Alentejo Blue (22 page)

That’s what all this is about though. Harry bloody Stanton. I mean, it can’t be about the baby. All that anger. He’s got a talent for it, I’ll give him that. My husband is good at being angry and it made him good at his job. It’s not much use to him out here. He’s got a chance now, I suppose, so he’s making the most. Bet he doesn’t even think about the baby. I do. If you’re Catholic you believe a new life is created the moment the sperm enters the egg. That’s another soul being born. And then you’ve got to believe that when the body dies, the soul carries on. The soul doesn’t die. You’ve got a soul but no body. I can’t say that sounds so bad to me.

This happened.

I was at the well, getting water to boil up the sheets. The sun was shining and it was raining that needle kind of rain. It looked like someone had thrown a stripy sock across the sky. The rainbow was that bright. There was a woodpecker in the cork oak that spreads across the toilet hut; a nuthatch flew into the mimosa and an eagle no less fussing about over the pines. Sometimes it hits you like that. All this nature.

I’d got two buckets up and I was going to go back when I heard the car. In this place, when you hear a car you always wait to see who it is. Imagine doing that in Yarmouth. The two men got out first. They looked like locals but with suits and ties, which was confusing. Then China got out. Then Jay.

He said, ‘Mum,’ and gave me a hug and backed away, all without looking at me.

I said, ‘Your hair’s getting long, almost an inch now.’ There was a hole in the top of his trainers and I thought, not another pair.

I don’t know who spoke next and I can’t remember who said what as we went up to the caravan. When we sat down everyone’s knees were almost touching like we were about to play pat-a-cake. The man with the blue tie and the fat neck was Senhor Luis Costa and the one with the green tie and the high forehead was Senhor Helder Pedro Something Something de Araujo. They were policemen and they had come down from Lisbon.

After that they switched to Portuguese because, please forgive them, their English was not too good and Senhor de Araujo said that Jay was going to translate for everyone.

‘What’s she gone and done now?’ I was prepared for anything.

My husband rubbed his palms on his knees. I thought, there’s hair growing out of his ears like an old man. I’d never noticed that before. I felt sorry for him then, if you can believe that.

‘She’s done nothing,’ he said. ‘If,’ he said, ‘you don’t count opening her legs to every Tom, Dick and Harry.’

When we were courting I used to look into his eyes and they were such a soft, soft blue. I thought that meant something. The blue’s turned watery now, if you see it at all beneath the red. But we had some wonderful times. Our parties were the best, nobody would say different, China holding court in that smelly afghan he used to wear, my saviour. I was saved, for a while. I was.

Senhor de Araujo said something to Jay.
Diga a ela,
he said. Tell her.

Jay wrapped his arms across his chest like he was cold, though it was getting quite hot in the caravan with all of us steaming it up. He says they’ve come here to talk about something serious. He says that he wants you to help him and not to hide anything. He says that they are going to interview you and he wants your full . . .

Jay didn’t know the word. My husband leaned forward and he smelled of the goats. ‘Cooperation.’

‘Ah yes, cooperation,’ Senhor de Araujo said. If you’re a policeman perhaps you know that word in many languages. His forehead looked like an eggshell, the exact same shade I get from my best layer. His friend had taken a little spiral-bound notebook out of his jacket. The end of his pen was chewed. Senhor de Araujo spoke some more.

‘He wants your name and address,’ said Jay.

I didn’t say anything.

‘Get on with it,’ my husband said. ‘You know who she fucking is.’

Senhor de Araujo and Senhor Costa looked at each other. You could tell what they were thinking.

Senhor de Araujo talked at Jay, who twitched and fidgeted and drummed his feet on the floor until I almost gave him a slap. I thought, when Michelle gets back and hears that my husband tried to have me arrested for breaking into her property she’s going to wet herself. I smiled at the one with the fat neck, Senhor Costa, but he just stared at me like I was going to break down and confess because of how powerful he was. I smiled at my husband as well because he of all people should know that I have never, not ever, told the police a single thing. Eggy Head had hold of Jay’s elbow. He lifted it up and down. Policemen always come in pairs like that, the one that talks and the one that doesn’t. The stringy ones usually do the talking.

‘Come on, Jay,’ I said. ‘Get it over with. Nothing to worry about.’

He turned his face away from me. His ear was like one of those sunsets you get sometimes at the end of a long summer’s day, all red and swollen and throbbing.

He started talking then. I wasn’t listening properly, I was thinking about when you see the Asian kids translate for their mums. The mums wear saris or baggy coloured pyjamas or sometimes a big black bag that covers everything except their eyes, so you don’t really expect them to understand anything much. I was thinking I’m like that now. I’m the bloody foreigner.

‘He says if they find out all of these things that have been said about you are true –’ speaking fast, gabbling – ‘then you will be arrested and the charge will be –’ Jay looked at me then and I knew just before he said it, what he was going to say – ‘and the charge will be murder.’

Now that is such an ordinary word. No music to it at all. We use it all the time. It was murder at the shops today. I’ll murder you if you don’t stop that right now. I could murder a cup of tea. See. It doesn’t set you off. It’s not what I call a special word.

I had one of those things last night. An
out-of-body experience.
I must have lifted that tin roof right off because I was up high, higher than the trees, the pylons, the hills, and it was dark but I could see everything and I saw a woman, I knew it was me, and she was lying in the caravan where the seats push together to make a bed and she had a knife in her hand, she was drawing it very carefully across her forearm, writing a message perhaps, concentrating hard and bleeding softly on the sheets.

I left the car in Mamarrosa and walked to the house right through the woods. The ground was crispy underfoot, a bit of frost in the early morning, though you could still feel how soft it was below that top layer. I saw a nightjar, three bee-eaters and I lost count of the hawfinches. Before I met Michelle I never knew what any of the birds were called, apart from the obvious ones, the owls or the eagles or the storks and herons down along the lagoons. If you can’t name something it’s hard to be interested. You go, there’s a little bird, big deal. So I saw all these birds and I was that busy looking at them I forgot to look where I was going and got a bit lost. But I was still there early, the last of the mist drifting off the branches, and I had a long wait behind that big old tree on the slope where Jay used to have a rope swing. They came out about eleven o’clock and got on the Honda. How many times have I told China to make Jay wear a helmet? I knew he wouldn’t be going to school, not without me there.

It makes a hell of a noise, that bike. The chickens started up like the sky was about to fall and I calmed them and fed them before I went to the house.

Ruby was laid out on the big chair with her legs over one side and her head lolled back. I watched for a while through the window. She was winding a piece of string around two fingers, unwinding it and winding it round again. I thought, God help us. She sat up when she saw me though, which was a good sign.

I said, ‘Looks nice in here.’ She’d put a cloth on the table and some of those long grasses with pods in a vase.

‘Did he see you?’

I shook my head. She let the string fall on the floor. She had her nightie on and a cardigan and a pair of boots. I said, ‘I’ve come to get some things.’

‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘Would you care for a drink?’ Honest to God.

She made peppermint tea because that’s all there was and we drank it and I thought, this is so stupid.

‘Ruby, you know what’s happened.’

She fiddled with her hearing aid, turning it up and down so it whined and wailed. When she washes her hair and does it nicely you can’t see it, but most of the time she lets her hair get ratty and there’s no way of hiding it then. In the end she said, ‘Who’da thunk it?’

I said, ‘Can you believe it? On a murder charge. Me.’

‘Ridiculous,’ she said. Every now and again a word pops out perfectly formed. It made her sound really and truly shocked.

‘Do I look like a murderer?’

‘Nutso,’ she said. ‘Crazy.’ She’s got my eyes, Ruby. You have these moments when you see how totally your child is your own.

‘I mean, Chris the Ripper.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, laughing. ‘Chris the Killer.’

‘A dangerous woman.’

She was laughing hard now, honking really. I caught it off her and it was funny, I swear. Just then it was bloody hilarious.

‘Wooo,’ she said, holding her knees. ‘Lock her up quick.’

‘Throw away the bloody key.’

She was fairly choking by now. ‘The Murdering Mummy and Doctor Death. Lock them up together.’

I was getting a stitch. There’s muscles you use to laugh that don’t get used very often. ‘So he’s been charged as well?’

‘Yeah, they’ve hauled up Doctor Death.’

‘How does he plead?’

‘Ooh! Plead! Plead!’ She was hiccoughing now and that was making her laugh even more. ‘Plead let me go! He says – ha, ha – he says the notes are all lost. Hospital can’t find them.’

Well, I laughed at that. ‘What about you? Been arrested yet?’

There was that time lag then that you get when someone hears something they’re not expecting to hear. Her face changed a few beats before she stopped laughing. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I was just asking, what’s happened? Have you been interviewed?’

She chewed her lip and pulled her nightie over her knees.

I said, ‘If we get our stories straight they won’t be able to touch us.’

‘Us?’ she said. ‘I’m a minor. That’s the law. In case you didn’t know.’

‘Ruby,’ I said. ‘Ruby. This is not what you want.’

Her eyes went cloudy, out of focus. I wonder if mine do that. She shrugged and she said, ‘Ain’t up to me. As per usual.’

When I went into the shop everyone stopped talking. I said
bom dia
all light and airy, singing practically, and people mumbled it back and turned away. Doesn’t take long. Not round here. If someone in the next village farts everyone knows by lunchtime. So, you can imagine.

I was going to get some bits and pieces, a tomato, a piece of cheese, a banana, a yoghurt, a slice of ham, make them last a couple of days. China’s given me no money so what do you expect? But I wasn’t going to do that now, not with everyone watching.
She bought one tomato. Did you see? One banana.
I’m not giving them the satisfaction. I bought some ham, the best stuff, and held my breath while Gonzalo weighed it.

You know how in England everyone always says, oh, there’s no community any more? Well, here’s a community for you.

They do things together. Like the women who look after the orange trees along the road. They dig tiny ditches round the trunks to keep the water in better, always bent from the waist though it’s bad for your back. They pick the oranges together every winter, and every summer they put flowers in the concrete beds round the square. Spring and summer they have these festivals where they link arms and walk round the streets singing traditional songs, men and women both but separately of course. It’s mainly the old ones though. In England the council looks after the trees. It might get like that here.

I know what they think of us. I know what they think of me. And I don’t blame them.

There’s only one thing upsets me. The first year we were here I had a birthday party for Jay. He was six. I made all these invitations and stuck little silver stars on and drew clowns’ heads and balloons and I gave them out to all the mums of the kids in his class. I baked a cake and I made streamers, you can’t buy them, and I got three presents wrapped for pass the parcel and Jay and even Ruby were so excited they kept running up to the top of the track to look out for cars. They kept running up and running down and Ruby said the kids stay up that much later here, they’ll be coming later, and Jay kept checking the parcels and saying how many layers, Mum? I’m going to get one of them prizes, just see. Nobody came. Not a soul. We didn’t have the pigs then so a lot of the food went to waste. I said, Jay, I expect they were busy, and he said, that’s right, Mum, I expect so.

I told Michelle about it the year after and she said they don’t have birthday parties here, they just have the family round, it’s a different tradition. It certainly bloody is.