Weeks in Naviras

by Wimpress, Chris

‘I came to watch the confidence vote,’ I said. ‘Thought it would be a good show of support.’

  ‘You were up in the galleries?’ I nodded and he sighed. ‘Look L, that was very sweet of you, but I’d rather you’d discussed it with me first. It doesn’t look good on me, this idea that I need my wife here to help me through a Commons vote.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  He ran his hand through his hair. ‘It’s fine, it’ll probably get drowned out in the reshuffle news,’ James stood up, came over and kissed me on the forehead. ‘Glass of wine?’

  ‘I thought you were still busy shuffling?’ I still felt chastised.

  ‘I can afford a break. Anyway I need Rav, and he’s gone back to Number 10. She sends her love, by the way.’ James was opening a screw-top bottle of red wine, having produced two whisky tumblers from a cabinet behind his desk.

  ‘Her love? That’s a bit strong.’

  ‘You know what she’s like,’ James came over and handed me a glass. ‘Cheers,’ he said, clinking my glass before sitting down on the sofa opposite me.

  ‘Congratulations on the vote,’ I said. ‘I mean, not a single rebel.’

  ‘Oh, it won’t take them long to start making trouble, especially when they see who I’m sacking,’ There was a smirk lurking in James’s face.

  ‘So am I the first to know?’ I tried to make it sound flirtatious and it didn’t quite work.

  ‘Apart from Rav. I’ll need to get Rosie in here for a final briefing, is she still outside?’ I nodded. ‘I ought to get her in, so she can go home and get some sleep. It’ll be a another long day tomorrow,’ James went to stand up.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Tell me the highlights first.’

  He smiled, patiently. ‘Alright,’ he sat back down on the sofa, took a fairly large glug of wine. ‘Rob Kitchener for the Treasury, as you’d expect. Hugo’s staying at Foreign, Gilly to the Home Office.’

  ‘Really?’ I was surprised at this last bit. Gilly Caulfield wasn’t in James’s camp, and I knew he’d promised the Home Office to Jack Gorton, who’d been one of his key backers.

  ‘I need to keep Gilly close, she’s going to be a menace otherwise,’ said James, as though it were blindingly obvious.

  ‘Is she competent enough?’

  ‘Not really, but hopefully she’ll screw things up so royally I can just sack her within a year, that’ll take the sting out of her. Anyway do you want to hear the rest?’

  ‘Any interesting ones?’

  ‘Well, a couple of people are staying where they are, but I’m offering Drake party chairman.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘No, it’ll only be for a year or so, and he might turn it down. But I need to offer him something, and he might be useful in keeping the old guard in check.’

  I was genuinely shocked. ‘Do you think he’ll accept it?’

  ‘I think he will,’ James drained his glass. ‘Rav thinks it’s a good idea and I’ve been won round to the merits of it, shall we say. Right, I think we should get out of here. Rosie!’

  The door opened and she came in. Clearly she’d been listening; I imagined her head cocked to the keyhole.

  ‘We’re going back over the road, Rosie,’ said James, standing up. ‘Do you want to come with us and I’ll brief you on the way? Or first thing tomorrow?’

  ‘Tonight would be better,’ said Rosie. ‘I’ve agreed to leak something for the morning, and they’re waiting for me to come back to them.’

  ‘Okay, but I don’t want to give them anything major,’ James was putting on his suit jacket which had been hanging from the back of his desk chair. ‘Tell them Rob’s going to be chancellor.’

  ‘I’m not sure they’ll be happy with that, it’s not much of a surprise,’ To be fair to Rosie it was an onerous job, having journalists constantly badgering her.

  ‘I don’t want the rest of it leaking out tonight,’ said James as we walked out of his office, heading down a flight of stairs to the internal courtyard where the PM’s car was waiting. Big Ben was striking ten. It was late September but still muggy, nobody was really sleeping particularly well and party conference season was looming.

  TV crews and photographers were waiting at the gates to Parliament, the camera flashes temporarily blinded me. The next morning I’d see those photos splashed all over the news. I’d looked pretty happy, quite self-satisfied. And I had been, because Rosie had been denied her time alone with James in his office.

  Travessa

  The music coming from inside La Roda isn’t familiar but still I understand every single word; James never knew I’d learned a fair bit of Portuguese. The song’s about overpowering love, intense emotions that you can’t bear to lose. It’s there in the man’s thin voice, the fear and apprehension. My own experience of love has been far less easy to define; more malleable. I’m not sure I could pack it into one song.

  I pick up a stoneless olive, chew on it briefly and swallow. Taste and texture in my mouth, but no sensation of it going down. No hunger to quell. Jean and Bill don’t seem to care that I’ve been regressing. Both of them are just looking out to sea.

  ‘I keep remembering things,’ I say to them. ‘About my life.’

  ‘Oh you will, love,’ says Bill. ‘For a while, at least. Then you’ll decide whether you want to stay or not.’

  Then I have a sense of something; it comes and goes quickly but lingers. It’s my mother’s hands, cupped underneath my chin. Soothing me. Quietly shushing me. It makes me feel like crying, almost.

  Jean selects a cherry. ‘Don’t worry about it, flower. It won’t be long now. Really it won’t.’

  ‘So you both chose to stay here, then. You made that decision together?’

  They look at each other and then Jean looks at me. ‘We can’t be apart from each other. What was your name again?’

  ‘Ellie.’

  ‘Ellie. Sorry, love. You get to see so many people sitting out here, but they don’t stay long. Who knows what comes after this?’ She looks over at her husband. ‘No, Bill and I made the same choice. You can always change your mind, but we lived long lives and there’s a lot for us to remember. Perhaps we’ll make the journey together, but there’s no need to rush, is there?’

  ‘The journey?’

  ‘Out of the village. That’s where people go when they’re ready. Nobody comes back.’

  Would having a shorter life mean fewer memories for me to reabsorb? ‘I was married to the prime minister before I came here,’ I say, and Bill raises his eyebrows with interest. ‘I don’t expect you to believe me.’

  ‘Of course we do,’ says Jean. ‘Why would you be fibbing?’

  Why indeed. ‘I could tell you about the world, the way things have been. If you wanted to hear that.’

  Bill shakes his head, dismisses the idea with a wave. ‘You’re alright, love. But tell us about your husband, what colour was he?’

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘You know, Labour, Conservative?’

  ‘Oh,’ I laugh, for the first time. ‘He’s a Tory, the MP for Eppingham. We were about to go into an election year.’ It’s hard to explain James without describing recent events. I touch on the brownouts, the years of political turmoil which had caused them. Jean tuts and says she never had much time for politicians. Almost defending James, I tell them about the peace treaty and try to recount those final hours in Israel. I find them strangely difficult to recall. Even though I’ve revisited them in my mind and explained them to Luis not long before, the memories won’t come easily. I expect to feel something, some bad emotion, some sense of abomination. But nothing.

  ‘Once you’ve remembered, it’s normal to forget,’ offers Jean, her eyes out to sea once more. ‘That’s what happens here, it’s what you’re here to do. Remember, then forget.’

  I ask them if they’d had children and Jean says yes, two boys, but she doesn’t expect to see them in Naviras. ‘They’ll be in their own place, with their own families,’ she says, without regret.
r />   ‘Maybe that’s why I’m finding this... I feel my life’s been cut short, I won’t watch my kids grow up.’

  Is that a flicker of sympathy in Jean’s eyes? ‘Most people in your situation don’t stay here that long. We’re lucky in that sense, our boys had grown up, so we let go of them in life. I’m quite content where I am, and I’d never leave Bill.’

  ‘And I’d never leave you, love,’ Bill leans over and kisses his wife on the cheek. I can almost feel Jean’s happiness radiating out from her, beckoning me to engage with it, add my own joy to the mix.

  ‘I need to check for my husband,’ I stand up quickly, and for the first time I actually feel something, not dizziness but a sense of inertia, like mild in-flight turbulence. ‘He wasn’t down at the beach bar,’ I continue, once the feeling’s passed. ‘So I’m going to check up at Casa Amanhã.’

  Jean laughs. ‘Ah, you used to go up there often? How lovely for you! Why don’t you pop up there and see? You must know Lottie.’

  ‘Yes, I know her very well. I was on the way to see her, actually.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you go up there then? She’ll be delighted, I’m sure.’

  I promise them I’ll return, both just nod casually. I walk down the steps and cross the square, heading for the travessa to Casa Amanhã.

  I’m walking up Travessa de Cosmo, a narrow conduit that cuts right through the village. An alleyway, I suppose it would be called in Britain, running between the backs of the cottages. Until I’d first come to Naviras I’d been a bit sniffy about people who went back to the same place on holiday every year. I’d always gone to far-flung places with my parents as a girl, never the same place twice, really, not until I came to Naviras.

  I’ve reached the end of the Travessa. To my left the walls surrounding Casa Amanhã, the house obscured by the trees as usual. On the other side of the street just empty space where the old churchyard should be, the place where Lottie had been buried and Luis was remembered. No church with its low triangular roof and square minaret, no gravestones, they’re missing. Of course they’re missing; how could there be graveyards after death? They’re for the living, if anyone. I only ever went in there once, and that was once too often.

  Reflecting on the absence of the churchyard makes me realise and accept something once and for all; I’m not going to see my mother here. If she’s anywhere, and presumably like me she must be somewhere, it’s not going to be here. And that’s because Lottie’s here. She and my mother could never be in the same place at the same time, it would violate the natural order of things.

  Casa Amanhã

  By the time I turned 31 I’d become increasingly despairing. The hole my Mum’s death had excavated twelve years before still hadn’t been filled in. Of course nothing could because it was shaped like her. I venerated her, of course, forgot her bolshiness and snobbery and embossed her kindness. After she died I threw myself into law school, topping the class in my final year.

  Mum’s absence cut off certain parts in my brain, I think, often when trying to enjoy myself I’d think about the last time I’d seen her alive. On the phone to the bank that morning, annoyed as she disputed some charge they’d imposed.

  What do you mean, bear with me? No, I’m not going on hold again, I want to speak to the supervisor.

  I was late getting back to London for college, mouthed to her silently that I had to run for the train. She just waved across the kitchen at me, air kissing me goodbye with the phone still pressed to her ear. If you don’t put me through to someone in charge, I shall close my account forthwith. She died in her sleep that night, blood in her brain got into the wrong place.

  Most people get warnings about these things, a timetable to prepare emotions by. Without one the grief turns into a boomerang; you throw it away as hard as you can, but still it circles back and hits you on the back of the head when you’re not prepared for it. Each time you throw it away again it just takes a little bit longer to come back with amazing precision, returning for an attack as I graduated and nearly broke down in tears during the ceremony. My father watching from the balcony with a random woman sitting next to him, some other student’s mother or aunt; certainly not a new love interest. That I would’ve welcomed, wouldn’t have begrudged my father another chance at happiness for a second.

  I didn’t realise at the time that I wasn’t thinking clearly, wasn’t making choices in my own best interests. I should’ve gone straight into Bar exams after law school but instead went into a firm. Mum had left me quite a bit of money; sometimes it felt like that was all I had left of her. Becoming a solicitor was the more obvious and immediate way to earn money so I went straight into work. It took me a couple of years to realise I’d gone down the wrong path, by which point the consensus was I’d left it too late to switch.

  I was earning good money that I didn’t particularly need – Mum had come from a well-off family, Dad threw himself into his work after her death. I didn’t enjoy the lack of autonomy, wanted to pick and choose cases, maybe take on a few pro bono without having to ask anyone’s permission. By the time I hit my late twenties I realised I was wading through monotony every day. The idea of continuing for a further forty years was far from edifying. When people asked me what I wanted to do with my life I couldn’t answer, not truthfully at any rate. What I secretly fancied was becoming a Judge, maybe in the family courts division, doing something that really changed people’s lives.

  My love life always felt equally workaday; my few boyfriends all languishing in extended childhood; they’d never had to fend for themselves, certainly not emotionally. They tended to come via work or friends of colleagues, as such were tedious and uniform. Would Mum have approved of any of this, I’d ask myself?

  When I turned 29 I took a gamble and went for the Bar. I knew the chances of getting something weren’t great, I was five years older than anyone else doing the exams. Perhaps it was an attempt to get my father’s attention, after he’d sold our home and moved into London, saying there was no point sitting on a train for an hour a day just to go back to an empty house. I’d get a cab to the City and meet him in one of the pubs he’d stand in after work, doing the crossword. He worked seventy-hour weeks on purpose; taking on too much, starting at seven every morning and spending Sundays poring over things.

  The only day he ever really took off was Saturday, when we’d go to the rugby or I’d cook him a roast in his flat, which exactly what I was doing when I told him I was quitting work and starting Bar exams. His little rules concerning alcohol had broken down, whisky had become acceptable after mid-day and by teatime his eyes were misty. Initially he was shocked, warned me how competitive it was, even for those a lot younger than me. But I explained my thinking, how I needed more variety and purpose.

  ‘Your Mum would be so proud, Eleanor,’ he said, finally. ‘She’d come to watch you in Court every day, given half the chance.’ We both cried, the first time we’d allowed ourselves to weep in each other’s company in years.

  I met Gail while taking Bar exams. Four years younger than me and going straight to the top. She was far more convinced by me than I was; constantly talking me up, saying my previous work experience would stand me in good stead when competing for pupillages. She was with me the first ever time I arrived in Naviras. We were both shattered from driving all afternoon, both of us hungover from a raucous night in Lisbon. Well into the morning men had been buying us drinks and offering us drugs, especially to Gail who accepted them happily. As her self-appointed wingwoman I declined the drugs, the drinks had been strong enough. I’d been surprised by Gail that holiday; once out of Britain she took on a wildness, an echo from her past, maybe.

  ‘You need to lighten up, Ellie,’ she’d yelled at me above the thumping music as more shots were being poured by the barman. ‘You’re going to be a barrister, make the most of the free time you’ve got.’

  We took turns driving, the other one semi-comatose in the passenger seat. Gail had been far more hungover than me, as I
drove us out of Lisbon I had to pull over twice so she could open the door and retch into the kerbside. Then we crossed the enormous, endless red suspension bridge, both of us battling intense nausea but it was impossible to stop. I focused on the giant statue of Cristo-Rei perched on the hill on the other side, felt like he was guiding me out of Lisbon away from the debauchery.

  Even on the Almada side of the bridge the motorway remained busy. Men tailgated me before overtaking us slowly, jeering and pointing at us and making comments about our boobs.

  ‘What is it with the fucking Portuguese?’ Gail was giving them violent hand gestures. ‘The calmest people in the world, till you put them behind a wheel. Piss off!’

  The sun was hot on the leather seats and I’d been sweating, the steering wheel became slippery and uncomfortable. I was skittish from hangover, the wind making it hard to hear the stereo or each other, not that either of us were talking much.

  The convertible had been an ostentatious act of celebration, both of us had just passed our Bar exams. Unsurprisingly, Gail had been instantly offered a pupillage and had broken up with her boyfriend on the same day. Equally unsurprisingly I’d been rejected three times and was starting to wonder if it’d been a mistake going for the Bar relatively late, but I was still determined to let my hair down for a month. A drive around the Iberian peninsula which had started ten days before in Barcelona, passing quickly through San Sebastián and Bilbao before making a protracted stop in Lisbon. Spain I knew fairly well but I’d not been to Portugal before and had been looking forward to it.

  We’d been told to visit Sines and some of the other villages down the west coast but were behind schedule, mostly because we’d often found ourselves too hungover to drive after nights in Lisbon. We’d agreed to skip some of the west coast and head straight to Naviras, which had been recommended to us by Gail’s mother.

  ‘It’s just a nice place to stop for lunch, breaks up the journey between Sines and Aljezur,’ she’d said. ‘Very peaceful, and fantastic seafood.’