Weeks in Naviras

by Wimpress, Chris

  The first suggestion of problems came as we sat in the departure lounge. It was unpleasantly warm and people were complaining; staff at the gate told us the air conditioning wasn’t working properly. As we walked down the jetway to the plane James’s phone rang. It was Rav, by then a special adviser in the Home Office. As he listened James stopped walking abruptly, causing the people behind us to bump into him.

  ‘Problems with the power grid,’ was all he said to me as we sat down and buckled up, people still filing past us down the aisle to their seats. He’d thought about getting off the plane, had asked Rav to call Number 10 to see if they wanted him back at Westminster. But Rav called back to say Downing Street viewed it as an isolated incident, little more than a fluctuation in the supply. ‘Drake says it’s okay for us to go,’ said James. ‘He’d better be right, otherwise there might no getting back.’

  Still he fiddled with his phone long after the doors had closed and the safety video was playing. The flight attendant frowned at James as she was pointing out the exits. ‘You should put that into flight mode,’ I said, as the plane turned onto the runway and the engines signalled their eagerness to rev up.

  ‘Don’t be silly, L, you can’t crash a plane with a phone.’ The flight attendant was still staring at James from the very front of the plane, perhaps she knew who he was and let it pass. By the time we landed in Lisbon it was clear things had taken a turn for the worse. First there’d been a blackout across much of northern England, it had lasted an hour but had been dismissed as a one-off. Then the whole country started to experience brownouts, inconvenient at first but increasing the pressure on Downing Street to account for them. The fluctuations played havoc with all sorts of things; computers were crashing, cars and phones failed to charge properly. Clocks told the wrong time, fridges and freezers either defrosted or iced up.

  Privately James was informed that two separate things had occurred in tandem. An unusually long period of high pressure over Britain had caused the wind to drop, rendering the onshore windfarms useless. Meanwhile the Russians had diverted their gas exports to countries prepared to pay more than Britain. It had happened before but suddenly there wasn’t any slack left in the system to absorb the loss. Everyone in Whitehall knew; it wouldn’t be long before the media put two and two together.

  By the time we got down to Naviras in a taxi, checked into the hotel room and unpacked our things an email came through from Rav, saying James was needed back in Britain for an emergency Cabinet meeting. ‘Oh, now they tell me,’ he said. I don’t know whether James was annoyed with Drake for not getting a grip sooner, or with himself for not getting off the plane in London when he’d had the chance.

  ‘I think we ought to stay here,’ I said to him. ‘Me and the kids, I mean.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Well if there’re problems with the power then we’re better off here until it’s all sorted, surely?’ The issue was confined to Britain; Portugal had plenty of electricity thanks to its ubiquitous wind farms and solar panels.

  James went to the balcony of our hotel room with his back to me, staring out at the sea for a moment with his hands on his hips. ‘Okay,’ he said, turning around. ‘Yeah, it makes sense. No point you ruining your holiday over this. It’ll hopefully be resolved in a few days.’

  Once again he was leaving me in Naviras to go back and do politics, only it no longer bothered me; I was pleased about it, glad to be in the village and away from what seemed to be the makings of a serious mess.

  I didn’t care much for the hotel and tried as hard as I could not to make this obvious to the staff working there, none of whom were Portuguese. The rooms all had aircon, fruit platters waiting for us by the bed, there was even a phone in each of the bathrooms right next to the lavatory. Has anyone ever actually used one of those phones, I wondered? Can any conversation be so urgent that it has to be taken while relieving oneself? I began to see things like this, thanks to Bobby. ‘Mummy, can I phone Daddy from the toilet?’

  ‘Maybe later, darling.’ I couldn’t help using the word, even though invoking Lottie was always painful.

  I doubted whether the hotel made any money. It was never full, nowhere near. I think I only saw three other families staying there during that trip. The staff seemed bored much of the time and tended to over-compensate. Sitting by the rooftop pool they’d constantly ask if we’d like drinks or food, seemingly disappointed by each refusal. I hated the pool, sheltered from the wind by high walls which made it impossible to enjoy what should’ve been a tremendous view. The whole roof terrace felt clinical and new, the young shrubs in the planters looked like they’d been potted the day before; unweathered and too perfectly positioned. After a few hours I decided to take Bobby and Sadie down to the beach instead.

  In most ways Naviras was made for children, the only problem was Sadie’s habit of running off down the steep streets, and she hated being picked up or held back once she’d discovered the joys of walking. I couldn’t take my eyes off her as the three of us made our way down to the beach bar for some lunch. As we left the slipway I could see Luis sitting on the sundeck, smoking. I took the kids down to the beach, slathering them in suncream before laying out the towels and the toys, telling them not to go into the sea until I returned . They were happy making sandcastles by the towels. I walked up to the beach bar and across the terrace to Luis, who stood up. We kissed on each cheek before I sat down.

  ‘How’s scuba school, Luis?’

  ‘It’s going really well, I love it.’ He put the cigarette in the ashtray. ‘It’s been hard work setting up the business, but it’s actually starting to make money, believe it or not.’

  ‘I’m so pleased for you.’ It was good to see him with some direction to his life. I was just sorry about what taken him to spur into action. ‘Do you know what’s going on with Casa Amanhã?’

  Luis went to light another cigarette just seconds after extinguishing his last. ‘Nothing. Some people came a few weeks ago, saying they wanted to value the place.’

  I was shocked. ‘Where did they come from?’

  Luis was undoing the top buttons of his shirt. ‘Carolina saw them at the gates to the house and rang me. When I arrived they said they were acting on behalf of the vendor, they said they wanted to go inside and take photos of the rooms, but I stopped them. They didn’t have a key,’ He produced a leather cord from inside his shirt, hanging around his neck. ‘Not this key.’ He smiled at me, picking up his cigarette again. ‘I told them to piss off, unless they had proof of ownership. Then they left, and they haven’t come back. I check the house every day, to see if anyone’s tried to get in.’

  I was struggling to take it in. ‘Who were they?’

  ‘I haven’t seen them in the village before,’ he said. ‘A man and a woman, they seemed like a couple. Quite old, English, both of them. I asked them a few questions about the house but they didn’t seem to know enough about it, so I said they weren’t getting in.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a key to the house.’

  ‘It was me who chained up the gates in the first place,’ he puffed. ‘Nobody else seemed to be doing anything about it. The whole thing’s strange, I mean somebody must know what’s going to happen to it, but not anyone in Naviras. Where’s Jamie?’

  I explained to Luis what had happened and he just smiled to himself. ‘Seems to me like he’s running away from the village every time.’

  ‘I don’t mind, not anymore.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We’re not in love, Luis. We haven’t been for a long time.’

  His eyes locked onto mine. ‘You know, I can ask Carolina to look after your kids for you, if you want to do something one evening. She loves children.’

  ‘What did you have in mind?’

  ‘I think you know, Ellie.’

  We said nothing more for a while. I looked down to the beach, where Bobby had just destroyed Sadie’s sandcastle and was trying to stop her from doing the same to his.

&
nbsp; ‘Your kids are so wonderful, the way they play together,’ said Luis. ‘I never had this with my brother when I was the same age.’

  ‘Yeah, they seem to have bonded really well. Still, there’s only just under two years between them.’

  A long silence. Luis stubbed out his cigarette, only half smoked. ‘Is she mine?’

  Three words, no more were required. I put my hands over my eyes and rubbed them, unwilling to look at him. ‘I honestly don’t know, Luis.’

  ‘But she could be.’

  ‘It’s possible. There are ways of finding out, but not easily. Not without raising the alarm with James. Do you want to know?’

  ‘Yes, I’d like to know, of course I would. But I understand if it’s difficult. Why don’t you leave him, Ellie?’

  I gave a half-laugh. ‘And do what, Luis? Come and live out here with you?’

  ‘I didn’t say you had to come here. I just want you to be happier than you are, that’s all. While there’s still time for you to meet someone else.’

  ‘What a strange thing to say.’

  ‘It’s not, Ellie, I’m not stupid enough to assume we’d work together. We don’t really know each other. I only know you from when you’re here.’

  It was hard to take, him giving voice to a truth I’d always known. There was a loss of control. ‘But still you want us to go out, on some kind of date?’

  ‘I think we both could do with cheering up,’ he stretched his suddenly muscled arms. ‘And to talk about what’s happening with our lives,’ he added.

  Bobbie and Sadie had started fighting over buckets, she was crying. Normally I didn’t rush to comfort them when they were upset but I needed to get away from Luis. ‘I’d better go and sort those two out,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘I’ll talk to Carolina later, yeah?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You’ll have to give me your new phone number,’ he said. ‘I tried the old one a few months ago, it didn’t work.’

  ‘Of course. Sorry, I had to change it when James became Home Secretary,’ I lied.

  I spent a further two hours on the beach with the kids, enjoying the hot sun tempered by a fairly stiff breeze. I turned around at one point to find Luis had left the beach bar. Before long Bobby said he was hungry so we packed up our beach things and walked up to La Roda. My phone picked up the network, a message from James. Check the news when you can. He must have sent it from Lisbon airport. While we waited for our lunch he messaged me some more, clearly everyone was playing catchup but Ollie Drake had recalled Parliament and would deliver a statement the following day, a Friday, at noon.

  James called that evening to warn what the PM would say, but still I watched Drake’s speech to the Commons on the TV in the hotel room. Amid the bolshiest of jeering he explained how Britain was going down to a four-day week, with electricity restricted. Hospitals and major infrastructure exempt, of course. A temporary measure, until supplies could be properly restored. No firm timescale but expected to be within days, not weeks.

  If he’d said ‘hours not days,’ then it might just have been manageable, but from the outset it was obvious things were dire. Tory MPs must’ve sussed, some of them were jeering from the backbenches during Drake’s statement. I knew James would be swamped that night and wouldn’t call me, so it seemed as good a time as any to let Carolina take care of the kids for the evening. She must’ve known what was going on. The last message I got from James that afternoon was about how weak Drake seemed. I wished him good luck.

  Luis and I met outside La Roda and walked down to the beach as the sun was turning large and orange, the shadow of the cliff advancing up the other side of the bay. Luis had been down earlier, I realised, and had dug a pit in the sand and built a small fire with wood and charcoal bricks. It took a minute or two for the wood to catch light, we both lay on the sand behind the fire, watching the tide as the charcoal turned white. Luis had cleaned out four sardines and stuck skewers through them, resting them on two little pebble towers he’d built on each side of his fire. We drank vihno verde as a fingernail of moon rose out of the haze.

  Luis squeezed lemon onto the sardines as they cooked. We sat up cross-legged and ate them with our fingers quietly. When there was nothing left but heads and bones we threw them back onto the embers, then we held each other. I didn’t care that my mouth and lips tasted and smelled of sardines, nor if the whole village could see me. We stayed like that for about half an hour, before Luis pulled back. ‘Something I need to show you,’ he said, standing up and scooping sand over the glowing remnants of the fire.

  I explained how it’d been only my second meal on the beach, described the morning James had proposed. He looked up at me, then walked over to the slipway and fiddled with the rope securing his scuba boat to one of the iron cleats. I walked over to him and he turned around. He’d pulled off some of the twine from the rope, knotting it into a little circle.

  ‘I don’t want you to marry me,’ he said. ‘But have this, anyway.’ I smiled and held out my right hand, let him put the knotted twine around my ring finger.

  We walked up to Casa Amanhã in the twilight. Standing in the road at the gates Luis produced a key from his pocket, turned the padlock and pulled it apart. The gates made a wrenching sound as we pushed them open. As we walked down the driveway in the gathering darkness I looked at the doors to the guesthouse and restaurant, which were boarded up. Coming round the side of the building we reached the little hatch to wine cellar, which was down a couple of stone steps and also chained and padlocked. ‘It’s the same key,’ said Luis, twisting the lock and quietly pulling the door open.

  I’d never been down there before and could barely see in front of me until Luis struck a long cooking match and lit a lantern sitting on a small shelf by the hatch. He held it up to show row after row of bottles. ‘I keep thinking we ought to move them,’ he said. ‘But it would be stealing, and I’m not sure where I’d put them.’

  ‘How many people know this is all down here?’

  ‘As far as I know, just me and Carolina,’ he said, walking over to the darkest corner of the cellar and gesturing to the small safe embedded in the wall, big as a breezeblock and sealed with a combination lock. Luis crouched down and turned the dial. ‘Lottie never liked coming down here, much,’ he said. ‘She was scared of spiders and always got me to put the cash and the accounts stuff in here for her every night. The number’s 0603, you knew what it meant to her? Three minutes past six, the time she was due on-air every morning for her first weather forecast. She told me that the first time I met her.’ He looked up at me, grinned then turned back to the safe, there was a click as the final tumbler gave way and he pulled the door open. He rummaged around inside briefly before pulling out a pile of small papers, bunched together with an elastic band.

  They were our little notes, every single one we’d ever sent to each other via the alcove in Room Seven. ‘I can’t believe you kept them, Luis,’ I said. Those notes were the lump sum of what had kept me going, part of what kept pulling me back to the house. ‘Do you love me, Luis?’

  ‘Of course I love you,’ he stood up. ‘I always have. Well, not to begin with, I thought you were one of those English ice queens at first,’ he poked me on the arm. ‘Then I started to see into you, and I liked it.’

  ‘What you said on the beach this morning about us not working.’

  ‘I meant it. But it doesn’t mean I don’t love you, still.’ He pressed up to me. ‘Usually I feel like it’s wrong, but not because of James,’ He laughed silently to himself. ‘More because of how we’re brother and sister, somehow.’

  ‘Well, we’re definitely not, Luis.’ He smiled, but I was getting nervous and shivered.

  ‘Let’s move upstairs. It gets cold down here pretty fast, once the sun’s gone down.’ I said I didn’t want to go any further into the house, and I really didn’t want to, not without Lottie there. ‘Just come and look at the place for a second,’ he said.

  I watched as he put
the papers back in the safe and scrambled the lock. We walked up the stone steps that curled in a spiral, reaching the wooden door. Luis pushed on it and we emerged at the bottom of the main staircase, headed up into the restaurant, dark and covered with cobwebs. A few shafts of half-light were coming in through the shutters in front of the high windows. We stood at the top of the staircase for a moment. It was so much bigger than I’d ever appreciated, its true size only becoming obvious because there were no customers, no kitchen staff. No Lottie as a focal point.

  ‘If anything ever happens to Casa Amanhã, I’ll make sure I get our letters out of the safe first,’ said Luis, walking down the small wooden staircase, putting the lantern on the bar before running his hand through the dust on its surface.

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to Casa Amanhã,’ I paused again, knowing anything else would change everything. ‘Because it belongs to me, now.’

  I’d never seen Luis look surprised at anything before. ‘She gave it to you?’

  I walked slowly down the stairs towards him. ‘Before she died. She said she wanted me to always have an escape route from James. But it’s not as simple as that Luis, I always knew it wouldn’t be.’

  I could see him getting angry, just as I’d feared. ‘She gave it to you, not me.’

  ‘Luis please, I wasn’t happy about it either, I’ve felt so awful.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  I sat on one of the dusty stools at the bar, put both elbows on it and pressed my palms against my face. ‘I couldn’t. Actually, I wanted to transfer it into your name but I worried James would find out, and start asking questions,’ I stretched one of my hands out on the bar towards him. ‘I never expected him to become Home Secretary or anything like that. When he did, I thought about maybe giving the house to Carolina, but that’s not possible until she turns eighteen. I looked into it, Luis, honestly I did. That’s my plan, it’s only a year from now, then you can both have it, I promise.’