Under an Amber Sky

by Rose Alexander

  ‘Well,’ said Sophie, looking over the little boy’s shoulder to examine the picture in front of him. ‘It’s not that dissimilar to Mummy’s work.’

  ‘Excuse me!’ Anna had come in from her garden studio at exactly that moment and laughingly protested Sophie’s verdict. ‘Anyway, people pay a lot of money for my kind of naïve art.’

  Sophie raised her eyebrows and gave a dismissive snort. ‘Yes, well, some people have more money than sense.’

  They only just heard the voice from outside above the noise of their own mirth.

  ‘Hello!’ came the voice again – a deep, resonant, male voice. ‘Anyone there?’

  Sophie went to the door. The blue-eyed man was standing there, rucksack on the ground in front of him. She wondered what on earth he was doing there. There was a sign advertising sobe – rooms – but it was clearly attached to the house next door.

  ‘Do you have rooms?’ asked the man, as if he were inside her head.

  ‘Er, no,’ replied Sophie, hesitantly. ‘No – we’re – I mean, this isn’t a guesthouse. I think you want the konoba there.’ She pointed to the adjacent building, between the upstairs windows of which the sign hung in the still air.

  ‘I already asked them earlier,’ explained the man, frowning. ‘They’re full. In fact, I’ve walked the length of the bay and back looking for somewhere and there’s nothing available. I should have booked I guess, but it’s a whole lot busier than the last time I was here and it seems I’ve been caught unawares.’ He grimaced sorrowfully at Sophie. The eyes pierced into hers.

  Sophie smiled sympathetically. ‘It is peak season and there are more tourists every year – more this year than last, the locals tell me.’ She could hardly concentrate on what she was saying, she was so conscious of his gaze upon her.

  ‘It’s twenty years since I was last here. Hardly surprising that things have changed.’ The man paused and looked out over the water as if remembering something. It was a few moments before he turned back to Sophie and asked, ‘Have you been here long?’

  ‘No, not that –’ Sophie stopped short, registering that she had arrived at the very end of October and that it was now nearly June. Had she really been here seven months? ‘A fair amount of time, actually.’

  The man nodded.

  ‘I’m not a tourist, I live here,’ she added, for some unclear reason wanting to distinguish herself from the group of plump, red-faced, and sunburnt Northern Europeans who were meandering noisily past at that moment.

  ‘I get it.’ The man smiled. ‘So – what brings you here, then?’

  Sophie faltered. She had an inexplicable urge to tell this enigmatic stranger everything, to spill it all out, about Matt and the house and all those who lived here now and her local friend Darko, plus her fisherman, Sandra, and Petar. Her job at the village school. She could not understand what had come over her. She never normally wanted to say a word to people she’d never met before.

  She opened her mouth then shut it again, like a particularly inept goldfish. She needed to pull herself together.

  ‘Why don’t I come in and you can tell me your life story over a cup of tea?’ Taking control, the man stepped over the threshold. Sophie stepped aside to let him in.

  ‘Yes, do,’ she said, a bit late, ‘come and meet my friends.’

  Irene and Tomasz were sitting at the table, eyes wide, an air of expectancy around them. Anna was no longer there, presumably vanished back to her studio.

  ‘Hello,’ their impromptu visitor said, warmly. ‘I’m Ton.’

  ‘Tom!’ shouted Tomasz, recognizing his own name.

  ‘No, not Tom, Ton,’ Ton carefully explained, enunciating the ‘n’ at the end of his name with particular clarity. ‘But I suppose your name is Tom?’

  Irene smiled indulgently, clearly immediately won over by the fact that this stranger called Ton had been intuitive enough to understand that the small child, too young to know much language, had picked up on the name because it was so similar to his own.

  ‘Is he yours?’ Ton asked Irene.

  Irene burst out laughing, alarming Tomasz so much he knocked over the painting water. Sophie leapt forward with a cloth to mop it up.

  ‘No, I’ve never had children and I’m forty or more years too old to be mother to this one,’ exclaimed Irene, though clearly complimented by the enquiry.

  Ton’s incredible blue eyes twinkled cheekily. ‘I can’t believe it. You look so young.’

  Flatterer! thought Sophie. Of course he knew Irene was not Tomasz’s mother.

  ‘He belongs to Anna, an old friend from London,’ explained Sophie. ‘He’s Tomasz, actually.’ She smiled at the little boy. ‘It’s Polish.’

  ‘A lovely name.’

  ‘And I’m Sophie and this is Irene.’

  At that point, Anna came back, hesitating at the threshold on seeing Ton and then entering the kitchen with a questioning look.

  ‘Ah, here she is – meet Anna, Tomasz’s mum.’

  Ton nodded in greeting to Irene and Anna. ‘So – you guys visiting, are you?’

  ‘Oh no,’ interjected Anna, brightly. ‘We all live here together. One big, happy, totally unrelated family!’

  Sophie suddenly saw how strange their little set-up might seem to an outsider. All it needed now was for Frank to turn up and Ton would probably think he’d happened upon some kind of cult.

  ‘Amazing,’ Ton glanced towards the door, a few metres beyond which lay the sea and its encircling ring of mountains. ‘Lucky you.’ He seemed utterly unperturbed by their unconventional living arrangements.

  ‘Tea?’ asked Anna, moving towards the kettle.

  ‘Oh yes, I was just about to make some,’ said Sophie. ‘Sit down.’

  Ton looked down at the chair Sophie had indicated and removed a few drying finger paintings and a couple of grapes. He sat, somewhat gingerly.

  Two hours later, they were all still chatting.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ enquired Irene, eventually.

  There was an awkward pause.

  ‘Well, that’s rather the problem,’ replied Ton, reluctantly. ‘I haven’t been able to find anywhere.’

  ‘Well, you must stay here with us, my dear.’ Irene’s tone was unequivocal.

  And so Ton was given the room on the second floor, overlooking the garden.

  Chapter 18

  Everyone gathered to see Sophie off to Ulcinj with Darko. The only person absent from the farewell line-up was Ton. Sophie had no idea why they were all so keen on the idea of her weekend away but put it down to their concern for her state of mind, her continual grieving for Matt, combined with Anna’s oft-expressed view that Sophie needed to get out more.

  The drive there was smooth and swift; Sophie still hadn’t got used to the uncrowded roads of this tiny country, with a population not that much greater than that of Glasgow. Darko wanted to show her everything, knowing that she hadn’t been anywhere apart from the places he’d taken her. He had been her one-man Montenegrin tour guide and seemed to like this self-imposed occupation.

  Thus it was that he pulled off the coast road that ran all the way down to the Albanian border long before Ulcinj, and followed signs to Stari Grad, the Old Town of Budva. Just like Kotor, the city, standing proud on its promontory, had had to be painstakingly reassembled after the 1979 earthquake and now stood as testimony to the skill of the local builders and craftsmen.

  ‘Now we know that Dragan Kovac was a stonemason, as you intuited,’ said Sophie, running her hand over the age-old stone of the ancient fortress that stood in the wide main square, ‘I guess he might have worked on this building: its maintenance and repair.’

  Darko nodded. ‘Restoration and renewal are one of the key parts of the job, as well as building from scratch.’

  Neither spoke for a while, both lost in their own thoughts.

  ‘Ice cream?’ asked Darko. ‘I know the best place.’

  Sophie was glad of
the distraction, the cool sweetness of the ice cream soothing in contrast to the strong, white sunshine that glanced off the stonework they so much admired.

  When they reached Ulcinj, Darko took her first to his aunt’s house, where they were staying. It was an immaculate bungalow a few lines back from the city beach, with three bedrooms, one of which had been made ready for Sophie and another for Darko. He was keen to get straight to the festival and Sophie found herself swept up in his enthusiasm. But once she was there, the shock hit her again. She hadn’t been anywhere remotely busy – apart from Gatwick airport – since Matt died.

  She gazed around her, bewildered and exhilarated in equal measure by the crowds and by the energy that hung in the hazy, sultry air. So many people of all ages, though mostly young – younger than her and Darko, Sophie discerned with a stab of shock.

  She and Matt had married when they were both twenty-two, right after graduating. He’d been at Cambridge and she’d chosen the University of East Anglia, to be near him. Since then she had hardly noticed the years passing. Her twenties had disappeared in a flash. Her thirties, she understood suddenly, could have gone the same way. Except that it wouldn’t have been like that because she would have had a baby – several babies, hopefully – and they’d have moved to a bigger house, outside London probably, near their parents and where they had grown up.

  She’d had it, albeit subconsciously, all mapped out. And then Matt had gone and died and the whole edifice had come tumbling down and now here she was, on a beach in southern Montenegro, with no real idea why she was there, and no stonemason with Dragan’s skill to put her life back together in some semblance of order and normality.

  Darko reappeared with two bottles of beer and handed her one. ‘Come,’ he said, gesticulating towards the stage a bit further down the beach. ‘Let’s get a bit nearer so we can hear properly.’

  Soon they were right in front of the stage, listening to a soul band as the sun set behind them, searing the sea and the sky with amber, gold, and orange. It was too loud to talk so Sophie stood and swayed to and fro and drank her beer and tried not to think, tried to stop her whirring mind and grieving heart and give in to the mesmerizing melody and hypnotic beat of the music. Darko turned to smile down at her.

  ‘They’re good, yes?’

  Sophie nodded, still swaying. ‘Very good.’

  It was late by the time they got back to Darko’s aunt’s bungalow.

  ‘Thank you for a super evening,’ said Sophie, at her bedroom door. ‘It was such a lovely thought, to bring me here.’

  Darko, his height accentuated by the narrow corridor of the modern house, smiled. ‘You are welcome. Thank you for accompanying me.’

  In bed, Sophie pushed the covers off. It was still swelteringly hot, but she was used to it now and it no longer stopped her from sleeping. She was flat out in moments, exhausted from the journey, the lateness of the hour, and the unexpected feeling of somehow having re-entered the world of the living when she had been so long in the half-life between her own existence and Matt’s absence.

  The next day they slept late and then went to eat brunch at a sweet little café that Darko knew, where all the food was locally sourced and produced. Sophie’s poached eggs had huge, deep orange yolks that spilt generously forth, the strands spreading outwards across the plate like the sunset they had watched the night before.

  Back at the beach, the festival was already in full swing, a loud and popular local rock band playing to an excited crowd. It wasn’t to Sophie’s taste so Darko took her to a stretch of beach with loungers and they spent a few hours lying in the shade of an umbrella, reading, chatting, or people-watching in a companionable silence.

  Sophie caught some of the passing women throwing envious glances in her direction, and then letting their eyes linger on Darko, his athletic body stretched out on the lounger, his brooding dark looks and ever-deepening tan adding to his allure. She couldn’t see where his eyes, behind his dark glasses, were focused. But she imagined them following the receding figures of the brown, lithe girls who were so obviously admiring him. She hoped she wasn’t cramping his style.

  There was a British style fish ’n’ chips van nearby and, when the sun had set once more and the heat had dissipated slightly, they bought some, eating out of their paper punnets perched on the rocks that flanked the edge of the beach. They listened to a young Serbian singer-songwriter who was one of the big names of the festival. Sophie, though she couldn’t understand a word that was sung, was entranced by the purity of the music, which floated on the heavy air like weightless liquid.

  Afterwards, they wandered down to the water’s edge. Sophie slipped off her flip-flops and let the gently lapping waves cool her feet. They walked on, the expanse of dark sea and pale sand stretching away before them; the beach was many kilometres long. Above them, a crescent moon hung in a limpid sky. Sophie stopped and pointed out to Darko the moonlight dappling the water, the way it created patterns that morphed and reformed in endless succession. Darko stood beside her. He put his arm around her shoulders and she rested her head against his. He was steadfast, so real and true. She was lucky to have him as a friend.

  After a while, he moved slightly and, out of the corner of her eye, she saw his dark hair and then his eyes, dark as dark, locking on to hers. His hand reached out to take hers. Her feet were sinking into the sand and she shifted to find a better position.

  The pain was indescribable, excruciating. Her scream rent the air; she had been shot, or been bitten by a shark, or stepped on a knife that had sliced right through her flesh and bones. She could hear herself yowling, how her shrieks of agony resounded in the still of the night, mingling at their outer edges with the distant music of the festival. She collapsed onto the sand, half in the sea, half out. She was gasping, hyperventilating. Her foot was going to explode.

  The noise was drawing people to them, kite-surfers, bar staff, hippy types with braided hair. She felt herself being gripped under the arms and pulled backwards, out of the water. Subsiding onto her new resting place, she writhed in agony. She had no idea what had happened to her, imagined that she would look down and find her foot split apart.

  ‘Sophie,’ she heard Darko’s voice, urgent amidst the fuss and commotion of all those around them. ‘Sophie, you’ve stepped on a dragana – a weever fish. You’ll be OK.’

  He ran a cool hand across her brow that was slick with sweat from the pain and shock. She didn’t feel as if she’d be OK. How bad did pain have to be before you became unconscious? Surely that would be better than this torture. What was a weever fish, anyway? She had never heard of one.

  ‘Put it in hot sand,’ a voice screeched in her ear. This might have worked, if the sand had still been hot. She could feel from the fact that she was lying on it that it was not.

  ‘Burn it with a cigarette,’ came another voice, echoed by several more. Right by her ear she heard someone say, ‘Maybe some rakija?’, rapidly followed by a bottle being thrust onto her lips and upturned. Gulping down the firewater, she couldn’t ever remember being more nauseated and grateful for anything. Perhaps strong alcohol would numb the suffering.

  ‘Make way, please.’ The voice was confident, but somewhat slurred. ‘Make way. I’m a doctor.’

  Sophie found herself looking into the eyes – pupils somewhat dilated – of a dark-haired man who, in her torment, she thought resembled Darko.

  ‘Hot sand,’ he declared, as he knelt down beside her. ‘But the sand is not hot.’ His thought processes seemed to be unnaturally slow. ‘So we use a cigarette.’ Expertly, he retrieved a packet from his pocket, extracted one, lit it, and handed the packet to a bystander to hold, all in one fluid and easy gesture. Sophie could see two of him and wasn’t sure if this was the effect of the pain or the rakija, or both.

  ‘Give this girl some more rakija,’ ordered the doctor, taking a long draw on the cigarette. The bottle was on her lips once more, the burning liquid corroding her throat.
She would never, ever drink rakija again.

  The doctor held the lit end of the cigarette as close as possible to her foot. ‘This deactivates the toxin,’ he explained, before taking another lengthy draw for himself. Darko was on her other side, leaning over her. Where had he been?

  ‘It’s true, Sophie,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘The doctor knows what he’s doing.’

  Even in her befuddled state, she must have transmitted her doubt about this somewhat unconventional treatment. Was this guy even a doctor? Perhaps he was one of those fantasists who pretend to be members of the emergency services to fulfil their desire for attention, to be noticed, to be thanked. She wasn’t in a fit state to ask for his credentials. She heard a thudding in the sand that reverberated through her body.

  Suddenly, there were people all around her, more people, but these ones had uniforms and badges and bags and official-sounding voices. In seconds, they had unrolled a mat, shifted her onto it and given her an injection. Her heart, which she had thought was going to burst out of her chest, slowed its beating to something approaching normal. It was still tropically hot but she started to shiver and one of the paramedics – for that is what they must be – covered her with a survival blanket.

  She felt her eyes shutting. The pain was receding and all she wanted to do was sleep. Her head swam from the rakija. A hand slipped into hers, dry and strong. Darko’s hand.

  ‘Come on, Sophie. Let’s get you home.’

  Managing to sit up, she rubbed her eyes. They were alone in their spot on the beach. She must have been asleep for longer than she thought. Where had everyone gone? They seemed to have melted into the blackness. Now she’d never find out if the doctor had been real.

  ‘You should be able to walk now. I’ll help you.’

  Cautiously, with Darko supporting her, she hauled herself to her feet and managed to limp to the road where Darko had a taxi waiting.