Under the Sun

by Lottie Moggach

  Anna looked over to the steps. No sign of Jaime – he’d told her he was on a course today – but a pair of beach hawkers were stationed there. One had counterfeit DVDs neatly arranged in front of him, the other handbags. Both of them sat with bent legs apart, their heads dipped.

  Anna’s high from the night before was dissipating and now, looking at the hawkers, she thought again about the body on the rocks. Those painfully splayed limbs. His blood-filled eye. The string of leather pouches, biting into the flesh at his waist, just visible under his hippo T-shirt. The identical set, up at the finca. What had Almamy called it? A gree gree.

  Her discovery of the borehole, and then the discovery of Satine, had sent her off on a diversion, but now, today, she must find out what a gree gree was and what it meant. She thought, for a moment, of asking the hawkers, but then remembered the reaction of the bearded man at the finca, when he caught her touching it; Almamy shutting down when she brought it up. Instead, she turned from the promenade railings and started back across the square.

  The Internet cafe was not as full as yesterday, and the atmosphere more sedate. It was mid-morning, so she guessed more men must be out working. The same girl was behind the counter, but there was no bunch of fresh mint, nor any music playing, and what conversation there was amongst the men at the computers was muted. Only four phones were charging on the table.

  As Anna paid her euro, a man hurried out of one of the private terminals, and she took his place. The computer was screened by five-foot-high barriers to the side and saloon-style doors at the front. As Anna sat, she realized that the men whose hunched backs she’d seen in these booths on her previous visit must have been tall: in the low, rickety office chair, she was barely visible to the room.

  Boxed in by grubby MDF, she felt grimly aware that there were only a few reasons anyone would require this level of privacy. There was a heavy chlorine tang to the air around her that she tried not to inhale. Perhaps she was the first woman who had ever been in this booth. Perched on the edge of the chair, she lowered her hand onto the mouse, grasping it with just the edges of her fingers, like a spider sizing up its prey, and then, when she logged on, typed with pernickety speed, not leaving her fingertips on the keys for a millisecond longer than was necessary.

  Google told her a gree gree was something to do with a monkey character in a computer game. A different spelling, Grigri, was the brand name for some rock-climbing device, and this gave her pause – but no, that definitely wasn’t what she was looking for.

  Then, she googled gree gree and Africa and – bingo. The word was most commonly spelt gris-gris, and referred to the little leather packets on the string. Voodoo amulets offering spiritual protection, given to the wearer by their holy man, and often worn when travelling. The packets could contain various things: herbs, earth, hair, bone, lines from the Koran . . .

  ‘El Tio!’

  Anna started, and looked over her shoulder, craning to see over the partition doors. Paco had entered the cafe, and was being greeted by an African man at a computer terminal. The man had stood up and was leaning towards Paco, hand outstretched, but, as she watched, Paco ignored him. No, more than ignored him – he aggressively brushed past the man’s hand, like a celebrity furious at being approached on his day off. The man sank back into his chair.

  Slouching lower in her seat so she wouldn’t be spotted, Anna continued to watch as Paco walked up to the counter, gave a perfunctory nod to the smiling girl and leaned over to the till. Opening the cash drawer, he took out some notes before slamming it shut, saying something to the girl and then leaving the cafe. The whole thing had taken less than a minute.

  Anna turned back to the screen, thrown. So, Paco was not just tolerated by the staff here. To take money from the till in such an offhand manner could only mean he owned the place. Or, at the very least, worked here, as some sort of sideline. But if that were the case, and the girl was his fellow worker, why would he be so curt with her?

  Anna thought back to Christmas Day. Paco with his sardines, her drunken dash back to the flat, where she scooped up the money on the counter – money she really needed, that could have paid for her broadband for a month – and ran back to give it to him. The way Paco clutched her hand to his chest and thanked her, tortoise eyes glistening with sincerity. He had accepted her money like a pauper, when really, all the time, he was connected to a thriving business in town.

  And how Paco had acted just now, with the man who’d stood to greet him. El Tio! Simón had called Paco this, too, the first time she had met him. Distracted by Simón’s request to rent the finca, Anna hadn’t given it any thought. Now, in her booth, she typed the phrase into Google. Apparently there was no one fixed meaning; it could signify friend, boss, uncle – even demon.

  Why would Simón call Paco El Tio? And why the African? She supposed he might know Paco from the beach; or maybe, if he came into the cafe a lot, knew him as its owner. But if that were the case, then why would Paco react as he did to the greeting?

  One thing seemed clear: Paco was not just a simple man of the sea, scratching a living from selling paella on the beach to tourists.

  The man who had been shunned by Paco was now staring at his screen, jaw tense, headphones on. Anna stood and wound her way through the terminals towards him. Behind the counter, the girl’s chin was raised, gaze fixed pointedly on Anna. She stopped in her tracks. The room was so quiet, filled only with the light tapping of keys. Anna carried on to the door, as if she was just taking a circuitous route out of the cafe. As she squeezed past the shunned man, she glanced down at his screen and saw he was reading what looked like a news site in French, Dakar Online.

  Dakar. That was in . . . she couldn’t think. Come on, she thought, come on. General knowledge had never been her strong suit. It was only after she had left the shop and was walking slowly along the street, face screwed in concentration, that the answer came to her. Senegal. Dakar was in Senegal. Wasn’t it?

  The image came to her of Mattie, wide-eyed in her peach kimono, at the doorway of her bungalow. Once you’ve been to Senegal, there’s no going back.

  The plastic flamingos in Mattie’s garden seemed to have bred since Anna was last here: there were at least half a dozen of them dotted around the AstroTurf, necks bent back in perpetual surprise as Anna approached. She knocked on the door of the caravan. The couple next door were outside, watching TV. This time, absorbed in some news programme, they didn’t greet her.

  The door opened, just the width of a security chain. Only a slice of a woman was visible, but Anna could see enough – a large pink arm, some grey-blonde hair – to know it wasn’t Mattie. Her mother?

  Anna said hello, and asked if Mattie was in.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said the woman. Her voice came as a surprise; careful and well spoken, not unlike Janet’s.

  ‘She’s at the market,’ the mother continued.

  ‘The supermarket?’

  ‘No, the market,’ she repeated, in the same measured tone.

  Anna realized she might mean the weekly car boot sale, where Brits went to flog their stuff. She had never been. Salvage yards and vintage shops were one thing; the bric-a-brac of desperate expats quite another.

  ‘Do you happen to know when she’ll be back, by any chance?’ she asked, mirroring the woman’s formality.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  There seemed to be only a few phrases the woman was comfortable saying: a script she had learned for when she was home alone and the doorbell rang.

  ‘Well, thank you very much and I’m so sorry to bother you,’ Anna said. ‘Oh – and I didn’t catch your name?’

  The woman hesitated.

  ‘Deirdre,’ she said, finally.

  ‘Well, thank you, Deirdre,’ said Anna. ‘I’ll leave you in peace now, but before I go is there anything I can help you with?’

  ‘No, thank you very much,’ said Deirdre. But she didn’t shut the door, and kept on looking at Anna through the gap.

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bsp; ‘I love your garden,’ said Anna, in case she wanted more conversation. ‘Did you do it yourself?’

  The woman nodded.

  ‘Me and Martha. It’s not finished yet.’

  There was a pause, and as Anna was about to say goodbye, Deirdre spoke again, in a different tone of voice, more anxious, as if she’d let the carapace slip.

  ‘Is the earthquake over?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘All those poor people. What can we do?’

  ‘There’s no earthquake,’ said Anna, gently. ‘It’s lovely outside, actually.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Deirdre, more agitated. ‘Not here. On the TV. All those poor people. What can we do?’

  Anna didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. She smiled and reached her hand through the gap in the door, to touch the woman’s arm.

  ‘It’s all OK.’

  Anna felt Deirdre flinch at her touch, and then the woman withdrew, back into the dark of the caravan, softly pulling the door closed. As Anna left, pushing open the pointless gate, she glanced at the neighbours’ TV, and glimpsed pictures of rubble and desperate faces; a news banner about a disaster in Haiti. Deirdre was right – something had happened. Anna paused, and then kept walking. She hadn’t watched the news for months, but now wasn’t the time to start. The wider world would have to wait.

  The car boot sale was held further down the ring road, not far from the police station. As she walked, lorries growled along the coast road above her, exhaling black exhaust fumes and leaving slow-to-settle dust clouds in their wake. The shop units in this part of town were almost all empty; a charity shop and a bookmaker’s were the exceptions. A Spanish mother and daughter passed her, lugging a gas canister. Would Jaime go shopping to help his mum? He gave that impression. But then, thought Anna, aren’t we all different people with our parents? The self-possessed, surprising young man who’d taken off her clothes against the bar might well be a mulish disappointment at home: locked onto his PlayStation, ketchup-encrusted plates shoved under his bed.

  As Anna was considering giving in and asking for directions to the market, she saw some parked cars and activity in an empty lot up ahead, beyond a beige slab of a warehouse. From a distance, the sale looked like the ones back in the UK – piles of junk and low-key milling about. But, as she drew close, she noticed that although the lot was relatively small, the contents of what seemed like several entire houses had been hauled onto the tarmac – wardrobes, washing machines, dining tables with matching chairs. The furniture was all of a type – white MDF or cheap pine, modern and flimsy. Maybe they had all been part of a furniture package when bought, Anna thought, like the one Tommy and Karen had.

  Alongside these house clearances were trestle tables offering the more usual car boot stuff. Sentimental but useless objects, like medals and horse brasses; gadgets that now seemed foolish luxuries, coffee machines and foot spas. Hobby apparatus. Power tools. And a lot of everyday items that could only fetch cents – clammy piles of clothes and warped shoes, magazines; even an old broom and mop.

  Whilst the expats were selling the contents of their houses, the Spanish were into a different game. Their stalls offered wholesale quantities of sunglasses, factory pottery and knock-off football tops.

  As Anna passed through the market, she recognized a couple of half-known faces from the urbanization sitting on folding chairs beside their goods. Several of them had swooped down on her the moment she had opened the bar, offering unskilled services – cleaning, driving, odd jobs – and she hadn’t seen them since. Then she spotted Richard, sitting behind a trestle table spread with rows of DVDs and CDs. There were so many of them, newly produced, that they were clearly not his personal collection. He didn’t have the same beleaguered expression as the other Brits and, on spotting Anna, waved a greeting.

  ‘Hola!’ he said.

  ‘Gosh, what a lot of films you have, Richard,’ she said, slipping into her default bar banter. ‘The long winter nights must have just flown by.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Nothing like a good movie. You should come over and watch one with me one night.’

  He smiled, showing lots of teeth. Anna had rarely seen him out during daylight hours – he wasn’t a daytime drinker, and was always somewhere ‘on business’. The sun shone off his gelled hair and highlighted the desiccation of his large, handsome face.

  ‘You’re a particular fan of Finding Nemo, I see.’ She indicated the four copies on the table.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, and then, after looking theatrically around to check they weren’t being overhead, told her how he had an arrangement with his mate Ron, who’d bought a laminating machine during the boom years. Richard burnt copies of the films at home and printed out the covers on his colour laser printer, then ran them through the laminator for the professional touch.

  ‘Can clear ninety euros here on a good day,’ he said. ‘What do you think about that? And then there are the ones down at the beach. Looking at sixty euros a day when the season starts.’

  ‘What, you supply the guys selling them on the beach steps? The looky looky men?’

  Richard winked. ‘I’m saying nothing.’

  Anna knew that Richard was up to dodgy stuff, but the fact he was supplying the African beach hawkers was a surprise; she’d assumed that was sewn up elsewhere. She asked if he’d seen Mattie, and Richard gestured down to the far end of the market.

  ‘She likes it down that end, near the food. Can’t stand the smell myself.’

  Anna walked towards the other end of the car park, and saw what he was talking about. Discreetly situated under some trees, out of sight of the main road, were a handful of food vendors. All dark-skinned women, they sat beside stainless steel vats. So this was where the female migrants were.

  Close to them, at the edge of the official market, was Mattie. Unlike the other Brits she wasn’t stationed at a table but on a rug, sitting back on her heels, face hidden under an unnecessarily large sun hat, her dress fanned around her. She was surrounded by amateurish beaded jewellery, the kind that thirteen-year-old girls make during school lunch break.

  Anna called her name, and the sun hat tilted back.

  ‘Hi!’ said Mattie, looking up from under the brim. She didn’t seem at all surprised to see her.

  Anna crouched down beside Mattie, being careful not to mess up her display.

  ‘Listen,’ said Anna. ‘I need to ask you something.’

  ‘Do you now.’

  ‘That man you saw. Almamy. Do you have a number for him?’

  Mattie looked at her, expression unreadable.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she said.

  ‘Er, no,’ said Anna. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I’m hungry.’

  Anna caught up.

  ‘Shall I get you some lunch?’ she asked.

  Mattie smiled and nodded graciously.

  ‘The Ghanaian is best,’ she said, pointing at the food vendors.

  The Ghanaian woman was wearing too many layers of clothing for the mild weather. Her vat of food was also bundled up: in the absence of a fire to keep it warm, it was insulated by layers of plastic bags. The woman took Anna’s order without making eye contact, and as she stirred the stew, releasing tantalizing vapours of oil and meat and unknown herbs, Anna changed the order to two. The woman dolloped the stew into two china bowls, instructing Anna to bring the crockery back, and added chunks of thick, spongy bread.

  Her neighbour was selling sliced avocado and plantain. Both women seemed on edge, checking the crowd. The lack of relaxed conversation between them was a contrast to the men in the Internet cafe – this was clearly an unofficial operation.

  ‘Are you here every week?’ said Anna, as she returned to Mattie.

  ‘Of course!’ said Mattie. ‘I don’t want to let my customers down.’

  They sat together, companionably eating their stew. It was very spicy and, Anna thought, delicious, but that could be down to its novelty. Her taste buds were more accustomed to ja
món and queso. For all her mannered refinement, Mattie ate indelicately, dripping liquid onto the rug. Anna wondered whether their previous meeting’s awkwardness need be mentioned.

  ‘Listen, I need to ask you something,’ said Anna, starting again. ‘About that guy, Almamy. I saw him yesterday, up at my finca, and he said hello.’

  ‘Oh, how nice,’ twittered Mattie. ‘Such a sweet boy.’

  Bowl now empty, she had gone back to threading beads, her tiny hands suited to the task.

  ‘Do you know how I can get in touch with him?’ said Anna.

  Mattie looked at her quizzically.

  ‘But you just saw him,’ she said.

  ‘I mean, I saw him at the house, my finca, but I need to talk to him again . . .’ Anna slowed down, feeling herself getting tangled up. ‘I wanted to ask him something about . . . the others were there and their boss hates me, you see, so I think he couldn’t talk freely . . .’

  ‘Their boss hates you? Then of course they won’t speak to you,’ said Mattie. ‘He’s given them work, put them up in a nice house – of course they’re going to be loyal to him.’

  ‘He said that?’ said Anna.

  ‘He mentioned that his boss had promised them a permanent contract if he was happy with their work, so of course they want to please him. That’s what they want, you know. A contract.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ said Anna.

  Mattie shrugged. ‘We talked. I’m a people person.’

  ‘So you don’t have a number for him, or anything?’ said Anna.

  Mattie shook her head and continued with the beads. Anna looked at this strange woman, with her newly revealed qualities.

  ‘Do you know anyone else from Senegal?’ she asked.

  Mattie tilted up her hat, with a sly expression.