by Trevor Eve
She built her house on the dunes above this stretch of beach which was called Shipwrecks. It was 1985.
Her house she named Casa Lomita.
It was just twenty-four steps down to the beach and the ocean.
*
It was nearly ten years later that she was driving into the town of San José.
With the sun lying low in the west, burning out her drive in an overexposure of light, the dust billowing around her truck, on a track where rain hadn’t fallen for months. She suddenly, but too late, blinded by the dropping sun, her hand across her face behaving like a shield, collided with some cattle that had wandered unconcernedly into the road. It was not a full-on collision but enough for her truck to jackknife and roll to its right, hitting the high wall of compacted sand that stood as a carving by the side of the road. Her head smashed against the pillar on the right side of the windscreen; she fell instantly unconscious.
Rarely did traffic go along this road; the population was sparse, the dusk was descending and most of this area’s inhabitants were in bed by eight o’ clock.
Known as Baja midnight.
The blood poured out of her head wound. She was crumpled in a protective curl, nearer to the end by the minute as the red continued to leave her. After a time had passed, she was unaware of its passing, or that there was such a thing as time or breath, a man called Jeff Murphy was returning from San José back to his camp which he set up in the winter months; he was an Alaskan snowbird. He lived there between November and April, as everyone seemed to do, he knew the truck and Lomita well.
He carried her from the wreck, feeling life in her, but fearing she wouldn’t survive the thirty-minute drive. He lay her across the back seat of his truck, and turned it round to head back into San José and the one hospital.
She was put into intensive care, barely holding on to her life, a blood transfusion was needed if survival was at all a possibility.
Jeff stayed through the night as they transfused someone else’s donated blood to revitalise her depleted stock of liquid life.
Manita arrived, the process of communication in the Cape in those days, and even now, is slow. There was no phone service and physical message or radio was the only way.
She held Lomita’s hand, spoke to her as if she wasn’t in a coma, discussing the day’s events, not that there were many, and the weather, not that it ever changed, and what would she like to eat, her diet was consistently the same.
It was just Manita’s refusal to believe she would not be around anymore. She couldn’t go. And after prayer after prayer she didn’t.
Gracias a Dios.
After forty-eight hours of blackness – a mind travelling to a place of no memory or light – Lomita opened her eyes.
She remembered nothing of what happened and at first asked if Manita was all right, as if she was the one with the problem. She couldn’t move, the stitches and brace that held her head in place, to protect her brain, was to provide a long, slow recovery. She had fractured her skull, allowed light into a place that was always in the dark. She wondered, through that crack where the light shone in, whether it had changed her perception of life and her feeling towards the things that had happened in her life. It made her give a thank you every day; she had never felt the need before, in a way it made her brighter, that light. It brightened up her life.
Lomita had survived, but the blood transfusion was to carry another story.
*
Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence by Caravaggio was painted in 1609.
It was stolen from the Oratorio di San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily on 18 October 1969. So there you have it. By the Mafia. Roberto dePirizone was owed a massive payment for work executed in Los Angeles and there was no way of paying him. This was used as collateral; pledged as security for the payment that would eventually come. On the black market the painting would fetch only a tenth of its market value, which was estimated at $25 million. But if all else failed this was a good fallback. So, for a time Roberto and Lomita, though in intense privacy, and not benefitting from it on their wall, were the proud owners of a Caravaggio.
*
Jean Metzinger painted En Canot in 1914.
It had been missing since 1938.
After the Degenerate Art Exhibition, it had been supposedly pillaged by the Nazi regime. Which indeed it was, but was traded in a transaction in the 1950s from an about-to-be-publicly-embarrassed German family to the Mafia in Naples. It then, through an amicable interfamilial negotiation, found its way to Roberto, again as payment for work achieved and underpaid: he had no particular affection for cubism, just liked the idea that it was valuable and celebrated.
This time it did get across to Los Angeles and it did hang on his wall. His security only allowed selected visitors and, in their world, there was an understanding that you did not ask questions. It lived happily with them both, Lomita being oblivious to its dubious history until the unravelling of her dead husband’s estate revealed its provenance.
She immediately asked her second husband to dispose of it. To where she never asked, nor expressed concern.
She just wanted no part of the involvement in that kind of world. That world died, and with great relief, with Roberto dePirizone.
*
Did Ingmar Lorken know about all that?
Her history would be accessible to anyone who put in the effort to unravel it: as far as the law was concerned, she had paid her penance and was in the clear. Well almost. But for the art world that would be a new revelation, perhaps. She still thought it would be impossible to trace. And even if the trace was achieved, she had no responsibility for either acquisition.
Did she?
*
The light comes in, and it brings a joy to help others.
That is what she wanted to do with Ever; it made her feel good to be able to do that. Enlightened, you could say.
But in doing so, it had, in this case, thrown the light onto herself.
She had craved anonymity and had succeeded in hiding her past for nearly forty years, but had now exposed herself to a person who was interested in re-evaluating her position in the world.
*
She woke feeling as though the restorative process of sleep had not taken place.
She also realised she had failed to take her medication the night before.
If you miss a dose do not double up: imprinted on her memory for years. But the evening had drained her, she felt unable to move and was equally unenthusiastic about discussing the previous night with Ever. How could she possibly begin? With a lie, of course.
She called through to Manita and asked for her coffee. A large espresso to start her up. For years she had ground her own beans, made the coffee as a ritual, now it took twenty-four seconds with a Nespresso machine; Arpeggio, in purple, was her favourite flavour. She felt embarrassed to be such a coffee purist traitor. But it did the trick. One minute later, allowing for the walk across the big brown room, Manita presented her with her coffee and plumped up her pillows, understanding these days of exhaustion that periodically arrived.
No breakfast was required; Lomita asked if Ever had made an appearance. She hadn’t seen him and was now wondering what to suggest.
The blinds were drawn back, the Los Angeles desert morning started its gradual simmer to full spring temperature. Manita returned from the medicine cabinet with the pharmaceutical cocktail, and a lavender bed jacket, in colour not scent; the smell of lavender reminded Lomita of old ladies. She hated it. She would just have to hope she stayed strong; that her immune system would hold up. When she first started on these drugs the side effects caused intense nausea that was as incapacitating as the illness. But her body adjusted during the time it took to interpret the pharmaceutical invasion; those effects faded.
Maybe Ever could join her for coffee, she thought, and he could be relieved of the suspense of finding out what happened. Not that he would be finding out the truth: just get it over with.
Wa
s she transferring her tension to Ever?
He might be fine.
That was answered in a second: Ever was knocking on her door.
*
From outside he started and never entered the room, or even cracked the door.
Even a little bit. He spoke to the closed door.
‘I am not coming in. I know it all went like shit, because if it didn’t you would have told me it all went well, last night. I know, so you don’t have to protect me. Did they really not like his work? I don’t want to know, we’re still seeing it right, on Wednesday, I mean, who cares what they think? What did they think? Don’t tell me if it’s bad. I don’t want to know. How did you bring it up? Or did they? I mean who spoke first? You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to. I know they hated it right. I’m going out anyway. I don’t want to know. You’d have told me last night, not let me spend a night awake. I’m sorry, are you feeling OK? Did you sleep all right? Do you feel better? I don’t want to know about my Dad, just you, OK? How are you?’
Better than you by the sounds of things, thought Lomita, and then summoning her inner calm, she managed.
‘Come in.’
The door opened.
‘Would you like some coffee?’
He walked into the room, Lomita and Manita stared with apprehension, a little bit of tension, even.
‘Yes, I would love some coffee.’
‘Sit down.’
She said pointing to the chair by the window. Manita left to make some coffee, knowing how he liked it, same as Lomita, but longer. The thirty-two-second version.
‘It was fine, the subject didn’t really come up until the end, and that was more of a confirmation of the viewing. It was a Shabbat dinner, so business was avoided, it was delicious food and joyous conversation about houses and decorating and favourite places to eat, and where to go on vacation. You know rich stuff. Spoilt behaviour stuff. Sort of very splendid. And terribly grand, unbelievably so.’
Ever didn’t know what to think.
To be a believer or not. To trust in God or be an atheist or an agnostic. He hadn’t slept, and was most likely not looking at his best. Unbrushed in the hair area, unshaved in the face area and he stank in the underarm area.
In his underpants and a T-shirt, he felt disrespectful, Manita brought in his coffee that was probably cold, his was the longer version, but even allowing for the walk across the room, unless the delay happened at the beginning, this coffee was not going to be piping hot. It wasn’t and Ever knew what Manita thought of him today. It happened, some good days and some not so good.
‘Thank you Manita.’
Cup to lip revealed the tepidity. No need for a cooling blow.
‘How do I know if you are telling me the truth?’
‘You don’t. What would you like to hear? That they thought his paintings were wonderful. Then why were they in a warehouse?’
She felt severe, but he couldn’t be expecting the genius revelation.
‘I suppose I hoped they might have acknowledged making a mistake.’
‘They don’t make mistakes. If they do, they don’t recognise them.’
‘OK. Thank you for going. I appreciate it enormously and I’m glad you had a good time and I’m sorry it has knackered you.’
‘Done what to me?’
‘You know, I mean, tired you out.’
A censorious pause.
‘I am doing this for you, you know, Ever.’
‘Then why did you say we had a problem?’
‘Did I?’
‘You did, you know you did. Last night, first thing you said, why do you think I didn’t sleep?’
‘I think in a strange way Ever, I am joining you on your journey. It seems to be determining its own destination.’
‘I need a shower.’
It seemed too much for Ever to handle. Too hot. Too fucking obtuse. Too much for Ever.
*
Myalgic encephalomyelitis, ME, chronic fatigue syndrome, CFS, or Epstein–Barr.
All provide symptoms of intense and chronic fatigue; she had days when her physical condition could have indeed indicated all of these as possible diagnoses. Initially her exhaustion was put down to the contraction of Epstein–Barr, human herpesvirus 4.
It took two years for her blood to reveal the presence of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. HIV.
This could only be traced back to the blood transfusion and the use of unscreened blood. She was taking antiretrovirals to boost her immune system and keep her CD4 T blood count at acceptable levels to avoid the collapse of her system into Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS. But stress and exhaustion put her immune system under pressure; the concern was for her not to contract tuberculosis or develop lymphoma or any of the other essentially fatal conditions associated with the syndrome.
*
Ever appeared washed: to have brushed up well; the face damage looked less dramatic and he was dressed in non-smelling clothes.
Black T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans and sneakers. He was not as sartorially exciting as Lomita. But he had the devastating effect of youth on his side.
‘Would you like me to wheel you round the block?’
He said from outside the door.
Not one of the most exciting offers she’d ever had, but it was from Ever and that made it one of the most special.
‘That would be lovely, my sweet. Give me thirty minutes.’
He could have joined in as a chorus from the ‘give me’ stage. Always waiting for Lomita.
Chapter Thirty
He didn’t exactly know if he was trying to kill his mother.
There was a garage, an air raid shelter and a coal hole. The first two had a relevance, the coal hole didn’t. The air raid shelter was too scary to go down into and always struck Ever as an extraordinary thing to have in a suburban garden.
No one moved the leaves that were waist high; a mixture of rotted and fresh that collected at the door at the bottom of the steps. On his only trip down there, which he was forced to make or have his pants taken down by the girls next door, a concrete bunker room was revealed.
That was it.
That was it, against a bomb.
Maybe it was having this continual presence of something that protected you from bombs that gave Ever the idea to make one.
The coal hole, well, that kept coal, not used anymore and, every New Year’s Eve, Ever would have coal dust smeared on his face, then have to knock on the front door to be let in as a good luck charm. To bring good fortune to the coming year. This superstition was to do with his Welsh mother being the daughter of a coal miner. Although the need to have an abundance of coal in the mines the following year was lost on Ever, even as a child,
Then there was the garage where he found some old fireworks, bangers, whose sole purpose was to make a bang, probably too damp on bonfire night but now, months later, dried out. The fourth prompter into action was as non-sequential as the other three. There was a soda syphon, red, with the press down arm, and the place where the sparklet of gas was inserted was in chrome. Plastic chrome. When the gas had gone into the water and had been shaken for ten minutes or so, you got the miracle of soda. Leaving an empty mini torpedo of metal with a pierced hole at the top. It was an ancient contraption. It was obvious really: fill an empty sparklet with the gunpowder from the fireworks. Compress it in tight, pack it. Create a pressure. There was a bomb, that would explode and send the metal, shrapnel-like, everywhere.
After this preparation he took the bomb into the garden, laid a long trail of gunpowder that he could light and that would travel up to the bomb.
And.
He laid it on the bit of terrace that dropped down two steps by the fence and the posts that held the washing line. He spread the trail of gunpowder, the fuse, up the path away from the washing line until the gunpowder ran out. Quite a way up the path. He wanted to be safe. He lit it.
Then his mother came out with a pile of washing in a pale blue plas
tic version of a latticed basket, with a cigarette in her mouth. And he shouted.
‘Hang on Mum.’
And repeated the shout.
Did he shout loud enough?
She ignored him as was her way, or didn’t hear him, and the crackling trail of flame was heading towards the loaded sparklet.
His mother put the basket down; she had pulled the first sheet out of it to hang on the line when the explosion happened.
Explosion was the word.
The noise was deafening, the metal did indeed shatter and fly everywhere, most of it towards the sheet, but some buried into his mother’s leg. Neither of them could hear anything as the noise had left them in a ringing mime show. Completely deafened ears. His mother, he could tell was screaming, by the shape of her mouth and body; he was in shock. About, he thought, to cry but was not sure what the appropriate emotion or action was when you have nearly blown up your mother.
The first thing was to see the extent of the damage to her leg. She was hopping on the other leg. As far as he could see, there were several pieces of sparklet embedded in her flesh, and blood; there was bleeding; he hoped, in a moment of startling banality, that tweezers could purpose the extraction.
At least that was his thinking.
The silence was still deafening, the ears continued to scream with a sound generated only by them: but his mother was calmer, assessing the extent of her damage, still not knowing what had caused it. He was fourteen; the divorce was in process; his father had already moved permanently to Los Angeles.
That night between him and his mother had taken place over a year previously.
*
He sat with ringing ears and wondered if he had really tried to kill his mother.
No of course not, she wasn’t there when he lit the fuse.