‘It’s a well.’ She unslung her bag from her shoulder and found a 25 peseta coin – the one with a hole in it – and dropped it down. Nothing happened and she was amazed at the silence. How could there be nothing? Where was the sound of the coin dropping into the water below –
spluck!
She couldn’t believe the depth. She took another coin and dropped it and counted as if making an exposure. A thousand and one – silence – a thousand and two – silence – a thousand and three – still silence – a thou –
spluck!
She heaved herself up again and looked into the well. The disc of light at the bottom rippled. There was something so right about this place. It was affecting her body. Her knees began to tremble. She held tight to the well head. She had to sit down on the steps and lean her back against the font.
She sat for the best part of an hour, sunbathing and absorbing the place. Occasionally she changed her position on the steps or walked in and out of the shadow of the cloisters. The place emphasised her aloneness. It felt as if it had been made for her and she should share it with no one. The cloister was a well for light – the cloister was a well for water. The word Omphalos came into her head. She connected the word to a poem of Heaney’s she’d read somewhere. The stone that marked the centre of the world. The navel.
The sunlight and the clarity of the air squeezed into such a small space by the surrounding roofs became a lens which made her see herself with more precision. She did not think of herself as a middle-aged woman – she was still the same person she had been all her life – a child being bathed by her own mother – a teenager kissing. She was the same bride, the same mother-to-be in white socks and stirrups on the delivery table. Her soul was the same as that younger girl. She felt the same.
Soul was a word. What did it mean? People talked of stripping away layers to reveal the soul. It was not buried deep within her. It wasn’t like that at all. Her soul was herself – it was the way she treated other people, it was the love for her children, for the people around her and for people she had never seen but felt responsible for. Her soul was the way she treated the world – ants and all.
She smiled at herself. In this place she knew who she was. In the hour she’d been here it had become sacred. She would remember this haven – this cloister – for the rest of her life.
By the time she got to the beach Jimmy was already there. He was lying flat out on a sun-bed with his back to the sun. Maureen went up and nudged his elbow with her shin.
‘Hi.’
‘Buenos días,’ he said. He looked up sideways at her. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Around. I went up into the old town.’
‘See anything?’
‘The shops were closed. So was the church. Siesta.’
‘What kept you?’
‘Exploring. I had a coffee. Sat in an old courtyard for a while.’ It was too late in the day to get the value out of lying on a sunbed so she began spreading a towel, having flapped it free of sand. ‘Oh there’s a fiesta tomorrow night – fireworks, specially for us leaving.’
‘That’s nice of them.’
‘How are you feeling now?’
‘Hunky dory.’ But he groaned all the same when he was turning over to get the sun on his chest. He cradled the back of his head in his hands and from between his feet watched the German girl and her boyfriend. ‘You missed it earlier on,’ he said. ‘I’m sure she was lying on his hand.’
‘Jimmy – leave them alone. Don’t be such a . . .’
‘Remember that?’
‘Sometimes I don’t know what goes on in men’s minds.’ She took off her shorts and T-shirt and lay down on the carefully spread towel. The beach was noisy – an English crowd were shouting their heads off at the water’s edge – there was a baby crying having its nappy changed – euro-pop played and dishes rattled constantly in the beach café. ‘Or whether they’ve got minds at all.’
The next evening before they went out to eat they decided to try and get the whiskey ‘used up’ before going home. Because it was their last night they decided to dress up a bit. They sat on the balcony while it was still light. Maureen had a small whiskey and he a much bigger one.
‘I better leave enough for a nightcap,’ said Jimmy.
‘But you’ll be drinking all evening.’
‘A nightcap’s a nightcap. We judged the bottle well.’
‘We?’
‘Almost as well as the All-Bran. If we were to stay here a day longer the bowels would grind to a halt.’
They sat staring at the view – the sea straight at the horizon – the white buildings, the palm trees, the cranes.
‘I’m going to miss this,’ said Maureen. All that week they had seen no-one working on the unfinished apartments. The cranes were unmanned but they moved imperceptibly – at no time did they respond like a weather vane to the wind but whenever Maureen or Jimmy had occasion to look up the cranes would be in different positions and at different angles to each other.
‘The recession must be hitting here too,’ said Jimmy.
‘It’s back to normal next week.’
‘Don’t mention it – don’t ruin our last night.’
‘I think – I’ve been thinking . . . now that the kids are practically gone I might try and get a job.’
‘Doing what?’
She shrugged.
‘I might train for something.’
‘At your age?’ said Jimmy. ‘No chance.’
‘Why do you always put me down?’
‘I’m just being realistic, Maureen.’
‘I got three distinctions in A levels. I held a good job in the photo works up until you came along.’
‘They were the days of black and white.’ He laughed.
‘They were the days when they sacked you for being pregnant.’
He finished his whiskey and stood.
‘We’d better go if we want to eat and firework. Do I look okay?’
‘Yeah, fine.’ She picked a few grey hairs off the collar of his navy blazer and dusted away some dandruff.
‘You look good,’ he said and kissed her.
During the meal in the restaurant Jimmy drank three-quarters of the bottle of wine. He dismissed white wine as not drinking at all – ‘imbibing for young girls’, he called it. By the time they’d had their coffee Jimmy had finished the bottle. Maureen noticed that he was looking over her shoulder more than usual during the meal. She glanced round and saw an attractive, tanned girl in a white dress sitting by herself.
‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’ said Jimmy.
Maureen nodded. ‘Why’s she by herself?’
‘Because her lover has just gone to the crapper.’
‘And there was me building a romantic story . . .’
‘Do you want the rest of your wine?’
Maureen shook her head. He poured what was left of her glass into his.
‘Get the bill, Jimmy.’ He put his arm in the air and attracted the attention of the waiter. Left alone again he said,
‘A woman by herself is the most erotic thought a man can have.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘By herself she is the complete item. The brain, the body, the emotions. In the shower, in bed. Uninterfered with. Herself.’
‘I still don’t understand.’
‘Sexy. Absorbed. Unreachable. Aloof. Detached.’
‘I thought sexy was the opposite of detached.’
‘A woman in a shop’, said Jimmy, ‘by herself is absorbed – choosing something to wear – looking through a rack of dresses.’
‘Or even studying a book – or even writing a book.’
‘You’re really fucking bolshie this evening.’
The partner of the woman in white returned to the table.
‘He’s back,’ said Jimmy. Maureen twisted in her seat to see.
‘They can’t be married,’ she said. ‘She smiled at him. That’s very early days. Second or third date.’
‘Remember that?’
She smiled and put her hand on his.
‘I do,’ said Maureen. ‘Vividly.’
‘That was a time of finding out . . . of knowing everything there is to know . . . There must be no privacy between people in love.’
‘Crap Jimmy. You’re talking the impossible. Anyway, there can never be a situation where you know everything about another person. It’s harder to know one thing for sure.’
‘Maybe.’
‘When there’s nothing left to know there’s no mystery. We would all be so utterly predictable.’
The waiter brought the bill and they paid and left. Maureen checked her watch and saw there were only a couple of minutes before the fireworks were due to start. They walked quickly towards the main square.
It was a large open area overlooking the harbour. At the back of the square were the dark shapes of civic buildings. Gardens and pavements and steps descended to the sea. There were trees of different varieties symmetrically spaced. Looped between the trees were what looked like fairy lights but they were not working. Jimmy pointed them out to Maureen and laughed.
‘They’re about as organised as the Irish,’ he said. ‘If they had a microphone it’d whine.’
The square was filled with local people waiting for the fireworks. Amongst them, holidaymakers like Jimmy and Maureen were obvious.
Suddenly there was a whoosh of a rocket followed by an ear-shattering bang. Both Maureen and Jimmy jumped visibly. There was a sound of drums and the raucous piping noise of a shawm and ten or so figures pranced into the middle of the square.
‘It’s the fucking Ku-Klax-Klan,’ said Jimmy.
They were dressed in white overalls, some like sheets, some like rough suits. Their heads were hidden in triangular hoods with eye-slits. Two or three of them were whacking drums, all of them were dancing – leaping and cart-wheeling.
‘I don’t like the look of these guys.’
‘They’re really spooky.’
‘Like drunk ghosts.’
‘They’re more like your man – Miro,’ said Maureen. The figures danced and dervished around, whirling hand-held fireworks and scattering fire crackers amongst the crowd who screamed and jostled out of their way.
‘Jumpin jinnies, we used to call those,’ shouted Maureen. The troupe of dancers pushed sculptures on wheels with fireworks attached – shapes of crescent moons, of angular trees, of whirling globes – from which rockets and Roman candles burst red and green and yellow over the heads of the public. Between the feet of the bystanders crackers exploded. The air was filled with screams of both adults and children as they leapt away from them.
‘Jesus – this is so dangerous,’ said Jimmy. ‘They’re breaking every regulation in the book.’ The drums pounded and the pipe screeched on. As the sculptures were swung round they gushed sparks – sometimes it looked as if the sculptures moved because of the sparks – jet-propelled.
‘Those robes must be fire-proofed. This wouldn’t be allowed at home. It scares the shit outa me – All-Bran or no All-Bran.’
‘It’s so utterly primitive – prehistoric,’ said Maureen.
‘How could it be prehistoric. Gunpowder was invented in the middle ages.’
‘There would have been an equivalent – fire, torches, sparks.’
‘Come on let’s get outa here before somebody gets hurt.’
The troupe had split up and before Jimmy and Maureen could move three dancers had run up the steps and appeared behind them. Close up their robes were embroidered with Miro-like symbols. One of them held aloft a thing that looked like the spokes of an umbrella. Suddenly it burst into roaring fire – five Catherine wheels with whistles on them spraying sparks in every direction. They rained down on the crowd – white magnesium sparks – drenching them in light and danger and everyone screamed and covered their heads with their hands.
‘Fucking hell,’ shouted Jimmy. Maureen saw the white hot sparks bouncing off the cobblestones like dashing rain – white, intense, like welder’s sparks. She tried to cover her head – she knew the skin of her shoulders was bare. But she felt nothing. Neither did Jimmy. They ran, Jimmy elbowing his way through the crowd away from the dancers, pulling Maureen after him by the hand. On the edge of the crowd they looked at each other and laughed.
‘They’re like kids’ hand-held fireworks,’ said Jimmy. ‘They’re harmless. Fuckin sparklers.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m not going back to check, I’ll tell you that.’
Again there was a series of enormous explosions just above their heads so that Maureen screamed out. What Jimmy had thought were broken fairy lights were fire crackers going off a few feet above their heads. They both ran holding hands.
They stopped at a small pavement area outside a bistro still in sight of the fireworks and they were both given a free sherry. The three supposed priests sat at a table near the door. They nodded recognition to each other. Jimmy ordered Menorcan gin and because he was going home the next evening allowed the barman to fill the glass with ice. They sat at the same side of the table, shoulder to shoulder, at a safe distance from the fireworks.
‘It’s pure street theatre,’ said Maureen. ‘The audience are involved because of their fear. The adrenalin flows. The costumes, the music, the fire –’
‘It could never happen at home.’
‘Yeah, we kill people outright.’
‘The danger brings pleasure. It involves the audience totally.’
‘Look,’ said Jimmy. The young German couple were walking away from the fireworks. They had an arm around each other. They stopped to kiss and the boy slid both his hands down onto Heidrun’s backside to hold her closer.
‘They make a fine couple – even though we don’t know their language.’ When the kiss was finished the lovers walked past the bistro. The boy’s hand was worming its way down the back of her shorts and Heidrun was leaning her blonde head against his shoulder.
Jimmy mimicked the gesture and laid his head on Maureen’s bare shoulder.
‘I’d still be interested to know how far you went with previous – the men before me? You knew some pretty good tricks.’
She looked at him tight-lipped then moved away from his head.
‘I wouldn’t like to see you with another man now – but I’d like to have seen you with one then.’
‘This got us nowhere before,’ she said quietly. ‘Jimmy, give it a rest.’
‘No, why should I? Tell me about the first time you came, then.’
‘I would if I could – if it’s SO important to you. But I can’t so I won’t. Would you like to ask your daughters this question the next time you see them?’
‘Don’t be stupid. That’s a totally different thing.’
‘I don’t see why.’
‘Why can’t you tell me?’ said Jimmy. ‘You’re repressed. Why can’t we talk openly about this?’
‘It’s you that’s repressed,’ she almost shouted, ‘wanting to know stuff like that. It’s becoming a fixation.’
‘It was a question I’d always wanted to ask. I thought – what better time. Holiday. Alone. No kids.’
‘No time is a good time for questions like that.’
When she lifted her sherry her hand was shaking.
‘Don’t make such a big thing of it.’
‘When you do those kind of things with people there’s a pact – a kind of unspoken thing – that it’s private – that it’s just between the two of you. Secrecy is a matter of honour.’
‘So you have done it.’
‘No – don’t be so stupid – it could be just kissing or affection or kidding on or flirting. Whatever it was it’s none of your fucking business.’
She did not finish her sherry but got to her feet.
‘I’m going home. You can stay here with your priests, if you like.’
At about three o’clock Jimmy crawled into bed beside her and wakened her from a deep sleep. He was drunk
and crying and apologising and patting her shoulder and telling her how good she was and how much she meant to him and that he would never ever ever ever leave her. He was a pest but that’s the way he was and she could like it or lump it. But she was a wonderful woman.
Collected Stories Page 44
