We took our stuff out of the car and headed to Area Maior. The only thing I didn’t like about that beach is that it had a really small car park, so if you didn’t find a space, you had to walk all the way from the pinewood next to the other beach as we did that day. But the difficult access and the lack of parking spaces was the only reason this piece of paradise wasn’t entirely crowded.
It was the beginning of June, and the small lagoon behind the dunes was full of water. At the end of the beach, almost on the horizon, the mighty presence of Monte Louro mastered the landscape. It was a place of legend and myth, of stories beyond imagination hidden amidst the morning haze, in the depths of the ocean and beneath the surface of the waters of the lagoon.
I took my shoes off as soon as we were on the thin sand. It was very hot, but it felt so good under my feet. I could notice the sand grains playing between my toes, slightly tickling my soles as we walked. It was tiresome to feel my feet sinking in the sand, keeping me from advancing, but it also was a relaxing sense, and that was all I needed at the moment. The afternoon sun was heating my head and my shoulders. I closed my eyes and raised my face to feel all its power on my skin. It had been a while since the last time I was on the beach, and I missed all those little things you can only enjoy by the seashore.
Area Maior was around a mile long, and unlike its neighbour, the waves were smoother and perfect for a nice, pleasant bath. The lagoon in the middle, hidden beyond the dunes, was a nature reserve full of wildlife, mostly birds and fish. From the distance, its water was bluer and shinier than that of the sea, and it wasn’t unusual to see it crowded by herons which made the surrounding trees their home. The reeds spread along the edge and worked as a natural border between the aquatic ecosystem and the dunes, where the main form of life were reptiles, insects and small plants. A sweet place to relax and spend your day.
We didn’t like to be surrounded by people, so we chose the opposite end of the beach, too far away from the car park for most visitors to think it worthwhile. The heavy and slow steps on the sand and the torrid midday sun made the first sweat drops run down my back. It was both relaxing and tiring, but it felt amazing to get to the exact place I wanted to be and rest my body on my towel, hearing the monotonous roar of the sea in its eternal battle with the beach, rocks and wind.
I took off my sandals and denim shorts and stood for a while staring at the waves, trying to guess where and when the next one would break or how high it would be or how long it would reach once it struck the sand. I could spend hours like that, doing nothing. It was the roar of peace, the sight of a smooth and violent water world subjugating the horizon. I lay back on my towel and sensed the sun massaging my body. Too bright to open my eyes. Too pleasant to move and look for a shade. More and more droplets of sweat were gathering in the middle of my chest, merging to form a bigger bead.
I was so isolated in my inner world that I hadn’t realised Marta and Luis had gone to have a bath, and I almost jumped when I felt Mario’s hand on my left arm.
“Damn, Mario!” I shouted. “You scared me!”
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to.”
“What do you want?” I asked, between upset and curious.
“It’s just,” he hesitated. “I’ve missed you.” He looked me in the eye and put his hand forward to touch my knee. His hand felt cold compared to my skin.
“Have you?” I asked, knitting my eyebrows. I instinctively looked around and saw that the nearest person was more than five hundred yards away.
“Yes,” he said, sliding his hand up my leg. It felt good. His cold, strong fingers on my hot skin, reaching my inner thigh and advancing shy to my bikini knickers.
I moaned with pleasure as he studied the warmth of my body, kissing my neck and whispering in my ear: “I missed you so much.” His voice was soft and hot and echoed in my head, and I couldn’t even think with clarity because the only thing that mattered to me was the flood of his mighty hand on my body. Sooner than I would’ve liked, Mario’s caresses were interrupted by our two friends, who came back from their bath. Marta looked at me, smiling, and I felt her impertinent eyes scanning me.
“What were you guys doing? You are both sweating!”
“I’m sweating because it’s bloody hot! You just came from the water and don’t feel it, but it’s bloody 3:00 pm, and I have been lying in the sun for a while.”
“Oh, I’m sure you have!”
“You’re a funny little smartass, aren’t you?” I said with a flushed smile.
I had had enough of Marta’s suspicious words, and I was all sweaty, so I got up to have a bath. When the first wave washed my feet, it felt like ice. My skin was boiling, the sand was boiling and the sea wasn’t too bad, but the contrast made it feel really cold. Just a few waves and two jumps later, and the water seemed to have warmed up, just the ideal temperature to cool my body down and prepare it for another round of sunrays.
I was hoping Mario would follow me to the water, but he was apparently very busy telling his friend some stupid meaningless episode of his life. I couldn’t be bothered. I was just fine. Relaxed. Feeling my body move with the sweet flow of waves, up, down, up. The sun spreading on my face. The sound of the sea rocking my ears.
A hard blow smacked the back of my head, and my face crashed into the water. It was unexpected. It came out of nowhere. Impossible to see it coming. A wave crest had pushed me down the sea and was dragging me and making me hit the hard sand of the sea bottom. When I could finally reach the surface again, I was farther away from shore and realised I had swallowed plenty of water. I tried to scream, but I was struggling to float and my voice was shut down by the liquid, salty gag in my mouth and the back of my nose. I tried to swim back to the beach, but it was impossible. My neck was rigid and my head dizzy and heavy. My efforts were useless. I was being pushed away. Offshore. Far from the sun. And the warmth. And life. I passed out.
According to my friends, who wouldn’t leave my side, my heart stopped beating for four minutes. Marta tried to revive me the best she could, blowing air into my lungs and pressing my chest to help my heart pump the blood throughout my body. It didn’t work. My skin became pale. My flesh, cold. A layer of salty water wrapped around me.
Time passed, and I wouldn’t react. My body was just there, still and absent like a shell drying out on the sand. But Marta didn’t give up. She tried once and again. She fought and did all she could, and yet she wasn’t able to reanimate me, but the doctors said that I was alive thanks to her. She kept my blood moving and my lungs full of oxygen. She checked over and over whether I was awake, whispering in my ear, even though there was no answer.
There weren’t any dark tunnels. There were no angels or spirits or any beings. The only thing I saw was the water piercing my eyes, the salt stuck to my retina, and the sunlight reaching me through the waves. That was all the light I saw. Shutting down. All my reality collapsing into itself as I felt my life being taken away. Then just emptiness. A void. An infinite void. A huge space devouring my consciousness very slowly, entertaining itself at the sight of my futile fight against death until I let go. That’s all I’ve got. An empty lapse of time. Four minutes of nothing.
“Laura!” When I heard Marta’s whispers, it felt as if I had just passed out, as if I had woken up from a dreamless night. “Laura!” I didn’t know where I was. It was confusing. I wasn’t supposed to be there. “Laura! Wake up!” I found myself struggling again. I wanted to come back. I wanted to live. I couldn’t breathe. “Wake up!” I coughed. It was painful. I felt a stream of water moving up my throat and tearing my lungs apart. A thousand needles poked in my chest, and the only thing I could think about was breathing. I needed to breathe. My whole body shuddered, and I heard the sound of the fresh air coming back all at once through my vocal cords, filling my lungs in a second, bringing me back from death. I felt dizzy, and sick, and mad, and cold under the thirty-degree-Celsius summer sun. I felt life.
Chapter 12
Dinne
r date
Jaime had spent the day stuck to me. He loved Karen, but he didn’t want us to go out and leave him at home. After a long chat, several hugs and as many kisses on his forehead, he accepted the situation and embraced the idea of spending the evening with his old friend. We needed a break. I owed Mark. It was the least I could do after months of long evenings imprisoned, a voluntary inmate of my own depressing cage, after all that had happened to me, to us, and the huge efforts he had made to make me feel better.
Problems faded away next to Happy, and his fluffy fur had the power to cheer me up when I slid my hand across his back. He wouldn’t ever let me down. He was there for me, to widen my world, to pull me out of myself and setting me free to love again, to appreciate all the good things I had before it was too late and the distance too great.
We heard somebody at the door, and Jaime ran to open it. When he found Karen standing on the doorstep, he hugged her as if it were the last time they would see each other.
“Oh, dear! Ya’ve grown so much, Jaime!” Karen said.
“I’m almost four feet tall,” he said.
“I can see tha’! Ya’ll be taller than me in no time!” She smiled at us and had a glance at Happy. “Oh, and this mus’ be Happy, inni’?”
“Yes, he’s Happy,” Jaime answered. “He’s a puppy.”
“He’s lovely! I’m lookin’ forward to knowin’ him be’er. Will ya tell me more ‘bou‘im?”
“Yes. We can play together!”
“Thank you very much for coming, Karen, we really appreciate it,” I said.
“There’s nothin’ to thank,” she said while looking me in the eyes with a knowing smile.
“I’ve already prepared some dinner. It’s in the fridge. He usually watches TV. Well, you know how it works, don’t you?”
“Absolu’ly, Laura. Ya know there’s nothing to worry ‘bout.”
“You’re an angel, Karen.”
We left home at 6 pm. It was getting dark. We walked up Leytonstone High Road towards the Underground station. It felt good to walk holding Mark’s hand, seeing people passing by and living their own stories. It was a fun stroll, populated by many faces and voices, most of them strangers, and a few known ones, like the lady sitting at the door of the TFC, just a few yards away from the Overground station, always asking for spare change. “Bless you,” she used to say to everybody, regardless of whether they gave her a coin or not. “Bless you,” even if the person pretended she just didn’t exist, as if she were a mere feature in the neighbourhood or part of the street.
There also was a bench where a group of people used to hang out in front of a Romanian grocery shop. They drank canned beer. Sometimes there were three of them, and sometimes as many as six. All in their late thirties, and considering their clothes, they worked in the building sector: they always had paint and cement stains on their trousers, and sometimes they still wore their security boots, all covered in dust and red trails of brick.
The Black Hart, my favourite pub in Leytonstone, was not far away from this spot, and you could see people entering and leaving as you approached its emblematic building. From the outside, the picture windows projected the reflection of the cars grumping their way out of a busy suburban road, rushing to get home and finish the day relaxing in front of the TV. It wasn’t unusual to see all the wooden tables and benches spread along the pavement, crowded by pints and crisps, particularly in summer, when the sun was still pleasant and the skies clear at 8 pm or even 9 pm.
It was full that day too, despite being cold and dark, since the afternoon had been dry and a good coat was more than enough to make the temperature pleasant enough. At the top of the building, a picture of a black stag in a static posture decorated the frieze of a small window, and just a few feet upwards there was an old pigeon loft abandoned long time ago but still crowning the façade. To me, this pub was the centre of Leytonstone, and its inhabitants’ life was distributed around it. It was the place where I used to spend the most time, enjoying along with Mark the sweet jazz concerts on Sunday evenings or the burgers we treated ourselves to only once in a while.
In summer, lots of Leytonstoners gathered in the inner garden, whose walls were covered in many graffiti of varied quality. The decoration in the main hall respected the old structure of the building, and the many chips along the walls made the bricks visible from the inside. Long bronze pillars, green with rust, supported the high ceiling, giving the place a decadent tone and offering an open space to the visitors. I loved the way they distributed tables and chairs, uneven and made in diverse shapes and types of wood, a good sign you were entering a great British pub. Some of them were too big to be occupied by one person or even by a couple, so it wasn’t uncommon to see complete strangers sitting close together and pretending they didn’t see each other as only a good Londoner can. It was the perfect venue for a dinner date. But not that night. That night would be in central London. So we left the Black Hart behind and continued our walk to the Underground.
I hated the tube. It was too hot and smelly in summer, and in winter you had to peel all the layers you wore not to end up sweating your life away. Crowds of people moved at once as if they weren’t individuals, just a tide of bodies struggling to be in time, crawling in the hole like a mob of human worms desperate to find the exit and breathe. In a city like London, where it’s slow and rather unpractical to move by car, bus or taxi, the tube, like death, didn’t make any distinctions between poor and rich. Everybody was dragged into the hole on a more or less regular basis, overwhelmed by its supreme power. It was the centre of every journey for those who didn’t cycle and had to move around the city to work, go to the university or have fun.
Two major groups of travellers inhabited the tube: the commuters and the tourists. They coexisted rather pacifically, since the times they used the Underground were usually different. However, inevitable clashes took place from time to time, and the commuters, armed with faces of disapproval, showed their despair to the tourists, who tended to defend themselves with a passive and insulting indifference. Not a single word was pronounced in this eternal war, but communication was more fluent than the most eloquent of speeches.
On this night, we were lucky and could find a place to sit together to play the game every Londoner who gets in the tube secretly plays: avoid the eyes of the rest of passengers. The game is compulsory, you can’t not play, and only children are allowed to skip this ritual and stare unpunished at adults. Sometimes, if you are skilful enough, you can look at others without being noticed using a window just to realise some people – mostly those who belong to the group of the tourists – stare at you when they think you can’t see them.
When I first arrived in the city, I had to forget everything I thought I knew about personal space and adapt the best I could to feeling unknown faces just inches from mine or even being in direct contact with several bodies at once. It was disgusting at the beginning, then bearable, and with time, I learned to live with it and ignore them all. It became a natural part of life, like breathing or going to the toilet.
It was a thirty minutes journey, just in time to see the lights of the buildings along the river banks splashing the autumn night as we walked the Golden Jubilee Bridge to Southbank. I think that was my favourite view of the city. Saint Paul’s Cathedral and the skyscrapers on the north side of the Thames and the mighty Shard in front of them, all powered by the unusual light you can only see in a big city at night.
We crossed the bridge in no rush. It was our night, it was still 7:30 pm and we had told Karen we’d come back before midnight. Southbank was a human anthill, pierced by long lines of people having an amble alongside the wide river, enjoying the cafés and the pubs and the fluorescent colours of the London Eye, just in front of the Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. The weather wasn’t cold enough to prevent groups of friends, families and couples from enjoying a peaceful evening outdoors, congesting terraces and bars and filling the night with their constant humming.
> We had booked a table for 8:30 pm, so we decided to enter one of the bars next to the end of the bridge to have a pint or two. The beer was expensive, even for London standards, but we didn’t need to worry about money – not tonight. I couldn’t even remember the last time we had a little time for ourselves.
Mark ordered an ale for himself and a lager for me. He used to make fun of me for disliking what he called “an authentic beer.”
“Why don’t you just order water?” he told me sometimes.
“Why don’t you just order a brain?” was always my answer.
It’s not that I didn’t want to try. I did try multiple times, and with a very open mind, but I won’t be sorry for wanting my beer to be ice-cold and fizzy.
One pint later, and all the main small talk topics had been covered. Then we moved to our future together with Jaime and Happy, the family’s new superstar. It was an exciting night. Mark would be appointed as CEO, I’d get a job in the City, Jaime would finally settle in and we’d be a happy family ever after.
With these promising dreams and the merry look in our eyes and my hand caressing his face and the back of his head, the time came to go to the restaurant.
I was standing on the threshold when I first felt it. The same chill I had sensed a few months ago when I left work to go home. I knew nothing wrong was happening to Mark this time, though, as he was right next to me.
The Outcast Son Page 7
