Garden of Stars

by Rose Alexander

  I stared at him in utter stupefaction. “What do you mean?” was my rather incoherent articulation.

  “It belongs to a friend of mine, I begged the loan of it, there are no lessons today or tomorrow at the school in honour of patron saint’s day,” explained Edmund, the words pouring out of him in a great flood. “So I thought it would be so much fun to go for a drive and even better if you can come with me, a real adventure…” He ground to a halt, beaming delightedly at a secret successfully kept and satisfactorily revealed.

  Then suddenly his eyes narrowed with anxiety. “If you would like to come, of course. If you have nothing better to do.”

  His sincerity touched my heart. “I would be honoured to accompany you, Mr Bond,” I replied in my best, most refined English. I turned and climbed into the car, lowering my head to disguise the slow, uneven smile that was creeping across my face. I really should not be doing this but I knew that I was going to. Who would know? Who could ever find out?

  Moments later and we were off, hurtling down the steep street and into Porto’s commercial centre, which was busy with daytime traffic. I flinched slightly every time we missed by a whisker a countryman’s cart loaded with fresh produce or a pedestrian crossing the street and I had to hold my hat tight on my head as we bounced over the cobbles. It was only after the car had come to a sudden and unnecessary halt for the third time that I ventured to ask Edmund if he had actually ever driven a motorised vehicle before.

  He blushed characteristically.

  “Well, I have, sort of…had a few lessons, but I suppose…” He broke off suddenly, turning his head rapidly from right to left before venturing out across a junction.

  I waited patiently, ensuring that my expression betrayed nothing but innocent expectation.

  “Look, Charlie did take me through the basics a couple of times. But it’s all a bit different once you actually get behind the wheel.” Edmund swerved violently to avoid an ambling group of flower-sellers, their heads bearing baskets filled with spring blooms of iris and lily that resembled elaborately decorated Easter bonnets.

  I stifled my urge to giggle, not sure whether it was hysterical fear or laughter that threatened to engulf me.

  “You’re doing very well,” I reassured him encouragingly, when I had managed to compose myself. “It took John a while to get the hang of it but once you know how - it’s like riding a bicycle.”

  This latter was probably true for all I knew, but in fact John had had no problems learning at all; he had taken to driving like the proverbial duck to water. I wasn’t going to tell Edmund that, though. He was doing fine, and comparing him to John would only serve to fluster him, make him feel inadequate and quite probably inhibit our smooth passage further.

  Instead, I drank in the view as we moved further and further from the city; small fertile fields, pink and white villages, eucalyptus groves and patches of pinewood stretching out on either side of us. Men walking purposely along the verges, heading to their fields or back again, touched their grey, conical hats as the car swept past. Oxen pulling carts barely blinked as we overtook. I had no idea where we were going and even less desire to ask. It was, as Edmund had indicated, an adventure and the whole point of an adventure is that it should be shrouded in mystery for as long as possible.

  We entered a small aldeia, where stone houses huddled along the dirt road, chickens pecked in the dust and goats were tethered in every small space. Children came pouring out of open doorways, and then halted, the sight of a motorcar so rare that their curiosity was tempered by silent disbelief. To my great surprise - although there had so far been almost nothing about the day that was not surprising - Edmund applied the brake and the car came to a deliberate, albeit rather too sudden, halt. Recovering quickly from being flung rather inelegantly forwards, I straightened my hat and turned to Edmund with a quizzical look.

  “You’ll see,” was all he said, leaping out of the car and running around the long bonnet to help me out.

  The children swarmed forward as one, overcome with excitement at the presence of such exotic strangers. And then stopped a few feet away as if there were some invisible barrier lying across the dusty road. They stood and gaped, at me, a lady of such refinement as they may never have seen before, but even more so at Edmund, whose red hair and pale, freckled skin marked him out as someone utterly alien. His looks, with such subtlety of colouring and elegance of bone structure, are arresting to anyone. But to a Portuguese peasant child they would appear extraordinary. Edmund smiled benignly at the scores of soft brown eyes that were focused upon him, taking no offence at the unabashed stares.

  “Come,” he said to me and, briefly taking my hand, led me through a narrow alley which opened out into a wide and graceful square, fringed by shops and headed up at one end by a whitewashed church. We walked to a narrow shopfront between a hardware shop and a house with closed and shuttered windows. Inside, the room was tiny, barely twelve feet square with benches fringing the walls and a broad wooden counter at the back with wine-barrels beneath it. A few loud raps by Edmund on this counter brought forth a smiling young woman sporting a flowered kerchief on her head.

  She greeted him with exclamations of pleasure and quickly produced a large, roughly decorated earthenware jug brimming with wine which she poured into two glasses. We took them outside and sat on a rickety bench beneath the shuttered window next door. The sun was directly behind the church, flooding the entire square with light and heat and as we drank the delicious wine I felt its warmth combine with that of the sun and infuse my veins.

  “You seem to know this place well. Do you have a past of debauchery to confess to me?” I asked Edmund.

  He grinned awkwardly. “Nothing so intriguing, I’m afraid,” he admitted. “It’s somewhere I discovered on one of my solo cycling tours during the school holidays.” He paused and looked down at his shoes, planted firmly on the rough grey slabs that paved the square. “It’s good to share it with someone. I thought you’d like it here.”

  “And I do,” I replied, finishing my glass of wine. “I like it very much.”

  Edmund took me a different way back to the car. In a glade of trees just before the road, the ground was entirely misted over with dwarf iris, drifts of blue against the orange-brown soil. I hadn’t seen such a mass of wildflowers since leaving my beloved Alentejo and I stopped to drink in the beauty of the sight.

  “Let me pick some for you,” said Edmund, eagerly.

  But I had to tell him not to, for I know that these flowers cannot endure to be parted from the soil. I urged Edmund to leave them where they are happy.

  “They say that if flowers fade quickly on a person it means they have a warm heart,” he replied, earnestly, his brow creased in gravity.

  The silence that followed was disturbed only by the distant fighting of some birds in the treetops.

  “These flowers would tell you nothing about my heart,” I told him, laughing lightheartedly as I did so. “They wilt and die as soon as they are plucked, whoever holds them.”

  The sun disappeared behind a cloud and the glade darkened. I heard a cuckoo call, and drew Edmund’s attention to it. We talked of birds and their varying cries until we were back beside the car and ready to continue our drive.

  But I could not divert my own attention from matters of the heart as easily as I had Edmund’s. I sat beside him in the car and wished I could rest my hand upon his thigh to show my ownership of intimacy with him. I wanted to touch him, hold him, feel him and experience him. I found myself dreaming of making love with him and knowing, with a certainty that wrenched at my very being, that ours would be a meeting of minds as well as of bodies. How I hungered for such an experience, with a longing that left my stomach feeling hollow and my soul desolate.

  A sudden encounter with an ox-cart that involved some tricky manoeuvring brought me back to my senses with a jolt – quite literally. What on earth was I thinking of? I could not believe the place to which my own thoughts had gone. A married
woman, fantasising about…about having sex with another man! I should not have come with Edmund, after all.

  I turned my face to the view and concentrated on the changing landscape around us. The soil had become poorer as we progressed towards the coast, and now began to develop into broad, high sand dunes whose dusty pallor masked the distant, barely visible blue line of the Atlantic. As we approached the town of Aveiro, known as the Venice of Portugal, the flat coastline broke up into a maze of lagoons fed by a network of canals that brought the briny sea into shallow salt-pans. The still water acted as a mirror to the bright sunlight and reflected it back onto us. Onto Edmund, and onto me, somewhere I shouldn’t be, with someone I shouldn’t, in all honesty, be with. How could something so wrong feel so right?

  In the Convent of Jesus, Edmund showed me the chapel that is entirely made of gold; it was like standing inside a burnished seashell, every millimetre glittering and shimmering, as if some alchemist had spurned the brightness of the sun outside and recreated an artificial version within. As I gazed around in wonder, I thought of the beggars on the church steps as we had come in. I had given them a few escudos and thanked them for the privilege, as is the tradition in Portugal. I wondered if they knew what riches lay just a few yards from them.

  I noticed Edmund regarding me questioningly, eyebrows raised.

  “Penny for them,” he said, smiling.

  “Excuse me?” I had no idea what he meant.

  “It’s an English saying,” Edmund explained. “Penny for your thoughts…it means, tell me what you’re thinking.” He smiled more widely. “I’ll really give you a penny if it’ll help.”

  I laughed despite myself before answering. “I suppose what was going through my mind…what I can’t help but think, is - does God truly require so much gold in his worship?”

  Edmund stood in silent consideration for a few moments. “I didn’t bring you here for God,” he said, eventually. “I’m an agnostic. But I would worship someone like you with gold if I had any.” He glanced at his watch. “Let’s get going. It’s one o’clock already and I’m uncommonly hungry.”

  And with that, he strode towards the door, leaving me reeling, my emotions in turmoil. What had we stirred up with this madcap venture?

  The place Edmund had chosen for our picnic took a bit of finding. He had discovered it on one of his bicycle rides, but getting to it by car was a different story. We drove to the other side of town, through a tiny fishing village where girls in flat, brimless hats were gutting the day’s catch, the quayside around them already ankle-deep in scales and innards, the fishermen’s boats, returned for the day, rocking lazily against the wooden edge. As we ventured deeper and deeper into the marshland, the dunes and saltings seemed endless and other-worldly, the grey-green of the reeds and the water mingling with the grey-blue of the horizon, the melancholic silence broken only by the calls of the water birds. Finally, Edmund let out a cry of joyful recognition, swung the car dramatically to the right and parked.

  “This is as far as we can go on four wheels, I’m afraid,” he announced apologetically. “For the rest, we have to go by foot.” Retrieving a wicker basket from the car and hoisting it under his arm, he indicated to me to follow him.

  It was hot and I was glad I had remembered to bring my umbrella to shade myself from the sun’s glare. We walked alongside a wide canal from which rose a strong smell of salt; at a small but well-trodden gap between the dunes, Edmund veered off the path towards the water’s edge. Arriving there, we found a small, flat-bottomed raft attached to a rope as if waiting for us.

  Edmund turned to me and saluted. “All aboard, Cap’n Morton. It’s time to set sail!”

  I burst out laughing. “What is this? Where are you taking me, Able Seaman Bond?”

  “To the best, most perfect outdoor dining spot in the Western hemisphere,” replied Edmund. “Now, you hold tight to the hamper,” he continued as he helped both me and the picnic aboard the rickety, makeshift vessel. “And I’ll provide the muscle.”

  I laughed again, and then stopped, in case Edmund thought I were making fun of his strength. Pulling on the rope, he hauled the raft across the canal whilst I balanced precariously by his side. On reaching the opposite bank, he leapt out and held the craft firm whilst I, too, disembarked, trying to be elegant although wobbling alarmingly. Safely ashore, we both collapsed into helpless giggles.

  It was a moment in time that felt outside time, as if happening in a parallel universe, as far removed from my ordinary life as could possibly be imagined. I resolved to enjoy myself despite my misgivings. Surely there can be no harm in spending a day laughing with a friend?

  Clambering over the dune in front of us, we arrived on the tiny beach of an inlet, the ocean ahead of us, clear, flat and bright, on either side of us pine trees where dappled sunlight filtered gently through the branches. It was a place of utter peace and tranquillity. Edmund spread a rug on the clean, silvery sand that was scattered with fragrant pine needles and I sat down, the dusky shadows of the trees behind, the water shining in front.

  “No time for sitting,” shouted Edmund, from where he had disappeared behind a tree. “We swim – then we eat.” When he emerged, wearing his bathing suit, I could not take my eyes off him. He glowed in the sunshine, appearing almost translucent, the blue veins in his arms clearly visible beneath his white skin. For a moment, I was transfixed, overcome by the sight of him, so pale and ethereal, overwhelmed by his beauty.

  “Hurry up!” he called, as he ran athletically to the water’s edge and waited there for me to join him.

  I pulled myself together and I’d soon got changed and was standing beside him. But as I entered the water I hesitated, the memory of Praia do Guincho causing a sick dread to sit heavily in my stomach, despite the joy that surrounded me.

  “Are you all right?” asked Edmund, his brow creased with worry.

  I threw my fear away. The sea here was dead calm, not a wave nor a ripple disturbing the surface. We were far from the open ocean. I grabbed Edmund’s hand and ran into the deep and soon we were swimming and diving and somersaulting like children. Edmund proved to be a true underwater gymnast, executing perfect one-armed handstands and backflips.

  “I grew up in Cornwall,” he told me (as if I would know where that is. I didn’t reveal my ignorance). “We did nothing but bathe all summer long.”

  I thought of us as I dived down into the blue, both swimming in our own seas throughout the years of our childhoods, and now here, together, on this one idyllic day.

  Eventually, hunger drove us ashore, Edmund cartwheeling all the way up the beach.

  “So let’s see what kind of a lanche my housekeeper has prepared,” announced Edmund, opening the basket and decanting its contents onto the rug. “She takes picnics almost as seriously as us Brits.”

  There was a bottle of water and another of red wine, cork thermoses of soup and coffee, a boned stuffed chicken already cut up, and slices of paio - loin of pork spiced, salted and rolled into a sausage. There were buttered rolls, chocolate eclairs, and even a dressed salad.

  “What a feast!” There was so much food I wasn’t sure where to start.

  “Don’t be shy,” replied Edmund. “Eat as much as you can. If you don’t, I’ll just have to carry it all home again! And hide the remains from Senhora de Freitas in case she thinks her menu didn’t please us.”

  “That will not happen,” I assured him, as delicately as I could whilst taking my first mouthful of chicken and bread.

  Later, replete with food and drink and drowsy in the heat of the afternoon, we slept, lying at either side of the rug. Edmund made me a pillow from his jacket and my wrap and as I drifted off, I couldn’t remember the last time I had been so contented, so at one with myself and my companion and nature and the still, quiet feeling of just being.

  I had no idea how long we had been asleep when I jerked suddenly awake, sitting bolt upright and looking around to find what had so unceremoniously forced me from my slumb
ers. A strange noise was coming from somewhere, and as I gradually came to full consciousness I realised it originated from behind us. I turned round to be greeted by the sight of a mother duck, five ducklings in tow, poking their yellow beaks through the picnic basket and happily devouring the leftover lettuce leaves. I couldn’t help but laugh, a sound that woke Edmund, who until that moment had been snoring lightly and peacefully.

  Seeing the duck family he laughed too, and considerately fed them the rest of the salad before flapping his arms at them until they left.

  He might not say ‘boo’ to a goose, I thought, recalling John’s remark of a few weeks before, but he can say ‘shoo’ to a duck. I giggled to myself, pulling my hat over my mouth in case Edmund took it the wrong way.

  “Gosh!” he exclaimed, studying his watch. “It’s six-thirty already. We’ve been asleep for hours.”

  It suddenly occurred to me that John might be intending to telephone that evening and that I should be there. I looked around me as if there might be some hitherto unnoticed means of getting back to Porto in a matter of minutes waiting somewhere in the wings. But of course there wasn’t. I knew, with certainty, that there was no way we would make it to the city by the time that John was likely to call, which wouldn’t be later than 8pm. After that, he’d be having dinner and he’d want to try when he had time to spare, in case there was a delay in getting a line.

  “Don’t worry,” cried Edmund, flying around our little picnic spot gathering everything up and stuffing things into the basket. “I’ll drive like the wind and we’ll be back in no time.”