‘They’d be covered in goose-pimples,’ said Maureen. Jimmy stared at the gusset of the white bikini facing him. It was as if the closeness of the German couple had some influence on them and Jimmy and Maureen moved closer together. He whispered in her ear.
‘Why is it that the only woman on the beach who seems to have any pubic hair is you?’
‘You mean you go around looking?’
‘A man cannot help but notice these things.’
‘You mean a Catholic repressed man. A lecher. A man with a problem.’
‘You lie there like some kind of a farmer’s wife from the backabeyond or . . . or somebody from Moscow.’
‘I meant to do it before I came away – but with the rush and all . . . It’s not that obvious – is it?’ She looked down at herself.
‘Not really but . . .’
‘Anyway, who’s looking at me in that tone of voice – at my age. Catch yourself on, Jimmy. Go and buy me an ice cream.’
He got to his feet and put on his shirt. ‘What flavour?’
‘The green one with the bits of chocolate in it.’
‘What’s it called?’
‘Jesus, you can point, can’t you?’
He fiddled in her purse for pesetas, then went off towards the bar.
At the bar he noticed again the three suspected Irishmen from the first day. They sat beside the counter. Jimmy listened as he pointed out and bought the ice-cream. Maureen was right again. They were definitely from the North of Ireland. They were talking about football. Something about Manchester United and the English league. Two of them wore tartan shirts, the third a T-shirt with Guinness advertising on it.
When he got back to Maureen he gave her the ice-cream.
‘I saw your friends up there. I think they’re RUC men.’
She licked the peppermint green and crunched a bit of the chocolate.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I dunno. They look like Chief Constables or Inspectors. I feel sorry for them. If you were a policeman in the North where would you go for your holidays?’
She didn’t answer. She nodded towards the German couple.
‘There’s been plenty of PDA since you left.’ She smiled and winked at Jimmy. The couple were lying with their faces an inch apart staring into each other’s eyes. Occasionally the boy would trail the back of his knuckles down her naked side. Maureen beckoned Jimmy’s ear to her mouth.
‘Meine Liebe,’ she whispered.
That evening on the patio of Nino’s they decided to have the seafood paella for two. They had been given complimentary glasses of a local sherry and Jimmy asked to have the order repeated. He would pay for them. As he suspected, when the waitress brought the drinks she said, ‘On the house.’
Jimmy drank Maureen’s second drink as well as his own two.
When the waiter brought the double paella he showed it to them. They both nodded in appreciation at its presentation. It was served from a much-used, blackened pan and the waiter made sure to divide everything equally. Three open navy blue mussel shells to one plate, three to the other. One red langoustine to you and one to you.
Maureen hated it – wet sloppy rice with too much salt and the most inaccessible parts of shellfish. Things that had to be broken open and scraped, recognisable creatures which had to have their backs snapped and their contents sucked. At one point Maureen raised her eyes and gave a warning to Jimmy. The three Northern Ireland men were sitting down at the next but one table from them. She scrutinised them.
‘I’m sure they’re not policemen.’ They were directly behind Jimmy and he had to twist in his chair to see them. One of them caught his eye and recognised him from the beach. They nodded politely to each other.
‘They’re like people out of a uniform of some kind,’ said Jimmy. ‘Maybe they’re screws – from Long Kesh.’
‘Or security men.’
Maureen gave up on the paella.
‘How do you tell a lie in Spanish – it was lovely but there was too much of it?’ There was a lull in the noise of conversation and dish-rattling and Maureen heard a name float across from the next but one table. Jimmy said,
‘If you are not willing to talk about your early sexual experiences – I am.’
‘Not again.’
‘In those days I was a vicious bastard – every time I went out with a woman I went straight for the conjugular.’
She laughed and said, ‘You think I didn’t notice.’ She paused and looked at him. ‘You made that up.’
‘Of course I did. I just said it, didn’t I?’
‘No I mean you thought it up one day and then waited for a time when you could use it. Tonight’s the night.’
He nodded vigorously, pouring himself another glass of wine. Maureen put her hand over the top of her own glass.
Another, different name came floating across from the Northern Ireland table. Maureen made a face as if something was just dawning on her.
‘I know,’ she said when she had swallowed the food in her mouth. ‘They’re priests. The first name I heard was Conor and now there’s Malachy.’
‘Catholic names don’t make them priests.’
‘But black socks do.’
‘Keep your voice down. If we can hear them they can hear us.’
‘Two of them’s wearing black socks,’ whispered Maureen. ‘It all fits now. Why would three aging men go away on holiday together?’
‘A homosexual ring?’
‘They never go on the beach. They never take their clothes off. They are keeping an eye on each other. Since the Bishop of Galway nobody trusts anybody else.’
‘One of them has a moustache.’
Maureen looked over his shoulder and checked.
‘So?’
‘I’ve never seen a priest with a moustache.’
‘Maybe there’s two of them priests and the one with the moustache is the priest’s brother. You’re right – the one with the moustache is wearing white towelling socks.’ Jimmy checked under the table. Maureen smiled and said, ‘There’s nothing worse than a priest’s brother. All the hang-ups and none of the courage.’
‘Are they drinking?’
‘Yes.’
‘They probably are priests then.’ They laughed at each other. Jimmy reached out and covered her hand with his. ‘Would you like coffee or will we get another bottle?’
‘Coffee is fine for me.’
‘I’m sorry to go on about this – but there must have been no shortage of men trying it on before me.’
Maureen stared at him. ‘What is this – where did all this shite suddenly come from, Jimmy?’
‘I’ve just been thinking. Seeing things that remind me. You were a very attractive woman when we first met . . .’
‘Gee thanks . . .’
‘No I don’t mean that. You still are. I’m saying – in comparison to others in the field.’
‘In the field – you’re making it sound like a cattle fair – have a good look at her teeth.’
‘That’s a horse fair you’re thinking of.’
‘Jimmy.’ She stared hard at him. ‘Teach me how to be right all the time?’
‘It wouldn’t work – two in the one family.’
‘Then one of us would have to leave,’ said Maureen. ‘It’s that time of life. Everybody is leaving everybody else. They stayed together for the kids. Now that’s over.’
‘You don’t feel like that, do you?’
Maureen looked at him and smiled. She shook her head.
‘Not yet.’
They walked back to the apartment across the dark beach. They both took off their shoes and walked ankle deep at the water’s edge. It was warmer than during the day. There was a white moon reflected on the water. They held hands again until Jimmy stopped for a piss in the sea. Maureen walked on.
In the apartment Jimmy fell down onto the sofa.
‘I’m going to have a drink of that duty-free whiskey before it’s all drunk.’
&n
bsp; ‘And who’s liable to drink it?’
‘Me.’ He grinned and rose to pour himself one. She laughed at him.
‘Have you drunk all that since we came here?’
‘Lay off. I’m on my holidays too.’
‘But we drink a bottle of wine – minus one glass for me – every night as well.’
‘Over dinner.’
‘That makes no difference.’
‘Plus a few beers. Maureen, will you stop counting. And some of that Spanish fucking gin.’
‘With no ice.’
‘Ice is where the bugs get in.’ He diluted his whiskey with bottled water sin gas he had bought for the purpose. ‘Speaking of which . . .’ He moved to the bathroom and looked down at the tiled floor.
‘Holy shit! Maureen will you take a look at this.’ He hunkered down and sipped his whiskey.
‘Oh my God,’ said Maureen. What had been a trickle of ants was now a torrent – a stream that was moving both ways. From the chink in the bathroom tile they moved across the floor in a bristling stream to the table leg, up the table leg onto the table – into the cereal packets. The stream divided and part of it went to the rubbish bin where they had thrown their leftovers – melon rinds, tea-bags, stale bread.
‘It’s fizzin with them,’ said Maureen, lifting a bread wrapper from the bin between her finger and thumb. ‘Are they just a fact of life. Will we have to put up with them all the time we’re here?’
‘As long as they’re not in the bed,’ said Jimmy. As he stood up some of his whiskey slopped over. The ants panicked, began moving faster. The stream parted and moved around the droplets of whiskey, ignoring it. ‘Why don’t they get pissed?’
‘Maybe they will do – after work,’ said Maureen.
‘They’re really prehistoric, aren’t they. And so silent. In the movies there would be a soundtrack.’
Maureen made tea with a tea-bag in a mug and they went out onto the small balcony. There was a candle in a bottle left by a previous tenant and Maureen lit it and set it on the white plastic table. Jimmy sipped his whiskey and put his feet up on the balcony rail.
‘I just love being in my shirt-sleeves at this time of night. Can you imagine what it’s like at home?’ Maureen sighed a kind of agreement. The moon was low in the sky and criss-crossed by the struts of two cranes. Had the moon not been there the cranes would have been invisible. Jimmy nodded towards the candle.
‘Somebody from the north. Remember that holiday in Norway?’ Maureen nodded. ‘Candles everywhere. The kids loved it. Flames burning outside restaurants. Never pulling their curtains – you could follow people moving from room to room.’
‘You certainly did.’
‘The electric bills – light shining out of everywhere. Here it’s the opposite. Shutters – keep the light out. It’s impossible to get the slightest glimpse inside a Spanish or an Italian house.’ Jimmy sipped his whiskey and held it in his mouth for a while, savouring it. It was a thing he knew annoyed her. They didn’t speak again for some time.
‘You really don’t like to talk about this stuff, do you?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘I just want to know what happened to you before I met you.’
‘I’ve told you everything there is to know – chapter and verse. Everything about my home and school . . .’
‘But not sexually. You never mention anything about that.’ She sipped her mug of tea holding it with both hands – the way she would sip tea in the winter. ‘I’m jealous of not knowing you then. Your school uniform. Your First Communion. I am jealous of all the time I was not with you.’
‘That’s a kind of adolescent – James Dean – kind of thing to say.’
‘I am jealous of every single sexual act in which I was not involved.’
She looked at his face in the candle light and realised he was serious.
‘Jimmy, why are you torturing yourself about this? Leave it alone. Why should all this come up now – after twenty-five years? Maybe you feel threatened. Now that you’re out of shape and balding you feel threatened.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘I’m going to bed.’ She got up and went the long way round the table so he wouldn’t have to take his feet down off the balcony rail.
He heard her shut the latch on the bedroom door and the creak of the bed as she got into it. He poured himself another whiskey larger than the last because she was not there to see the size of it. He drank several more glasses equally large and listened to the crickets and the English voices that were continually passing in the street below.
When Maureen woke at 4 am he still had not come to bed. She found him in the chair, his head tilted back, his mouth open and slanting in his face.
‘Are you okay, Jimmy?’ She put her arm beneath his and got him to his feet. He was mumbling something about ‘those fucking priests’ as she eased him down onto the bed and started to take his shoes off.
He was sick the next day and, although he tried to hide the fact by going out of the room, Maureen could hear the crinkling of him in the bathroom pressing indigestion tablets out of their tinfoil pack. When she accused him of drinking foolishly he blamed the paella.
‘You’ve never done that in your life before, Jimmy. Not to my knowledge.’
‘Got a bit pissed?’
‘No – passed out – sitting in your seat.’
‘I fell asleep, for fucksake.’
‘I’m going to get you one of those wee stickers printed which says Wake for Drinks.’ Maureen went to the fridge to put away the butter.
‘Oh my God,’ she said, ‘would you look at this?’
‘What?’
‘There’s ants crawling up the rubber seal of the fridge door.’
‘We’ll have to do something.’
In the coolness of the Supermercado Maureen, with the help of a small Spanish dictionary, made herself understood to the man she liked at the checkout. She wanted to kill ants. The man nodded, went off down between the aisles and came back with an orange-coloured tube.
‘You have children?’ he asked.
‘Yes – two girls.’
He made a face which said – oh well, I don’t think this is a good idea. He pointed at the black skull and crossbones on the side of the tube. Maureen realised what he meant and laughed at herself.
‘My children are not here. They are big. Away.’ He smiled and raised an eyebrow which Maureen interpreted as – you don’t look old enough to have grown-up children. It was soft soap but she still liked him.
‘Where ants come in.’ He directed the nozzle downwards. Maureen nodded that she understood.
When she got back Jimmy was lying on the sofa still looking hung-over. She handed the tube to him and he insisted on looking up the instructions and ingredients in the dictionary.
‘Jesus – it seems to be honey and arsenic.’
‘The guy says you have to put it down where they’re coming in.’
Jimmy heaved himself off the sofa and squatted down by the bathroom door. The stream of ants was now so dense that they blackened the floor in an inch-wide band. Millions coming, millions going. He unscrewed the lid and aimed the oily liquid into the crack they were pouring in and out of.
‘Try this for size, my little ones.’ Several drops fell on the tiles of the bathroom floor. Jimmy stood up and washed his hands thoroughly. Maureen came to see the effect the stuff was having.
‘They are going daft, Jimmy. They’re all lining up to drink it. Look at them.’ The ants were now streaming in all directions but the main movement was to line up along the edge of the liquid. ‘They can’t leave it alone. Look they’re dying.’ The ones on the margin of the poison had ceased to move. Others nudged them aside to get at it. Maureen looked at the tile where the single drops had fallen. Ants had gathered round the edge of the drop and ceased to move.
‘They’re like eyelashes round an eye,’ said Maureen.
‘Christ – it’s very dramatic stuff.’ Jimmy looked down at the fl
oor still drying his hands. ‘Goodnight Vienna.’
Maureen went out to go to the beach. If Jimmy felt better he would join her later. She had to pass the Supermercado so she stepped inside and gave the thumbs up to the guy at the checkout about the efficiency of the ant stuff. He nodded his head and smiled.
It was on the way down the hill that it occurred to her that maybe he didn’t know what she’d been referring to. She became embarrassed at the thought. Maybe he didn’t even know who she was – a man like him would smile at all his customers.
It was nice to be on her own. She felt good about herself. Her tan was beginning to be evident without being red. The pale stripe beneath her watch-strap acted as a kind of indicator. She was in no hurry to get to the beach and walked towards the old town looking in shop windows. She did not want to buy anything – just to look. Most of the shops were closed and she realised that it was siesta. The streets were empty. It was eerie – like in a movie after the bomb had been dropped. The flat stones of the pavement were hot and shining and she got the notion that she would slip on them if she was not careful. Pasted to a wall were posters for a fiesta which coincided with their last night. There were to be fireworks starting at 11 pm in the square at the harbour front.
She was now moving through an area of the town where she hadn’t been before. The façade of a church appeared as she came round a corner. It seemed to grow out of a terrace of houses and looked very old and very Spanish. She walked along the street towards it. She was not knowledgeable about these things but she guessed it was mediaeval. In the curved arch above the door white doves blew out their chests and made cooing, bubbling noises. The main door was huge and ancient – studded with iron nails, each shaped like a pyramid. There was a smaller door cut into it. She tried the handle but found it locked. Now that she was excluded she wanted to see the inside more than ever. Several yards to the left of the main door was another side door. She was unsure whether it belonged to the next house or the church. She tried the handle and it swung open.
‘Ah . . .’ She stepped in. It wasn’t really inside the church but in a colonnade alongside. At this end it was dark and cool but the far end was brilliant with sunshine. In between the colonnade of columns, arches of shadow sliced onto the walkway. She had a memory of looking out from a dark wood into sunlight. The door closed behind her with a rattle as the catch clicked. There appeared to be no way into the church from here. She walked down the colonnade towards the sunshine, listening to the slight itching sound the soles of her shoes made with the sandstone floor. The arches were curved, held up by pillars of blond stone which got lighter and lighter as they neared the source of the sunlight. Was she sufficiently dressed to go into the church? Her white T-shirt left her arms bare, but nobody could object to her Bermuda-length shorts. She felt slightly nervous – like a child expecting to be scolded for trespassing or intruding where she had no right to be. What if some Monsignor were to turn the corner and begin shouting at her in Spanish, yelling at her that this was the Holy of Holies. She paused and thought of going back. But she was so curious to see what lay beyond the source of the light. She walked hesitantly down the arcade and came upon a small square. It took her breath. There was something about it which made her love it with an intensity she had rarely experienced. There was no fear now of being caught. In some way she felt she had the right to be here. It was a square or atrium made of the same blond stone as the columns which formed the cloisters around its perimeter. In the centre was what looked like a font set up on a dais of steps. It had a spindly canopy of wrought iron. Maureen moved near the font and turned slowly to look around her with her head tilted back, looking up. Windows, three sets in each wall, overlooked the small courtyard but there appeared to be no one living behind them. There were no shutters, no curtains. Empty rooms. The sun was almost directly overhead. When she sat down on the steps the stone was warm. She was aware of the absolute silence – aware that outside this cloister was the quietness of a town in siesta. Inside, everything was intensified. Suddenly the silence was broken by the clattering of wings as several white doves flew onto the tiled roof. Maureen stood up and climbed the steps to the font. She leaned her elbows on the rim and looked at the round hole or shaft in the middle of it. She gave a little jump and leaned on her forearms, her feet off the ground, and looked down into the shaft. There was a white disc at the bottom.
Collected Stories Page 43