will have to make do with a microwaved breakfast.
The café’s terrace, perched above the main road, is still grubby from a busy Saturday night: plastic chairs blown over, tables sticky with spilled drinks, the terrace strewn with cigarette butts, and the smell of stale fried garlic wafting out from the dark cavern of a bar. Jenn takes a seat as far away from the door as possible, but close enough to the steps to make a hasty getaway should the traffic warden arrive.
The crone who serves her is laughably surly; viewing the early morning trade more as a nuisance than a fillip. There’s no ‘Buenas dias’ or ‘Hola, señora’, just a curt ‘Si?’ But the experience is mitigated by the orange juice she’s served, so fresh and thick it feels as though it’s been pumped straight from the citrus grove behind. The coffee is also good; potent enough to zap away the dregs of her hangover – full of bite, but by no means bitter. Why can she never get coffee like this in England? Even the pioneering little independents in West Didsbury don’t come close to this. She sits back, sips slowly at the orange juice, luxuriating in the tang of each slurp. Such simple pleasures, she muses – so profound in their impact. The sun pokes through the cloud cover and Jenn tilts her face towards it. She stretches her arms out, elbows down, and holds her fingers in a loose yoga pose. She imagines a different life, of mornings that begin with a swim in the sea, a coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice on the terrace instead of traffic jams and juice from a carton. It’s a nice fantasy while it lasts; the sun ducks back behind the clouds. Footsteps below, the irregular slap of flip-flops. Jenn is surprised to see the hippy girl – the diver-chick from the market – emerging from the olive grove. She is wearing a paint-stained man’s vest, cinched at the waist with a belt made from rope, but, even in rags, there’s no disguising her beauty; the barely discernible bobbing of her breasts – no bra – and the tautness of her arms. Is this who they rowed about last night? Jenn tries not to think about it, and instead focuses on the crone who is leaning over the balustrade to gawp at her as she passes below the terrace. The crone mutters to no one in particular and shakes her head – whether in admiration or approbation, Jenn can’t be sure.
