Collected Stories

by Bernard Maclaverty

  ‘Maybe it was Reds, then. There were thousands of extras in that.’

  ‘You don’t encourage her much.’

  ‘It all exists in here with Linden.’ He tapped his temple. I didn’t like to probe any further but smiled down at my white knees.

  We finished the second bottle between us and returned to the villa. Linden put her arm round Brendan’s thickening waist and they went off for a siesta. In my room I slept almost immediately after the wine. When I woke I heard a strange noise – it must have been Linden – a kind of suppressed whimpering. Hissing whispers. Afterwards when they came down to the poolside there seemed to be nothing amiss and he laughed at some joke she had made. But she would not repeat it for me.

  In the evening when Brendan was preparing the meal Linden and I sat on the patio drinking Camparis. Brendan’s voice floated out into the night imitating a French tenor, singing ‘Pour un baiser’.

  ‘Do you see how good you are for him,’ said Linden.

  I nodded, unable to think of anything to say. The ice clicked and cracked in my glass. Her initial shyness of me seemed to have gone. She looked at me and her eyes held for longer than they should. I was unable to return her gaze and bowed my head. When I raised it again her eyes were still there – dark and beautiful – fixed on me. I called in to Brendan in the kitchen, ‘Anything I can do to help?’

  The next morning was very much the same as the first two. I went down to the pool in my dressing-gown and Linden was stretched out on a sunbed with her ring binder open on the ground in front of her. But she was asleep. I went over to her and before I cleared my throat I could not resist looking at her. I could see the wonderful length of her brown back, the side of her breast where it pressed softly against the sunbed. Her black hair was up to let the sun at her shoulders. I tried to tiptoe away but suddenly she wakened.

  ‘Hi,’ she said and smiled. She put on her top and sat up, flicking her hair back.

  ‘What’s the file?’

  ‘Something I’m working on.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘A screenplay.’

  ‘I’ve never seen one of those. May I?’

  ‘You of all people. No. I’d be embarrassed. It has no shape to it yet. Let me get you some coffee.’

  ‘No. Let me get you some – for a change.’

  We sat and talked for about an hour, drinking our way down a whole pot of coffee. I discovered that she and Brendan weren’t actually married.

  ‘It seems the easiest thing to say. We’ve been together for about eighteen months now. I needed the protection of one person – a moat if you like.’

  ‘From?’

  ‘From being hounded. I was getting into a lot of bad emotional relationships.’ She indicated her body with her spread hands as if to explain. ‘Every man I met wanted me on my back.’ I stared at my knees which had turned pink from yesterday. Somewhere in the house a door slammed.

  ‘The top of the marning, to yis,’ said Brendan and he strode between us to dive into the pool. When he surfaced, blowing like a whale, he shouted, ‘That kitchen’s beginning to stink.’

  I offered to help Linden and she asked me to take the rubbish down to the bin. I tied two bulging black bags which, by the smell coming from them, were a risk to our health and took them down the steps to the side of the house. The man in the navy T-shirt came round the corner with a similar black bag tied at the neck. We were too close for him to have ignored me.

  ‘Buon giorno,’ I said. He nodded. I wondered if he had some disease or an eye infection because his face was streaming with tears.

  ‘Cosa di male?’ I asked him, when I realised he was simply crying. He sniffed and rubbed his forearm across his face, said it was nothing. I held the heavy lid of the drum open for him and he thanked me. When I let it slam into place he told me that it was an anniversary for him. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth and eyes. This day twelve years ago, he said, a terrible thing had happened. His only daughter had been murdered. Just walking in the hills above Lugano. They never got the man who did it. She was just twenty years of age. Just beginning her life. I stood there, my hands empty, trying to make sense of his oddly-accented Italian. Why does that kind of thing happen? You sound like an intelligent man. Tell me.

  ‘Peccato . . . peccato . . . I’m sorry,’ was all I could think of. He turned muttering to himself and walked away from me. Had I made a mistake – taken him up wrongly? When I told Brendan and Linden about the conversation Brendan just shrugged.

  ‘He might be telling the truth. Who knows? Anyway, we were all canning peas outside Spalding.’ He laughed but Linden was obviously disturbed by the story because she barely spoke a word all afternoon.

  In the early hours of the morning I awoke and, as sometimes happens when I have had too much to drink, could not get back to sleep again. Eventually I got up to go to the lavatory. The window, which overlooked the pool, was open and insects hummed and fluttered round the light bulb. I looked out and saw the pale figure of Brendan squatting beside the pool. He was totally naked. My eyes were attracted to the knot of gristle and hair between his thighs. He was hunkered down, staring at the lit glassy pane of turquoise water. Even from this distance I could see the blackness in his eyes which did not move but seemed hypnotically riveted on the surface or in the depths of the water. Occasionally he flicked his hanging penis with his fingers the way another man would touch his moustache or adjust his glasses on the bridge of his nose. For some reason I directed my stream quietly down the side of the bowl and did not flush the toilet after me.

  I could not sleep and read a Moravia from my bedside shelf for an hour or so until dawn. I don’t know whether it was curiosity or another call of nature made me go to the lavatory again but Brendan was still there in the milky morning light. He had changed his position and now sat on the side of the pool with his feet dangling in the water. But his eyes stared in the same fashion, looking at nothing and at everything.

  The next night at dinner Brendan drank heavily and was argumentative and objectionable. Both Linden and I were constantly putting our hands over our glasses as he poured glass after glass of wine for himself. It was a very hot night and I could see the sweat standing out on his face the more he drank. At the coffee stage he produced my gift of duty-free Irish whiskey and poured himself a tumblerful. And another. The crickets kept up their calls like unanswered phones in the woods.

  ‘Do you write a screenplay with a specific actress in mind?’

  Brendan sniggered and I looked at him but he didn’t say anything.

  ‘No,’ said Linden. ‘You can think of the best actress. If you write the character well, the actress should be able to make it believable.’

  ‘De Niro . . . Streep . . . Fonda . . . Jack Nicholson,’ Brendan listed the names punctuated by snorts of laughter. Linden ignored him and because she was talking directly to me I had to do the same.

  ‘How do you know how to set about it?’

  ‘There was a section on my drama course. My course tutor said I handled it well.’

  ‘I’ll bet he did,’ said Brendan. He laughed and slammed the table with his hand so that the spoons rang. Linden looked at me and began to bite her thumb-nail. Brendan poured himself another very large whiskey and sipped it noisily.

  ‘Can I ask what is it about?’

  Linden shrugged. She picked up a piece of card and began to fan herself. The motion wafted her perfume towards me.

  ‘It’s about a woman who’s trying to come to terms with herself and her life. She started out as a beautician then got into the manufacturing side of make-up. It’s the irony of the outside and the inside. And how she copes with success.’

  ‘Sounds interesting.’

  ‘Why . . . WHY’, shouted Brendan, ‘don’t you write about something you KNOW about? Fuck success. Why don’t you write about failure, Linden. Eh? Failure with a capital F?’

  She did not turn her head to him but kept staring out into the darkness. Tears came i
nto her eyes but she quickly blinked them away.

  ‘You’re drunk,’ she said. ‘Go to bed.’

  ‘Ah-ha, you’ve rumbled me.’ He began to sing, ‘Noo-bod-ee loves like an Irishman.’ He swung his arms wide and toppled an empty wine bottle. It smashed among our feet on the stone floor of the patio.

  ‘GO TO BED.’ Linden’s voice was tight with anger. They got up simultaneously as if they were about to come to blows but Linden went to get a brush and Brendan bounced off the jamb of the door and staggered across the room to the stairs.

  I sat on the chair and listened to the empty echoing sound of broken glass being thrown in the bucket. Linden came back and lowered herself into her chair.

  ‘I’m sorry about this.’

  ‘Not to worry.’

  ‘It must be very embarrassing for you. To have to sit and talk to your friend’s wife.’

  ‘Actually I feel more relaxed now that he’s gone.’

  ‘I think I deserve a drink,’ she said. In the American fashion she filled her glass with ice-cubes then poured herself a whiskey. She pointed the bottle at me and I nodded. When she sat again she put the cold glass to her forehead.

  ‘It’s so warm tonight.’ The fireflies flicked out beyond the lights of the pool. ‘I so hate him when he’s like that.’

  ‘Drink changes some people.’

  ‘Please, don’t talk about him.’ She rearranged her long legs and tucked one heel up underneath her. ‘Tell me about publishing.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Finding someone new. That must be exciting.’

  ‘Yes, it is. But if they’re any good they move on to a big London house.’

  ‘I’ve written a novel – a short one.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s been rejected by lots of publishers back home in the States. One of them was kind enough to say it would make a good screenplay. That’s what I’m working on at the moment.’

  I began to wonder if, at last, I’d discovered why Brendan had invited me. Had she coaxed him? I wiped the perspiration from my forehead with the bottom of my shirt.

  ‘Would you like me to read the novel?’

  ‘It’s very kind of you to offer but . . . no. I think I see its faults now.’

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘I’m sorry I brought it up. Can we just leave it?’

  She swirled her ice-cubes in her glass and drained off her drink.

  ‘Too long for a title.’ She smiled and stood.

  ‘I think’, she said, ‘I’m going to swim. Do you want to join me?’

  ‘Okay.’ She stood up, her hands reached down to the hem of her dress and with one sweeping movement she pulled it off over her head, shaking her hair loose as she did so. She was wearing only the briefest of white underwear. She skipped away as if she was shy or modest and dived into the pool.

  ‘I’ll be down in a moment,’ I said. Upstairs I had some difficulty in getting into my bathing trunks and it didn’t help to hear Brendan’s heavy snores from the bedroom. I had just come out on to the patio when I heard her scream. She threshed towards the edge of the pool making a kind of whinnying noise.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ She pulled herself up on straightened arms, sat on the side and winced.

  ‘Something . . . an insect . . . huge . . .’ I looked and saw in the lights of the pool what looked like a grasshopper with whirring wings. But it was the size of a big, fat cigar.

  ‘It’s horrible. It hit me in the face.’ She was still shuddering with nausea at the thought of it. I reached for the pole with the net and captured the thing and pulled it nearer to inspect it.

  ‘It’s a locust, by God.’

  ‘Kill it. It’s horrible.’

  ‘If you think I’m putting my bare foot on that . . .’

  I sank the net and held the insect under the water. Its elbows and knees made frantic rowing motions and its wings twitched. My dry shoulder was touching Linden’s wet one as she tried to see into the net.

  ‘It must have come millions of miles,’ I said. ‘Thought you only got them in Africa.’

  ‘Hold it under for five minutes,’ said Linden. She put her wet arm on my back and I flinched.

  ‘You’re wet.’ Coming out of the water her underwear had become almost transparent and I kept looking away, or at least looking at her face. I toppled forward into the pool and began to swim up and down.

  ‘This is lovely.’

  ‘I’m not going in with that thing there,’ she said. She went up the steps and poured two more drinks and brought them down to the poolside. She was drying her hair when I got out.

  ‘Is this for me?’ She nodded and drank a little of her own. I lifted the net and saw no movement from the creature. ‘Stone dead.’ I sat down beside her on the sun-bed.

  ‘Be careful with the glass on the patio. In your bare feet,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it properly tomorrow.’

  I kissed her, lightly at first – in a friendly fashion almost. She responded and kissed me with passion. She was like a coiled spring, full of unexpected jumps and starts. When I touched her breasts she gritted her teeth and tensed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I could barely speak.

  ‘I keep expecting pain. Brendan likes to . . . he hurts me.’

  At the mention of his name I drew away from her. She sat with her hands between her knees and her head bowed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Suddenly there was a whirring, chattering noise at our feet as the locust lurched out of the net. Linden screamed again and it took to the air, throbbing like some machine, and disappeared into the dark.

  ‘It’s gone. It’s okay now,’ I said, putting my arms around her shoulders. I tried to kiss her again but she tucked her chin into her shoulder. I kissed her arms and shoulders. I was shaking now.

  ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘Have done since the day you arrived.’

  ‘You’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met. I cannot believe I am so close to you.’ She allowed me to kiss her again. ‘He’s asleep. I heard him snoring.’

  ‘We’ll go to your room. There’s a lock on the door.’ Linden did not put on her dress again but tiptoed up the stairs in front of me with it draped over her shoulder. I was relieved to hear that Brendan had stopped his snoring.

  Throughout our love-making she kept saying over and over again, ‘You’re so gentle.’ When it was finished she said once more that she loved me.

  ‘I want you to take me away from him.’ There was a long silence between us.

  ‘Is it that serious?’

  ‘Your friend . . . is . . . My pain is the only thing that arouses him.’

  ‘Brendan? That’s hard to believe.’

  ‘You haven’t been to bed with him.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘In the beginning it was fine . . . but now he has to . . . he brings things home from the hospital . . .’

  ‘Like what?’

  She turned her face away from me. Her lips moved but no sound came out.

  ‘I can’t begin to understand that.’ I was tracing out her body with my fingers. Soon the talk stopped and we made love again. I tried to persuade her that this was a night we could both cherish in our memories – a photograph – a searing flash – but again she said, ‘I love you. I want to go away with you.’

  It was four o’clock when she left my room, quietly unsnibbing the door. Almost immediately I heard voices in the corridor. Brendan must have seen her coming from my room in that half-clothed state. I lay there naked and nervous wondering what I could do. A toilet flushed and Brendan’s heavier footsteps came to my door. He pushed it open and stood there, still fully-dressed.

  ‘Hi,’ I said. He looked at me and slowly tapped the side of his temple.

  ‘It all happens in there with Linden. Remember that.’ Then he was away.

  I could not sleep, of course. I remembered people in Zurich whose address I could get from the telephone book. At five I began to pack and as the
dawn came up I was going quietly down the stairs. I left them a brief thank you note on the kitchen table. Outside it was already warm and the birds were singing. I looked back at the villa and saw the owner in his navy T-shirt sitting at the window of his hut. I felt I had to wave to him and he answered by raising his hand in a kind of tired salute.

  END OF SEASON

  THE ELDER MISS Bradley walked to the end of the small pier and stood listening to the sea thumping in from below. White horses flecked the bay and the wind was strong enough to make her avert her face from its direction. She was convinced that the summer was over. A week back at school and already the first gale of winter. On this exposed coast with no trees autumn did not exist.

  She liked to come here on her way home, particularly on windy days. It rinsed the experience of school from her. She did not stand long – a minute, perhaps two, facing into the wind with her eyes closed. Then she turned on her heel and walked slowly, leaning back into the wind, trying not to let its strength fluster her or make her movements awkward.

  The briefcase was heavy with jotters and she wished she had brought the car. The school was only three-quarters of a mile from the house but each day she debated whether or not she should walk the distance for the good of her health. It would not do to have two invalids in the one house.

  The family home was one of a terrace of cream-painted houses, set back from the road behind long, well-kept gardens. Some of the houses still had little gibbets overhanging the pavement with ‘Bed & Breakfast’ signs swinging in the wind. As she walked up the path she faintly heard her sister, Kathleen, laughing and thought it odd – a feeling which increased when she opened the front door and smelt tobacco smoke. In the front room a man sat in her armchair beside the bookcase, with his back to the light, talking.

  ‘Ah Mary, there you are,’ said her sister. The man stood up politely.

  ‘You remember Mr Maguire?’

  ‘Eh . . . yes, indeed.’

  In his hand Mr Maguire held their old guest book. He sat down again and opened it so quickly that he must have had his finger in the place. ‘I was just looking at when we were here last.’ He passed the book to Mary. She found Mr and Mrs Maguire whose stay was dated July 1958.