by A. T. Grant
Soon they were following a guide at high speed down a broad white trail, a welcome stream of fresh air countering the extra effort of pedalling. The children were at the back, now singing the silly song their father had plied them with earlier. David found it hard to resist the urge to join in. His mood had swung from despondency to exhilaration and he was increasingly aware that this bipolar tendency was one of his main issues. At least, he reflected, there was now some positivity and excitement thrown into his emotional mix. Poor Phoebe would not have experienced much of either. He swept past the Tanners with a wave and a grin then slowed, as their little convoy reached the Morgans. They had stopped to take pictures of a troupe of small monkeys. The children peeled off to be with their parents. David cycled on with the guide, keen to hold on to the breeze and his positive mood for as long as possible.
They swept into the bottom end of a large clearing. In front of them stood a small wooden café, several cycle racks, and a noticeboard. The clearing climbed away through a scattering of small trees and shrubs to their left. David parked his bike and looked around for the others. He seemed to be the only tourist within view. His guide began chatting to the man behind the café counter, so David moved on alone, assuming he would soon see the remainder of the party. Instead, his full attention was taken by a colossal pyramid, larger and grander than anything he was expecting, rising beyond the far end of the clearing. He could see a scattering of individuals climbing skywards, over large rough sections of stone, but nobody whom he recognised.
The thrill of being first to the top superseded his desire to locate the others. The grand central staircase also drew him magnetically upwards, but even before he reached its base he was out of breath. He sat on the lowest step. As he stared back down the slope, he could see some of the others emerging. A large, electric-blue morpho butterfly held him spell-bound as it ambled from one side of the clearing to the other. A gift from the gods, David surmised, wondering how such casual beauty might seed a hurricane. He began to climb methodically - three steps and a rest - then sat down again. He was now more than halfway to the summit, at the same level as the forest canopy. A carpet of green, punctured by lesser Mayan structures, rolled away towards a hazy horizon. Perhaps, he considered, another perspective was what he needed. If he could see things differently he might find how to get his life moving. Or he might grow happier with what he had.
He was at the summit: a narrow platform, with a simple stone shelter at the back. Beyond that the jungle re-established itself. Only the front of the pyramid had been reclaimed from the undergrowth. The whole edifice was like a battleground between man and nature, a giant wave on a shifting coastline between plant and stone. David imagined a Mayan warrior climbing the sacred structure, to be lifted above the jungle for the first time, and the last. He would enter a world of sun and open sky, not sweat and lingering shadow, to be transported - who knows where?
He looked around. He was alone. There were no temple priests to mark his passage, or even other tourists with whom he could share the moment. There was no blood sacrifice to colour the scene. In his head, David travelled a universe in which he was always at the centre, and in which everything he did held some import. He had climbed beyond his brain and expanded into an ocean of jungle.
David tried to think of how to lighten up. He was aware that his mind was beginning to spiral into yet another convoluted internal monologue. He needed someone to whom he could holler or wave, someone to notice. He could see the bobbing heads of a couple, who were shuffling on their bottoms down the final steep steps. Nothing else caught his eye.
He was reluctant to leave. He needed a place in somebody else’s world. He was also more than a little nervous of the precipitous-looking downward slope. He had left his hat on the bus when he retrieved his insect repellent, and the sun was now at its zenith. He edged for relief into the narrow doorway of the small stone temple, despite a dislike of confined spaces. On either side, two carved gods squatted with arms aloft, as though holding up the heavens. Come on then, he told himself, does the sky fall in if I face a fear. He forced his way through the narrow opening into the darkness. There was a loud hissing sound. David jumped involuntarily upward from his semi-crouched position and his head connected with unforgiving masonry.
“Balls!” Dazed and confused, he tried to turn around and feel his way back the way he had come. The hissing surrounded him, as though a giant serpent was about to strike. Then he tripped and stumbled back into the blinding light of midday.
“Hello, David.” It was Laura. She had ascended quickly to the summit of the pyramid, relieved at the opportunity to vent her own concerns of the day upon the tough stone staircase.
David put his hands on his knees in order to regain his breath, his balance and his composure. After a few seconds he was able to return Laura’s sympathetic smile. Although this was the second time he had made a fool of himself around her, for some reason she did not make him feel either patronised or embarrassed. In a certain way Laura was just there, like the temple and the forest, a disinterested and non-judgemental observer of other people’s machinations. If he could have read her mind at that moment and learned of her doubts and frustration at Marcus, he may have come to a different conclusion.
A small, skinny tabby had emerged from the doorway, behind them. The cat carried a diminutive kitten by the scruff of its neck. Three other balls of fluff crept, one after the other, from the darkness and followed their mother around the side of the building and into the dense undergrowth.
“Bloody cats,” David swore. “That was what spooked me when I went inside.”
“Cute though,” suggested Laura and the pair laughed: a sense of relief usurping their frustrations.
They followed the route the cats had taken and sat together in a small patch of shade. David, always more comfortable around females, felt the urge to gabble surge within him, but it was Laura who spoke first.
“I’m so sorry about what happened earlier. We should have been a lot more careful. I think you may have saved us from something very nasty.”
“No problem: I always assume the worst is going to happen. Every now and then it pays off.”
“And now everyone is going their own way. We were all getting along so well, yesterday.” Laura was rolling a pebble she had plucked from the floor through her fingers, as unselfconsciously as a small child.
“I wouldn’t worry. Everyone needs space to deal with what happened. I was probably doing the same. As soon as we’ve worked it through, people will come together again.”
“You are very calm.”
“Didn’t you see me a moment ago?” David turned to stare at Laura, enquiringly. She was still playing with the stone, throwing it now from one hand to the other.
“Yes, things happen to you, but you react to them so well.” Laura remained focused on her juggling.
David thought for a moment. “You are very kind. If it’s true then that is definitely a new thing in me. I think Mexico must be doing me good. Is this your first time here?”
“It’s my first time anywhere, really.” Laura clasped the pebble tightly and turned to meet his gaze. “I’ve only just got the job and it’s still just a trial.”
“I’m surprised: you’re most assured.”
“I am enjoying it. I think this is quite new for Marcus, as well. All his previous experience has been in the Mediterranean.”
“Same sort of thing,” David supposed, “but with fewer crocodiles.”
Laura giggled girlishly and aimed her stone at a spindly tree trunk. She felt very relaxed in the presence of this curious, overweight, middle-aged lost soul. Despite his obvious lack of self-belief, he had a very natural paternal quality that Laura found appealing.
“What did you do before?” enquired David, as he dabbed at perspiration with a handkerchief.
“I worked in advertising. I liked t
he creativity, but you soon realise that most of the products are brought to you precisely because they aren’t very good. It was excellent experience, but it all felt rather contrived. Sitting on top of this temple feels like real life.”
“I know exactly what you mean. Here we’re not scrambling after life, it’s actually happening to us, even if sometimes a little more intensely than we might wish.”
“What about you, David, have you travelled before?”
“Do you know, the children asked me that earlier - just before we realised we could hire bicycles and save all the walking? As I told them, I went to India a long time ago. The strangest thing is that I think someone you know was with me - do you remember what Phoebe, my girlfriend, told you?”
Laura looked blankly back at David. For some reason she thought it must be her father, but he had never really travelled.
“I was with a girl called Culjinder.”
Laura looked back at David with an even more intensely blank expression than before. She was thinking methodically through what he had just said. Then the reality hit her. “No!” She responded like a schoolgirl whose best friend had just told her that the most studious pupil in the class was pregnant. Then she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
David was quiet too. How could he explain something he didn’t himself understand? They sat for several moments, looking across the forest canopy. Then Marcus and Cesar joined them.
“Great view!” Marcus enthused.
Nobody else spoke.
Chapter Eighteen
London
Alfredo stared into the ale glass on the sticky, heavily stained table top in front of him. It was neither half full nor half empty. It was just there, an alien beer in an alien-shaped glass. Alfredo hated England. He hated the smug look that accompanied every suit. He hated the unintelligible range of accents. Most clearly, through his drink and drug induced haze, he hated the crushing normality of it all. People here lived ordinary lives they did not need to rationalise. There was no fantasy of omnipotence, no instant respect which did not need to be earned. Worst of all, there was nobody to point him in the right direction. Alfredo wanted to punch someone: anyone. He looked around the bar full of loud, confident, smiling faces. Nobody here looked like a victim. Nobody looked as though they wanted a fight. Even the manager of his hotel had given him only the politest of dressing downs about the succession of women he brought back to his room. Other valued clients had complained and he would either need to desist or leave. Alfredo had sworn loudly in an earthy form of rural Mexican. Then he had left for a cheap American chain hotel further down the road.
He stood up decisively. He could not bear another long hour in the enervating atmosphere of a bland hotel room and would not return there until it was time to sleep. In the meantime he would find somewhere that better suited his mood. He pushed his way unnoticed through the Friday night throng. Stepping out onto the street, he struggled to put his newly acquired raincoat on, unstable gusts of damp air tugging at its flapping corners. Putting his head down he started to walk. Wherever he ended up, there would surely be a tube station nearby. With hands thrust deep into plastic pockets, it still felt strange and slightly unnerving not to feel the solid security of a pistol hidden in his clothing. He studied those he passed on the broad pavement: couples, groups of boastful young men and the occasional briefcase hurrying home. Still nobody noticed him. Why did nobody notice him? He wasn’t sure why it mattered, or how it made him feel, but it was not a positive sensation: almost as though he didn’t exist. He began to walk faster.
He thought back to his two visits to the bicycle warehouse. The first had been brief, Alfredo was still in a daze from his journey and most of the time had been taken up by introductions and a tour of the complex. He had not needed to say a lot and the only awkward moment had come when he was asked about the strong American drawl to his English. “Travel” he had responded with a shrug and, whether his answer was taken as empty or enigmatic, it was not pursued. Nobody had questioned who he was or asked to see any credentials.
The second visit had not gone so well. Alfredo’s contact in London was a lawyer, Christian Monteverde, originally from Venezuela. He had set up an appointment with the bank and helped Alfredo through the paperwork needed for a regular transfer to El Paso. Then he had driven him back down to Portsmouth. Unfortunately, the warehouse manager took the opportunity to discuss various aspects of how the bikes were manufactured. Neither Alfredo nor Christian could respond convincingly. Christian explained that their expertise lay in finance, but this only led to a flurry of complaints and enquiries. Why was there never any response to letters and emails? Too many bicycles were being returned as faulty. The distributors needed a bigger margin to make any profit.
A car horn blared as Alfredo raced the flashing lights at a pedestrian crossing. He clattered into a bag-laden woman on the far side and swore. The lady looked scared. At least she had noticed him, so he smiled politely and said sorry. He swung into a late-opening music store to escape the cold, but what was on offer held no interest. Music was something sultry, late night, live and Latin: more chemistry than disc.
London was like a giant parking lot for the unwanted and the dispossessed. He must keep going or he might never find a way out. Alfredo moved back onto the street. Both road and pavement were empty. He noticed the lit windows spaced randomly above the shops. For some people, this place was called home. He wondered where his own home was. His favourite place had always been Rancho Morales, in the mountains above Chihuahua. For a few brief childhood years he had spent most of his time there. Although he now only visited rarely, there was still a room that he could call his own. It was the only place that never changed. Alfredo was afraid of change. His childhood had been punctuated by a succession of young women arriving at the ranch to take care of him and Luis. Few survived the predatory microcosm of machismo and misogyny for long, but each provided Alfredo with just a hint of an alternative, more feminine world. Both boys escaped into that world whenever they could, but it was Alfredo, as the younger brother, who clung to it more. Around these young women Alfredo had felt safe and, in one or two instances, loved. As part governess, part private tutor, each girl had revelled in the apparent freedom of ranch life; ranging far and wide across the open and dramatic mountain landscapes in search of education and amusement. Most, however, soon came to resent lack of access to the city and the heavy security which accompanied even a trip to the local market. The prettier ones were harassed by the guards. The prettiest became a target for Don Felipe. Failure to acquiesce to his advances was grounds for instant dismissal. One or two tried to find common cause with his reclusive wife, Marta, but alcohol steadily eroded her indignation to the point where she was little more than a prisoner to both the ranch and her own addiction.
Alfredo had reached Hamley’s toy shop on Regents Street. With a sudden start of recognition, memories flooded back.
It was Luis’ eighth birthday and Uncle Felipe had arrived unexpectedly that morning, driving a pickup and wearing a huge grin. In the back of the truck was a crate, which had come all the way from a toyshop in London. Inside was a beautiful, shining red sports car. Alfredo was only four and this was one of his oldest memories. He remembered driving the car, Luis running alongside him grasping the steering wheel. It was only much later, at a bar during Alfredo’s own eighteenth birthday party, that a gnarled old plantation worker, whom Alfredo had made fun of, retorted by revealing that the present had been extorted from his boss. It was intended for the plantation owner’s son. Felipe had added this gift and a beating to the usual sum of protection money in response to some slight. Alfredo never told Luis, who idolised Felipe as a child, partly because Alfredo’s own view of Luis as his protector was founded upon this early memory of shared glee.
Alfredo marched on towards Oxford Street, now even more perturbed. Up ahead he could see the crowded junction and an Un
derground sign. Not yet ready to descend, he swung into a cobbled side street. The distinctive subway symbol dragged along another memory, one that unsettled him in an altogether different way. It was the face of a girl and the faces of girls were not usually something he remembered. He had seen her recently at a tube station, for only the briefest of moments, but her image had already come back to him once, in a dream. The strangest thing was that the dream was not set in London, but back in Mexico, and it was not he who saw her, but the little boy he had once been. In his mind, he now connected the dream with his memory of the toy car. Surprised by the connection, he stopped and stared blankly ahead of him. The image of Liberty’s Department Store came gradually into focus a few yards further along the street, its nineteenth century, arts and crafts architecture a triumphant anachronism in a city devoted to trade. Uncertainly, Alfredo paced slowly towards it. There was a female voice in his head calling to him and telling him to be careful. It had only made him want to pedal faster. He and Luis were both laughing.
“Felipe, get them to slow down, please.”
The voice rang out, as clearly as if he were being hailed from the other side of the street. He saw her dress and her pinafore. He saw his father standing beside her, smiling in approval, arms folded across his muscular chest. Alfredo reached out blindly for something to steady him. He was going to be sick. His hand grasped the sill beneath a large display window. He focused on the reflection in the glass of his own sallow features. Then he peered into the dark interior, where drapery adorned an ensemble of painted furniture. The pattern could just be made out. It was the pattern of her dress. He stared at it in disbelief then, through his mind’s eye, looked up at her face. It was his mother.
Alfredo sank to the cold and damp London pavement and put his head in his hands. Wild unnatural sobs whirled around the deserted street. He had never seen her before. For all his days he had been jealous of Luis for having a memory of his mother. On the few occasions that Luis had mentioned her, Alfredo had sucked in his casual descriptions as though his life depended upon remembering every detail, but he had never managed to reconstruct her features. Nor had he been able to recall her voice, although the occasional hint of expensive perfume, or a snatch of some popular song, would draw him to the edge of some profound, yet irretrievable memory.