Weeks in Naviras

by Wimpress, Chris

  I told James he’d been foolish to kill the bee as we got the tube home. ‘Well she appreciated it, and I didn’t want to lose her.’ He wouldn’t say what that meant. I think he was already feeling a bit frustrated as an MP, he’d scraped the by-election with a majority of just over a thousand, but this was considered a triumph given the state of the polls at the time. It did Labour substantial damage since they knew they couldn’t win the next election without retaining seats like Eppingham. It made James a minor political celebrity for a week; admittedly some bemoaning how a bland Tory officeboy had managed to become an MP, jokes about how James’s sort were hatched from pods, but James seemed to come across well in the few interviews in the wake of his election. I found myself on the national news the day after the election, kissing him on the podium as he celebrated.

  Your life as you know it is over, Gail texted that morning, I’m joking, of course, she added quickly in a second message, but she hadn’t been joking at all and in fact had been completely correct. I still hadn’t managed to find myself a job in the intervening weeks, and once James was elected he suggested I should run his constituency office in Eppingham. ‘There might be some stick about me employing you,’ he said, ‘But it’d be good for us both to have an income, and I’d love to have someone I trust completely manning the ship.’

  I gave it some thought for a few days. Rav was certainly keen, saying I was more than qualified and would find it varied and interesting. ‘Because it’s so near London, the constituency office will be the main hub,’ he insisted. ‘There’ll be loads to do, at least for the first few years.’

  I came round to the idea, particularly since I knew being the wife of an MP would come with all kinds of oblique duties. And at that point I was still relatively sold on James’s career, enjoyed being a part of it, even. Ultimately there seemed few reasons not to do it; what exactly was I holding out for, after all? I’d already been doing the job to some extent, helping to set up the office in Eppingham and dealing with minor business.

  It was irksome having to commute out of London to Eppingham each day, but handling the casework from constituents was varied and often interesting. I was shocked at how people lived their lives; the spiral of debts they accrued and their apparent lack of knowledge in how to deal with it. My legal background helped enormously and I actually helped people, helped them turn their lives around. There’s a lot to be said for that, and in any case it was just nice to be working finally, doing something productive. Sometimes I’d meet up with Gail – by then a junior barrister and seriously making a name for herself – and wonder how things might’ve been different, but only in a speculative way, not through any real regret.

  Once the publicity of his election faded James found he couldn’t get on a committee easily and it took him a few weeks to get a feel for the networks inside parliament. He was happy during those months, though, the newest intake always seemed less cynical, more energised. I think it was his brushes with Morgan that prompted my husband to stop people calling him Jamie. It was something he just deleted overnight, after six months in Parliament he changed his name formally in the register. I remember the first time he addressed himself like it to me, in a voicemail. Then a fortnight later he picked me up when I apparently mistitled him at a constituency dinner.

  ‘Jamie’s a bit infantile, L,’ he said as he drove us back into London. ‘It makes me sound like a weasel.’ I just smiled to myself.

  His induction to Washington would take place at the beginning of the following year, Rosie had clearly been angling to go with him but he knew well enough not to risk a row with me by inviting her. She and I had got off to a bad start and James knew he was largely to blame for that. A few people at Westminster knew he’d had a brief history with Rosie, but they mentioned it to me casually enough. I wasn’t paranoid about the two of them, actually I was more suspicious of Rav. He and James both turned thirty-five that year, and Rav’s singledom was becoming ever more glaring.

  A fortnight after Morgan’s visit to London the Commons rose for summer recess and James and I headed out to Naviras. Our work schedules meant big holidays were impossible most of the year, and the political climate meant every MP was fearful of jetting off to exotic locations. In any case all James wanted to do on holiday was read policy papers, no adventurous treks or strange timezones.

  Being so obscure and off the beaten track meant Naviras was a good recourse, and we would go for long weekends twice a year. Other people came out, including Rosie. She brought another new boyfriend with her, this time a wonkish bespectacled policy analyst in the Foreign Office; very much a rising star but painfully dull with it. The two of them didn’t spend much time in the village and instead drove around the region, frantically exploring. We accompanied them on a boat trip around the cost, taking in various grottos and deserted beaches. Rosie took countless photos with a ridiculously oversized camera.

  Ultimately that visit reassured me. Like a lot of male MPs James had put on a fair bit of weight since entering Parliament. Constant snacking and too many canapés had given him a pot belly and his chest had begun to sag, his nipples almost sticking out sideways and resembling little snouts. By contrast Rosie’s boyfriend was svelte with a washboard stomach; he tanned quickly and easily, while James just went a bit red and freckly as usual. I caught Rosie looking at him at the beach bar late one afternoon, I’m sure she was wondering what she’d ever seen in him.

  Rav never seemed to care much for Naviras, he seemed fidgety the whole time and couldn’t understand why we wanted to come back to the same place constantly. ‘It’s fine,’ he’d said, when I’d suggested he was restless. ‘I can see why you both like it.’ Perhaps he was too polite to decline an invitation from James, or maybe Rav felt obliged to go because Rosie had, worried he’d lose his place in the inner circle accreting around my husband. Rav spent most of that week doing exercise, swimming in the ocean or running along the beach or up the cliffs. He was trying to bulk up, each morning asking Lottie for just a glass of milk into which he’d stir some protein powder. That sudden obsession with his physique concerned me a little; it felt like he was turning into everyone else around James, doing things because he felt he ought to, rather than because he necessarily wanted to. But then, who was I to judge?

  That summer also saw the start of construction on the hotel, at the top of the eastern cliff. It was noisy work with a crane towering over the village for nearly a year. Everyone was annoyed about it but none more so than Lottie. It wasn’t so much that she saw it as a rival business, after all its guests would eat in her restaurant. With Lottie the objection was aesthetic, she predicted a looming monstrosity.

  ‘It’s a revolting-looking thing, isn’t it?’ She was standing at the top of the slipway one afternoon, wearing a large pink sunhat. The outer shell of the building was just about complete, work was beginning on its roof. Lottie winced as she looked across the bay. ‘It looks like it should be in Beirut, not Portugal.’

  ‘It’s only going to have ten rooms, Lottie, you’ll get a lot more people stopping off here, they can take back stories of your food to London and maybe you’ll get your own TV show, again.’

  She laughed. ‘It would have to be filmed on location, of course. Actually, yes, the production team can stay in the hotel whilst they film me.’ In the end she came to tolerate the hotel; it brought an influx of holidaymakers and Lottie noticed her restaurant became busier, particularly in high season. They were a different sort, though, not the kind who would ever have stayed somewhere like Casa Amanhã, where breakfast-time involved sitting around a long table with Lottie and the other houseguests. The hotel was more suited to people like Rosie, less social folk who always needed to be doing things. Scuba diving, visiting old forts and churches, they viewed Naviras as little more than a base to explore the region and rarely returned a second time.

  In early October after we’d returned to London from party conference I discovered I was pregnant. We’d been trying for a only few we
eks so I was quite surprised at how quickly we succeeded. At ten weeks, I rang Lottie to wish her Happy Christmas and tell her about the baby.

  ‘Well, that’s just joyous news,’ she said, in the tone she used when talking to guests she wasn’t sure about. ‘Now take my advice, and don’t find out what it is.’ She recanted a story of a couple who’d stayed with her a few years before, they’d been told they were having a girl and had prepared their pink nursery only for the scans to prove wrong. Lottie didn’t care much for technology at the best of times. ‘To my mind,’ she said, a precursor she’d often use, ‘I see people these days relying far too much on other things to think for them. What about feelings, Ellie, instinct? It’s very disconcerting.’

  ‘I think we’ll leave it as surprise,’ I told her, and in that I kept my word.

  The January of the following year saw James’s induction trip to Washington. He was away for two weeks, only one of which was during Commons recess. Morgan had suggested James not make a big song and dance at Westminster about his invitation so James managed to get himself quietly slipped from a few Commons votes. A family matter, was all that was said publicly. I thought it a bit dangerous but really James’s profile was still low enough to get away with it, in any case the Tories were in opposition. He and Rav went off one grey, freezing afternoon and I heard very little from them for the first week. A few messages, a short phone call every other day. James was never particularly forthcoming about what he was doing, would only say it was ‘fantastic’ or ‘extraordinary’. At the time I was quite hormonal; Bobby never gave me any acute problems during pregnancy but I did feel quite neurotic and paranoid at times. Once I even dialled Rosie’s mobile, withholding my number, to see whether it gave a US ringing tone. It cut straight to voicemail. My insecurity came from being apart from James for so long. I put in more hours in the constituency clearing the caseload pile, and after a week or so found myself at a bit of a loose end. I called James and suggested I fly out to Washington.

  ‘Oh well, I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea.’ He sounded faint on the phone. ‘I mean we’re very busy, even in the evenings. I think you’d be bored.’

  ‘Well, I could explore Washington,’ I said. ‘I’ve not been before.’

  ‘I mean, are you sure you’re in a fit state to fly?’ James knew well enough that I was barely into my second trimester.

  ‘You don’t want me to come, do you.’

  James sighed down the phone. ‘Look, L, it’s politics. I think you’d find it boring. I know you find it boring sometimes, don’t you?’

  That was debatable; I found policies interesting, I was just turned off by the prevarication and obfuscation of MPs and ministers. I backed down, although not without protest. It was a Thursday evening and I’d been looking at flights to Washington while on the phone to James. Once he’d hung up I typed ‘Lisbon’ and searched.

  By noon the following day I was in the village, a speedy taxi ride from the airport after a rather bumpy morning flight. I’d called Casa Amanhã from the airport in London, hoping Lottie would answer the phone. Instead it was Luis who picked up.

  ‘I’m just checking Lottie’s not full,’ I said. ‘I’m coming out for the weekend, last-minute thing.’

  I heard Luis blow air down the receiver, a noiseless laugh. ‘It’s fine. The whole village is deserted, but Lottie will be happy you’re coming down. She’d like to see you both.’

  ‘No, it’s just me,’ I said, struggling to take off my shoes for the security search. ‘James is in Washington.’

  ‘Even better,’ was all Luis said.

  Naviras was indeed empty; the sea was rough and the Portuguese economy was in the doldrums. The village had been quieter than usual for the previous couple of summers anyway; Brits had noticed their spending power decline markedly whenever they went abroad, at the same time the price of almost everything in Portugal was going through the roof. Even the seafood was more expensive because the cost of diesel for the fishing boats had rocketed.

  After dropping my little suitcase in Room Seven I walked down to the empty slipway. Huge waves were crashing against its sides, making liquid fireworks. The ocean was swollen making it impossible to get to the beach bar. I watched as the breakers slammed into the side of the drenched sun deck, the thatched parasols dripping spray.

  It was quite edifying to see this hidden side of Naviras, to observe the village while it was dormant. You could say it was like seeing it ‘in the round’, but it’s more accurate to describe it as travelling to the core, to the centre of the circle. Who knew how the village got its name? Luis told me it used to be called Navires, and before that Navios, The Ships. ‘It was a place to watch them as they came up the coast,’ he said, and that remained true centuries later. I often watched them, several miles out, big sea containers on their way to and from Lisbon, or maybe even France or London. It was fun to imagine a time when someone standing on the beach would’ve seen caravels, off to draw maps of the world, followed later by conquering frigates to colour them in.

  Lottie was adamant the village’s name came from Moorish. ‘Or maybe from the Visigoths, they had this part of Europe for a hundred years or so. That’s about long enough to put one’s mark on a place.’

  The hotel was finished, at least on the outside. They had been half-way through putting up the signage at the top of the building, but presumably they’d stopped working because of the high winds. That afternoon the letters just read ‘NAVIRAS BEACH HOT’.

  ‘Of course it should be Hotel Praia Do Naviras,’ scoffed Lottie when I told her about the sign. ‘That’s the way things are going.’ As usual for that time of year Lottie wasn’t running the restaurant in the evenings, instead she was experimenting with her menu. She did this often in the winter, tweaking recipes or planning wholesale changes for the following summer. Some dishes like her giant pan-fried prawns never changed, but that winter Lottie introduced an array of new desserts, and I was the first to test some of them out.

  ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t go to Washington to see him,’ she said casually as she was standing behind the bar, whisking melted chocolate with crème fraiche.

  ‘He’s doing politics, I think it would have been boring for me,’ I said, sitting on a stool opposite her.

  She put down the whisk and stared at me, incredulously. ‘He didn’t want you there, did he.’

  ‘No,’ I couldn’t look at her. ‘I’m sorry you were second choice, Lottie.’

  She let out a puff of indignation. ‘It’s the fact you’re the second choice, dear girl. That’s what I find so troubling.’

  ‘He’s right, though. He’s got work to do and I would’ve been on my own, walking around Washington with nobody to talk to. In his own way, he’s got my interests at heart.’

  Lottie smiled. ‘Who do you think you’re lying to, darling?’

  She went to bed early that night, saying she found the creative process wearying. I went up to Room Seven and lay on the bed, reading. I could hear the waves pounding Naviras Bay as the wind made the window shutters rattle. I was reading a novel from the paperback pile in the vestibule but was struggling to get my tummy comfortable. I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth, where I noticed the painting was ever so slightly skew-wiff. The fisherman looked like he was struggling to keep his balance in an earthquake. I took the painting down from the wall. In the alcove behind it was a rolled up piece of paper.

  I wish he would love you like you deserve to be loved.

  His handwriting was cursive and quite lovely. I’d never been sent a message quite like it; slow and considered, not bashed out onto a screen. It was fairly obvious the note had been posted there that day, no sign of dust, no yellowing of the paper. I didn’t have a pen with me nor anything else to write with. I fished around in my makeup bag for an eyeliner pencil. Right below where he’d written his words I replied.

  And I wish someone could love you, as you deserve to be loved.

  I toyed with putting
an ‘x’ at the end but it didn’t seem necessary. I folded up the paper and put it back in the alcove. I replaced the painting, making sure it was hung straight.

  James barely asked me anything about my quick trip to Naviras, even though I’d told him in advance about it on email. There were a few texts, a couple of forwarded emails from him, constituency business and an invite to supper at a fellow MP’s London flat. But he never called; already James was showing signs of, what? Negligence? Absent-mindedness? There isn’t quite a word for it. Relaxed complacency comes nearest. A sense that our relationship didn’t need as much maintenance, now we were married with a baby on the way. Lottie had been correct, I was now a secondary consideration, after politics. At best James thought we were a team, with clear delineation of responsibilities. But to determine those also allocated power and I’d acquiesced, no doubt about that.

  Luis never acknowledged the note. I didn’t check to see whether another message had been posted behind the painting. We barely spoke to each other for the remainder of my visit, largely because I stuck to Casa Amanhã, chatting to Lottie and gorging on both her food and the novels in her vestibule. But on the two occasions he came up to the house we shot each other quick glances and looked away.

  I flew back to London and two days later James returned from Washington like the cat who’d got the cream, suddenly a bit dismissive of Westminster but with a renewed sense of purpose. Rosie came over the following evening and it was obvious she hadn’t been with him, that was clear from the way she asked endless questions about the cultural programme and the state of US politics. James gave full explanations, but one thing he didn’t tell her was how Rav had come out to him while they were in Washington, disclosing also that he’d quietly had a boyfriend for nearly a year and wanted James and me to meet him. That, it seemed, was not something Rosie was allowed to know.