The Lemon Grove

by Helen Walsh

  Jenn slides off the cool stone balustrade and moves behind an orange tree to watch them. He and Emma seem at ease in one another’s company, as though they’ve been together for longer than four months. In their terms, though, by the law of young love, four months is forever. She thinks back to her own first love; how reaching the milestone of each month was celebrated as though it were a year. It felt like it would last forever. Water is being placed down on the table. Nathan pours. First he sees to Emma, then he pours a glass for Greg. Greg makes no acknowledgement. He doesn’t move. Then, as though snapping out of some reverie, he gets to his feet and pads away, holding up a finger to indicate he won’t be long.

  Nathan’s eye line follows him a little furtively, Jenn thinks – and then she sees why. Nathan lowers his mouth to Emma’s shoulder and drags his top lip down over her arm. He slips the slim shoulder-strap of her dress down and licks along the clavicle. Emma slaps him, gamely, and looks over her shoulder for her dad. Nathan dips his hand in the glass of water and takes out an ice cube. He runs it along her arm, his eyes never leaving hers. He puts the ice cube in his mouth and sucks it a while, then turns to face her and kisses it into her mouth.

  Jenn turns away from them. She slumps back and lets the dry, slender trunk of the orange tree take her weight for a moment. She closes her eyes and it hits her again; hits her hard.

  The breeze is rustling the leaves of the orange tree, and further away, the old wooden tram is trundling up from the little port. Only last week she and Greg were down on the harbour front, haggling for fresh-caught bass and squid. Jenn is not that woman. She is neither here, nor there.

  For a moment she can see herself, standing in the doorway of a pub with the rain slamming down, and the sound of laughter bellowing out from the smoky saloon. She can hear the low, dirty rumble of buses on the other side of the estate. She is kneeling on the scratchy red carpet of her old living room by the three-bar fire; her dad is towel-drying her hair. He’s giving her a lecture on the kind of low-life wretches she can’t stay away from. Pretty boys with big lips and no soul. The boys in bands that hardly play; the poets who never write; the jobless dreamers. You’re done with those kinds of men now, Jennifer, her dad is telling her. She is twenty-nine. She lifts her eyes to meet his. She nods, and this time she means it. This time she listens.

  She opens her eyes. Greg is back at the table; he’s spotted her – or he thinks he has – he’s slipping on his glasses and looking in her direction, pointing her out to Emma; and before Emma can confirm or beckon her over, Jenn dips back behind the orange tree. She stands and waits and breathes; there’s a guided tour, heading up to the church, and without so much as a flicker of hesitation, Jenn insinuates herself into the middle of the two dozen pensioners. She walks with them a little way and the very bored, perspiring tour guide directs their attention to the Palma–Sóller steam train, coming down from the mountains. The pensioners stop and point their cameras, senselessly snapping into the glare of the midday sun. Jenn picks her way to the edge of the group then peels herself away. She is on the other side of the square now and she can no longer see Greg; or Emma; or him.

  She walks with her head down and her arms folded at her chest. She wants to get as far as possible from the square, into the warren of back streets that sit behind the town. She cuts across the broad steps of the church. Its massive wooden doors are open. Sombre organ music hangs on the air. She could sit on a pew and let the stained-glass sunshine sieve her face. She could light a candle, say a prayer. Her footsteps echo across the church plateau. Shattered, she keeps on moving; moves on past.

  The church is behind her now; she is lost in its shadow, out of sight. Free. She turns hard left up one of the narrow side-streets and the chatter of the square ricochets down to nothing. It’s cooler here in the alleyways, the pace is languid. Middle-aged couples stroll, arm in arm, lingering at the tiny boutiques. Jenn traces a slow, sleepy zigzag in their wake, browsing from window to window. One of the shops seems only to sell chillies. They hang in bunches from the top of the window, every hue and texture, some waxy, shining and ripe, others wizened. Next to it, a shop specialising in rugs: goat and rabbit skin, and one so thick it must be bearskin. Are there bears in the Tramuntana? There’s an artisan cheese shop; next to it, a jewellery shop specialising in ornate bracelets and chains. She stops and bends to examine the sea-grass baskets filled with bright, salvage-chic artefacts. And Jenn realises, in a flash, that she is not free after all. Far from it. Even now, she can feel her little hand on her wrist, tugging her, the girl with the gap between her teeth.

  She was going to buy her something special, something symbolic to mark the years they’d been coming here, the times they had had. She fingers a bracelet; beaten copper with studs of polished amber. She casts a sly glance through the open door. The pretty young sales assistant is chatting effusively to a couple. She slips the bracelet in her bag and walks quickly to the end of the street. Forks right, back into the blare of sunshine.

  She turns off into a residential street. An arid gutter runs along its spine. The green wooden shutters are closed on their narrow town houses. Two women sit on plastic chairs outside their front doors. They are ageless. Their eyes sparkle. They wear the same box hairstyles, the same formless frocks. They could be in their late forties; they could be well into their seventies. They chatter animatedly, fleshy arms flailing. They seem happy in their skin and age. A couple of scrawny cats weave in and out of their legs, their tails held high. The crones stop talking and gape as she passes. Their sun-beaten faces do not return her quick smile. They sit silent until Jenn is right up the road, and the chatter starts up once more.

  She’s in a narrow street now, no more than a dark and fetid passage. Rotten oranges and withered cloves of discarded garlic litter the cobbles. Her footsteps click and echo and, between her steps, there comes another, louder footfall. From nowhere, she feels the air-rush of someone coming up right behind her. She clutches her handbag to her chest and tightens her elbow to her ribs. A hand grabs her by the shoulder and pulls her back. It’s his; him. His hand drops down to link with hers. She grips him back, long enough to feel the awesome sensation rip through her, then flings her hand free and quickens her pace.

  She tries to accelerate away from him but he’s at her side again, and now he’s in front of her. He spins round and walks backwards, eyes never leaving hers. His pupils are black and huge; his skin, shiny with sweat. He tries to take her hand again. She puts both hands on his chest and pushes him away with force. He pauses for a while, as though making up his mind whether to leave her alone, and she strides away from him. She hears him, trotting to catch up with her, and her heart gladdens with relief.

  She is standing level with him now, her hands at her side. She breathes across the adrenalin, striving for a calm authority.

  ‘You’re fucking her.’

  He doesn’t say anything. And then:

  ‘You telling me or asking me?’

  She is shocked and angry; angry that he doesn’t deny it. She puts a hand on her stomach, looks away and down the street. A clutch of crones in the distance, dressed up. Going somewhere. She turns back to him.

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  He drops his head, the smile-dimple denting his cheek. He shakes his head, still smiling, and looks her in the eye.

  ‘Well, let me ask you. Are you fucking the old man?’

  The reaction is fast and deliberate. She slaps him, once, across the face. The dimple is no more. Her hand hangs there on the recoil and he eyes it, incredulous. He places his hand on his cheek. Two old women are chuckling between themselves as they get closer. He moves into her. She doesn’t resist. She can taste the salt through his T-shirt as she presses her face flat to it. She hooks a leg around his thigh so it’s pressing between her legs, and she pushes down on it, so his dick digs up into her. He scrapes up her hair from the nape of her neck, twists and holds it tight as he licks her throat.

  ‘I need to see you,’ he
says. ‘Properly.’

  Over there. The café by the tram station. The unisex toilet down the spiral staircase. A waitress with a nose that is a prolonged extension of her forehead, and heavily made-up eyes passes them on her way up. It must be coming off their faces in waves. The waitress shoots them a look, her big loop earrings jangling as she shakes her head. Jenn makes fleeting eye contact, drops her head and follows him into the cubicle. Nathan shuts the door behind them and slides the latch shut. The basin of the toilet is stuffed with toilet paper; she thinks, no, no, not here – but then Nathan is turning her to face the big gilt wall mirror. He stands behind her, pulls her top, her bra down, licks and kisses her shoulders. She squirms. He stands back. Through the mirror, he forces her gaze down and over herself. Their breath clouds the glass. He leans over her, his cock jutting into her hips, pushed back by his jeans. He licks a patch clear, looks her mirror image in the eye. She can’t bear it any longer and she turns round and claws at his belt. He flips her back round. Places her hands on the mirror and pushes her face forward into the cool glass. One hand threads her tresses round his fingers. The other digs his cock out; tugs her knickers to one side. He sticks it in her cunt and pushes once, twice; then pulls it out and tries to put it into her arse. ‘Not that way,’ she mumbles and reaches down and feeds him back into her core. It is urgent and profound and it’s over within seconds. She tries to hang on; she clenches her muscles to stop him sliding free; and when he does, some part of her comes away, too.

  16

  From the doorway she watches him at work. Whatever he’s writing, he means it: it’s spewing from him, in a fury. And yet, observing him now in the hard white glow of the desk lamp, his body has never looked so slack, so tired. The loose skin of his chest hangs down as he hunches over the pad. His skin looks lived in; soon he will be like the crones in the backstreets. His pelt will hang from his body like old pyjamas. Their history is inscribed all over those dimples, creases; his weathered hands. No extraordinary love story, theirs; defined not by drama or tragedy, but by friendship. Faith. Mutual dependency. She watches him write and she is choked.

  It whispers in her ear; the piece he read to her on their wedding day. It was an extract from a D. H. Lawrence poem.

  And when, throughout all the wild chaos of love

  slowly a gem forms, in the ancient, once-more-molten rocks

  of two human hearts, two ancient rocks,

  a man’s heart and a woman’s,

  that is the crystal of peace, the slow hard jewel of trust,

  the sapphire of fidelity.

  The gem of mutual peace emerging from the wild chaos of love.

  She will always remember that, word for word – no matter what. She and Greg had hardly been together long enough for those words to have such resonance, yet the passage meant everything to her. It felt right.

  She was a care assistant at Summerfields, when they met. Greg cut a tragic, heroic figure. He’d lost his wife the year before, not long after she’d given birth to their daughter, Emma. Greg and the little one used to come in, every Saturday, without fail, to visit his mother-in-law. Not once did he miss a visit – not that old Irene would have noticed. He’d recite poems to the patients in the day room; Keats or Shelley, she later found out. She thought they were his words, his poems. He’d incant the lines like he meant it; like those thoughts and words could only have emanated from him. The way his eyes would shine when he told her what he loved about poetry – the way you could own it. It became a part of you.

  The old women in the home loved Greg. Her workmates loved him, too. He was handsome, after a fashion – Clark Gable with a beard. He wasn’t really her type; too big, too manly. But he radiated some elemental goodness that she found attractive. He was nice. He was constant. And it worked – they were good together. Really good. Emma took to Jenn, and Jenn responded. She’d loved the sense of being needed. She loved snuggling up with Greg once Emma was asleep and resting her head on that broad chest.

  He drops the pen on his pad and slumps back in his chair. He seems pleased with what he’s written.

  She clenches her fists and steps gently back out of the room and into the corridor, before he sees her. She gets herself out of the villa, out of earshot. The force of her sobbing sits her down among the rotting carcasses of the lemons; green welts pitting their dull, yellow-brown skin.

  17

  ‘I don’t trust him,’ she says as she forks hard left onto the switchback. It is early evening. It is one night and one day since the incident with the van on the cliff bend but, somehow, it feels much longer. It seems like Nathan has been here forever and yet when he’s not with her, when he’s with Emma, time drags like tar. She endures every second of his absence. Farmers are tilling and raking their groves. A line of goats picks its way down the rocky incline with a toll of maudlin bells. The light is soft and the landscape mellow.

  ‘Who? Nathan?’

  ‘Nathan.’

  Greg’s eyes are on her for a moment, drilling the side of her face, then he turns away, gazing on out to the slow-rippling sea beyond. ‘Why? What’s happened?’ There’s a snap of suspicion in his tone.

  ‘Nothing’s happened. Just a hunch, that’s all.’ She keeps her eyes trained on the road. A mountain rabbit flits across, pauses and looks directly at them, then leaps to safety. ‘I just think we need to be careful.’

  ‘Careful? Careful how?’

  She rests her free hand on his lap and gives a reassuring squeeze.

  ‘Look. It’s nothing, right? Nothing at all …’

  ‘It can’t be nothing.’

  ‘It’s just … I dunno. The way he looks at girls. You know?’

  Greg is hunched forward in his seat now, his hands on his knees.

  Her free hand is back on the wheel.

  ‘Why? Has she said something?’

  ‘Who, Emma? No!’

  Greg sits back in his seat, drags his hands back up his thighs; taps out a rhythm with his fingers. He’s on the verge of saying something – and then he’s stalling, thinking it through. She shifts down a gear and slows to a crawl as she approaches the first hairpin bend.

  ‘Because I looked it up, you know, this so-called blog of his,’ Greg says.

  ‘Yes?’

  He doesn’t answer right away. There’s a lurch in her solar plexus. What has he seen? What has Nathan written? Something about them?

  ‘And guess what?’ He pauses for effect and drives irony into his expression. ‘Site still under construction.’

  Jenn relaxes. They turn into the dirt track up to the villa.

  He releases his seatbelt and shifts his whole body round to face her.

  ‘Well?’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, what does that tell you?’ Jenn lowers her chin, indicating for him to expand. ‘How likely is it that Godrich’s people would approve an interview with a kid who doesn’t even have a website?’ Before she can respond, he adds, ‘So I asked Emma.’

  Jenn nods.

  ‘… I asked her if he’d be flying home early, for the big interview. She had no idea. Of course, she was quick to cover for him, but her first reaction was one of surprise. And the funny thing is, I knew it. I knew straight away that he was spinning you a yarn.’ He points a finger at her, vindicated.

  Tell me, Greg, how did you know? she wants to shout. She maintains a cool authority. ‘Possibly. Although it could just be that he didn’t want to say anything until it was confirmed?’

  And as though this were a game of chess, he considers it carefully before making his next move. He cranes his neck and rolls his gaze right up to the village where the young lovers are dining right now. ‘Do you not think it a little odd that he told you – and not Emma?’ His eyes drill her again.

  She gives an insouciant shrug of the shoulders but her neck is starting to burn. She badly regrets instigating this line of conversation. Her motive was simple: to throw a veil of doubt over Nathan’s integrity, should he ever expos
e her. She can see now, there was no need. Greg had already cast him as the unreliable narrator – but now his sixth sense has fastened onto something else. She tries to kill it before it takes seed. She shrugs again and gives it her best poker face.

  ‘Come on, Greg, isn’t that obvious?’

  ‘What?’ He raises his eyebrows.

  ‘He told me because he knew I’d tell you. I’m starting to find it just a little bit embarrassing – how desperate he is to earn your respect. That’s one thing we can be certain about – the boy reveres you.’

  Greg dismisses this with a hiss. But Jenn knows her husband too well: there’ll be a part of him that wants to believe; a part of him is flattered.

  Jenn shuts down the engine. She turns to him, cups his face with a hand.

  ‘I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. There’s nothing sinister about him, really. Just … let’s be on standby, hey? Just in case …’

  She kisses him, hard on the mouth, and draws the conversation to an end.

  They get out of the car and start unloading the shopping from the boot. Jenn runs ahead to open up the big wooden doors. Greg lumps the carrier bags inside, four in each hand. He takes the eggs out of their box and begins stacking them in the fridge one by one, but with such force that Jenn fears he’ll break them.

  ‘Tell me, Jenn,’ he mutters. ‘If there’s something I need to know, then, please, tell me.’

  ‘Jesus! Are we still talking about that?’

  ‘Well? Is there?’

  ‘God. No. Nothing specifically … I mean, you know the way men are. The silly little games they play. The lies they tell.’

  Gregory speaks slowly, deliberately, into the fridge.

  ‘He’s not a man, though, is he, Jennifer? He’s a boy. And he’s your daughter’s boyfriend.’

  If he’d have turned round, he would have seen Jenn fighting back a furious flash of guilt. He finishes stacking the eggs in their cup-holes. It’s all she can do to smooth her face out and arrange her features in a way that roughly signals agreement. She moves out of his eyesight, into the lounge. She hears him sigh deeply and then a bottle is being uncorked. There’s the glug-glug-glug as he fills his glass, full. He doesn’t pour one for her.