Anna sat on the edge of the fountain and closed her eyes until she felt able to speak. Then she took out her phone and dialled the police. When the call was answered, she started explaining, in Spanish, how she had reason to believe that Paco was involved in people smuggling, and had had a hand in the deaths of at least two men.
‘What is your name?’ the policeman asked, when she finally paused for breath.
‘No names,’ she said, like the Africans earlier.
‘Do you have any evidence for these claims?’
‘Testimony from one of the men on the boat,’ she replied. ‘But he won’t give his name.’
‘So there is no evidence?’
‘Why not call this a tip-off, then,’ Anna snapped. ‘You find the evidence. You’re the police.’
‘One moment,’ the policeman said, and put her on hold.
Anna found herself pacing around the fountain, absently scanning the square. In Sweeney’s window, a new sign had been put up, advertising a puce-faced, superannuated lounge singer. There was the ice-cream parlour. The You Chic gift shop. The little coin-operated train. Her bar . . .
She stopped. Something white – a piece of paper? – was stuck on the window. A passing woman paused to look at it, before shaking her head and moving on.
Still on hold, Anna walked towards the bar. When she got close enough to read the large sticker, she hung up, still staring at it.
Closed by Order of the Commissioner of Health and Mental Hygiene. Imminent Risk of Injury to Health.
A mistake. It must be. Anna tried to unpeel it from the glass with her fingernails, but it was designed to stay put, like a car-clamping notice. She couldn’t even fray the edges. Over on her front door, she found another notice. It was a letter addressed to her, densely typed and written in officialese. But for all the text, it didn’t give much more information than the sticker, merely stating that serious concerns had been raised about the standard of hygiene and presence of pests in the bar, and she was ordered to close for investigation until further notice.
Anna’s first instinct was a flush of guilt: the same she felt when a security alarm went off on leaving a shop, despite having stolen nothing. Then, indignation. The bar wasn’t spotless, true, but – pests? Surely, if any of her regulars had spied a mouse dropping, they’d have mentioned it to her, not called the authorities?
Unless it was untrue. A malicious complaint from someone with a grudge.
Sweeney. Of course. Anna thought of his triumphant looks of late. She marched over to his bar. He wasn’t yet open, so she banged on the window until he came to the door, holding a packet of Yorkshire pudding mix.
‘Is this really what you do for kicks?’ she said, holding up the letter.
Confusion clouded his face and he craned forward to see what she was brandishing.
‘You’ve gone too far,’ said Anna, weakly, but turned away as she spoke. She walked back to her bar and wrenched down the shutters to conceal the sticker, making no attempt to cushion the bang of the metal against the tiled terrace, and went upstairs to the apartment.
Locking the door, she curled herself into the Frank chair and closed her eyes. Much as she’d like to believe that the hygiene notice was Sweeney’s latest swipe, or the consequence of one of the urbanization lot mistaking a shrivelled grape in the corner for a mouse dropping, she knew that wasn’t true. She thought of her last encounter with Simón. That sniff. He’d known about her drink-driving conviction: he must have links to authority. Could he have asked them to close her down? Did he have that sort of power?
Smothering her nerves was a profound, paralysing tiredness. It reminded her how she’d felt during a brief period when she was going out with a cokehead from the RCA. She’d disliked the stuff but was in love with him and so she’d done it too, night after night. In the early morning, she’d lie in bed, beside him but utterly alone, unable to move, her body a shell but her mind fluttering wretchedly, latching onto anxiety after anxiety, breeding them.
She’d done all she could, hadn’t she? Confronted Paco. Confronted Simón. Talked to the Africans. Talked to the police. Hopefully, they were down on the beach right now. Inspecting the boat. Picking holes in his alibi. Seizing his phone. Breaking down his defences with expert questioning.
The church clock struck midday. Faint, genial chatter floated up from the square as worshippers emerged. It should have been a relaxing sound, but only served to exacerbate her unease. Did the whole town know about Paco’s other trade? She had the sense that not just Paco and Simón, but Marea itself had surrounded her, backing her into this apartment, onto this chair. She rubbed her cheek against the coarse linen, the pattern of pink and blue hills and exotic birds and foliage, as if it could transport her into its fantastical land.
She fell asleep for a few minutes, and jerked awake. The square was quiet again; the light had shifted. She looked around her, at the apartment. Unlovely to begin with, the place was now moribund. Clothes had been hanging on the dryer for a week; empty milk cartons and cheese wrappers left on the side; piles of papers, important ones mixed with flyers and old receipts, banked against the skirting board. In the corners of the room, the dust was so thick it looked as if a rabbit had moulted.
If she died today, this is how she would be remembered. She inspected the room through the eyes of an official: the policeman with the deceptively cherubic face, maybe, or the woman who had answered the phone about Paco. They would give a cursory look around and think this is how she lived. This is who she was. Photos would be taken. This scene would be the last word on her.
Galvanized by disgust, she sprang up and fetched some bin liners from the kitchen. Moving through the rooms, clearing surfaces, she felt strangely weightless, and her head emptied of thoughts beyond her immediate task. Despite her meagre existence in the apartment, she’d accumulated a lot of clutter. By the time she reached the bedroom she’d filled several bin bags, and she wasn’t even half finished. Out of her clothes, she spared two tops, two skirts, two jumpers, two pairs of jeans: everything else was out. She thought of the Senegalese men clambering onto the boat, all their possessions reduced to one double-wrapped plastic bag, and felt a compulsion to strip all the fat from her life.
Maybe she should take the stuff to the car boot sale. The prospect of joining those desperate Brits at their trestle tables was hardly appealing, but she might have to.
She tackled the pile of papers by the skirting board. Bills, flyers, receipts, old newspapers. And, underneath, a thick cardboard folder, bearing the label: Sun, Smiles and Sangria: Our Spanish Adventure!
Karen’s manuscript. Anna put it aside, to remember to give it back.
After the declutter came the cleaning and then, several hours later, the flat was spotless. She had even removed and scoured the fridge compartments. Plump bin bags lined the living room wall and the clashing scents of cleaning products hung in the air. The newly washed windows were lit with late-afternoon sun. The whole place looked anonymous and denuded, as if she was at the end of a week’s self-catering holiday and was now waiting for the taxi to the airport.
Except, this was her home. Or the nearest thing to it, right now.
She retreated back to the Frank chair. It was only six. She couldn’t go to bed. She couldn’t open the bar. She was unwilling – unable – to leave the apartment, to re-enter the world of Paco and Simón. A box set? No; she felt incapable of suspension of disbelief. She had the desire for a chat; a breezy, inconsequential, distracting chat with someone who wouldn’t ask questions, whose life was as messed-up as hers. Her father. She dialled Derek’s number, but he didn’t pick up, and hadn’t activated his voicemail.
Replacing her phone on the table, Anna saw Karen’s folder. She reached over and pulled out the manuscript. It was bound, with a copyright symbol prominent on the title page. She turned to the first page, titled New Beginnings!
So why did we choose to move to Marea, I hear you ask? Well, our dearest friends from Hampshire, Janice an
d Ray, had a place out there and we had enjoyed many happy holidays with them relaxing in the sun. When Tommy and I were considering early retirement, we thought it would be nice to move out to the same place. Unfortunately, Ray had a heart attack not long after our decision, but by then our minds were made up. Marea it was!
She turned to another page.
The Spanish love their fiestas! Part of the reason we came to Spain was to absorb the local colour and traditions, so we always make an effort to attend these events when possible. Fireworks explode in the sky, locals wear bright outfits and curious masks. In some towns, fiestas can be messy affairs – I hear there is a place where they throw tomatoes at each other!! There is also a festival where three men dress as the Three Kings, and one of them wears dark face paint to look black. Such a gesture might raise eyebrows in the UK, but as a visitor one must respect cultural differences. It is a tradition, and they do not mean any harm. In any case, the Spanish certainly like to live life to the full!
Anna’s eyes drooped. As she replaced the manuscript, she noticed a loose piece of paper in the folder. It was a handwritten letter, and it was addressed to her.
Dear Anna,
I know about you and Tommy, and I have done so for a while now. I am not a fool. I am also realistic. It hurts my heart to know he is meeting you, but I know you can offer him things I cannot, and I do not blame him for wanting those things. Men are simple creatures who like familiarity in some areas and novelty in others, and you are not the first to catch his eye. However, I have my limits. I believe your affair started sometime in May, and I’ve noticed that you two are meeting more frequently than ever. So I want to say this. God willing, we will soon be moving back to the UK. By and large, Spain has been a happy chapter in our lives and we do not have many afternoons left here. I do not want to be spending them alone whilst you are being intimate with my husband. So I ask you now to find yourself a new taxi service, give me back my husband, and we shall say no more about it.
The letter was dated the end of December; just before Karen gave Anna the manuscript. As she reread it in astonishment, Anna wondered what she would have felt if she had received it then, at the time she was supposed to. Would it have sent her into a tailspin? Would she have given up Tommy immediately, or would she have clung on, relishing the drama? Now, with everything that had happened since New Year’s Eve – everything that had happened that day – the letter seemed an artefact from a different era. She couldn’t help but feel a certain respect for Karen, and her discreet chutzpah. What must she have been thinking these past weeks? She’d have presumed Anna had seen the letter; yet Anna had continued texting Tommy, asking for lifts. Did Karen think that Anna was wilfully ignoring her plea to leave him alone?
Questions for another day. Tiredness clubbed her, and she laid her head on the chair arm, letting the letter drop to the floor.
She woke, ravenous. After her ruthless clear-out of the apartment, there was nothing perishable in her kitchen, so she went out to the shop. As she stepped onto the street and closed the front door behind her, she noticed a pensioner standing in front of the bar, staring at its facade. He turned his gaze to her, before lowering his eyes and shuffling off.
Even before she had turned to see what the man had been looking at, Anna sensed there was something different about the bar’s facade. A new colour, so strong it seemed to tint the air around it.
She turned to see that the shutters on the front of the bar were now covered with graffiti. Or rather, just one piece of graffiti, a single vast word – but the background had been painted in too, so that not one inch of the shutter remained in its original grey metal state. The background was a psychedelic swirl of purples and pinks – almost exactly matching the bougainvillea nearby, presumably by accident – and the curly script typeface in yellow, so large that Anna had to step back to read it.
PUTA
The girlish prettiness of the colours and design, and the effort that had gone into the job, were so at odds with the word that at first Anna thought she must have read it wrong. But no, there was no doubt. PUTA.
Even the most linguistically challenged expats knew that meant ‘whore’. But the word had another meaning too, Anna remembered. During her months spent around builders, waiting in masonry yards and garages and cash and carries, she’d heard it used as a general swear word, similar to ‘fuck’.
So, read one way, this graffiti was a direct attack on her. A public shaming. Read the other, it was just a swear word, an elaborately rendered howl of frustration from some disenfranchised youth, and her bar’s shutters merely a convenient canvas.
Judging by the looks she was getting from British passers-by, it was clear which way they were reading it.
Anna had a sudden image of Karen, out here at 2am with her spray cans, a bandana around her mouth. The Banksy of Marea. If only.
Acid corroded her stomach. She wanted to move but felt bolted to the spot, as if she were in the stocks. Passers-by continued to stare at the graffiti and then at her, some stopping in their tracks; the less brazen glancing and moving on.
After a few moments Anna forced herself to move and started to walk across the square, past the minimart, and into the town.
As she knocked on Jaime’s door, it occurred to her that he might still be in bed – what did he have to get up for on a Monday morning? But he answered himself, fully dressed. His hair was scraped back in a bun and when he saw her he instinctively pulled it out of its band. Despite her agitation she registered a flicker of pleasure at the gesture.
Anna explained that someone had graffitied her bar and Jaime agreed to come and take a look, to see if he recognized the style. They walked up the street together, close, in silence.
‘Found any good bits of scrap, recently?’ she said, finally.
‘Yeah, a great big copper pipe, as thick as this,’ he replied, holding out his forearm. ‘Served any nice customers recently?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Not one. And this isn’t going to help.’
They had just entered the square. Anna pointed towards the bar. Even from this distance, the graffiti was startling. Jaime whistled.
‘Wow.’
‘Quite a lot of effort, no?’ said Anna, as they walked towards the shutters, cautiously, as if they were ablaze. ‘Do you recognize the style?’
Jaime shook his head.
‘No one I know would do something like this, just for the hell of it. They couldn’t afford it. Look at how much paint they’ve used. That would cost, like, one hundred euros.’
They stood and looked at it together for a few moments. Anna stared without blinking, so her eyes filmed and the colours and shapes abstracted into a harmless decoration.
‘Why would someone do this?’ Jaime said, as if to himself.
His voice had a circumspect tone she hadn’t heard before, and she felt touched that he was taking the matter seriously. Should she tell him about Paco and Simón? No. It was too long and complicated and she didn’t feel confident of his reaction. At the moment, his concern was pure and straightforward: that’s what she needed.
She shrugged.
‘Maybe I poured someone a flat beer,’ she said, lightly.
Jaime didn’t smile, but looked down at her, with his long, half-handsome face. Then, to her surprise, he reached over and stroked her hair, just once, before promising to make some enquiries.
Anna watched Jaime lope across the square and resisted the urge to run after him and clutch his arm. She wanted to go with him, back to that safe little apartment of his, to stroke his cat and have his doe-eyed mother cook her green beans for dinner. As he disappeared down a side street, the calming effects of his presence dissipated, and she felt jangly and unnerved again. The square looked as placid and innocent as ever in the weak sunshine; and then there were the shutters, as jarring as a streak of blood on a white towel.
Anna knew she should paint over the graffiti, but she didn’t have one hundred euros. Not nearly. She thought of the fin
ca, that pyramid of casually discarded, half-empty paint pots piled up in the shed.
For now, she’d just raise the shutters. The health warning sticker on the window would blare out, but right now that seemed the lesser of the two slurs. She crouched to grab the handles and then . . .
‘Olé!’ called someone, from behind her. It was a familiar British voice, but she couldn’t place it. Still crouching, she turned to see her father stepping up onto the terrace, hands waggling in a showman’s pose.
‘My girl!’
11
Anna stared at her father. He was wearing pale, too-tight jeans, with a heavy-buckled belt. He had worn that belt for as long as she could remember, and prided himself on never having to get another hole punched in it. He was carrying a plastic shopping bag and looked extremely pleased with himself.
‘Aaah!’ he said, laughing, as he saw her expression. ‘I knew that Timmy was a good bloke. Said he’d keep the secret.’
Anna stood up from where she was crouched, wincing with the effort, as slowly as if she was under instruction from a yoga teacher. By the time she was fully upright, she had seen the whole story, and understood exactly how her father had come to be standing here on her terrace. It was so dreadfully obvious; a fait accompli. She heard herself gushing to him about the wonders of Spain; his questions about the cost of living. This was the price for her posturing! He had run out of people to look after him in the UK; his charm had worn too thin to get another wife and Marie-Anne’s tolerance of him was limited. Now he had only his divorce payoff from Elsbeth to see him out. Not enough to buy anywhere proper in the UK, but enough for a knock-down place in Spain, where he could baste in the sun, under the care of his dear daughter. The one who liked a drink and wasn’t uptight – a chip off the old block. Who was single and still had time for him. He hadn’t been the best father, he’d admit that, but now they could make up for lost time, eh?
Under the Sun Page 19