Alec thumbs slippery coins. One teases through his fingers.
“Bloody hell!” he says. “Made for kids.”
He finally pushes one into the slot, jabs the numbers and puts the receiver to his ear. He tries to slow his breathing and coughs to clear the clog from his throat. The line rings. Rings. Rings.
On a clear lilo Jane lies, her white bikini making the water seem electrically blue. Wrinkled fingers stroking the cool surface, feet soothed to the ankle, a smile on the point of parting her lips. Pimples rise in the breeze floating across her skin.
“Telephone! Señora Jones.”
Jane holds a white towel wide, like wings, then folds it around her, under her arms, and knots it at the side. She slips her feet onto pink flowered wedges and walks over the grass. Mown in perfect lines, giving pleasantly. The phone rings. Rings. Maria holds it on the terrace, on a tray. Jane climbs five steps, sits at a marble table, takes the phone and puts it before her. She lets it ring while she ties her hair with a Hibiscus band.
“Come on you bitch,” growls Alec. “Pick it up!”
The ringing halts and a couple of seconds later a voice comes on the line.
“Alec?” Jane says, unable to stop a smile from settling on her lips. “Is that you?”
When the answer comes, her smile takes flight.
“Yeh!” says Alec. “Me. Get over here. Now.”
Jane puts her hand over the receiver as she swears to herself: “fuck!”
“Did you hear me?” Says Alec.
“And… Christopher?”
“He’s at the house, what’s left of it.”
“Is he¾”
The phone goes dead.
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On Saturday, two days earlier, there had been a party on the lawn. Pink parasols shaded trays of canapés. Starched servants topped up glasses of champagne, nails manicured, brown hands working from white cuffs.
“It’s too bloody hot for a party”, said Alec to Jane, as she waved across the lawn at a new arrival. “Should have had a barbecue, an evening do…”
“We’ve been through this, darling. Last night was the Navaja’s party, and there’s just no other time. Besides, you’ve got to leave enough time to reach the woods and prepare the guest chalet in time for dear Christopher.”
Alec gulped champagne too fast and it burnt in his throat.
“And why can’t you bloody come too, eh?”
“It’s your business not mine, he won’t listen to me.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday. Was I born yesterday? Is that what you think?”
“I’m sure he’ll give you a little more time.”
“You know damn well he’d listen to you, he’s your bloody brother, for crying out loud. But no, you won’t talk to him. And we know why that is¾”
“I never said I wanted you to sell.”
“You know how much that place is worth. It’s greed, pure and¾”
“I’m not the one that owes my brother a million.”
Alec grabbed the fullest glass of champagne from a passing tray.
“I just need a little more time,” he said.
“So tell him. Keep the house, the land – if that’s what you want.”
“What we want.”
“I just want what’s best, for all of us.”
Jane wandered among the guests. She smiled, revealing perfect white teeth and tiny wrinkles. She touched her fingers on forearms, pressed her face to cheeks, one side then the other.
Alec got a refill and chatted to Señor Carnicero’s new wife, whose name he couldn’t remember. He rubbed the back of his neck as he kept a smile on his face and watched her lips moving. His ears caught sounds but his brain absorbed little meaning, at least until she mentioned the house in the woods. She smiled and hinted at an offer. Old Carnicero had made most of his money in timber. Alec didn’t have the energy to have another go at Jane for her indiscretion. Christ. Did everybody know about his predicament? Alec’s shirt felt moist beneath his linen jacket. He thought about the house in the woods and what he was going to say to Christopher about the money.
The next day, Sunday, Alec reached the little village near the woods just after one. He parked his jeep by the only phone booth in the square and bought a bottle of chilled water from the old lady in the only shop. She wore black and kept her eyes on his, unblinking. She said nothing, then closed the shop behind him for the afternoon. Alec sat in the empty square, drank from the bottle and looked out over the ochre rooftops. Smoke rose here and there from the plain. Glass glinted. Birds with serrated wings spiralled.
He went to the phone and ducked his head under its bulbous canopy. His vision cut off from the world, he took a coin from his pocket and slid it into the slot.
“I’m here,” said Alec. “In the little village.”
“Fabulous,” said Jane, phone in the crook of her neck, eyes on a magazine. “I’ll be thinking of you.”
“Are you sure he knows how to get here?”
“I’ll describe it in the most intricate detail, darling. He’ll find it with his eyes closed. I’m sure he’ll be there by sunset, our favourite time¾”
“And what about you?”
“I’ll be up in couple of days.”
“Tuesday, then?”
“Tuesday, yes.”
Alec drove up the only road into the mountains. He twisted the wheel back and forth, back and forth, easing the car round bends. He kept his eyes fixed on the road, avoiding the ever heightening view of the brown plains. Drops of sweat clustered into trickles on his brow and upper lip. Then over the top of the pass he drove and down the other side where the curves formed wider sweeps and the view was now all green, as a million trees flowed from the bowl of the valley and up to coat the sides of the mountains.
The car entered the woods. The air was dark. The further he went the more the car bumped on the track and the more he slowed. After half an hour or more he turned a corner and shaded his eyes from the sudden blaze of the sun. He crossed the circular clearing to where buildings were waiting against the trees on the far side, a hundred yards or so away. He pulled the car up to the garage door. Alec got out, stretched and looked around. The grass was high all across the meadow and the swimming pond his mother had dug held a green lid of weed. The encircling pines obscured the mountains. Browned stems poked from the tubs on the veranda and from the bowls hanging from the balcony. There was lots of work to be done, as every year, but the house still looked magnificent: broad and solid against the soft line of the trees, its high windows enticing you to lounge within. Alec put away the car then climbed the wooden steps to the porch. He unlocked the door, then stood on the threshold and looked into the front room.
He listened.
He was always moved by the silence of a place which held so many sonorous memories. Yet even after forty years of coming here, the room never looked quite the same as he remembered it. Everything was a touch bigger or smaller, a fraction closer or further apart. It would take a few days of habitation for it to feel familiar again. He walked through to the hall, then up the wide stairs, through the master bedroom and out onto the balcony which ran along the front of the house. The sun was sinking closer to the tips of the pines around the clearing. He put on his sunglasses and leaned on the balustrade. The wood felt warm beneath his fingers. Alec looked at the slight parting where the track emerged from the trees and wondered when Christopher would arrive.
In the kitchen Alec poured himself a brandy, then turned on the fridge and filled the trays with ice. He brought supplies in from the car and stocked the cupboards. He put clean sheets on the bed in the guest chalet, and noticed that branches were growing over the windows. He went into the garage and found his working clothes: a tatty tweed jacket, some tatty jeans and boots. Then he sharpened his machete with a file and set about chopping back the bushes.
Meanwhile, Jane sat on the terrace and enjoyed the feel of late Sunday sun on her face. She drank a Martini with a lemon twist. The phone on the table rang and she picked it up straight away.
“Christopher?” she said.
White hair neat, long back flexed under the canopy he drummed clipped nails on top of the phone.
“Jane, my love. I’m in the little village.”
“Will you call me afterwards?” she asked.
“Of course, Jane. How is he?”
“He won’t listen. He won’t sell. He’s adamant.”
“Well, it can’t be helped, then.”
“You will call won’t you, tomorrow?”
“Don’t rush to the phone. Act as if it’s Alec. Let it ring for a good while. Maria’s not stupid, Jane. She mustn’t suspect.”
Christopher hung up.
The sun sank behind the trees. Cicadas sang. Alec lay on his bed, machete dormant, drinking a half-cold beer. He felt sleepy from the early start, the labour and the drive. He thought how it wasn’t so bad that Christopher was coming. It felt good to be dealing with the situation right here – It would give him strength, he thought. And in spite of what Jane said, she loved the house, really. She’d bought new furniture and fittings to replace his mother’s stuff, which had been looking a little dated. She wouldn’t want to lose the house. There was another way, Alec could feel it. He would show Christopher the house, the chalet, the lodge in the woods, the pond and the caves – where he and his cousins used to play as kids. You couldn’t think of this place on paper, you had to breathe it and, once he was here, Christopher’s lungs would fill with the soul of the place as everybody’s did. His resolve would be sure to weaken. And Alec would feel tall, he knew it! No matter what he owed or how it all added up or whatever it was that Christopher might have planned. No – Christopher’s visit was welcome, now Alec thought about it.
Jane wandered the garden cutting flowers. Cicadas sang as the last of the sun turned the walls the colour of peaches. She thought about the house in the woods and how many summers they had spent there and what a thrill it had been the first time Alec had taken her to stay – in spite of his mother’s constant attempts at terrorisation. Jane had swum in the stinking green pond, had played the witch’s requests on the piano, had peeled infinite potatoes as she listened to acid anecdotes about her ageing friends. Then once the malevolent trout was rotting in the ground – poisoning worms, no doubt – Jane had stayed behind when Alec returned to work. Christopher had come to stay, unbeknownst to Alec, and they’d stripped the place of everything the witch had loved. They had built a pile of it all in front of the house, sat on the terrace drinking Martinis, and watched it burn.
Alec snored. In his dreams Christopher lay on a burning pyre. He could hear the fire roar, smell the burn of his hair, feel the heat of the flames. His eyes opened and he saw that the roof above him was a dazzling orange. He could smell petrol. After a dawning second he rolled off the bed onto smoking planks and felt his skin smart as he dashed through shimmers of flame, slashing his machete as he went – as if he could hack the flames away – and tore down the stairs and out the back door. He ran for the woods.
Jane lay on her back in silk sheets, her breathing deep, a smile beneath her lips. She dreamed of an island in a lake where she lived with Christopher. There were pines around a white house and ponds and waterfalls spilling into streams which trickled to the glassy water. She remembered the dream when she woke at dawn and kept it with her throughout that morning as she lay on a lilo in the pool.
Alec scrambled through the woods, pine needles like combs on the bottom of his feet. He ran in a wide arc from the house, back towards the start of the track. As he crouched near the edge of the clearing he could hear the fire’s roar – studded with crackles and pops and the claps of shattering glass. Through running eyes he saw that the garage burned and the chalet burned and the whole house was swelling into a mansion of flame. He watched a hole in the roof burn outwards like burning paper. He saw the balcony fall. He noticed the air was becoming bright and he could feel the heat upon his face. He was about to take off through the trees when he saw the shimmer of a man against the orange.
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The next day, Monday, Alec walks out of the woods, along the sweeping bends of the road, over the pass and down the zig-zag road. It is just past two o’ clock on a Monday afternoon when he finally reaches the little Spanish village half-way down the mountains. He calls Jane. She takes her time coming from the pool, as Christopher requested. She smiles at the subterfuge of speaking Alec’s name, when she knows she’ll never speak to him again. But it’s Alec on the phone, not Christopher.
When Alec hangs up, she slams the receiver down and screams, screams. She tips the table over and bellows for Maria. Maria tells José to get the car out of the garage, then packs a suitcase for Jane. Jane sits on the terrace, swigging a triple vodka and tonic, biting her nails. Her breath heaves and she swears she can feel a pain in her arm. She fights the urge to smash her glass to the floor.
In the little village, youths kick a ball around the square. Kids stare as a strange man in a singed jacket walks to the shop. Alec buys water, wine, bread, chorizo and peaches from the silent woman. Then he sits on a bench and looks out over the ochre rooftops. He waits, as the sun spins toward the line of the distant hills and the air cools into shadows. At around five o’ clock he calls the Carniceros. At six o’clock he hears the motor of Jane’s Mercedes before the sound of the tyres on the grit of the street. He keeps his eyes on a sliver of moon above the plain, until he hears the engine hush. He walks towards the car and climbs in.
“Drive,” he says, without looking at Jane.
“I’m not moving a muscle until you tell me what’s happened to Christopher.”
“Fine.”
“Where is he?”
“At the house.”
“Is he…”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“He was when I left.”
“What have you done to him?”
“Fire is a terrible thing.”
“Alec!”
“If you get a move on you might find out.”
Wheels spraying a hail of shingle, she fights the car round bends. Alec grips the handle on the inside of the passenger door. His eyes take in the plain, the snake of the road below – brown, like the yellow-eyed snakes in the woods they used to bait as kids. He feels great relief, an urge to smile, but contents himself with the pleasing feel of his stubbled chin in his smoky fingers. Jane tries a array of persuasion techniques: from rage to pitiful whimper. But Alec won’t reveal the fate of her darling brother.
Señor Carnicero sits on the terrace of his pink house and looks out over the bay. He smiles and chews on an Esplendido he’s been saving since he tied up Cuba. Across from him his wife swims in the pool and sings an Abba song. He waves to her and she laughs and performs a somersault, slick as a dolphin. A champagne glass sits on a step in the shallows. Señor Carnicero makes phone calls to his timber mills, the logging crews, the chief of police.
Jane’s Mercedes jerks to a halt in the opening to the clearing. She swings her legs from the car, white slacks creased from the tortuous ride. The scene is apocalyptic: the charred wreck of the house, smoking, smoking. Fumes slide across the grass and the khaki pond. Jane remembers the water more green.
“Wherever…?” She says, and sees a shape at the water’s edge. A long shape curled with the line of the bank. She moves on distant feet, catches sight of a glimpse of hair, white against the mud. Skin grey, blood drained into the water.
There’s a flash of red and silver in the evening sun. An arc created by Alec’s hand, gripping the handle of the machete. It feels familiar this time. Jane feels the strike for an instant she’ll never remember. There is barely a sound. Alec rolls her next to her brother and the pond darkens.
Alec takes a final look at the blackened house, runs his gaze around the edge of the clearing, lets his eyes rest on the sunken shapes at the edge of the pond his mother dug. Then he gets into the car, turns it around and drives back into the forest.
Across the mountains, lorries rumble hungrily across the brown plain.
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