‘You need to go,’ she said. ‘Now. Come into the house; we’ll go back through the door and you’ll have to lock it afterwards from your side.’
She led me away by the hand and I noticed that the game of Blind Man’s Buff had restarted, and already Jason had caught someone. Sarah’s fear was infectious, though.
‘We’ll tell Jason we’re sorry,’ I suggested as I ran with her. ‘He’ll have to forgive us.’
‘He’ll know. His eye will show him exactly what we’ve done, and what we were going to do. You can’t escape his eye.’
We ran around the house and into the kitchen where the lights of the little candles still danced around in the reflective surfaces of glass and copper. I looked at the party food longingly as we passed, and I slowed down. I dearly wanted to stay, but Sarah pulled me into the hallway and once again, as we entered, the grandfather clock chimed slowly, as if trying to detain me. I didn’t have time to count, but the dial showed that somehow three hours had passed. I was pulled around to the bottom of the stairs and we started to climb up to the brightly-lit landing. I was aware that, though Sarah was a little older and bigger than me, I could probably free myself if I wanted to, and go back down to Jason and try and make friends with him.
There was a sudden loud shout from down below and fear coursed through me. I allowed Sarah to pull me again down the passageway at the end of which was the open doorway to my grandparents’ dark house. As we ran towards it I could hear Jason leaping up the stairs behind us. He was no longer shouting and that worried me all the more.
Sarah pushed me through the door and slammed it shut behind me. She implored me to push back the bolts on my side. I reached up to close the top one but the door was wrenched open again and I nearly fell into their passageway. Jason was standing there trying to control his emotions.
Sarah tried to close the door but he wouldn’t let her. Nevertheless, he didn’t cross over the threshold into my grandparents’ house. I could do nothing but tremble and hope that he might calm down.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘For whatever I’ve done wrong. I don’t know what it is. I want to be friends.’
‘You’re no friend of mine,’ he said with a deep-seated rage. The mottled flecks in his bad eye seemed to be moving around, and the darkness within it pulsated. I couldn’t help but look at it and be horrified. It appeared to be independent of Jason, struggling to escape, but trapped within him.
I was shaking, wondering what would happen next, when Sarah hit Jason in the chest and shouted, ‘You’re a beast! I hate you. I hate your games, and your party, and your house.’
He looked down at her and smiled horribly.
‘Go with him, then,’ he said, nodding towards me with an expression of disdain.
Her reaction was to burst into tears and run back off down the corridor.
Jason turned his head and watched Sarah go. When she was out of sight he turned to me and appeared to tap his strange eye with his finger. He then used that finger to point at me, and without saying anything else he shut the door. The warm, coloured light disappeared and I was in the darkness and the cold. I heard the bolts shoot back into position on the other side of the door, and then nothing else at all.
I hastily put the bolts back on my side of the door and went to bed. I lay in dread of any sound, not from my grandparents (to whom I longed to explain and apologise and confide), but from out in the street. The full moon was still shining, illuminating my room, and I seemed to lie there for hours, waiting.
I could only think of Jason and his eye, and how he said that he could see through and around things. I knew that a bolted door and a curtain were no barrier to him seeing me.
And then I remembered that someone must have unbolted the door between the two houses only that evening.
When sleep finally claimed me I dreamed of Jason, and of his eye. In dreams afterwards I would never meet Sarah, or their other friends. I would always be running from Jason and his eye down passageways which became progressively darker and colder. And at some point flight would give way the sensation of falling; falling ever downwards into something even darker, and colder, and more terrible.
The Restaurant San Martín
The Restaurant San Martín in Mendoza did not appear to have changed at all in its ninety-five year history. It was still richly decorated and plushly upholstered in a hopelessly antique style, and Ernesto Galman revered it. He liked anything old and unaltered that suggested stability and quality, and the restaurant exemplified all of these virtues. He was amazed that it was so well preserved, but it was dark inside, which hid some of the tattiness. He enjoyed the fact that the staff had unfashionable pinafores and deferential manners. The cutlery and crockery were tired and past their best, but they were reassuringly heavy.
On the first Monday of every month Ernesto Galman would take the early bus into Mendoza and visit his various clients. He would snatch lunch without much thought, depending on where he was in the city, but before going to catch the bus back to San Juan he would always visit the Restaurant San Martín. He would arrive there at any time between two-thirty and five o’clock, but would always sit at the same table. The position was, he had long ago decided, the best in the establishment. Others would probably disagree for only two people could sit at the table comfortably and there was no sight of the outside world through the impressive etched glass windows. It was dark there and commanded a very restricted view of the interior of the restaurant, which was why, he realised, it was usually free. But that was how he liked it; the modern world did not intrude.
Ernesto Galman was a man of habit and not only was his choice of table always the same, but so was his selection of refreshment. He would order one of San Martín’s home-made white chocolate alfajors (which were so much better than those you might buy at a kiosk in a foil or wax-paper wrapper). It would be served with a thick yellow cream. If his wife had been aware of this indulgence she would not have particularly minded, but he kept the visits to the restaurant a secret from her and from everyone else. He was not ashamed of going there, but the fact that nobody else knew anything about it gave an especial savour not only to the alfajor, but also to the glass of esperidina that he would always drink with it. The half hour that he would spend at the Restaurant San Martín would be entirely for himself; he would have no thought of his family, the business, or any other concerns or cares. His real self-indulgence was to step off the streets of the busy city and lose himself in a comfortable and perhaps unreal world, and he had been doing so since he first discovered the place in the late ‘sixties.
And the particulars of each visit were almost identical, right up until one Monday in the later ‘nineties. On that afternoon he entered the restaurant as usual, started to walk towards his table, but then saw that somebody was already sitting there; a woman. It was rare, but not unknown, for another customer to have taken the table and his reaction was to quietly leave and return later. The staff were always quick to respond to new customers, sometimes opening the door to them as they were about to walk in and if he had to leave he normally did so with some embarrassment, play-acting an excuse for his retreat. This time a waitress he didn’t recognise had seen him and was walking towards him with a welcoming smile. He patted his pockets in the hope that he would appear to have left something in a shop or on a bus. He was able to go back outside with some of his dignity intact.
Galman decided to head up towards the Cerro de la Gloria. He didn’t know how far he would get, but after twenty minutes, he resolved, he would stop and turn back. The woman sitting at his table would have had time to finish the glass set before her, and Ernesto reasoned that his alfajor and accompanying esperidina would taste all the sweeter for the wait. It was still early, and he could catch a later bus back to San Juan.
Ernesto Galman had first visited the Restaurant San Martín when, aged twenty, he had been given the position of representative for the Galman Conserve Company. In an attempt to find his first sale of jams and pi
ckles he had ventured tentatively inside the restaurant and was shown down to the kitchens in the basement. There he found a very elegant blonde woman arguing with a stout, bald and wrinkled old man. Galman was received with disdain by the man, although the woman seemed relieved that he had arrived. The tension between this odd couple was palpable. Galman had offered to return another day, but they both insisted he stay and state his business. He could soon see that he was being used as a pawn in some power struggle between them; the toad-like old fellow, with great solemnity, asked to try each of the samples on small slices of crustless white bread. The man considered each with profound concentration and insisted on comparing them to the brands that they were currently serving and cooking with. The woman watched disdainfully and after much deliberation the man agreed that Galman’s was a superior product. He gave his name as Ocampo and walked away, telling Galman that Señora Goyeneche would arrange the details of their order.
The young representative was relieved to be able to depart, and not simply because the atmosphere in the kitchen had been so unpleasantly charged. He had previously been very uncertain about his position in the company; he had felt some pressure because he was not simply a new employee; he was the grandson of Jorge Galman who had founded the business many decades ago. For young Ernesto to be given the Mendoza Province was preferential treatment, and he wanted to live up to the expectations his family had for him.
Thirty years later he remembered that meeting with Señor Ocampo and Señora Goyeneche clearly. They had both made an odd impression on him, and in Galman’s eyes they gained a certain mystery because he had only ever seen them again once or twice over the intervening years, and never together. Galman did the mental arithmetic and decided that he had revisited the restaurant something like three hundred and sixty times. That meant three hundred and sixty alfajors and three hundred and sixty glasses of esperidina. It wasn’t until he had to stop for breath on the way up to the Cerro de la Gloria that he realised that his calculations had to be incorrect. When he had first been given the position of representative for the Mendoza Province he may have visited the restaurant more than once a month. And he had somehow managed to forget the three years when he had worked in Buenos Aires, employed in the more significant position of representative for the capital. Then he had been given a small office and had lived in the city, and had no reason to visit Mendoza at all. Over his whole time with Galman’s Conserves, though, he decided once a month would be a reasonable average. He liked order, and three hundred and sixty seemed to him to be an orderly number.
But then, he considered, there had been those years of change and upheaval. In 1980 Jorge Galman died and his son Roberto (Ernesto’s father) had taken over the Galman Conserve Company. Sadly, within that year, Roberto had also passed away. Aged only thirty-two Ernesto had inherited the family business and moved back to San Juan where the preserves were made.
These memories occupied him all the way back to the restaurant. As he had turned around with the views of the city from the Cerro de la Gloria not quite attained, he had thought for a brief instant of the woman at his table, and had wondered briefly what he would do if she was still there. He dismissed the idea in a moment, for although some people did often wait, taking their time over food or drink, most seemed to come and go quite quickly. There never seemed to be many, like him, who were inclined to linger in the Restaurant San Martín.
It seemed even dimmer inside the restaurant when he returned. Automatically he walked towards his table and was annoyed to see that it was still taken. It appeared to be the same woman sitting there. In the gloom he found himself a little confused.
He would have been content to leave again, to return once more a little later, but ill-luck meant that he was greeted by the same waitress he had seen earlier.
‘Señor Galman,’ she said, although he was sure she had not been working there on any of his previous visits. ‘So good to see you. Your white chocolate alfajor and a glass of esperidina?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
Was he such a regular that a new waitress would have been told who to expect, what he would like and exactly what his order would be? He was suddenly aware, perhaps for the first time, that visiting the restaurant as regularly as he did was not so much a habit as an eccentricity. Had he been able to leave once more he would have done so and would never have considered it at all odd. But being suddenly confronted by his eccentricity he realised that he required it for the sake of his soul and he could not explain why. This was the first serious threat to it in thirty years and he did not know how to react. He felt hot and uncomfortable in his suit, and his tie seemed to be choking him. He wondered if he was unwell.
He was still standing, panicking, when he noticed that the waitress had already set his food and drink down at his table. The woman was sitting opposite his accustomed place.
‘Please join me, Señor Galman,’ the woman said simply. It was then that he realised who she was: Señora Goyeneche. Her wonderfully deep, velvet-like voice went right through him.
Ernesto wondered how long he had been standing there, not noticing the passing of time. He felt terribly self-conscious, as though not only the woman but the whole restaurant was watching him. There was no way that he could leave now, not if he wanted to return next month, or the month after that.
‘Thank you,’ he said, and he did as she had asked him.
‘You came in earlier and then left.’
So, he had been seen.
‘Yes, I realised I’d forgotten something.’
‘I didn’t take it personally. I’ve been waiting here for you. It’s nice to have company.’
‘I always sit at this table.’
‘I know. It’s the most private. That’s why I sit here as well.’
‘But I’ve never seen you in the dining area of the restaurant before?’
She shrugged.
‘You are Señora Goyeneche?’ he asked. ‘We first met in the kitchens, thirty years ago.’
‘Is it really that long?’ she replied, with a lift of an immaculate eyebrow. She smiled, and he realised that it had been an ungallant remark because it inferred that he knew something of her age. He inevitably attempted the calculation, knowing that when they had met she had to have been at least five or ten years older than him. Even in the poor light he could see that she was still very beautiful, but was she fifty like him, or sixty even?
He picked up his drink to cover his embarrassment. Normally he would savour the aroma of orange, taking small sips, but now he gulped some back and turned immediately to his cake. He felt very uncomfortable and decided to finish his refreshment as quickly as he could and leave. He picked up the small spoon with which he always ate his alfajor and made a start on it.
‘You appear hungry,’ said the woman.
He looked up, startled, and saw that she was looking at him with a smile of amusement.
‘I’m, sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I hope you don’t mind me sitting here. The waitress assumed…’
‘No, it’s not a problem. As I said, I’ve been waiting for you.’
‘For me?’
‘You are Ernesto Galman.’
‘Yes.’
‘You own and run the Galman Conserve Company,’ she added.
‘I do.’
‘I like your jams,’ she replied very evenly, giving nothing away. ‘And your pickles.’
‘We only use local fruit,’ he said earnestly. ‘We make it in San Juan. The melt water comes down and helps us grow some of the best fruit in the whole of South America. This is why Galman’s Preserves are so good; they could not be made anywhere else in the world.’
‘I’m sure,’ she replied indulgently.
He regretted his little sales pitch. It was beside the point. She had sought his company for a reason.
‘And once a month you come to Mendoza, and eat in this restaurant,’ she said.
‘Exactly so!’
‘It is fate that has brought us together, you
know.’
‘Fate?’
‘I think so.’
‘But why?’
‘Consider every little thing that has shaped your life, the smallest decisions that you have or haven’t taken. At this moment you might have been anywhere in the world, doing anything. And it’s the same for me. But we’ve come together here, right now, at this time, and in this place.’
‘But you have something to do with this restaurant. And me, I visit once a month. It’s not surprising that we meet, especially if you have been waiting for me.’
Her face seemed to fall slightly, and he could see that he had said the wrong thing again. He attempted to make up for it:
‘Perhaps we were always meant to meet, but for some reason we’ve been kept apart by circumstances.’
‘Until today.’
‘Exactly.’
She nodded thoughtfully: ‘I think you may be right. Perhaps fate has kept us apart until today. You think there is some design? Some intelligence moving us around like pieces on a chessboard?’
‘Perhaps,’ he said, not believing it for one moment. He took the opportunity to eat a mouthful more of alfajor.
‘Will you join me in a glass of champagne?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know if I should. It’s very kind of you to ask, but I’ve a long bus journey, and there’s a chance I might fall asleep.’
‘Is that a bad thing?’
‘Yes, because I find travelling very stressful.’
‘Even after thirty years?’
‘It’s worse now than ever!’
‘You may not know it, but we have had a relationship for thirty years. I think we should celebrate it with champagne.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You said that I have something to do with this restaurant. In fact it is mine; I own it,’ she said, and with the smallest of movements was able to call forward a waitress. She ordered two glasses of Tattinger champagne.
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