Collected Stories

by Bernard Maclaverty

  ‘Hot – and it’ll get worse as the day goes on. The Supermarket has . . .’ She laughed. ‘I was going to say central heating but I mean . . .’ She wobbled her hand above her head.

  ‘Air conditioning.’

  ‘Yeah – you come out onto the street and feel that hot wind – like somebody left a hair-dryer on. The Supermarket’s a Spar, would you believe. I thought they only existed in Ireland. And I got Irish butter – here in Spain.’

  He killed an ant on the table with his thumb.

  ‘These wee bastards are everywhere.’ He bent forward and stared down at the maroon tiled floor. ‘Look – Maureen.’

  ‘The toast.’ She hunkered down and turned the bread just as it was beginning to smoke.

  When they had eaten breakfast they made love and after a while he said, ‘I love you,’ and when her breath had come back she said,

  ‘Snap.’ She reached out and touched the side of his face. ‘I mean it, Jimmy,’ she said and smiled, hugging him to herself. Their faces were close enough to know they were both smiling.

  In the plane Maureen had bought a long-distance Fly-Travel kit which contained light slippers and a neck pillow. It also included some stickers which said Wake for Meals. Jimmy stuck one on his forehead and pretended to be asleep. Maureen laughed when she saw it.

  ‘It’s what life’s all about,’ he said. He put on his salesman’s voice. ‘Have you seen our other bestselling sticker, sir? We give birth astride the grave.’

  ‘Wake for meals.’ Maureen said it aloud again and laughed. ‘Let me have a shower – then we’ll find out where this pleasure beach is.’

  He laughed and said, ‘We know where it is.’

  They followed the signs which said Playa. His hands were joined behind his back, she carried a bag with the camera and the towels and stuff. They stopped on the hill overlooking the beach to study which part of it would suit them best. The place was crowded and colourful.

  Sun-beds were stacked at intervals. When they got down they took one each and camped near the beach bar. Jimmy sat on his like a sofa while Maureen stepped out of her dress. She had her bathing suit on. She stood putting sun cream on her shoulders and legs.

  ‘Do my back,’ she said, handing him the bottle. She lay on her front on the sun-bed. He squeezed some cream into the palm of his hand and began to rub it into her skin. He looked around him. Most of the women were bare-breasted. Everyone seemed to be tanned. Mediterranean people with jet-black hair and dark olive eyes.

  ‘We’re pale as lard,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘Only for a day or two. Who cares anyway – nobody knows us here.’

  ‘I care,’ he said – then after a pause, ‘Nipples the colour of mahogany.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Act your age, Jimmy. They’re young enough to be your daughters.’

  ‘I can look, can’t I? Anyway, who’s talking about girls – the boys have nipples, too.’

  When he finished doing her back he did his own arms and legs. He opened his shirt and saw the pallidness of his own skin. If anything, it was whiter than Maureen’s.

  ‘Don’t forget the top of your feet and . . . your bald spot.’

  ‘I meant to buy a fucking hat.’ When he had his body covered with cream he joined his hands and rubbed the top of his head with his moist palms as if he was stretching. Then he lay down on his back. That way his gut was less noticeable.

  ‘Do you miss the girls?’ Maureen said.

  ‘Like hell. It’s about bloody time we got away by ourselves.’ He laughed and said, ‘It’s like it used to be. Just you and me, baby.’

  ‘It’s different now.’ Even though her eyes were closed she made an eye-shade cupping her hand over her brow. ‘Maybe better.’

  ‘God it’s hot.’

  ‘That’s what we paid all the money for.’

  ‘Did you remember to put the butter back in the fridge?’ Maureen nodded.

  ‘I hate butter when it’s slime.’

  ‘I hate anything when it’s slime.’

  ‘This place makes me so . . .’ Jimmy looked around at the people sprawled near him. If they were reading books he could tell by the authors whether or not they were English-speaking. Jilly Cooper, Catherine Cookson, Elizabeth Jane Howard. Others who just lay there sunbathing gave no clue. So he lowered his voice. ‘It makes me so fucking randy.’

  A couple in their early twenties came up and kicked off their sandals. They dropped all their paraphernalia on the sand and began to undress. Jimmy watched the girl, who was wearing a flimsy beach dress of bright material like a sarong. Beneath she wore a one-piece black swimsuit. The lad pulled off his T-shirt. He was brown with a stomach as lean as a washboard. He said something to his girlfriend and she replied, laughing. They sounded German or Austrian. The girl elbowed her way out of the shoulder straps of her bathing suit and rolled it down, baring her breasts. She continued rolling until the one-piece was like the bottom half of a bikini. They both sat down and the girl took a tube from her basket. She squirted a teaspoonful of white cream onto her midriff and began rubbing it up and over her breasts. They lifted and fell as her hand moved over them. She looked up in Jimmy’s direction and he quickly turned his head towards Maureen.

  ‘What?’ said Maureen, sensing his movement.

  ‘Nothing.’ He shook his head.

  About mid-day Jimmy put his shirt on and they went up to the patio of the beach bar for a drink and something to eat. They sat in the shelter of a sun umbrella looking over the beach. The luminous shadow cast by the red material of the umbrella made them look a slightly better colour. Maureen leaned towards him and said,

  ‘Don’t look now but I hear Irish voices.’

  ‘Jesus – where?’ Jimmy, with his elbows on the table, arched both hands over his brows and pretended to hide.

  ‘Behind me and to the left.’

  Jimmy looked over her shoulder. There were three men around a table smoking. They all were wearing shirts and shorts. One of them had a heavy black moustache. Maureen was about to say something when Jimmy shushed her. He listened hard through the foreign talk and rattle of dishes. He heard some flat vowels – but they could have been Dutch or Scottish. American even.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Jimmy.

  ‘Well, I am.’

  ‘Let’s steer well clear.’

  A waiter approached their table.

  ‘Try your Spanish,’ said Maureen.

  ‘Naw – it’s embarrassing.’ But when the waiter opened his pad Jimmy said, ‘Dos cervezas, por favor.’

  ‘Grande o pequeño?’

  Jimmy cleared his throat.

  ‘Uno grande y uno pequeño,’ he said.

  ‘That’s one large and one small, sir.’

  Jimmy nodded. ‘Gracias.’

  ‘De nada.’ The waiter disappeared indoors to the restaurant. Jimmy raised his eyebrows in a show-off manner.

  ‘Not bad at all,’ said Maureen. ‘I hate all the th’s – like everybody’s got a lisp.’

  When the beers came they toasted each other. Every time he raised his glass an ice-cold drip would fall down the open front of his shirt onto his belly and startle him. He cursed – thought there was a crack in the glass or the beer mat was wet.

  ‘They put the stupid fuckin beer mat round the stem instead of underneath.’ Maureen pointed out to him it was condensation. The beer was cold – the air was hot – condensation formed on the outside of the glass – each time he picked it up it would drip on him. The beer mat round the stem was a none too successful attempt to prevent this.

  ‘You’re too smart for your own good,’ he said.

  Maureen looked up at the menu displayed on the wall.

  ‘We’ll have to eat a paella some night.’

  ‘Yeah – seafood.’

  ‘It’s a kind of enforced intimacy. They only do it for two people.’

  ‘No paella for spinsters.’

  ‘Or priests.’

&nb
sp; ‘If it was in Ireland they’d make it for his Riverence and throw the half of it out.’

  They both smiled at the thought. There was a long silence between them. Jimmy shifted his white plastic chair closer to hers. His voice dropped to a whisper.

  ‘Who – I don’t know whether I should ask this or not . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Naw . . .’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Who was the first man you ever did it with?’ She stared at him. ‘You don’t have to tell me – if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I don’t want to and it’s none of your business.’ She spoke quietly and without anger.

  ‘Can you remember the first time you had an orgasm? I mean – not even with somebody. By yourself, even.’

  ‘Not really. All that early stuff is smudged together.’

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘That’s one of those questions like where were you when they shot Kennedy. Everybody knows. The first time that happens to you it’s like being in an earthquake or something. You remember. It’s like your first kiss . . .’

  She hesitated and screwed her face up. ‘It might have been the back of a car . . .’ He leaned forward to hear her better. ‘This is nonsense. Why do you want to know?’

  ‘We’ve been married twenty-five years. We should have no privacy – no secrets from one another.’

  ‘This is just stirring up poison.’ She looked away from him at the sea. There were pedalos and wind surfers criss-crossing the bay.

  ‘I just want to know.’

  ‘It’s like picking scabs on your knee. No good’ll come of it.’ She finished her beer and stood up. ‘I’m going for a swim.’

  When she had gone Jimmy sat staring at the white table top. He raised one finger at the waiter and said,

  ‘La cuenta, por favor.’

  They swam and dried off, then reapplied the sun cream. They did each other’s back.

  ‘It was a bit nippy getting in at first,’ said Maureen. ‘I didn’t expect that. But it was lovely when you got down.’

  The German or Austrian couple had gone off. Jimmy picked them out from the other bathers. They were playing knee-deep in the waves with a velcro ball and bats which fitted onto the hand. If the ball touched the glove even lightly it stuck fast.

  Maureen settled down on her front, crossing her arms as a pillow for her cheek. She sighed.

  ‘This is so nice. I deserve it.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that – that before the swim – up at the bar. But sometimes – there’s a thing in me that . . . wants to know about you before I met you. There’s a part of me that’s jealous of the time when I didn’t know you.’

  ‘Jimmy . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re starting again.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Where do you think the girls are? Right now,’ said Maureen.

  ‘God knows. Half way across the Nevada desert. New Orleans? L.A.? I just hope they don’t hitch. Them hitching makes me nervous. Bloody lorry-drivers.’

  ‘They’ll be fine.’

  The German couple came up the beach, laughing, their hair sleeked and wet. The boy dropped the bat and ball game beside Maureen. The girl rolled down her bathing suit again and lay down on her back just a few feet from Jimmy. She was breathless. Her wet stomach rose and fell as she gasped for breath. Jimmy stared at her. Gradually over a minute or so her breathing became normal. She turned to get the sun on her back and her breasts appeared columnar before she eased herself down.

  ‘How does that work?’ Maureen asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That bat and ball game.’

  ‘Velcro.’

  ‘Oh . . .’

  ‘Two materials – one has hooks, the other loops. When they hit they stick.’

  ‘I’ve only seen it used as a zip.’

  ‘It was one of those ideas that came from nature. The burr sticking to the animal hair.’

  ‘Clever balls.’

  ‘I’ve just expanded your world for you, Maureen. You should be grateful.’

  To avoid the risk of sunburn they went back to the apartment at three o’clock. They walked slowly through the heat.

  ‘I feel utterly drained,’ said Maureen. There was a flight of steps to where their apartment was and they both paused half way up.

  ‘It’s the heat,’ said Jimmy and they both smiled at each other. He leaned against the wall which was in shadow. The stones forming the wall were round and porous.

  ‘They build everything here out of Rice Crispies.’

  A lizard suddenly appeared on the sunlit side of the wall. ‘Behind you Maureen.’ She looked and stood still. It had come to a halt in an S-shape. It was bright green. With a flicker of movement it was gone as suddenly as it had appeared.

  ‘Wasn’t it lovely to see that?’ said Maureen. ‘I’ve never seen one before. They move so fast.’

  ‘They’re cold-blooded, that’s why they seem so energetic in this heat. It’s like us going for a run on a frosty morning.’

  ‘I feel my world expanding all the time.’

  The shutters were closed and the place was dark. They had a shower together and Maureen got to choose the luke-warm temperature of the water. Then they made love again.

  ‘We’ll not be able to stick the pace’, said Jimmy, ‘– without the kids.’

  ‘Today is lovely but I don’t want you – y’know – every time we close that door. We need our own space.’ She was boiling the kettle for a coffee and it seemed to take ages. The room was still dark but slivers of the harsh hot light and white buildings could be seen through the top slats of the shutters. Jimmy sat in his white towelling dressing-gown looking down at the table. The ant population had increased since the morning.

  ‘They’re after our toast crumbs,’ he said. They seemed to be forming a line to and from the table, clustering round a crumb or an almond flake from a biscuit. There were too many now to start killing them.

  ‘Just let them be,’ said Maureen. ‘It’s not as if they bite.’

  Jimmy was following the line to its source. Down the table leg and across the kitchen floor to the jamb of the bathroom door. There was a millimetre gap between the wood and the tiles and ants were disappearing into it. Others were coming out.

  ‘There must be a nest somewhere.’

  ‘Or a hill,’ said Maureen.

  ‘Maybe they’ve been on this route for ten million years,’ he said. ‘Somebody just built this place in their way fifty years ago. This is their track – why should they change just because some bastard of a developer puts a house in their way.’

  She poured two coffees and set one on the table for him. She side-stepped the shifting black line of ants and said,

  ‘They do no harm to anybody.’

  He decided to watch one – it seemed sure of itself heading away from the table with news of food. It came face to face with others and seemed to kiss, swerve, carry on. Away from the main line there were outriders exploring – wandering aimlessly while in the main line the ants moved like blood cells in a vein.

  ‘There’s no point in killing one or two. The whole thing is the organism. It would be like trying to murder somebody cell by cell.’

  ‘Just let them be.’

  ‘The almond crumbs are yours,’ he said but still he flicked ants from his bare feet whenever he felt them there.

  The next day they went to the beach and sat in the same place. Jimmy looked around and saw that Jilly Cooper, Catherine Cookson and Elizabeth Jane Howard were just behind him.

  ‘We’re all creatures of habit,’ he said. ‘It’s as bad as the fucking staff room.’ The mid-day sun made the sand hot to the touch. Maureen had moved from Factor Fifteen and was putting on Factor Six. He did her back for her and she lay down.

  ‘We agreed not to talk about things like that.’

  ‘Okay – okay.’

  ‘Until we get back.’

  They lay there roasting for about thirty minute
s, Maureen flat out, Jimmy resting on his elbows taking in the view. He had bought a white floppy hat with little or no brim and a pair of sun-glasses in the Supermercado. The glasses gave him greater freedom to look around without noticeably moving his head.

  ‘The Germans are absent,’ he said, ‘and no note.’

  ‘Which Germans?’

  ‘The Velcro Germans.’

  ‘I didn’t realise they were Germans. What is the Assistant Head’s particular interest there?’

  ‘Nothing. They just haven’t turned up.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘The girl is a class act – a bit magnificent.’

  Maureen laughed and rubbed a little cream onto her nose with her little finger.

  ‘Do you fancy a walk?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah sure.’ He put on his shirt and let it hang out over his shorts and they walked to the rocky cliff at the far end of the beach. People here were brown and mostly Spanish-speaking. There was a lot of laughing and shouting.

  ‘It seems to be compulsory not to listen. People all speak at the same time.’

  ‘That’s because you don’t have the faintest idea what they’re saying. Two people from Derry would sound just the same – if you didn’t know – if your English . . .’

  ‘They just seem to interrupt each other all the time.’

  They swam off the rocks and the water seemed warmer than the previous day. As they walked back across the beach Jimmy took Maureen’s hand. They nudged up against each other and fleetingly she put her head against his shoulder.

  ‘This is so good,’ she said. ‘I like Public Displays of Affection – no matter what you say.’

  ‘Why does it matter when nobody knows us?’

  ‘I know us,’ she said. ‘Sometimes you can be so bloody parochial.’

  In the middle of the afternoon the German couple arrived and sat down about three feet to the left of the spot where they had been the day before. From behind his sunglasses Jimmy watched the girl undress. Today she wore the bottom half of a white bikini. He heard the boy use her name. Heidrun, he called her. Jimmy tried to nod hello to her but she didn’t notice. She shook out, then spread a large towel, adjusting and flattening the corners. All her attention was taken up with her friend.

  ‘They might as well be on a deserted beach in Donegal,’ said Jimmy, nodding at the couple. Heidrun knelt down on the spread towel and her boyfriend leaned over and nuzzled into her neck. They both lay down face to face, their feet pointing in Jimmy’s direction.