by David Miller
“It’s fizzin with them,” said Maureen, lifting a bread wrapper from the bin between her finger and thumb. “Are they just a fact of life. Will we have to put up with them all the time we’re here?”
“As long as they’re not in the bed,” said Jimmy. As he stood up some of his whiskey slopped over. The ants panicked, began moving faster. The stream parted and moved around the droplets of whiskey, ignoring it. “Why don’t they get pissed?”
“Maybe they will do – after work,” said Maureen.
“They’re really prehistoric, aren’t they. And so silent. In the movies there would be a soundtrack.”
Maureen made tea with a tea-bag in a mug and they went out onto the small balcony. There was a candle in a bottle left by a previous tenant and Maureen lit it and set it on the white plastic table. Jimmy sipped his whiskey and put his feet up on the balcony rail.
“I just love being in my shirt-sleeves at this time of night. Can you imagine what it’s like at home?” Maureen sighed a kind of agreement. The moon was low in the sky and criss-crossed by the struts of two cranes. Had the moon not been there the cranes would have been invisible. Jimmy nodded towards the candle.
“Somebody from the north. Remember that holiday in Norway?” Maureen nodded. “Candles everywhere. The kids loved it. Flames burning outside restaurants. Never pulling their curtains – you could follow people moving from room to room.”
“You certainly did.”
“The bills – light shining out of everywhere. Here it’s the opposite. Shutters – keep the light out. It’s impossible to get the slightest glimpse inside a Spanish or an Italian house.” Jimmy sipped his whiskey and held it in his mouth for a while, savouring it. It was a thing he knew annoyed her. They didn’t speak again for some time.
“You really don’t like to talk about this stuff, do you?”
“No,” she said.
“I just want to know what happened to you before I met you.”
“I’ve told you everything there is to know – chapter and verse. Everything about my home and school …”
“But not sexually. You never mention anything about that.” She sipped her mug of tea holding it with both hands – the way she would sip tea in the winter. “I’m jealous of not knowing you then. Your school uniform. Your First Communion. I am jealous of all the time I was not with you.”
“That’s a kind of adolescent – James Dean – kind of thing to say.”
“I am jealous of every single sexual act in which I was not involved.”
She looked at his face in the candle light and realised he was serious.
“Jimmy, why are you torturing yourself about this? Leave it alone. Why should all this come up now – after twenty-five years? Maybe you feel threatened. Now that you’re out of shape and balding you feel threatened.”
“Fuck off.”
“I’m going to bed.” She got up and went the long way round the table so he wouldn’t have to take his feet down off the balcony rail.
He heard her shut the latch on the bedroom door and the creak of the bed as she got into it. He poured himself another whiskey larger than the last because she was not there to see the size of it. He drank several more glasses equally large and listened to the crickets and the English voices that were continually passing in the street below.
When Maureen woke at 4 am he still had not come to bed. She found him in the chair, his head tilted back, his mouth open and slanting in his face.
“Are you okay, Jimmy?” She put her arm beneath his and got him to his feet. He was mumbling something about “those fucking priests” as she eased him down onto the bed and started to take his shoes off.
He was sick the next day and, although he tried to hide the fact by going out of the room, Maureen could hear the crinkling of him in the bathroom pressing indigestion tablets out of their tinfoil pack. When she accused him of drinking foolishly he blamed the paella.
“You’ve never done that in your life before, Jimmy. Not to my knowledge.”
“Got a bit pissed?”
“No – passed out – sitting in your seat.”
“I fell asleep, for fucksake.”
“I’m going to get you one of those wee stickers printed which says Wake for Drinks.” Maureen went to the fridge to put away the butter.
“Oh my God,” she said, “would you look at this?”
“What?”
“There’s ants crawling up the rubber seal of the fridge door.”
“We’ll have to do something.”
In the coolness of the Supermercado Maureen, with the help of a small Spanish dictionary, made herself understood to the man she liked at the checkout. She wanted to kill ants. The man nodded, went off down between the aisles and came back with an orange-coloured tube.
“You have children?” he asked.
“Yes – two girls.”
He made a face which said – oh well, I don’t think this is a good idea. He pointed at the black skull and crossbones on the side of the tube. Maureen realised what he meant and laughed at herself.
“My children are not here. They are big. Away.” He smiled and raised an eyebrow which Maureen interpreted as – you don’t look old enough to have grown-up children. It was soft soap but she still liked him.
“Where ants come in.” He directed the nozzle downwards. Maureen nodded that she understood.
When she got back Jimmy was lying on the sofa still looking hung-over. She handed the tube to him and he insisted on looking up the instructions and ingredients in the dictionary.
“Jesus – it seems to be honey and arsenic.”
“The guy says you have to put it down where they’re coming in.”
Jimmy heaved himself off the sofa and squatted down by the bathroom door. The stream of ants was now so dense that they blackened the floor in an inch-wide band. Millions coming, millions going. He unscrewed the lid and aimed the oily liquid into the crack they were pouring in and out of.
“Try this for size, my little ones.” Several drops fell on the tiles of the bathroom floor. Jimmy stood up and washed his hands thoroughly. Maureen came to see the effect the stuff was having.
“They are going daft, Jimmy. They’re all lining up to drink it. Look at them.” The ants were now streaming in all directions but the main movement was to line up along the edge of the liquid. “They can’t leave it alone. Look they’re dying.” The ones on the margin of the poison had ceased to move. Others nudged them aside to get at it. Maureen looked at the tile where the single drops had fallen. Ants had gathered round the edge of the drop and ceased to move.
“They’re like eyelashes round an eye,” said Maureen.
“Christ – it’s very dramatic stuff.” Jimmy looked down at the floor still drying his hands. “Goodnight Vienna.”
Maureen went out to go to the beach. If Jimmy felt better he would join her later. She had to pass the Supermercado so she stepped inside and gave the thumbs up to the guy at the checkout about the efficiency of the ant stuff. He nodded his head and smiled.
It was on the way down the hill that it occurred to her that maybe he didn’t know what she’d been referring to. She became embarrassed at the thought. Maybe he didn’t even know who she was – a man like him would smile at all his customers.
It was nice to be on her own. She felt good about herself. Her tan was beginning to be evident without being red. The pale stripe beneath her watch-strap acted as a kind of indicator. She was in no hurry to get to the beach and walked towards the old town looking in shop windows. She did not want to buy anything – just to look. Most of the shops were closed and she realised that it was siesta. The streets were empty. It was eerie – like in a movie after the bomb had been dropped. The flat stones of the pavement were hot and shining and she got the notion that she would slip on them if she was not careful. Pasted to a wall were posters for a fiesta which coincided with their last night. There were to be fireworks starting at 11 pm in the square at the harbour front.
“Ah …” She stepped in. It wasn’t really inside the church but in a colonnade alongside. At this end it was dark and cool but the far end was brilliant with sunshine. In between the colonnade of columns, arches of shadow sliced onto the walkway. She had a memory of looking out from a dark wood into sunlight. The door closed behind her with a rattle as the catch clicked. There appeared to be no way into the church from here. She walked down the colonnade towards the sunshine, listening to the slight itching sound the soles of her shoes made with the sandstone floor. The arches were curved, held up by pillars of blond stone which got lighter and lighter as they neared the source of the sunlight. Was she sufficiently dressed to go into the church? Her white T-shirt left her arms bare, but nobody could object to her Bermuda-length shorts. She felt slightly nervous – like a child expecting to be scolded for trespassing or intruding where she had no right to be. What if some Monsignor were to turn the corner and begin shouting at her in Spanish, yelling at her that this was the Holy of Holies. She paused and thought of going back. But she was so curious to see what lay beyond the source of the light. She walked hesitantly down the arcade and came upon a small square. It took her breath. There was something about it which made her love it with an intensity she had rarely experienced. There was no fear now of being caught. In some way she felt she had the right to be here. It was a square or atrium made of the same blond stone as the columns which formed the cloisters around its perimeter. In the centre was what looked like a font set up on a dais of steps. It had a spindly canopy of wrought iron. Maureen moved near the font and turned slowly to look around her with her head tilted back, looking up. Windows, three sets in each wall, overlooked the small courtyard but there appeared to be no one living behind them. There were no shutters, no curtains. Empty rooms. The sun was almost directly overhead. When she sat down on the steps the stone was warm. She was aware of the absolute silence – aware that outside this cloister was the quietness of a town in siesta. Inside, everything was intensified. Suddenly the silence was broken by the clattering of wings as several white doves flew onto the tiled roof. Maureen stood up and climbed the steps to the font. She leaned her elbows on the rim and looked at the round hole or shaft in the middle of it. She gave a little jump and leaned on her forearms, her feet off the ground, and looked down into the shaft. There was a white disc at the bottom.
“It’s a well.” She unslung her bag from her shoulder and found a 25 peseta coin – the one with a hole in it – and dropped it down. Nothing happened and she was amazed at the silence. How could there be nothing? Where was the sound of the coin dropping into the water below –
spluck!
She couldn’t believe the depth. She took another coin and dropped it and counted as if making an exposure. A thousand and one – silence – a thousand and two – silence – a thousand and three – still silence – a thou –
spluck!
She heaved herself up again and looked into the well. The disc of light at the bottom rippled. There was something so right about this place. It was affecting her body. Her knees began to tremble. She held tight to the well head. She had to sit down on the steps and lean her back against the font.
She sat for the best part of an hour, sunbathing and absorbing the place. Occasionally she changed her position on the steps or walked in and out of the shadow of the cloisters. The place emphasised her aloneness. It felt as if it had been made for her and she should share it with no one. The cloister was a well for light – the cloister was a well for water. The word Omphalos came into her head. She connected the word to a poem of Heaney’s she’d read somewhere. The stone that marked the centre of the world. The navel.
The sunlight and the clarity of the air squeezed into such a small space by the surrounding roofs became a lens which made her see herself with more precision. She did not think of herself as a middle-aged woman – she was still the same person she had been all her life – a child being bathed by her own mother – a teenager kissing. She was the same bride, the same mother-to-be in white socks and stirrups on the delivery table. Her soul was the same as that younger girl. She felt the same.
Soul was a word. What did it mean? People talked of stripping away layers to reveal the soul. It was not buried deep within her. It wasn’t like that at all. Her soul was herself – it was the way she treated other people, it was the love for her children, for the people around her and for people she had never seen but felt responsible for. Her soul was the way she treated the world – ants and all.
She smiled at herself. In this place she knew who she was. In the hour she’d been here it had become sacred. She would remember this haven – this cloister – for the rest of her life.
By the time she got to the beach Jimmy was already there. He was lying flat out on a sun-bed with his back to the sun. Maureen went up and nudged his elbow with her shin.
“Hi.”
“Buenos días,” he said. He looked up sideways at her. “Where have you been?”
“Around. I went up into the old town.”
“See anything?”
“The shops were closed. So was the church. Siesta.”
“What kept you?”
“Exploring. I had a coffee. Sat in an old courtyard for a while.” It was too late in the day to get the value out of lying on a sun-bed so she began spreading a towel, having flapped it free of sand. “Oh there’s a fiesta tomorrow night – fireworks, specially for us leaving.”
“That’s nice of them.”
“How are you feeling now?”
“Hunky dory.” But he groaned all the same when he was turning over to get the sun on his chest. He cradled the back of his head in his hands and from between his feet watched the German girl and her boyfriend. “You missed it earlier on,” he said. “I’m sure she was lying on his hand.”
“Jimmy – leave them alone. Don’t be such a … ”
“Remember that?”
“Sometimes I don’t know what goes on in men’s minds.” She took off her shorts and T-shirt and lay down on the carefully spread towel. The beach was noisy – an English crowd were shouting their heads off at the water’s edge – there was a baby crying having its nappy changed – euro-pop played and dishes rattled constantly in the beach café. “Or whether they’ve got minds at all.”
The next evening before they went out to eat they decided to try and get the whiskey “used up” before going home. Because it was their last night they decided to dress up a bit. They sat on the balcony while it was still light. Maureen had a small whiskey and he a much bigger one.
“I better leave enough for a nightcap,” said Jimmy.
“But you’ll be drinking all evening.”
“A nightcap’s a nightcap. We judged the bottle well.”
“We?”
“Almost as well as the All-Bran. If we were to stay here a day longer the bowels would grind to a halt.”
They sat staring at the view – the sea straight at the horizon – the white buildings, the palm trees, the cranes.
“I’m going to miss this,” said Maureen. All that week they had seen no-one working on the unfinished apartments. The cranes were unmanned but they moved imperceptibly – at no time did they respond li
ke a weather vane to the wind but whenever Maureen or Jimmy had occasion to look up the cranes would be in different positions and at different angles to each other.
“The recession must be hitting here too,” said Jimmy.
“It’s back to normal next week.”
“Don’t mention it – don’t ruin our last night.”
“I think – I’ve been thinking … now that the kids are practically gone I might try and get a job.”
“Doing what?”
She shrugged.
“I might train for something.”
“At your age?” said Jimmy. “No chance.”
“Why do you always put me down?”
“I’m just being realistic, Maureen.”
“I got three distinctions in A levels. I held a good job in the photo works up until you came along.”
“They were the days of black and white.” He laughed.
“They were the days when they sacked you for being pregnant.”
He finished his whiskey and stood.
“We’d better go if we want to eat and firework. Do I look okay?”
“Yeah, fine.” She picked a few grey hairs off the collar of his navy blazer and dusted away some dandruff.
“You look good,” he said and kissed her.
During the meal in the restaurant Jimmy drank three-quarters of the bottle of wine. He dismissed white wine as not drinking at all – “imbibing for young girls”, he called it. By the time they’d had their coffee Jimmy had finished the bottle. Maureen noticed that he was looking over her shoulder more than usual during the meal. She glanced round and saw an attractive, tanned girl in a white dress sitting by herself.