Alentejo Blue

by Monica Ali

  He started talking then. I wasn’t listening properly, I was thinking about when you see the Asian kids translate for their mums. The mums wear saris or baggy coloured pyjamas or sometimes a big black bag that covers everything except their eyes, so you don’t really expect them to understand anything much. I was thinking I’m like that now. I’m the bloody foreigner.

  ‘He says if they find out all of these things that have been said about you are true –’ speaking fast, gabbling – ‘then you will be arrested and the charge will be –’ Jay looked at me then and I knew just before he said it, what he was going to say – ‘and the charge will be murder.’

  Now that is such an ordinary word. No music to it at all. We use it all the time. It was murder at the shops today. I’ll murder you if you don’t stop that right now. I could murder a cup of tea. See. It doesn’t set you off. It’s not what I call a special word.

  I had one of those things last night. An out-of-body experience. I must have lifted that tin roof right off because I was up high, higher than the trees, the pylons, the hills, and it was dark but I could see everything and I saw a woman, I knew it was me, and she was lying in the caravan where the seats push together to make a bed and she had a knife in her hand, she was drawing it very carefully across her forearm, writing a message perhaps, concentrating hard and bleeding softly on the sheets.

  I left the car in Mamarrosa and walked to the house right through the woods. The ground was crispy underfoot, a bit of frost in the early morning, though you could still feel how soft it was below that top layer. I saw a nightjar, three bee-eaters and I lost count of the hawfinches. Before I met Michelle I never knew what any of the birds were called, apart from the obvious ones, the owls or the eagles or the storks and herons down along the lagoons. If you can’t name something it’s hard to be interested. You go, there’s a little bird, big deal. So I saw all these birds and I was that busy looking at them I forgot to look where I was going and got a bit lost. But I was still there early, the last of the mist drifting off the branches, and I had a long wait behind that big old tree on the slope where Jay used to have a rope swing. They came out about eleven o’clock and got on the Honda. How many times have I told China to make Jay wear a helmet? I knew he wouldn’t be going to school, not without me there.

  It makes a hell of a noise, that bike. The chickens started up like the sky was about to fall and I calmed them and fed them before I went to the house.

  Ruby was laid out on the big chair with her legs over one side and her head lolled back. I watched for a while through the window. She was winding a piece of string around two fingers, unwinding it and winding it round again. I thought, God help us. She sat up when she saw me though, which was a good sign.

  I said, ‘Looks nice in here.’ She’d put a cloth on the table and some of those long grasses with pods in a vase.

  ‘Did he see you?’

  I shook my head. She let the string fall on the floor. She had her nightie on and a cardigan and a pair of boots. I said, ‘I’ve come to get some things.’

  ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘Would you care for a drink?’ Honest to God.

  She made peppermint tea because that’s all there was and we drank it and I thought, this is so stupid.

  ‘Ruby, you know what’s happened.’

  She fiddled with her hearing aid, turning it up and down so it whined and wailed. When she washes her hair and does it nicely you can’t see it, but most of the time she lets her hair get ratty and there’s no way of hiding it then. In the end she said, ‘Who’da thunk it?’

  I said, ‘Can you believe it? On a murder charge. Me.’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ she said. Every now and again a word pops out perfectly formed. It made her sound really and truly shocked.

  ‘Do I look like a murderer?’

  ‘Nutso,’ she said. ‘Crazy.’ She’s got my eyes, Ruby. You have these moments when you see how totally your child is your own.

  ‘I mean, Chris the Ripper.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, laughing. ‘Chris the Killer.’

  ‘A dangerous woman.’

  She was laughing hard now, honking really. I caught it off her and it was funny, I swear. Just then it was bloody hilarious.

  ‘Wooo,’ she said, holding her knees. ‘Lock her up quick.’

  ‘Throw away the bloody key.’

  She was fairly choking by now. ‘The Murdering Mummy and Doctor Death. Lock them up together.’

  I was getting a stitch. There’s muscles you use to laugh that don’t get used very often. ‘So he’s been charged as well?’

  ‘Yeah, they’ve hauled up Doctor Death.’

  ‘How does he plead?’

  ‘Ooh! Plead! Plead!’ She was hiccoughing now and that was making her laugh even more. ‘Plead let me go! He says – ha, ha – he says the notes are all lost. Hospital can’t find them.’

  Well, I laughed at that. ‘What about you? Been arrested yet?’

  There was that time lag then that you get when someone hears something they’re not expecting to hear. Her face changed a few beats before she stopped laughing. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was just asking, what’s happened? Have you been interviewed?’

  She chewed her lip and pulled her nightie over her knees.

  I said, ‘If we get our stories straight they won’t be able to touch us.’

  ‘Us?’ she said. ‘I’m a minor. That’s the law. In case you didn’t know.’

  ‘Ruby,’ I said. ‘Ruby. This is not what you want.’

  Her eyes went cloudy, out of focus. I wonder if mine do that. She shrugged and she said, ‘Ain’t up to me. As per usual.’

  When I went into the shop everyone stopped talking. I said bom dia all light and airy, singing practically, and people mumbled it back and turned away. Doesn’t take long. Not round here. If someone in the next village farts everyone knows by lunchtime. So, you can imagine.

  I was going to get some bits and pieces, a tomato, a piece of cheese, a banana, a yoghurt, a slice of ham, make them last a couple of days. China’s given me no money so what do you expect? But I wasn’t going to do that now, not with everyone watching. She bought one tomato. Did you see? One banana. I’m not giving them the satisfaction. I bought some ham, the best stuff, and held my breath while Gonzalo weighed it.

  You know how in England everyone always says, oh, there’s no community any more? Well, here’s a community for you.

  They do things together. Like the women who look after the orange trees along the road. They dig tiny ditches round the trunks to keep the water in better, always bent from the waist though it’s bad for your back. They pick the oranges together every winter, and every summer they put flowers in the concrete beds round the square. Spring and summer they have these festivals where they link arms and walk round the streets singing traditional songs, men and women both but separately of course. It’s mainly the old ones though. In England the council looks after the trees. It might get like that here.

  I know what they think of us. I know what they think of me. And I don’t blame them.

  There’s only one thing upsets me. The first year we were here I had a birthday party for Jay. He was six. I made all these invitations and stuck little silver stars on and drew clowns’ heads and balloons and I gave them out to all the mums of the kids in his class. I baked a cake and I made streamers, you can’t buy them, and I got three presents wrapped for pass the parcel and Jay and even Ruby were so excited they kept running up to the top of the track to look out for cars. They kept running up and running down and Ruby said the kids stay up that much later here, they’ll be coming later, and Jay kept checking the parcels and saying how many layers, Mum? I’m going to get one of them prizes, just see. Nobody came. Not a soul. We didn’t have the pigs then so a lot of the food went to waste. I said, Jay, I expect they were busy, and he said, that’s right, Mum, I expect so.

  I told Michelle about it the year after and she said they don’t have birthday parties here
, they just have the family round, it’s a different tradition. It certainly bloody is.

  I found some coins in a little tin with a picture of Harry Potter on the side. Michelle’s got all the books though it’s not what you’d expect her to read. Even eco-warriors can have too much of this world. I’ve borrowed the money and I’m treating myself to a cup of tea and a pastel de nata still warm from the oven. I’ve driven over to Lindoso, which is an escape of sorts. From the café I can see the iron tree in the middle of the roundabout. It’s all scraps of junk welded together and it looks just like the kind of tree you’d have in a fairy tale when the children get lost in the woods. I’m making the tea last, even though nobody cares. There’s a Brazilian soap opera on the television. All the women in it have that shuddery way of talking, like they’re about to have an orgasm. I think the heroine’s husband has caught her cheating though it could be the other way round, everyone seems equally worked up.

  What I’m thinking now is that I should plead guilty. In England you get life for a murder. A life for a life. But they let you out before you die, there’s no symmetry – which, by the way, is a word I like. You know what, it doesn’t scare me any more. I think I’d like it. All this business of what to do next, how to do it, when to do it, why you’re doing it. Well, they take that off you, don’t they? You don’t get to be small and live under the floorboards, not in the real world, but this is as close as damn it. You don’t have to pretend any more about pushing on, going somewhere. You just have to serve your time. Isn’t that what we’re doing anyway? And there is this as well: I am guilty. How easy that is to forget.

  I’d make some Portuguese friends. Isn’t that a laugh? I like that idea. I like everything about this now. Give in and make it easier. Might as well make it easy on yourself.

  Today I went to Beja to see my lawyer. All these phrases kept popping into my head. How do you plead? Guilty, m’lud. Take her down. I couldn’t get there fast enough. I was practically holding my arms out to be handcuffed by the time I walked into the office. Silly, I know. He’s supposed to be on my side.

  He said, ‘Senhora Potts, allow me a moment to refresh my memory.’ And he started reading through the papers on his desk, like I’d just happened to barge in and he wasn’t expecting me at all. I thought I could save him the bother by saying I was changing my plea, but when you’re in front of a man like that you don’t interrupt. He’s called Senhor Soares de Macedo, he has a brass plaque outside his office, a receptionist with acrylic nails, and a crystal decanter on a mahogany sideboard. He looks like a little bird in a suit, all puffed-up chest and tiny bones.

  ‘Ah, yes, yes.’ He said it a few times.

  He has a really big chair and I glanced down to see if his feet touched the ground but the desk panel came too low. I’ve been to the office before, but last time I was in such a daze I didn’t take anything in. This time I was calm, only a little impatient to get on with things.

  Finally he stopped shuffling the papers. He put his elbows on the desk and pressed the tips of his fingers together. ‘Senhora Potts.’ It sounded like Pootz. ‘Senhora Potts, you are a lucky woman.’ He didn’t go on; he stopped and smiled at me as if that was all he was going to say. I knew he’d have to say something else if I kept quiet but I guess I’m just too polite, or too weak.

  I said, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the lost hospital notes.’ I thought, this could take a long time, and all for nothing. Did I tell you he has orangey hair? That’s not normal for a Portuguese.

  ‘They have been found, Senhora Potts. Do you wish to know what they say?’

  I didn’t, not really, because it wouldn’t make any difference. I said, ‘Yes please,’ like a schoolgirl.

  He bent his head to read and the sun caught across his hair and I could see for the first time how thin it was, how it must really be white with a terrible dye on top. I could see then how old he was, how frail. He looked up again and said, ‘Yes, that’s right. They have been found, and they say that the baby, this baby, died in the womb.’

  The first thing I thought was, how terribly afraid of forgetting he is that he must keep checking and checking again. The second thing I thought was: this is not fair.

  ‘That can’t be right,’ I said.

  Senhor de Macedo stared at me for a few moments and I stopped digging at my arm. I saw the confusion come over his face. He bent so quickly to his papers it was funny, like he’d dropped off to sleep. Then he did the position again with his fingertips pressing together. It seemed to give him confidence. ‘She can’t believe her luck. I saw that once on an advertising poster in the London Underground. I was there in the year of nineteen hundred and seventy-six.’ He made it sound like the Middle Ages. ‘It was promoting a – I think you have the same word like us – perfume.’

  ‘Same word,’ I said. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Give thanks,’ said my lawyer, tipping back in his big chair and looking up, as if to some just and almighty power.

  On the drive back I thought about my hens. I thought about a lot of things. I thought about good luck and rotten luck. And I thought about yellow eyes.

  I knew he would come and get me. He said, it’s finished now, and I got my things and I didn’t say a word. He carried me inside (Over the threshold, darlin’) and sat me in the high-backed leather chair. I held the back of his neck and remembered how much his skin feels like scars, even where no scars have ever been. He rolled a joint and said, ‘Suppose we’re sort of celebrating.’

  I said, ‘I suppose we sort of are.’

  8

  OUTSIDE BEJA THEY STOPPED FOR PETROL. HUW WENT TO pay and saw the bar and laughed out loud. Drink and drive. You have to. Dancing round the puddles he returned to the car and rapped on the window. Sophie looked at him but didn’t do anything so he shouted through the glass.

  ‘Pull over.’

  When she got out she held her hands over her head, trying to stop the rain. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘One for the road,’ he said and pointed to the right of the cashier’s booth at the spirit bottles dangling upside down along the back wall.

  She sprinted across the forecourt, gaining dark wet tracks up the back of her jeans.

  He ordered two large whiskies and they stood at the bar. ‘It’s three o’clock,’ she said, shaking her head.

  ‘When in Rome.’

  ‘You’re such an idiot,’ she said, banging her hip into his.

  ‘That’s why you’re marrying me.’

  ‘Only out of pity,’ she said.

  He slid his hand, briefly, over her backside. ‘I love it when you talk dirty.’

  ‘Shut up,’ she said, laughing, ‘let’s drink.’

  ‘Remember that guy,’ he said, ‘in our village?’

  ‘“If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.”’

  ‘Quoting himself maybe. Said he was a writer.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Sophie, digging a band out of her pocket and pulling back her hair. ‘Writing his own excuses.’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t have a problem with three o’clock.’

  ‘And that’s good, is it?’

  In the village where they had rented a house for the week they went to a café at lunchtime. The man was there. Drunk but contained, slurring a bit perhaps but rising above it with an elegant kind of self-loathing. It’s only the happy drunks you have to avoid. Huw could imagine, back in Mamarrosa, a late night session, getting down to brass tacks.

  ‘Don’t beat me up,’ he said. ‘I’m still sore from last night.’

  In the car she said, ‘Where are all these damn birds anyway?’

  He fiddled with the binoculars, the road going in and out of focus. ‘You know, playing Scrabble. They’ll be out when the rain stops.’

  They had taken a circuitous route, on small roads in the region of Castro Verde, traversing the grassy steppe and fallow fields, encountering few houses and most of these lay fallow too. He had se
en, he thought, a Lesser Kestrel and a Great Bustard but at such a distance that he could not be sure. Now they were moving slowly, behind a truck, across the rolling plains of wheat north of Beja and if the sun came out he’d ask her to stop and take a walk and hope for some luck: Black-bellied Sandgrouse, Hen Harriers, a Red Kite.

  ‘I’m sorry about the weather,’ he said. ‘November can be lovely. It just happens not to be.’

  She took her hand off the gearstick and laid it on his thigh. ‘I’ve got all the sunshine I need. Right here with me.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said, watching her jerk her shoulders and screw up her nose.

  ‘Twitching,’ she said. ‘Just twitching.’

  ‘You’ll pay for this,’ he said. ‘Hey, look. Look at these.’

  ‘Ohmygod. What? Dodos!’

  They looked up at the nests, vast, untidy edifices, crowning dozens of telegraph poles. The storks fussed around the neighbourhood, seeking verification of something or other. Huw could almost hear the clatter of long red bills.

  ‘You’re learning fast,’ he said.

  ‘Shall we stop?’

  ‘No,’ said Huw. ‘Let’s just get there.’

  They were heading to Évora, an ancient town replete with city walls and Roman ruins. They were splashing out – he was splashing out – on a night in a pousada, a state-run, top-of-the-range hotel.

  He looked at Sophie, leaning into the wheel as she watched for a chance to overtake; the fine line of her nose, the permanent, promising hunger of her mouth. He breathed deeply and the interior of the hire car smelled of plastic and deodorizers, of cheap and illicit exchange.

  If you went to a real down-and-dirty fleapit, that was the exception that proved the flash-hotel-equals-hot-sex rule. In Calcutta, once, he rutted with a girl, a fellow backpacker, in a brown-stained room where water and cockroaches trickled down the walls, and attained not only orgasm but Enlightenment which lasted as long as the night. But, as a rule, sex adhered to star ratings: one star, perfunctory; two stars, businesslike; three stars, comfortable; and four stars – depending on setting and style – lavish, experimental or baroque.