by Peter May
She breathes deeply as the change of air in the room signals that the door has opened. She knows Cristina’s scent by heart, the distant sweetness of orange blossom carried by a single spray of her eau de cologne. But today the air brings her another, different scent. A masculine tone. Distinctive and musky, male hormones transmitted by the oil in perspiration. And she is confused.
‘Who have you brought to see me today, Cris?’
It is a moment before she feels the scrape of a chair on the far side of her computer, and the vibration of fingers on a keyboard raising braille on her screen. She scans the dots lightly with sensitive fingertips.
– It is a policeman from England, Ana. He has come to help us find the man who has threatened me.
‘And does he have a name, this man?’
– Mackenzie.
‘Ah. So he is Scottish, then.’ Ana smiles
– How do you know?
‘It is a Scottish name, cariño.’ And she senses Cristina’s surprise.
– But how do you know that?
‘Tesoro, when you have all day every day to fill you read a lot. I know many things that I would not know if I wasn’t deaf and blind.’ And she smiles sadly at the irony of it.
*
Mackenzie stood a pace or two back. Listening to Ana’s soft cadences, little more than a whisper at times. And reading the text produced onscreen by Cristina’s quick fingers on the keyboard. It gave him a moment or two to cast curious eyes over the woman seated on the far side of the screens. Ana’s black hair was cut short, and fell in a fringe over well-defined eyebrows. Her face was plain, unremarkable. Had he passed her in the street she would not have drawn his eye. But there was a strange serenity in it. In the soft set of her full lips, the almost drowsily half-closed eyes. He tried to guess her age, but she might have been anything between thirty and fifty. He settled on forty as a compromise, and was not so far out.
She wore a black blouse over black jog pants, and a pair of pristine white sneakers. Her frame was petite, although it carried a little more weight than it should. She could not yet be described as plump, but was inclined in that direction, and Mackenzie guessed that so many hours spent trapped each day in a chair would both waste muscle and accumulate fat.
Cristina had warned him in advance that her aunt was deaf and blind, and now as he stood before her he tried to imagine what that must be like. He glanced around the room where she spent her life. Like a cell. No pictures on the walls. No ornaments on the dresser. A table set for one. A corner kitchen with a small breakfast bar. How did she do the simplest things? Make tea or coffee. Or cook a meal. Dress, undress, do her laundry. Obviously she would have help. Family, the State. His eye fell on Sandro eyeing him cautiously from his bed on the far side of the room. Companion, guide, friend.
But for most of her life, she would have only herself to fall back on. Her courage and resilience, her will to be.
And the real prison was not this room. It was her own body. Whoever Ana might be, she was trapped inside it with no way out, and no way of letting anyone else in.
Except that here she was in animated conversation with her niece. Thanks to an extraordinary piece of technology that brought the world to her in dots raised on a screen.
He moved around to Ana’s side of the table to watch her fingers scan the braille, and was surprised as her head turned to follow him. Her smile seemed to register his surprise.
She said, ‘When fate robs you of your two primary senses, Señor Mackenzie, by way of compensation your remaining senses – taste, smell, touch – become much more highly developed. I can feel the air move as you walk. I can follow your scent, just like Sandro over there. She nodded towards her dog as Sandro raised his head at the mention of his name.
Mackenzie said to Cristina, ‘Tell her I’d like to know how her braille works.’
Cristina stood up. ‘Tell her yourself.’ And she moved aside to let Mackenzie sit in her place. His fingers rattled across the keyboard and he looked up to register Ana’s surprise.
‘Do you know?’ she said. ‘You are the first person ever to ask me that.’
He typed. – I’m interested.
‘Why?’
– Everything interests me.
She said, ‘Each braille character is made up of six dot positions. These positions are arranged in a rectangle comprising two columns of three dots each. A dot can be raised at any one of six positions, or in any combination. If you count the space in which no dots are raised, there are sixty-four combinations altogether. The alphabet plus contractions.’
Mackenzie sat for a moment absorbing this, visualizing how that would work. He turned back to the keyboard.
– That’s ingenious! Was it difficult to learn?
‘Nothing is difficult when you are motivated, señor. But it requires use of the brain’s spatial processors, as opposed to the auditory processors most people use in conversation.’
– So it helps to be deaf.
She laughed out loud. ‘Señor, there is nothing helpful about being deaf. But, actually, it was my lack of vision that aided me in the learning of braille.’
It was Mackenzie who laughed this time. And text conversations with his daughter enabled him to convey that with an LOL. He typed:
– All temptation to take a peek being removed.
‘Exactly. It was so much easier once I had actually gone blind.’ Then she tipped her head in admonition. ‘Señor, your Spanish is excellent. But if you want to be strictly correct, you should know that LOL is jejeje.
– Correction noted. He paused, then typed again – Jejeje.
Ana raised her head and turned it towards Cristina, a wide grin creasing her cheeks. ‘Cristina you can bring your Scottish friend any time.’
Cristina had stood watching with growing astonishment as the conversation between Ana and Mackenzie developed. How was it possible that this misfit foreigner had managed to strike such an instant rapport with her aunt?
Ana eased herself out of her chair. ‘I’ll make us some coffee.’ Something she never did, always allowing her nieces to do the honours when they visited. But it seemed that today she was determined to demonstrate her independence to the Scottish visitor.
Mackenzie watched her move about the room and into the kitchen area with complete confidence. She reached up to open a wall cabinet and took out coffee and sugar before searching out an open bottle of milk from the fridge. She raised her voice above what she knew would be the noise of the kettle.
‘Cristina, tell me how Nuri was today, And Paco. I’ll catch up on it later.’
Cristina resumed her seat at the computer and typed up an account of her visit to the hospital with Nuri, and her meeting with Paco, while her aunt moved about the tiny kitchen preparing the coffees. When they were ready she placed them side by side on the breakfast bar. She said, ‘It makes it easier, señor, that I could see before I went blind. I don’t have to imagine the world around me. I can picture it. Recall images from my memories. What’s hard about that is that I know just how much I have lost.’
Mackenzie admired that there was no trace of self-pity in this, just a simple statement of fact. He felt unaccountably drawn to her. In the silent darkness of her world, a vibrant intelligence was fighting to get out.
He sat and drank his coffee, watching as Ana resumed her seat and she and Cristina chatted. About family, about the practicalities of daily life – deliveries of groceries, a housekeeper who came once a week but was, in Ana’s opinion, taking advantage of her client’s disability and skimping on her cleaning duties. Cristina promised to see that she was replaced.
But then he witnessed a certain agitation creeping into the serenity with which Ana had initially greeted them, her fingers straying with increasing frequency to flick nervously over the face of her braille watch. He was not to know that she was expecting Sergio, and worried that this man from her past might arrive before Cristina and Mackenzie left. But he sensed that she wanted them to go.
<
br /> He placed his empty mug on the breakfast bar and leaned over Cristina’s shoulder to interrupt her typing. He brushed her fingers aside and typed himself.
– Ana, it has been my great pleasure to meet you. Something he rarely meant, even if social convention demanded he say it. But this time he did. However, I must drag your niece away. We have a meeting soon at Marviña, and she is yet to take me for something to eat. Cristina glared at him.
Ana seemed almost relieved. ‘Go, children, go. But come again, Señor Mackenzie. Please.’
He leaned once more over Cristina’s shoulder.
– I will.
Cristina stood up. ‘What’s the hurry?’ she said to him. ‘The meeting’s not for ages yet. And you two seem to be getting on so well.’ He did not miss the sarcasm in her tone.
He inclined his head towards her aunt. ‘She wants rid of us.’
Cristina bristled, frowned at Ana then turned towards Mackenzie. ‘My aunt does not want rid of us.’
‘If you’d been paying attention,’ he said, ‘you’d have noticed how she keeps fingering her watch, or heard the tension that’s crept into her voice. She might be expecting someone.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Ana never has visitors.’
Ana’s head was tilted to one side, as if she were listening to them. And, almost as though she had heard their entire conversation, she said, ‘I’m expecting a visitor, cariño.’
Which took all the wind out of Cristina’s sails. She glared at Mackenzie, then stooped to give her aunt a kiss. The older woman squeezed her hand and whispered, ‘Trust him.’
*
Outside, the afternoon sun cast deep shadows across the street. The heat was marked after the cool of the house. The air felt hot to breathe, and the Calle San Miguel was packed with tourists pushing their way past each other in both directions. Distant music drifted across the rooftops, a church bell was ringing. ‘Is there something going on in town?’ Mackenzie asked.
Cristina seemed distracted. ‘What?’
‘Music. Crowds. Bells. Is it always as busy as this?’
There was irritation in her voice. ‘It’s the feria of Estepona’s patron saint all this week. San Isidro Labrador. There’s music and dancing, and there are exhibitions. Tomorrow there will be a procession from the church, with floats and horses. You won’t be able to move for people. We don’t want to be anywhere near here after six.’ She caught his arm to stop him. ‘How could you possibly have known she was expecting someone?’
He shrugged. ‘An informed guess.’
‘Informed by what?’
‘Observation. Something you would do well to work on if you ever want to be anything more than a constable.’
He saw anger flare in her eyes and thought he should probably have kept that particular observation to himself. But before she could respond, she was distracted by the sound of a girl’s voice calling from the Plaza de Juan Bazán opposite, and they turned to see a group of kids kicking a ball about between the fountains. A girl of around eight or nine waved cheerfully. ‘Hola. Buenas tardes, Cristina.’
Cristina waved back. And she lowered her voice to Mackenzie. ‘She lives along the street. Her mother is the housekeeper that Ana complained about.’
Mackenzie smiled at the child and waved also. Sotto voce he said to Cristina, ‘That’ll be fun for you, then – sacking her mother.’
Cristina threw him a look. ‘I thought you were hungry.’
‘Starving.’
*
When they had moved off through the crowd, a figure emerged from the shadows of a doorway further along the street and sauntered, hands in pockets, into the square. He was tall, with sandy hair flopping across a tanned brow. But his linen suit looked more than a little crumpled, and his white shirt less than pristine. His blue eyes followed the heads of Cristina and Mackenzie until they disappeared among all the others. The football being kicked around the plaza came rolling in his direction and he stooped to pick it up. The little girl who’d had the exchange with Cristina came running up to retrieve it. He held it out, but stopped short of handing it over.
‘Who is it who lives in that house there?’ he said, nodding towards the door from which Cristina and Mackenzie had emerged only minutes before.
The girl reached for the ball, but still he held it beyond her grasp.
‘That’s weird Ana’s house,’ she said.
‘Weird Ana?’
‘The old blind lady.’
‘What would the police want with an old blind lady?’ he asked.
‘Oh, that’s not the police,’ the little girl said. ‘Not really. That’s Cristina. Weird Ana’s her auntie. Can I have our ball please?’
Cleland smiled. ‘Of course.’ And he let her take it from his hands, before turning to gaze thoughtfully up at the little black-painted wrought-iron Juliet balcony on the first floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Ana feels the buzzer vibrate twice against her chest. Excitement, fear, apprehension. All very nearly stop her from breathing.
Sergio.
She tries to calm herself, and with a trembling hand depresses the rocker switch that opens the door below. Now she places her hands flat on the table in front of her, forcing herself to take long slow breaths.
Immediately she feels better and closes her eyes, waiting for the most distant of vibrations to tell her that he is on his way up the stairs. The change of temperature tells her that he has opened the door and is standing gazing at her.
Only now does she think about how she must look. No make-up, hair unfashionably short. Overweight, frumpy in an old blouse and jog pants. And more than twenty years older than when he last set eyes on her. She finds it hard to picture herself, but is aware with a sudden stab of apprehension that there can be nothing attractive about what he sees in front of him.
There is no clue in all this silence and darkness as to his reaction. She breathes in his scent, but there is nothing familiar in it. Male hormones, hair oil or perhaps aftershave.
‘Hello Sergio,’ she says, knowing that he will read her lips. Her voice is the merest tickle in her throat and she knows that she has all but whispered his name. In her mind it thunders in the darkness.
Still nothing. And then a movement of air. The warmth of another body in the cool of the room, shutters drawn against the afternoon sun. She feels the scrape of a chair on the floor. But not at the computer opposite. Much closer. She can feel his breath on her face. Soft, like the gentlest whispering touch of gossamer.
And then his hands, gentle and warm, taking hers in his. A tracing of fingers on her palm, the tactile signing that they had learned together all those years before, and she can feel her breath trembling in her chest.
‘Hello, Ana.’
It is extraordinary just how familiar his touch still is, even after all this time, as if it were only yesterday that they had last touch-signed. Only, then she could have opened her eyes to see him, heard his voice. It’s you I love. She wondered how he would look to her now, if she could only see him.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he says.
And a tiny current of anger spikes through her. ‘It is you who went away.’ And immediately she regrets it.
But she senses the contrition in his words. ‘I know, I know. And, God knows, I have spent every minute of every day of every year regretting it. You are right to be angry, and I have nothing but shame for my lack of courage.’
‘I am not angry, Sergio. Not really. Just hurting. Still. You coming here like this today feels a little like having something sharp stabbed into an old wound.’
His hands grip hers, then squeeze them almost too tightly. She can feel his anguish transmitted through every fibre of his body. ‘Your father contacted my parents. I don’t even know how he knew where to find us. And I have no idea what passed between them. But after he had gone my father forbade me ever to see you again.’
She can feel his tension in the trembling of his hands. ‘I always suspected,�
�� she says, ‘that my father had something to do with it.’
‘You have to understand, Ana, that I was dependent on my parents for everything. For money, the roof over my head, the car that I drove. I could not have continued my studies without their support, and without a job I could not support myself.’ His deep, tremulous breath transmits itself to her through the divining rod of his whole body. ‘At first I refused. I told them there was nothing they could do to me that would make me give you up. But then my father told me that if I chose you over them I would no longer be welcome in their house, and that he would withdraw his financial support. I knew my father, Ana. He was not a man to make threats lightly. I realized that he meant what he said, and I simply didn’t have the strength, or the courage, to defy him.’ He pauses for a long time, and she feels him shake with emotion. ‘I was miserable for weeks, and I’ve regretted it every day of my life since.’
Ana imagines then the silence that falls between them, hanging heavy in the room. Hands and lips and voices still. Motes of dust suspended in the sunlight that slants in through a gap in the shutters. She has no idea what to say herself, and senses that there is more to come. And she is right. She feels him draw breath.
‘One day about two months later, I was still inconsolable and my mother sat me down and told me the story of her first love. A young man she met at university in Madrid. A boy from a poor working-class family in Valencia who had only got to university on some kind of scholarship. Her family was appalled. He was not of the same . . . class. They made her give him up by threatening to take her away from university, withdrawing their financial support. And she always suspected that her family had paid off his family, because the boy himself did not fight it. She was heartbroken at first, she said. But then in time she met my father and never looked back. She said there was no future for me with a girl who was deaf and blind. That I would spend the rest of my life as a carer.’ She feels ironic laughter in the movement of his hands. ‘The moral of the story, I suppose, was that I would get over you. That I, too, would meet someone else and put you behind me.’ He pauses. ‘I never did. And there never has been anyone else.’ Another pause. ‘Never will be.’