by Alice Jolly
One gets tired of not understanding. I speak some French but I’ve never made any effort to become good at it because it’s a language I hate. I find it circuitous and flabby – a language for men who want to talk about themselves too much. I exist in a state of verbal confusion. The muscles in my face ache with smiling. Yes. Nod. Smile. Yes. I dread to think what I’ve said yes to since I’ve been here. Tonight I decide I’ll stay at home. I’m cold and tired and I want to soak in a hot bath. I stand in the sitting room and stare out at the city. Below me the wheels of cars ripple over the cobbles and there’s music playing in a bar.
On the table there’s a letter from Nanda – prickly handwriting growing over the envelope. The latest news from the Grannies’ Commune. I read the letter this morning but now I pick it up and read it again. Her main news is that Bullseye is dead and I’m sad about that, but also I think spitefully – well, he was only a dog. It seems that in my family there’s more than the usual amount of misdirected grief.
I take my new roving telephone, which I’ve only had for a week, to the window. I dial Adam’s number, although I know he isn’t in London. Four rings, and then a click. This is seven-three-six, four-nine-two-eight. I can’t take your call at the moment but please leave a message and I’ll get back to you. His voice is low and it rustles over the softer sounds. I put the phone down before the end of the beeps. Then I dial the number again. This is seven-three-six, four-nine-two-eight …
From the window I can see the Palais de Justice with its ring of scaffolding like a crown of thorns. And a gap in the jumbled rooftops, marking out the shape of a cobbled square, bigger than a football pitch, which is where the flea market is. It happens every day – a ragged bunch of stalls and piles of furniture. It’s as though houses have been cut open down the middle and spilled all their innards across the cobbles. Books and records, and jewellery and shoes, and old photographs, and hats. People’s whole lives are there. Freddy would be in paradise. The morning I spent there with Adam opens up in my mind.
Above the high roofs of Brussels the sky is mottled grey. A blustery wind tugs at trees and lace petticoats on coat hangers and old newspapers in piles. Thin rain comes down at us sideways, blown by the wind, splattering our cheeks and blowing under our coat collars.
On a sheet of tarpaulin, spread with pots and pans, between an old radio and a sewing machine, I spot red shoes made of suede – fifties jazz club kind of shoes with slingbacks and square bows on the front. Dorothy-in-the-Wizard-of-Oz shoes. I stoop down to look at them and touch the blood red suede. ‘Unfortunately I don’t think they would fit me,’ I say to Adam.
‘Uuum, and they don’t exactly look the most practical shoes,’ Adam says.
‘Would you mind waiting while I try them on?’
It’s an effort to get my boot and my sock off and my foot is suddenly exposed to the cold wind. I hold on to Adam’s coat as I balance on one leg, and don’t look at his face as I suspect that he might be getting annoyed. The shoes have cream leather insides and worn-out gold writing. The upper edge of them has been stretched into the shape of the last owner’s feet. The suede on one of the heels is slightly torn. They look small but strangely my foot slips straight into them so I buy them. And then I buy a wonderful dress made of creamy gold satin with a pattern of big red roses and a 1950s full skirt. Adam probably thinks that these purchases are a little strange.
The rain gets angrier so we go to a tabac for a coffee. One of my neighbours is there – Señor J. Sanchez. I know his name because it’s written on his doorbell. He lives in the flat below. He’s dark and thin, with untidy black hair and he wears a velvet jacket, and a shirt with too-long collars, and a pair of worn leather slippers. Now he’s standing at the bar with a group of Spaniards, including a friend of his who I’ve also seen before. They are wrapped in overcoats, looking gloomy and cold. We get talking and I long to be able to speak Spanish. Adam asks Señor Sanchez if he likes Brussels.
‘If you are taking a flower out of its natural climate then it will die,’ Señor Sanchez replies. Both Adam and I are rather floored by that comment, so we nod, smile, and say goodbye.
‘Gay, don’t you think?’ Adam says after we’ve moved to the window. ‘Or perhaps just a bit slimey.’
‘Well, Spanish,’ I say. ‘What can you expect?’
Outside, the rain is still coming down sideways, so I wrap my scarf around my head as we pass under the awnings of stalls piled with fruit and fish and cheese. An old-sock smell rises around us and a chilly smell of fish. Adam has my hand gripped in his. A whole stall is devoted to mushrooms and some of the people there have red-veined country faces, and mud on their boots, so that I think about Nanda. Then we come to a stall where a man is cooking paella and tortilla over a gas stove.
‘Let’s get some,’ I say to Adam. The man cuts through the crisp brown top of the tortilla to where the egg is still runny inside. I breathe in the smell of cooked onions and olive oil. ‘Mmm, my favourite thing …’
We decide to eat the tortilla straightaway so, standing under the dripping awning of a fruit stall, we break it in two. I stand very close to Adam so that the wool of my coat touches against his suede jacket. There are onions inside the tortilla, brown and sticky, and potatoes, and a hint of pepper. It’s hard to eat it without it falling to bits. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ I say.
‘Mmm,’ he says. ‘Wonderful – but a bit greasy.’
The rain stops but still glistens on the wet cobbles. I take my scarf off my head and shake back my damp hair. We look at each other, with tortilla still gripped in both hands. The sun is warm on us, and I lean up to kiss him and his mouth tastes of tortilla. He puts his hand on the top of my head and pushes my hair back out of my eyes.
We walk on and I stop to look at old sepia photographs spilt in a pile on the cobbles and resting on top of a commode. Some are wet from the rain. I pick up a photograph and the face of a small girl in a white dress looks out at me. Another photograph is of a group, outside a farm, probably a country wedding. In another a young couple pose next to a palm in a pot and a Grecian column. Their eyes see only the air straight in front of them.
‘I feel like I should buy them,’ I say to Adam.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. It just seems so sad – indecent really, for photographs like that to be here.’
Adam peers down at me, puzzled. I shuffle through the photographs, wiping the ones which are wet on the end of my scarf. The little girl in the white dress has fierce eyes and looks as though she intends to squeeze the life out of the bunch of flowers in her hands. The rain is starting again and Adam wants to go. Still I am holding the photographs. I ask the man behind the stall how much they cost. He names a price, far too much, and I pay him. Adam raises his eyebrows, shakes his head, then bends to kiss my forehead. I hold the photographs pressed against me.
Time for a bath. I’ve been longing for one all day. I turn on my Roberts radio, which Freddy gave me years ago, and leave it standing on the floor, quietly babbling at me in English. From below, there’s the sound of a piano, three or four notes, resolved by a chord – a sound like the beginning of spring. The notes are played again.
My bathroom is painted in so many layers of shiny, peppermint green that there are dried blobs and drips of it on every edge. Cobwebs cling to the knobbled joints of pipework. The bath is one of the reasons why I took this flat. The pot-bellied weight of it rests on elegant, clawed feet, and it’s so deep that I can hardly see over the sides of it. I twist the stiff bath taps, and there’s a high-pitched squeal and tea-coloured water rushes out.
I wait until the bath is nearly full, then I take a deep breath and plunge a foot in – but the water is cold, so cold that the shock of it shudders up my leg. I hop across the bathroom, and collapse on the loo seat. I think of Nanda, and I want to go home. This has happened before, but always I’ve been able to re-light the pilot light. Now it won’t re-light, no matter how often I try, and I run out of matches, striking them
again and again to no effect. I wonder if the British Embassy would have a hot-water department? I wander back into the emptiness of the sitting room, and stand with my head in my hands, groaning.
I find a T-shirt, and pyjama bottoms, and drag my stiff limbs onto the landing. I think of my neighbour Señor Sanchez. I’ll have to give him a try, there’s no other choice. In the darkness the chord echoes again in the stairwell. Dust sticks to my wet foot as I go down the stairs. Below me there’s an open door and a sliver of light, and a smell of oily foreign cooking. Señor Sanchez always has his front door open. I see that when I walk up the stairs, which I have to do quite often as the lift is always broken. Now, through the open door, I can see a flat like mine with the hall painted the colour of processed peas, and a fringed hessian wall hanging depicting a lurid Mediterranean coastline.
In the sitting room a lamp shines on him as he sits at a piano, his arm moving away from him as he picks out notes. I’ve made no sound but he swivels around on the piano stool, watches me for a moment, and then comes to the door. He wears the same velvet jacket, the same long-collared shirt, the same pair of worn leather slippers. ‘Buenas tardes, señora.’ There’s a soft hiss to his voice, and his lips roll back over the words, revealing white teeth. Perhaps I could have waited until tomorrow.
‘Buenas tardes, señor.’ I’m conscious of the low neck of my T-shirt. ‘Tengo un problema …’ My throat is tight and dusty, and I’m at the limit of the language which should have been my mother tongue. ‘Uuum … the water heater.’
‘Ah, si, for the bath.’ I hurry back towards the stairs, hearing his slippered feet behind me. ‘Si, I know, is difficult,’ he says. ‘Is a very old system. Not a good system. I help you.’ His feet are rooted to the spot, heels together, and his toes turn slightly outwards. His arms wave like a windmill as he talks. His trousers are pulled up too high, and secured with braces. Now he stands beside the bath with his weight on one leg and his hand jiggling change in the pocket of his trousers. If this guy was in a sitcom you’d think he was overacting – but then that’s the problem with living abroad, it doesn’t break down racial stereotypes, it reinforces them.
‘But you are Spanish?’ he says with a grin.
‘No, I’m English.’
‘Ah, si.’ He turns to the water heater. ‘You have matches?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’ His face is too close to mine and my skin winces. He smells of red wine, and smoke. The light from the bare bulb shines on his high forehead. Reaching down into the icy water, I pull out the plug.
‘Wait, wait,’ he says, and disappears. I stand beside the bath, shivering, and looking at my peppermint-tinged face in the mirror above the sink.
‘What is you name?’
‘Maggie.’
He raises questioning eyebrows.
‘Well, Magdalena really.’
‘Ah, Magdalena.’ He makes a short and muscular word of it, with a hiccough in the middle. He strikes a match and turns a knob on the heater. ‘Very dangerous, this heater. In fact, not legal. The señora says she has not money for a proper heater, but is no true.’
He mumbles Spanish swearwords and strikes a second match. His fingers are long and stretchy, with too many joints in them. ‘I am from Sevilla,’ he says.
‘Oh really.’
He asks about my job and I explain. ‘The European Community.’ He shakes his head and turns down the sides of his mouth. ‘In Spain perhaps we are not having a good economy or making BMW cars, but we have beautiful wine, beautiful women, beautiful – how you say? – arquitectura. For what are we needing an economy?’
I’d be inclined to agree, but right now I just want my water heater fixed. He lights a match and the flame flares. The smile has gone from his face. ‘You are too cold.’
‘Yes.’
He removes his finger from the knob and reaches down to turn on the bath tap. He puts his hand under the stream of water. ‘Si, si. Is becoming hot now.’ He looks up at me, and he’s smiling again. ‘You like it in Brussels?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t been here long.’
I wish he’d go now, but he’s watching me with intense eyes that are rather too close together and shadowed on either side of his beaky nose. I remember Adam’s suggestion – gay? I don’t think so. There’s silence. I need to say something. ‘Do you like it here?’
He shrugs and rolls his eyes. Silence except for the rushing water. He’s got his eyes fixed on the top of my T-shirt. ‘No one can fall in love in this city.’
He stretches that word out like an elastic band.
I sidle backwards to the front door and stand there, holding it open for him. ‘Well, thank you. Thank you very much for fixing the water.’
‘No problem,’ he says. ‘You come if you want something. Buenas noches.’ He goes out of the door and halfway down he stops and waves a long-fingered hand at me. I shut the door and lock it, then I stand in the steaming bath water, lifting one foot and then the other, while the blood throbs back into my feet.
I think of the desk in Adam’s bedroom. Even as we lie in bed together I can see it, neatly stacked with political biographies, history books, press cuttings, plastic folders full of interview notes and photocopies of Hansard. He takes care not to talk about his book because he knows that I don’t want to know. But in a way it’s stupid not to talk because the more you don’t talk about something, the bigger it gets. Words limit things.
Sometimes I pretend that in that pile of books and papers he’s going to find some proof that Dad is innocent. But, of course, I’m a fool, a total fool, and I know it. Because as he burrows further and further into those papers it’s not Dad’s innocence he’s going to uncover, but my lie. How did I allow myself to be drawn into the situation? The hotplate, the cliff’s edge.
I should give him up now rather than wait for the moment when he realises what I really am. I should give him up and find someone else. But there won’t be someone else. I’ve waited twenty-eight years for him. So I make the most of every minute, enjoying the luxury of his love, knowing that it can’t last. In my mind I used to criticise Dad for living in a world of illusion. Now I pray – let my lie last just one more weekend.
*
In the place between waking and sleep my sagging eyes watch the twisted leaves and the faces of animals carved on the foot of the bed. Whenever I ask Nanda about my mother her eyes become vague as sunlight.
What do you remember about her? I used to ask that question. Nanda would shake her head and say – she wouldn’t leave the tap running even for a moment. She couldn’t understand how we could waste so much water. That’s all she said. Now I don’t ask any more. I suppose it was all a scandal. English public schoolboy, straight out of Cambridge, suddenly marries unknown Spaniard. An inconvenient mistake.
Now that last weekend at Thwaite Cottages comes back to me. February, before I left for Brussels. Freddy is building a bonfire in the garden. The mist hasn’t lifted all day and there’s frost on the ground. I go to Theodora’s study.
‘Is Nanda all right?’ I ask. ‘She does seem tired.’
Theodora sits at her desk in elegant layers of silk and wool and peers at me over the top of her spectacles. She has never known what to say to me. I’m in a category marked ‘child’ and she can’t deal with children. If she had to look after me, when I was little, she used to hide in the loo and read a book and I used to watch her through the crack in the door.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I think Nanda is tired.’
‘But is she all right?’
‘Yes, of course. Now don’t make a fuss. You know she doesn’t like fuss.’
‘She doesn’t seem particularly pleased to see me.’
I hate myself for sounding so self-centred.
Theodora turns away from me. ‘I don’t think it’s that,’ she says. ‘I just think that perhaps Nanda has reached the limits of people. Not you in particular, just people in general.’
‘What is there after people?
’
Theodora looks at me in amazement and shakes her head so that her long pearl earrings swing. The conversation comes to a halt. It’s always the same. Theodora, Nanda, Freddy – they’ve got the Operating Instructions but they’re not sharing them.
I go outside and help Freddy carry wood for the bonfire. In the mist we’re like ghosts, edgeless and indistinct. The cottages are a shadow in the distance and the greenhouse glistens like an ice palace. Freddy carried a huge branch across her back, staggering under the weight of it. I help her with smaller branches, my nose running in the cold, and my hands covered with damp green lichen. It is getting dark, the mist turning from white to grey.
As always, Freddy terrorises me with her competence.
‘Don’t drop so many bits … and put the branches up higher, can’t you?’
‘Look, I’m doing my best.’
‘Yes, I know. That’s exactly what’s worrying me.’
The frost rustles underfoot. Twigs catch in my jumper and moss gets stuck under my fingernails. The growing bonfire looks like the ribcage of a dead dinosaur rising up through the mist. Freddy sticks her fork in the ground and undoes her jacket, then wipes her face with her handkerchief. When the bonfire is ready to light I go inside to fetch Nanda.
Freddy reaches into the centre of the fire with a match. A crackle, then a bang, before the flames leap up, roaring through the heap of twigs, and rising high, making the air above the bonfire thicken and shiver. I stand beside it, feeling the heat, blinking as the smoke stings in my eyes. Guy Fawkes figures dance in the golden yellow, forming then dissolving, their limbs flailing.
We watch until the middle of the bonfire has burnt out and there’s only white ash left. With a fork Freddy moves the branches that still remain into the centre. The mist is clearing now as the wind rises. The fire blazes and crackles again and our eyes water with the smoke and heat. Then there are no more branches to put on. Nanda bends down to pull at a small branch at the side of the fire. The end is alight and white hot. The flames move down slowly towards her hand. At the last minute she throws the stick back onto the fire. In a gust of wind, the flames flare again, suddenly lighting up her face, her grey hair standing on end and a black smudge on her cheek.
