Hello, Again

by Isabelle Broom

  There was evidence of the city’s artistic heart at every turn, from the patterned tiles – or azulejos, as Josephine reminded her – on the buildings to the posters stapled onto boards and lampposts, advertising everything from outdoor concerts to exhibitions. Pepper was enchanted by all of it – even the graffiti – and stopped numerous times to take photos. There were barely any tags or political statements, such as those she was used to seeing scrawled across surfaces in England, but rather Banksy-style cat-and-mouse stencils, colourful rows of aliens and what looked to be a teddy bear riding a sardine. Much of the more impressive street art had been created from mosaic tiles, and Pepper gazed in appreciation at a peacock, an elephant and the image of a vase filled with bright blue hydrangeas.

  The temperature that morning was comfortable, a mid-dial warm rather than sticky, and the faint breeze that danced along Pepper’s arms felt like a caress. Despite taking out her phone every ten or so minutes – far more than she ever did at home – Pepper had yet to contact Finn. What had felt so exciting yesterday now just seemed silly. While Finn had undeniably got her attention, he was by no means the first man to catch Pepper’s eye as she passed him. He was, however, the first who had ever come back.

  Men never came back.

  Josephine had been very keen to bring up the subject of Finn as they had breakfast.

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ she had said, smearing butter across slices of dark, nutty rye bread, ‘I don’t think men like that come along very often.’

  ‘Men like what?’ Pepper asked, feigning ignorance.

  ‘A gentleman,’ Josephine stated, fixing her with one of the no-nonsense stares Pepper had come to know so well over the past year. ‘One that is handsome, polite, clean, and has all his own teeth.’

  Pepper had been forced to fight the rising tide of a grin. ‘OK,’ she allowed. ‘I’ll let you have the handsome – but how can you really know if he’s polite all the time? He might curse his mother behind closed doors, for all we know. And he might have looked clean, on the outside, but what if he’s been wearing the same pair of pants for a fortnight?’

  ‘Not possible.’ Josephine lifted her water glass. ‘A man with fingernails that well-tended definitely looks after himself – mark my words.’

  ‘Why on earth were you examining his nails?’

  Josephine had given her a wry smile. ‘I was checking for a wedding ring, darling.’

  ‘Even if he is single,’ Pepper allowed, taking a sip of coffee. ‘And we have no way of really knowing. But even if that is the case, I still don’t think I should message him. I’m here to keep you company and help you find Jorge. I’m hardly going to bugger off and leave you by yourself just so I can meet a strange man I’ll probably never see again. Who, by the way, could be an axe murderer who doesn’t wash his pants.’

  She had torn a slice of bread into pieces as she talked, and Josephine eyed the crumbs with amusement.

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying,’ she remarked, ‘you seem rather . . . frustrated. In fact, might I be so bold as to suggest that a date with an attractive man might be exactly what you need.’

  ‘Stop!’ Pepper had given in to helpless laughter. ‘Please! I’m begging you.’

  Josephine had relented then, but not before telling Pepper that she must ‘pay attention to what fate is telling you’.

  Pepper, however, had already made up her mind that she was not going to message Finn. So many times, she had met a man and felt the same fizzing excitement, only to have her hopes dashed after the first few hours, when it became apparent that the two of them had little in common, or that she liked him far more than he liked her. Twice she had accidentally ended up on dates with married men whom she’d met on dating apps, and once she had gone for a coffee with a local farmer who seemed perfect, only for the two of them to be accosted mid-latte by his ex-girlfriend, who told him through sobs that she had made a big mistake and wanted him back. Pepper had left them kissing at the table, bewildered and frustrated at having made yet another bad choice. Against all that, the allure of love – real love – was a strong one. Pepper still wanted to find it and remained convinced that she would, but she needed more of a sign than merely bumping into someone.

  ‘If the universe really wants me to see Finn again,’ she told Josephine, ‘then I’m sure it will find a way of bringing him back to me. For now, though, this trip is all about you – deal?’

  ‘Spoilsport,’ Josephine had declared, but she tapped her coffee cup against Pepper’s, nonetheless.

  ‘Was Lisbon this busy when you were last here?’ Pepper asked Josephine now, as the two of them waited for a packed tram to clatter past.

  ‘Oh gosh, no. People were still using donkeys to transport themselves and their goods back then, and there were far less cars on the roads, far fewer people milling about. But the essence is the same,’ she added. ‘All these colours, and all the decoration, those have remained. I did worry that some godawful town planner might have come along and stripped away all the azulejos, but thankfully that doesn’t appear to be the case. It would be utterly devastating if it was ever allowed to happen. Have you ever been over to Cambridge and seen what a disaster they have made of the city centre?’

  Pepper had not.

  ‘Bloody criminals.’ Josephine sniffed in disgust. ‘I’d like to put whoever signed it off over my lap for a good spanking.’

  ‘Ooer, missus,’ Pepper murmured, and saw the glint return to her friend’s eye.

  ‘So,’ she said, taking Josephine’s elbow as they hurried across the road. ‘Do you think Jorge could still be here? Do you think you would recognise him if you did see him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Pepper could hear the conviction in Josephine’s voice, and felt something give inside her chest. It reminded her of the film Titanic, when you know that Jack has been claimed by the sea, but you still hope that, somehow, he will come back at the end, see Rose as an old lady and recognise her immediately.

  ‘It wouldn’t be his features I would know, so much as the feeling I would get when I saw him,’ Josephine said. ‘The body remembers even that which the mind cannot, and the heart is the most powerful, most vital, part of us.’

  Despite the heat of the day, Pepper got goosebumps.

  ‘I hope we find him,’ she said. ‘It feels like that’s what should happen.’

  ‘Well then,’ Josephine took a breath in and dabbed at her eyes. ‘Shall I take you somewhere that he took me?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask.’

  Leaving the busy Bairro Alto and Baixa districts behind, they continued downhill until they reached Ribeira das Naus – a wide riverside promenade dotted with benches, kiosks, and tall, arching trees. As Josephine found them a place to sit down, Pepper fetched them both a coffee in the reusable cups she had brought along in her bag.

  ‘Thank you, darling.’ Josephine grasped hers with both hands. ‘Did they add cream?’

  ‘Warm cream.’

  ‘Golly, how decadent.’

  They sat for a while in companionable silence, watching as a shrill contingent of little birds squabbled over a discarded paper bag. The weather had turned hazy, a white sky brightened by the promise of sun and putty-coloured clouds sitting in a fat swell above the water.

  ‘Jorge and I used to come down here all the time,’ Josephine said, turning until she was staring up towards a vast, distant statue of Christ the Redeemer.

  ‘Cristo Rei, the Portuguese call him,’ she said, as Pepper followed her gaze. ‘When I first came here, he was a relatively new fixture. He lends a certain something to the landscape, don’t you think?’

  Pepper put her head on one side.

  ‘I think I’d prefer him if he was more colourful.’

  Josephine gave Pepper’s pink denim shorts, zebra-print vest and battered tartan Converse the once-over.

  ‘In a city like Lisbon, it is those that are absent of colour who stand out the most,’ she said. ‘If Christ was dressed i
n a Technicolor Dreamcoat, how would he hope to compete with all the azulejos?’

  ‘You said before that Jorge was an artist,’ Pepper prompted, and Josephine’s expression softened.

  ‘Yes – at least, he wanted to be. He was also fanatical about cooking, would you believe? I guess you have to be an artist to create beautiful plates of food, just as you would a painting. All I know is that colour and vitality seemed to stream out of him – that is what it felt like to me. But then I was young and infatuated, not to mention a little bit bananas,’ she added, tapping the side of her head.

  ‘Is there anywhere else you want to go today?’ Pepper asked. ‘Any other places that you and Jorge went together?’

  ‘Do you know, I think I may have overdone it on the gins last night.’

  As she said it, Pepper noticed a tremble in her hands. Josephine was gripping the reusable cup so tightly that her knuckles were white.

  ‘Shall we go back to the hotel?’ she asked. ‘So you can take a nap?’

  Josephine visibly relaxed. ‘That might be for the best. You can keep yourself occupied for a few hours, can’t you, darling?’

  Chapter 9

  Pepper knew immediately where she wanted to go.

  As much as she had enjoyed ambling around the central hub of the city, it was the older district of Alfama, with its crumbling cathedrals, cracked tiles and cosy art galleries, that had won her heart.

  She settled on Castelo de São Jorge as the landmark to aim for, thinking that she would meander through the streets and reach the city’s sprawling fortress in time to watch the sunset. The Castelo had the added allure of being situated in the area where Josephine and Jorge had met for the first time. Josephine had told Pepper the story in the taxi ride back along the waterfront, and while she wasn’t able to recall the name of the road, or which buildings were nearby, she did remember that she had been sitting on a bench in the middle of a small square, staring up into the branches of an orange tree.

  ‘All I could think,’ she told Pepper, ‘was how much I wanted to taste one. I had never seen oranges growing on a tree before then, but I didn’t know if it was bad form to pick one. So, when this gorgeous young chap appeared and sat down beside me to roll his cigarette, I asked him outright, just like that. Instead of answering me, Jorge jumped up onto the bench and plucked one for me to try.’

  ‘That is so romantic.’ Pepper sighed.

  ‘He peeled it for me, too,’ Josephine went on. ‘I watched his thumb go through the rind, saw the juice run down over his fingers, and somehow, I knew, right from that moment. I understood that there was something special about him – about me when I was with him.’

  Pepper was now determined to locate this square with its tree of unforbidden fruit. It would mean so much to Josephine to see it again – and it was where her love story had begun.

  She already felt as if she blended in quite well here in Lisbon. Nobody gave her more than a cursory glance as she pounded along the pavements, her calves burning as much due to the gradient of the hills as the sun, which had made good on its earlier promise and was now sitting high in a cloud-strewn sky.

  Pausing to catch her breath and admire a batch of gold, green and purple azulejos, Pepper noticed a stream of people disappearing down a nearby alleyway. They looked purposeful enough to pique her curiosity, so she followed, and found to her delight that the pathway led to a huge sprawling flea market. Back home in Suffolk, she often got up with the dawn to get first dibs at car boot sales, which were invariably a treasure trove for any artist. Pepper could use pretty much anything as a basis to create something new: second-hand books, old clothes, mismatched pottery and crockery that could be broken and used for mosaics, discarded children’s toys, CDs, costume jewellery and more. She was a firm believer in the ‘one man’s trash’ mantra, and turning other people’s unwanted items into new and beautiful treasures made her feel more content, somehow.

  Despite this, however, Pepper stalled. She was supposed to be searching for a square with an orange tree. But then again, what harm could a quick half-hour browse do? She might find something truly remarkable amongst all these knick-knacks – something she could give Josephine as a gift or keep as a memento of the time she had spent here.

  Most of the stalls consisted simply of sheets laid across the ground, the seller’s goods spread out across them like sugar sprinkles atop a cake. Pepper crouched down to inspect a collection of trinkets, picking up each item to examine it in more detail. There was a pocket-sized china swan with a chipped beak, some blue metal jewellery pliers, a neat leather sack fastened with a velvet ribbon, a whole range of copper taps and pieces of piping and at least seven ornaments of the Virgin Mary, all in various states of disrepair.

  ‘All one euro,’ a woman with Brillo-pad hair who was manning a tin of coins informed her. ‘Very good price.’

  ‘Obrigada,’ Pepper said shyly, putting her hands on her knees and hoisting herself up. At a rough guess, she estimated that there must be close to a hundred more sheets on the ground, and perhaps fifty or so proper wooden stalls, each one piled high with items for sale. Determined to stick within her self-imposed thirty-minute window, Pepper decided not to bother looking at the paintings, large antiques and furniture – if she fell in love with something, she wouldn’t be able to get it home anyway – and focused instead on a stretch that seemed to be mostly jewellery, glassware and other small oddities. After ten minutes of picking through boxes, untangling nests of necklaces and turning teacups over to check the bottom for date and place stamps, she had amounted quite a haul for under ten euros.

  Stopping at the end of one row to replenish herself with some water, Pepper’s eye was drawn to a narrow table covered with a cheerful red cloth. The girl standing behind it could not be more than fourteen and was pleating the front of her dress with ner-vous fingers. As she edged closer, Pepper noticed the paint stains on the girl’s hands, and smiled in recognition of a kindred spirit.

  ‘Olá,’ she said, and the girl glanced up timidly, quickly returning Pepper’s greeting in English.

  ‘Did you make these?’ Pepper asked, gesturing down at the colourful array of ceramic key holders, vases, plant pots, pet food bowls, soap dishes and a range of model dogs. Everything had been painted beautifully, and with the kind of unselfconscious finesse that Pepper wished she was able to teach her clients.

  ‘Yes.’ The girl glanced down at her hands, her face flushed.

  Pepper extracted a key holder with two cats painted on it.

  ‘How much?’

  The girl smiled.

  ‘Five euros.’

  ‘In that case . . .’ Pepper opened her purse. ‘I’ll get this and one of your dogs, too, please.’

  She had just stowed her new treasures – each one cocooned carefully in bubble wrap – in her rucksack, when the air turned abruptly cold with the threat of rain. There was a unified kerfuffle as customers and stall owners took evasive action to avoid a soaking, and Pepper almost tumbled over onto the cobbles as an elderly couple barrelled into her sideways.

  Just as it had when she and Josephine arrived the previous day, the deluge fell like a waterfall – heavy and powerful and with a total disregard for anyone who might be yet to find cover.

  By the time Pepper had dodged, slipped and slid her way along a narrow street and found a tree under which to shelter, she was drenched, her hair plastered against her cheeks and her pink bra clearly visible through the thin material of her top. One of her laces had come undone and was trailing along the ground, so she propped up her foot on the arm of an adjacent bench and bent to tie them. Her back was turned to the road, so she was only vaguely aware of someone running towards her, seeing only a flash of blond and a wide grin before she had time to register who it was.

  Finn skidded to a stop beside her. He was wet through, just like her, his navy shorts sodden and his white T-shirt even more translucent than her zebra-print vest. Clocking Pepper as he pushed his dripping fringe out of his e
yes, Finn started to laugh.

  ‘It is you,’ he said, beaming at her. ‘Hello, again.’

  ‘Hi.’

  Pepper’s heart was trying to smash its way out through the front of her chest.

  ‘You’re soaked.’

  Finn appraised her. ‘You are the same,’ he said, and after twisting the bottom of his T-shirt with both hands in order to wring it out, he added, ‘Shit, man – this rain is crazy.’

  ‘I like it!’ Pepper had to raise her voice to be heard over the deluge, laughing at the look he gave her. ‘Summer rain. I always have. I think it’s the smell.’

  ‘The smell?’ Finn wrinkled his nose.

  They would need to build an ark from the branches of this tree soon, she thought, glancing up and noticing the oranges for the first time. Water was hurtling down the tram tracks and washing away scattered petals. From somewhere high above them, Pepper heard the sound of window shutters being slammed and shivered.

  ‘You are cold,’ Finn stated. ‘I don’t have anything to give you.’ He lifted both his arms, and for a thrilling moment, Pepper thought he was going to offer her a hug.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she told him, inwardly cursing the polite British reflex that always made her default to immediate reassurance. ‘I mean, obviously I’d be happier if I didn’t look like one of those sea birds that’s been caught up in an oil spill, but, you know . . .’

  Finn frowned at this, but only with the top half of his face – the lower portion was still smiling at her, and Pepper found that she had no choice but to grin back. It was as if someone had tied a helium balloon to each corner of her mouth.

  Finn took his phone out from the back pocket of his shorts, wiped the screen dry with the flat of his hand, then lifted it up to show her.

  ‘No message.’