Being

by Kevin Brooks

  I squeezed her hand.

  She looked at me, her eyes filling with tears again. ‘I wanted to come home… but it was dark… I would have had to ride through the mountains at night.’ Her lips started quivering and she lowered her eyes. ‘I was so scared, Robert… I just wanted to come home…’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said gently. ‘It’s over now. You’re safe –’

  ‘No, it’s not all right,’ she sobbed. ‘I was stupid… everything I did was stupid. I should never have gone there in the first place. It was a stupid idea. Now we haven’t got any money at all –’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’

  She looked at me, getting impatient. ‘It does.’

  I smiled at her. ‘Doesn’t…’

  ‘Does,’ she said, smiling now through her tears.

  I felt something inside me then, something I’d never felt before. A feeling that somehow the world had just shrunk and everything there was – the skies, the mountains, the stars, the sea – everything was right here, right now. Inside me, inside this room, inside this silent white cube. This was the world and that’s all there was.

  Just me and Eddi.

  Sitting on a settee.

  On a starlit Christmas Eve.

  ‘I really missed you,’ I said to her.

  She smiled. ‘I missed you too.’

  Later that night, as we lay together in her bed, our nakedness bathed in the light of the moon, I couldn’t help wondering about what we’d just done. I didn’t want to think about it, I didn’t want to think about anything. I just wanted to lie there and smile. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop thinking about myself – my self, my body, my skin, my flesh. My workings. The physical things. The glistening sweat on my skin. The excitement, the arousal, the love, the sex. My feelings. My actions. My liquids…

  The sex.

  How did it happen?

  How did it work?

  What had actually happened inside me… inside Eddi? What had passed between us? Were we making something together? Was it possible?

  Was it right?

  I had no way of knowing.

  And I think it was then that I began to realize that I didn’t really care any more. Whatever I was, whatever was inside me, there was nothing I could do about it. I knew it was there and I knew I’d never be able to forget it, but what could I do? I couldn’t do anything. So why bother trying?

  I functioned as a human.

  I looked like a human.

  I thought and felt like a human.

  Did it matter that I wasn’t human?

  No.

  What did it matter what was inside me? As long as it worked, and as long as it didn’t stop me from being myself, who cared what it was?

  I looked down at Eddi. She was snuggled up warmly in the duvet, her sleepy eyes fixed on mine. Through the open window, I could hear church bells ringing. Eddi smiled at me and draped her arm over my chest.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Robert,’ she whispered.

  I nodded, smiling at her.

  I was either too happy, or too sad, to speak.

  24

  In some ways, nothing really changed after that first night together. We still did the same things, went to the same places, lived the same simple lives. Our daily routine didn’t change. Our nights were different, of course. Our nights were very different. There was no sense of awkwardness or embarrassment after that first time, it all felt perfectly natural. We didn’t need to talk about it. We both just knew that we’d be sleeping together from then on, and we both just got on with it. And it was wonderful – like Christmas Eve every night. Fabulous, strange, exciting, unknowing… sometimes a bit frightening, and still very confusing. But mostly just wonderful.

  The other thing that changed, though – and this was the thing that meant the most – was the closeness between me and Eddi. It’s hard to describe what it was like, and I don’t know how much it had to do with the physical closeness we’d found, but after our first night together it felt as if an invisible barrier that had been keeping us apart had suddenly been taken away. We were close now – whatever that means. We were together.

  I’d never known that with anyone before. And, just like everything else, it felt really strange – to feel that close to another person, to be almost at one with someone else, but still be yourself. To still have your secrets and your lies, and the things you can’t say… to live every second of every day wondering what would happen if the only other person in the world could see inside you and see what you really are…

  I tried not to think about it.

  Eddi hadn’t taken all her money to Granada, so we weren’t completely broke. But the few hundred euros she’d left behind didn’t last very long and by the beginning of March we’d both got ourselves jobs. I started working for Jorge Alvarez just a few weeks after Christmas. I’d never had a job before, and it took me a while to get used to it, but after the first few weeks or so I felt as if I’d been doing it forever. I’d get up early in the morning, ride Eddi’s motorbike up into the mountains, then spend the day with a few other locals working on some old farmhouse – knocking down walls, painting, tiling, a bit of plastering sometimes. We’d stop work around two or three, then I’d get on the motorbike and ride back home again. The job didn’t pay very much, but it was cash in hand and it was just about enough money to live on.

  It was still quite a struggle for a while, though – trying to get by, living from day to day, having to count every euro we spent – and it didn’t really get any easier until Eddi got herself a job as a waitress at El Corazón. I knew she didn’t like it. She didn’t like wearing the uniform, she didn’t like having to be nice all the time and she didn’t like working the long hours – five days a week, from 11 am till 2 pm, then from 7 pm till one in the morning.

  But she didn’t complain.

  Her days off were Wednesday and Sunday, and mine were Saturday and Sunday, so we didn’t have nearly as much time with each other as before. But we could still share those lazy afternoons together, and there were always the long hot nights…

  And that was more than enough for me.

  It was a life.

  We even started going to church every Sunday, which was extremely weird for me, because I’d never been in a church before. In fact, the whole thing was extremely weird. It all started on a bright Sunday morning in May, when Eddi suddenly decided that she wanted to go to Mass. We were still in bed at the time, and we’d stayed up late the night before, so I was still feeling tired and sleepy.

  ‘Robert?’ she said. ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want to go to Mass.’

  ‘You want to what?’

  ‘Go to Mass… you know, Mass… the church…’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Church, Robert… I’m talking about going to church. I’m Catholic. I used to go to church all the time when I was a kid.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ I said, looking at her, ‘you’re not a kid any more, are you?’

  She punched me on the arm. ‘Come on, get up. I want to go to church.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, rolling over, ‘have a nice time. I’ll see you later.’

  Without another word, she got out of bed, yanked the sheet off me and stood there waiting for me to get up.

  ‘All right,’ I groaned, ‘all right.’

  She wore a plain black dress, the only one she had that was long enough to cover her knees, and she made me put on my suit.

  ‘It’s too hot for a suit,’ I complained.

  ‘You’re going to church,’ she said. ‘You wear a suit. And make sure you comb your hair.’ She smiled at me, gently shaking her head. ‘Look at you…’

  ‘What? What about me?’

  She laughed quietly. ‘Have you seen yourself recently?’ She nodded at a full-length mirror on the wall. ‘Take a look.’

  I turned and faced the m
irror. At first, I didn’t understand what she was talking about. All I could see was myself, the same person I saw whenever I looked in the mirror… but then it suddenly hit me. All at once, I was seeing myself as someone else might see me – a tallish young man, his skin tanned brown, his hair long and dark, his body lean and muscled. I stared at myself, feeling strangely embarrassed.

  I looked like a man.

  The streets were busy when we left the flat. Everyone was going to church. They always did. Families, couples, big kids, little kids… all dressed up in their Sunday best: the women in long skirts and hats, the men in sombre suits. The sun was shining, the church bells were ringing, everyone was smiling and talking to each other. It felt pretty good…

  Until we went inside the church and the service began.

  That’s when it got really weird.

  I just didn’t understand it – the strange sense of doom, the sinister rituals, the mad ideas and the fancy clothes. It all just seemed so ridiculous. God, Jesus… bread and wine, death and glory… I mean, I didn’t really mind any of it, and I actually quite liked all the stuff that went with it – the sounds, the smells, the music, the colours, the candles, the baubles, the strangely bewitching words… this is my body, this is the cup of my blood… I didn’t mind it at all. I just found it incredible that anyone could actually believe it.

  It was also quite weird being surrounded by so many men in dark suits. No one normally wore suits in the village – it was too hot most of the time and there was simply no reason to wear one anyway – so I just wasn’t used to seeing them, and I’d kind of forgotten how much they reminded me of Ryan and his people. But now the memories were coming alive again. And as I sat there in the church, listening to the priest droning on about sacrifice and resurrection, I found myself gazing around at the rows of dark-suited men, looking for anything that felt out of place – the wrong kind of eyes, the wrong kind of face, the wrong kind of feeling…

  I didn’t see anything I didn’t want to see, but I still didn’t like it. The memories, the fears, the shadows of shadows…

  Ryan.

  The past.

  Ghosts.

  I didn’t want to think about ghosts and shadows. I just wanted to be here – sitting with Eddi in a small stone church on a Sunday morning in Tejeda.

  Nothing else.

  Afterwards, when we got home, I asked Eddi if she’d enjoyed herself.

  ‘You don’t go to Mass to enjoy yourself,’ she told me, going into the bedroom to get changed.

  I followed her into the bedroom. ‘No? What’s it for, then?’

  ‘I don’t know… it’s just church. You know, going to church…’

  ‘Do you believe in any of it?’

  She started to take off her dress. ‘When I was a little girl at convent school,’ she told me, ‘I used to confess to sins I hadn’t committed. We all did. We used to talk about it all the time, telling each other what we’d confessed to the priest.’ She looked at me. ‘We were only little kids… we were too young for sins. But we were all too scared not to confess to any. So we made things ups – I stole some sweets from the shop, I had wicked thoughts, I said a bad word to Sister Mary.’ Her face darkened for a moment, her eyes lost in the memory, then she shook her head, dismissing it from her mind, and she turned back to me and smiled. ‘The way I look at it, I’m still in credit when it comes to sins. I spent so many years atoning for imaginary ones that now I can commit them for free.’ She stepped out of her dress and came over to me. ‘Do you want to share one with me now?’

  I looked into her naked blue eyes. ‘I don’t believe in sin.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said, unbuttoning my shirt. ‘You can leave all the believing to me. I’ve got more than enough for both of us.’

  25

  Every year, in the first week of June, the villagers of Tejeda hold a festival in honour of their patron saint, La Virgen de las Maravillas. The celebrations last for four days, starting on the Friday and building up over the weekend until the festival reaches its climax on Monday night with a grand procession through the streets.

  Jorge Alvarez told me all about it. He was a member of La Cofradía, the local brotherhood that organized the procession. His brother, León, was a member too… and his father, and his grandfather, and most of his uncles and cousins. This year, though, Jorge was one of the costaleros, the men who carried the image of the Virgin through the streets, and he was really excited about it. It was a huge honour apparently. And in the weeks leading up to the festival, he didn’t talk about anything else. In fact, he talked about it so much that by the time the festival finally started I was pretty excited myself.

  I didn’t go to work on the Friday, and I wasn’t planning to go back until the following Wednesday or Thursday, but Eddi had to work over the whole weekend. She didn’t want to, but the festival was a big event, and people came from miles around to see it, so the restaurants and bars were always really busy.

  ‘I can’t get out of it, Robert,’ she told me on the Friday afternoon. ‘They want all the waitresses on duty over the whole weekend.’

  ‘Every night?’

  ‘Yeah… I’ll probably get a couple of afternoons off, and I might get to see some of the procession on Monday –’

  ‘Can’t you tell them you’re sick or something?’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s the busiest time of the year… the money they make over the next few days is enough to get them through the winter. They need everyone they can get. It wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t help out.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose…’

  ‘You can still go to everything… you’ll enjoy it.’ She smiled at me. ‘It’s the Reina da la Feria tonight. You can watch the Queen of the Fair being elected.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I think there’s fireworks too.’

  ‘Pretty girls and fireworks, eh?’ I nodded thoughtfully. ‘I suppose I could force myself to enjoy it.’ I gave her a sad-looking smile. ‘Of course, it won’t be the same without you.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ she grinned.

  So I spent most of that night on my own, just wandering around the village, enjoying the celebrations. It would have been nicer if Eddi had been there, but I still had a pretty good time. The streets were crowded, the night was warm and the whole village was alive with colour and sound. Music was playing everywhere – guitars, trumpets, singing and dancing – and a lot of the locals had dressed up for the night. There were handsome women in brightly coloured frocks, men in white shirts and neckerchiefs, dancers in sequinned gowns, musicians in wide-brimmed hats. There were old people gathered in doorways, watching the tourists taking their pictures, while others looked on from upstairs windows. There were young people looking for fun – boys and girls, men and women – their eyes alight in the heat of the night. Candles were burning, drinks were flowing, the restaurants and bars were full… and I was just strolling around on my own, soaking it all up. I watched the festival streetlights being switched on. I watched the crowning of the Queen of the Fair. I watched the firework display. I listened to the music of the Alalba orchestra. And then, as midnight approached, I made my way up to El Corazón, found myself a table at the back and waited for Eddi to finish work.

  It was gone two o’clock by the time we got home and Eddi was so exhausted that she didn’t even want a drink. She just got undressed and fell into bed, and within seconds she was fast asleep.

  The next day, Saturday, I met her after work in the afternoon and we went to a children’s funfair together. There were clowns and magicians, stalls and rides, a DJ playing records. All the little kids were dancing around like lunatics, shouting and jumping and singing along… it was really good fun. But Eddi was tired, so we didn’t stay long. When we got home, she went back to bed and slept until the early evening. I woke her up around six, made us both something to eat and then it was time for her to go back to work again.

  ‘Are you sure you can manage this?’ I asked her. ‘You do
n’t want to wear yourself out.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, stifling a yawn. ‘I’m just not used to it.’ She smiled and blew me a kiss. ‘I’ll see you later – OK?’

  I stayed at home for an hour or two, then I went into the village and watched a dance performance in the square. After that, I listened to a band playing flamenco music for a while, but I couldn’t really enjoy it. I was worried about Eddi. She looked so tired… and she’d been really quiet that afternoon. So, just like the night before, I headed back to El Corazón and stayed there for the rest of the night.

  Eddi seemed a lot better on Sunday. She was still a bit quieter than usual, but she didn’t look so tired any more, and she didn’t have to go into work until eight o’clock that night, so we had the whole of the day to ourselves. It was a beautiful day – a brilliant blue-sky Sunday – and we had a beautiful time together. A quiet walk on the beach in the morning, a sleep in the afternoon, then in the early evening we went to church and watched a flower offering to La Virgen de las Maravillas. Although Jorge had told me that the Virgin was the patron saint of the village – the Virgin of the Wonders, or Our Lady of the Wonders – I still didn’t really understand what it was all about, so I had no idea why she was being offered flowers, and neither did Eddi. But it didn’t really matter. It was a nice thing to watch. Lots of colours, lots of flowers, lots of pretty lights. And as we left the church and headed back home, a glorious red sunset was spreading across the sky. It was a beautiful way to end a beautiful day.

  ‘It’s the last day tomorrow,’ Eddi said as we started walking back to the flat. ‘One more night and that’s it.’

  ‘Until next year.’

  ‘Yeah…’

  I looked at her. ‘Do you think we’ll still be here?’

  ‘I don’t know… maybe.’ She carried on walking in silence for a while, but I could tell she was thinking about something. I kept quiet and waited. Eventually she looked at me and said, ‘Would you mind if we were still here next year?’