by Lulu Allison
She built a refuge and populated it with ghosts, a throng to fill the empty halls and grim hollows. A sea of souls, a procession, an endless crowd of many to hide the one. So many that she is bound relentlessly in her duty of care for them. She wants only that which will strengthen the building. She wants only to augment her own binding.
Yet so ineffectual has it been that one glimpse of Ryan threw her off the safe plane of the world. Michael’s desire to celebrate what would have been her daughter’s thirtieth birthday as well as the anniversary of her death has sent her running in fear. Nothing is protected, yet huge effort is exerted to keep everything static, held tight, held just as it now is. She realises too that she has always known this, and has allowed herself to stay blind to it. Like walking around for years with a china teacup balanced on her head in the wildly exotic belief that it will protect her from harm. Carrying it at great cost, incorporating all the necessary compromises of her behaviour to stop it from falling, and refusing to weaken the charm by asking herself whether she actually needs to keep it there. Faith is all with magic. She will not or has not tested the reason for this awkward situation; instead she has remorselessly served it. And whilst she has skirted around this knowledge for years, caught the absurdity in her corner eye, as it cramps her form, her movement, limits her action, she has never openly admitted to herself how bloody ineffectual a strategy it is. She is angry, thinking of all that wasted stupid effort. To do something so deliberately without ever noticing whether it works or not. To keep it up for so long for fear of rocking an unhappy equilibrium.
On the thin edge of anxiety, unnerved by such self-scrutiny, her gaze flicks around without settling, breath flitting against her sternum, not filling her lungs. She doesn’t want to peel back the layers any more. Time for a focus switch – a fast and purposeful walk; the accomplice body willingly supplies unexpected energy for tired legs, willing to aid in retreat. Appreciation of the landscape and a brisk walk. She’s not ready to knock over the teacup just yet.
There is beauty in Tenerife’s stony land, the arid scree, the spat-out insides of the earth frozen in stone, sliding slowly down to the sea that in turn slides all the way to the Sahara. It would not take much of a curve through that sea, an easy tack, to miss Africa and go from dry heat to frozen Antarctic cold. Equator to sun, pole to sun – so small a difference between the two. It is ninety-three million miles to the sun; this equator-to-pole difference is a tiny fraction of that great distance, only that of Earth’s radius, a minuscule percentage marking the possible extremes of the land’s temperature. What other extremes exist on a scale we cannot really understand? That which we currently experience as outer limits in reality denoting only an insignificant, tightly angled section in the middle of the spectrum? Good and evil bounded by our human imagination of heaven and hell. Heavy and light, weight and mass have expressions that expand or crush into oblivion, not measurable with our bodily reckoning. The calibrations made in space dwarf our arm-spans and thumbs of measurement. Perhaps it is this intuited, groping recognition of the limited span of our experience that means our stories to explain the inexplicably crazy chance of our being here at all often start with the limitless sky and its perpetrator gods.
The red-brown and tan land stretches away behind her, back to the blue sea. Off the road there is a patchy covering across the pebbly ground, a sparse drift of knee-high shrubs. Small thin clouds, insubstantial like sifted icing sugar, move across the sky, barely enough, when they intersect, to dim the sun’s light. She is on a road that tips upward a little, away from the sea. Minutely nearer the sun in height, minutely further in distance. She decides to walk as far as the next curve in the road. The tarmac is smooth and new, an unlikely integrity to the black surface; it looks silky in comparison to the dusty expanse of the landscape. The tar surface bears a language of dashes and stripes in white, a sharp, geometric contrast with the stone and shrub. The whole road could be peeled away from the crumbly surface, taking a thin layer of stone but otherwise without damage. Like Sellotape on an old brick wall. At home, a road would come away like an old scab, leaving a patch of soil or chalk, fresh, moist and raw.
Once she gets to the corner, she keeps going. The road bends further inland to a lunar expanse of dusty stone. The sun has lost its overhead glare, dropping subtly richer colouring onto the undulating rock and shrub. It is late afternoon. She decides to cross further into that field of stone, loosen her connection with the road and town a little further. She turns off the road and heads for the middle of what appears to be nowhere, nothing, no-man’s land. Though there must be few places on this small island that could be truly deemed so. There are no fences, no buildings – it appears there are no prohibitions to her walking here. The ground is uneven, and in places the footholds between oddly shaped low shrubs are difficult to find. She would fare better with long giraffe legs, though then the droopy wires of the low telegraph poles would have seemed to be a fence excluding her entry. What animal life might have roamed here before the services of the airport brought the sneaker-wearing sun-seeker? Before liquorice roads and bright hoardings and jet planes? Her imagination populates this shallow, sea-bound slope with machine beasts from a sci-fi film. Perhaps small mammals would inhabit the cooler, greener region on the higher slopes looping out from the hub of the island’s central volcano, mingling with lush songbirds cruising the hot and humid air of the northern side. Here, it seems to be a land for insects, rodents and robots.
Progress is deliberate, steady; she has flimsy lace-up shoes and doesn’t want to turn an ankle. The ground, though stony and prickly with low plants, is at least flat, and she enjoys looking around her feet as she picks her way, taking in the plants, their subtle shades and patterned shapes. With a higher, wider view there would be an infinitely varying order of plants, a subtle shift of an almost-repeating pattern: circles, ovals and stars in varied combinations, as alike as snowflakes but never exactly the same. A pattern by familiarity of impression rather than by direct repetition.
Just ahead, there is the curve of a dirt track heading to the tarmac road she had recently left. She walks through a relatively clear area, stopping at a small patch of low grass that doesn’t look too scratchy. She sits down on the ground, glad once more to rest her legs, thinks fleetingly of scorpions as she pulls her feet onto her spread-out jacket. The energy bought at the expense of her uncomfortable insights some way back on the road is ebbing, and the sun feels relentless. She angles her hat to keep the late-afternoon sun from her eyes and looks across to the sea. Before she left this morning, she checked the news via the Wi-Fi in her room. A small scandal in London – someone claims that another lied, a heat that will die quickly unless more fuel can be added. Mock outrage is a good fire-starter but often does not have enough fuel for a witch-burning, particularly if the witch happens to be a powerful man of government. The news companies will move on, but for now the feeds are crammed with this little story, stretching it over pages, through video links, via comment pieces. Meanwhile, four or five pages along, in twenty lines of bald prose, six people have been killed by a roadside bomb. Where? Elsewhere. A different road. She starts to acknowledge them, staring across the dirt track to the road beyond. The view is not spectacular, but it is beautiful. She can see the people beginning to appear, like ghost images on an old photographic plate. Not wanting to forget them, she digs out a notebook and pen from her bag and starts to write on the small, thin pages. She makes notes, scratches quick words that describe them. She does not give them names. A concession to their unreal reality. She writes and scribbles, looking ahead, seeing them quiet and slow, called into being to experience the moments after death, standing on the dirt track etched on the remains of the volcano, as curious and uncertain as the others were in the soft cold hush of the beech wood. Quickly and easily, she sees them all, six new lost standing in the aspic of confusion, trying to make sense of their own deaths. When finished, she gets up stiffly and turns back to the town, stopping at the supermar
ket for bread and large tomatoes, olive oil and black pepper, olives, paper hankies and a bottle of water. They bump against her leg in a thin plastic bag as she walks through the welcome shade of quiet streets back to her hotel.
Back in her room she showers and eats, a tasty and simple meal. She sits at the desk and, looking at her scratchy notes, begins to write them all down in her purple-covered book. As evening settles, she writes, stopping occasionally for more tomato and more bread, more water. Stopping to gaze across the small balcony to the sea, refreshing her mind’s eye with a wash of steadily darkening blue sky.
23 December
She is striking, with a face that is powerful rather than beautiful. Her features are strong and dark, a sheen of expensive face cream smoothed over rugged bone structure. She is quick to see the worst in people but has depths of compassion that spring up occasionally, lava-like, hot, undeniable and impulsive. She has been responsible for unexpected acts of great kindness. She is never able to accept gratitude and avoids the people she has helped ever after.
He carries a large cotton bag over his shoulder, filled with notebooks, stones, scraps of paper that momentarily seemed to be poignant ephemera or important clues. He is visiting, part of a longer journey. He feels at home in this human hubbub of trading and tattling. In his bag, he has a picture postcard, unwritten, stamped. Ready to fill with cramped writing and expansive love for his sister.
Thirteen years old, whip-thin and pretty, springy dark hair assembled into order with bright clips. She has an older brother, chased home on the tail end of some undisclosed hangdog failure. She is cross with his sullen presence, annoyed by the heavy, unsaid tide held at bay by her parents’ sour silence. She tries to cheer her brother, tries not to nag or question him, tries not to spill the words dammed behind her mother’s tightly fixed mouth.
An old man, shaped like the walking stick he uses or the pipe he occasionally smokes. Tall and thin, bent over from the shoulders and neck. He walks with small steps, barely lifting his large brown shoes. His hands are large, wreathed with garlands of age. The one not holding the stick flutters gently at his side as if tenderly encouraging the rest of him to keep going, keep going.
A man in his twenties, he has a vividly animated face but speaks little. He lives alone, since his mother died, in a dowdy two-room apartment with newspaper taped over the windows. He keeps one of his mother’s old jumpers in his pillowcase and one of her geranium lipsticks (there were only ever three) in his trouser pocket. Sometimes he lies on the woven rug and imagines a procession of invented, wiry creatures that compel and frighten him in equal measure, marching in multi-legged time along a crack in the ceiling.
A nineteen-year-old girl, prone to dreaminess yet possessing quiet determination. A girl whose long arms and legs move with grace and deliberation, a slowness as if underwater. A girl who wanted to build bridges and viaducts.
She finishes abruptly, once again pulling away from a description that is too haunting, too familiar, and turns to the open doors that lead out to the balcony. The sky holds only a faint trace of blue; it is nearly black. The light from the mighty sun left behind, dropped around the corner by the industrious, busybody little Earth. She is tired, but exalted almost, glad to have caught the six people, secured them to the page. Now she will not forget them.
She wants to stretch legs that are tired and cramped from sitting sideways at an uncomfortable piece of furniture, halfway between desk and dressing table. She changes a loose gown for light trousers and a top, puts on a silver necklace set with a resin circle, a hard colour to name – greenish, light, pearl, yellow, all translucently combined. A sour moon set on a thin, curved shoulder-blade of silver. She takes the chains that hold it, locks the fiddly clasp behind her neck. She runs a hand through her hair. She has filled time well, it turns out, and she is pleased with herself for a change. She picks up her room key and bag and goes out to find late food and a glass of beer in one of the bright cafes that populate the plaza.
It is a pleasure to be out in the mild evening. The breeze strokes softly, a wisp of sun-warm remaining on its fingertips. A sense of freedom in walking out of the door without a plan. Occasionally, at home, usually with visiting friends, she ventures out on foot to the local pub, once convivial, good for beer and listless wine, now selling fancy dishes served inexplicably on squares of slate. The cutlery lands against it with a teeth-jarring jolt; portions are kept tiny so they don’t fall off the flat edges. They do go and eat there sometimes, but she misses the old pub. She reminds herself that tomorrow she will call England to reassure and wish well.
There is enough holiday trade for the square to be busy still, cafe tables occupied, candles flickering gently inside bars and cafes, interiors glowing invitingly. Some, surprisingly, have Christmas trees or other decorations that seem to belong in more northerly cold. She smells a summer smell, at odds with the Christmas twinkle, enticing garlic on a passing plate of seafood, and decides to stop at the small bar from which the plate emerged, carried by a casually dressed waiter to a table of smoking diners who are sitting outside. Inside, the tables are small, and there are a few empty. She sits down at one of them with her back to the wall, looks around the half-full bar, waits to catch the attention of one of the good-looking young men that wait at table. She guesses they might be some of the daytime kitesurfers sheering thrillingly across the bay or lugging things onto the beach, legs in sealskin wetsuits, the upper half brown and bare, the suit hanging empty around the waist. The kinds of young men and women that have necklaces of twine and leather, tied permanently, a charm, a spell set at the gentle waves of collarbone, until seawater and sunlight wear the material to weakness and the charm drops, perhaps to be found by another beautiful creature. Perhaps swallowed by a fish. She feels a fondness for the possibilities of youth. A time when summer is made longer, not just wished longer; summer as the reason for living. Though by the calendar it is still winter, intentions speak of a summer mood. She smiles at the waiter, orders a beer and a plate of garlic prawns; she is hungry, thirsty, glad to refuel.
She catches sight of a blond head, a long fringe, and flinches as she is reminded of Ryan. Ugly feelings stir, wriggle malevolently, even at this slight acknowledgement. She grits her teeth, bites down before the feelings can either escape or be swallowed, she is not certain which. Unprepared to spoil the gentle calm of the evening, she rejects these thoughts, looks instead at the other diners, mostly couples or small groups. The place is not busy. There is a man sitting on his own at the bar, the seasoned look of a regular, though he doesn’t look local. He is chatting amicably with the man working behind the bar, who cleans and serves as they talk. The customer wears old jeans, a T-shirt and a faded open shirt. He looks roughened by sea and sun. For the waiters, the young men and women of the beach, wind and sun smooths and burnishes; when one gets to our age, thinks Anna, the age of the man at the bar perhaps, the effect is to roughen, as if the sand too has begun to work on the form. His hair is scruffy, rather long. He has a handsome profile, grey stubble. His right arm ends without a hand, about four inches below the elbow. He looks interesting, has a rangy grace in his large frame. He and the barman are smiling and laughing.
Her beer arrives. It is cold and tasty. The prawns come in a heavy clay dish, orange oil still sizzling enticingly. A basket of bread, thick, round white cuts on a red paper napkin, a neat pat of butter in its folded square of blue-and-silver foil paper. The prawns are delicious. The bread soaks up the chilli and garlic oil when the prawns are finished. When she is finished eating, she gets out her notebook, reads again the six from today. She thinks of the traveller with the cotton bag. He would stop in a place like this, would roll into a town with a beach like this, with his tan, his crumpled clothes; he too would have a charm, a stone or a shell on a leather cord round his neck, several round his wrist too. He would probably strike up a conversation with the men at the bar, three crossed paths meeting at this small turnpike, sharing a beer in a little bar in Tenerife. T
hey would talk of where they came from, speculate about where they may be going next. She wonders if the man in the faded shirt is an unexpected resident, someone who arrived, then, without meaning to stay, never left. Perhaps he met a woman who did not want to leave. Perhaps he is Spanish, born here after all, though he looks northern European somehow. Perhaps he owns the bar, stepping in to keep an eye, enjoy the upside of his business. Or perhaps he is on holiday, investing in the experience to the full, an outgoing man who finds it easy to meet new people, has a gift for connecting with them as if they are old friends.
Holidays are like fairground mirrors, backed with cunning silver that lets us see ourselves in a new light, a new place, a role that changes us, a geography that defines new intentions. That, perhaps, is their greatest value. She pictures a life that would make her a regular visitor for garlic prawns and a familiar face, a smile and wave, a chat with the young men and women lucky enough to score a job that keeps them in rent and bread and time on a surfboard in the wind. Or she might make longer-term connections, friendships even, with locals who stay to make their living from the healthy flow of sun-hungry Europeans. She would speak Spanish, sit in the shade, write portraits of all who die. As Charon gets his coin, she would watch and write. Then, for consolation, come here for a beer, or a stemless glass of rough red wine, chat to friends whose lives pass in mysterious ways. She is alone and in company. She is new, unchained from the boulder of her past. She will never see that hated man outside a department store, or anywhere else, again. She catches the waiter’s eye and orders another beer.