‘Three, actually.’
‘That’s good. I’m coming to visit. That okay?’
‘Of course it is. Where’s the fair?’
‘What bloody fire?’
‘I said “fair”, Adrienne, as in book fair. Barcelona, is it?’
As I understood it, since the Las Palmas adventure that had led to Frank’s arrival, every trip she had made outside London had been work related, to book fairs in Germany, Australia, Prague and the US.
‘This isn’t business, girl. I’m going into semi-retirement, and I plan to celebrate by coming to visit my niece and great-nephew for a few days. At my age, I can’t afford to ignore any members of my family any longer. I got your number from your father: he said you’d be pleased to hear from me. Bugger didn’t give me your address, though, just in case.’
Good for Dad, I thought. ‘It’s all right, really. When are you coming?’
‘In a couple of days, I thought. How do I get there?’
‘Find yourself a peanut flight from London to Girona. Let me know the date and number and I’ll pick you up.’
‘I don’t do cheap flights, dear. I always travel business class.’
‘Not to Girona you don’t. But don’t worry: at this time of year and with that sort of notice it won’t be all that cheap.’
Auntie Ade sighed. ‘If I must, I must. I’ll have my PA book for me, and give you the details. Will it be hot?’ she asked.
‘Don’t pack the mink,’ I told her. Adrienne had turned up at my mum’s funeral dressed all in black, and encased in a fur coat that she made a point of telling me was ‘Wild, dear, not ranch. As with salmon, the farmed variety just isn’t the same.’
‘That sounds promising,’ she said. ‘I look forward to seeing you. By the way, what strange tongue did young Tom speak just now?’
‘Catalan.’
‘Ah, that explains why I didn’t understand a bloody word of it. There’s no market for book translations in anything other than Castilian Spanish. Can he read and write?’
‘In four languages.’ Actually he’s not very literate in French, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
‘Bloody hell, that’s as many as me.’
We said our farewells and I tossed the phone back to Tom, to replace in its cradle. ‘We’re having a visitor,’ I announced. ‘Your great-aunt.’
‘Is she as great as Auntie Dawn and Uncle Miles?’
‘In her own special way.’
‘She sounded funny.’
‘She’s all that.’ He frowned. ‘You don’t mind if she comes to stay, do you, Tom?’
He shook his head vigorously. ‘No, I don’t mind. I like it when we have visitors. I liked it when Grandpa Phillips came to see us, and Auntie Ellie and Uncle Harvey, and Auntie Dawn.’ My dad had come to Spain twice in the time we had been there, and Dawn once. Oz’s sister and brother-in-law had called in too, on the way to a legal convention in Barcelona, to see Tom, of course, not me.
I looked at him, suddenly concerned. Had I missed something? Had I screwed up his young life by uprooting him from the rest of his family and bringing him to yet another country, the fifth in his short life? ‘Tom,’ I asked him nervously, ‘if you didn’t like it here you would tell me, wouldn’t you?’
‘I love it here, Mum,’ he replied, without a pause for thought. ‘I like visitors because when we have them you’re never sad.’
I stifled a gasp. ‘Tom, I’m not sad.’
‘But you’re lonely. You don’t have anyone.’
He’d made me want to cry. ‘Son,’ I told him, ‘I’m not lonely. I have you, and I promise you, you’re all the company I’ll ever need.’
Four
Those expats who have lived in St Martí and L’Escala for a while tell me that there was a time when Girona Airport handled nothing but charter flights and closed in the winter. That was before a low-cost airline decided to establish its northern Spanish hub there; now it handles scheduled services to upwards of forty destinations.
Four aircraft seemed to have landed in quick succession on the Saturday afternoon that Tom and I went to collect Auntie Ade, rather a lot for the chuckers . . . sorry, baggage-handlers . . . to work their steady way through, and so we had to wait for almost an hour before she strode out of the hall. She was wearing white cut-off pants and a Tee-shirt that declared ‘Happy to be here’, and was pushing a four-wheeled case big enough to make me wish I’d pinned her down on her definition of ‘a few days’.
I should tell you right now that I don’t recall Adrienne ever looking her age, except maybe one time. She’s tall, about five ten in her heels, and her hair has always been shoulder length, and dyed a shade of auburn that verges upon red. She drew a few glances from other unofficial taxi-drivers and from a couple of security guards as she spotted us, and headed our way.
‘Darling,’ she exclaimed, reaching out to hug me. ‘I thought I was going to melt in there. I must look bloody frightful.’ (Her makeup was immaculate: I could tell that she’d just spent some time in front of the mirror in the baggage-hall toilet.)
She took a step back from me and looked down at Tom. ‘My God, Primavera,’ she said, ‘what a handsome boy.’ She wasn’t wrong there: the older he gets, the more he looks like his dad, dark haired and blue eyed. For a moment I thought she was going to bend and hug him too, which would have been a wrong move, but instead she reached out a hand for him to shake. ‘We haven’t really been formally introduced,’ she murmured. ‘I’m your great-aunt and I’m very pleased to meet you.’
My son is a very open kid. He hasn’t developed one of the less-endearing male traits, the charm button that can be switched on and off at a second’s notice. I hope he never does: right now you can look into his eyes and know exactly what he’s thinking, and I pray that nothing ever happens to change the fundamental honesty with which he’s been blessed. I hadn’t been sure how he’d react to our visitor, but when he took Adrienne’s hand, said, ‘Hello,’ then gave her a smile that turned into an awkward laugh, I knew she’d cracked it with him.
He took charge of her case as I led the way out of the terminal into the heat of the late-June day. At first Adrienne thought it might be too bulky for him, but he’s tall for his age, over one metre thirty already, and strong from all the swimming, running and cycling that he does, so he could handle it easily, although I had to give him a little help to lift it on to the back platform of our Jeep. (No, I’m not out to kill the planet. It has low carbon emissions, and it’s a necessity where I live. I gave up on the BMW Compact last April after the silencer was ripped off by a tree root that had pushed its way through a badly laid black-topped road.)
‘This is nice,’ said my aunt, as she slid into the back seat. ‘I haven’t had a car myself for twenty-five years. There’s no point in London any more, especially not since that awful man became mayor.’
‘It suits us,’ I told her, as we headed out of the airport car park, towards the northbound N11. ‘The roads can be a bit rough in the smaller towns and villages, plus it takes us up into the mountains whenever we feel like it. We can do that while you’re here, if you like. It’s a bit cooler up there.’
‘Heat doesn’t bother me, dear, the opposite, in fact. Are you far from the beach?’
‘The house backs on to it.’
‘You two must do a fair bit of sunbathing, from the colour of you both. Do you, Tom?’
He looked back at her. ‘Mum does, sometimes. I don’t. It’s boring: I like swimming.’
‘Are you a good swimmer?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘He is,’ I chipped in. ‘I taught him when he was a toddler. He’s always swum, in the sea and in the town swimming-pool, and with his brother and sister when he’s with them.’
‘Does he see much of Oz’s other family?’
‘Janet and Jonathan,’ said Tom, firmly, giving them their names. He’s very proud of them, and protective.
‘Oh, yes,’ I added. ‘I’ve promised him
that he can go on holiday with them in August. They’ve been to stay with us, too.’
‘But not . . .’
I guessed what she was about to say. ‘Their mother? No, not for any more than a night at a time. She brings them, then leaves them, and it’s the same with me when Tom goes to them. Susie and I are on friendly terms, but you know what they say about two women in one kitchen.’ There was more to it than that, too many memories, too much shared pain, but I didn’t want to get into it with my son in earshot.
‘One woman in one kitchen is too many as far as I’m concerned.’ Adrienne laughed. ‘I’m a stranger to cooking.’
‘My mother did tell me as much,’ I admitted. ‘But surely, when you were bringing up Frank . . .’ I knew at once that I’d said the wrong thing. There was a tightening of the mouth, a tensing of the eyes behind the shades. It only lasted for a second or so, but in that time she looked close to her real age. ‘. . . but maybe not,’ I added quickly, and as lightly as I could. ‘I have to admit that Tom and I eat out as often as not, especially in the summer when all the restaurants in St Martí are open for business, and all the beach bars. Isn’t that right, son?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I like it when it’s just us.’
‘What’s that over there?’ Adrienne asked suddenly, pointing at a castellated building on the top of a distant hill.
‘It’s a castle,’ Tom told her. ‘There’s lots of them here, even more than in Scotland.’
The rest of the drive home was taken up by my aunt quizzing my son about the local landmarks. His answers usually consisted of two words, ‘Another castle,’ until we passed the first of the roadside prostitutes, and Adrienne asked, innocently, I have no doubt, why she was standing there, in the heat, well away from the nearest village. I sighed with relief when he replied, ‘She’s waiting for a bus.’ He and I had had that conversation a year before, but I couldn’t be sure that one of his little friends hadn’t put him right since then. Before long he’s bound to ask me why no men ever wait there for buses.
Our garage lies below the house, and its entrance is actually outside the village itself, off the narrow road that runs above the beach. I guess that, in the past, it was a cellar or a stable. It has an automatic opener, and I drove straight in. Tom cancelled the alarm, led the way up the internal staircase, and set out to give his new aunt a tour of the house, as I lugged her case behind them. He finished by taking her out into the front garden to introduce her to Charlie, left dozing in his kennel while we had gone to the airport.
I had given our guest a room on the first floor, with access to another terrace from which she had her first proper sight of the village, and of the summer people in the square.
‘This is beautiful,’ she said, ‘remarkable. You should write, Primavera,’ she declared. ‘The ambience is perfect for a creative person.’
‘I’ll pass on that, Adrienne.’ I laughed . . . although I’ve changed my mind since then. ‘All my stories are staying locked up in my head. Come on. If you like, I’ll show you the beach.’
‘Please do, dear.’
I went to my room and changed into a bikini. My aunt took a little longer, but when she emerged she was similarly dressed, with a diaphanous garment wrapped around her. Tom had gone on ahead, saying that he had arranged to meet some French kids down below. We left by the front door this time, after refilling Charlie’s water-bowl (dogs are barred from the beach in the summer), walking past the church and the old, restored foresters’ house, then down the sharp slope that leads to the sand.
I have a deal with the nearest beach bar, a season ticket of sorts that lets me have all the sun-bed and parasol time I need. I grabbed a couple of loungers and hauled them over to an available sunshade. Almost before I knew it, Adrienne had lost the drape, stretched herself out and whipped off her top.
‘Bloody hell,’ I heard myself murmur. I’m rather proud of mine, but I don’t expect them to look like that in thirty years.
She smiled as she caught my glance. ‘Silicon, dear, the finest silicon, not those awful water-filled things.’ She tapped her perfect teeth. ‘Crowns, all of them; steel-bonded porcelain set on gold posts. Nature needs some help from time to time,’ she said. ‘If one can afford it, why not?’
Five
Tom rejoined us at seven o’clock, his cut-off time for reporting back to Mum. (When he gets to be eight, it’ll be eight o’clock, when he’s nine it’ll be nine, when he’s ten . . . we’ll see.) In fact he had never been out of my sight, since he had spent his time swimming with his friends on the guarded beach, playing a slightly over-ambitious game of volleyball, and tidying up empties around the cabin bar, a labour of love for which he and his mates are rewarded with the odd free soft drink. Tom never goes off on his own: he’s a gregarious boy, and when he’s not with me he’s with friends. He always tells me where he’s going, and if it’s too far for him to cycle, or involves the public roads, I take him there and pick him up. We may have a relaxed lifestyle, but I’m a responsible mother, and nowhere near the soft touch for him that some people may believe I am.
We let Adrienne decide where she wanted to eat, and what. From the options we laid out she chose a takeaway paella (I always leave those to the experts) from Mesón del Conde, to be eaten on the east-facing top-floor terrace that’s accessed from my bedroom. That suited me, since all the restaurants are jammed on Saturdays in the summer and also since there was stuff I wanted to ask her.
I didn’t get round to it, though, until after ten, when Tom had gone off to bed with Charlie, and his new friend Harry Potter (I plan to allow him only one a year: I reckon that the later books are a bit too dark for pre-teen kids), leaving us old folks in the candlelight, looking out across the bay and starting on our second bottle of Palacio de Bornos, from El Celler Petit, our local wine shop.
‘So,’ I began, settling down into my chair, ‘what’s this crap about semi-retirement? You don’t look ill. Are you?’
‘Of course not.’ Adrienne snorted. ‘Why shouldn’t I ease off? I’ve passed the age I will not mention, Primavera. Am I not entitled to enjoy my golden years?’
‘Yes, but last time we met you told me you were fit as a tick and that you’d die in harness. It’s not in your nature to ease off. You and my mother may have lived your lives in very different ways, but you’re cut from the same genetic cloth. She worked until she died. If she’d gone on till she was ninety it wouldn’t have been any different. She couldn’t do inactive. She wrote six days a week, then dragged my dad down to church every Sunday, but it was to fill her spare day, rather than to commune with her Maker. What do you do at the weekends, Auntie?’
‘I review my clients’ royalty statements, and I catch up on some other book-keeping. But I go out a lot, to the Tate Modern, for example. And I’m a regular at the NFT,’ she added, proudly but a little defiantly also.
‘Exactly. You aren’t capable of sitting on your arse and doing nothing, any more than Mum was, any more than I am, if I’m honest. So what’s behind this sudden and irrational decision?’
‘I have an assistant in the agency, Fanette. You remember her: you met her last time you came to see me in London. I felt it was time to give her more responsibility, with a view to her taking over from me completely.’
I laughed as I topped up her glass. ‘Adrienne, she must be pushing fifty-five by now. She’ll be ready to retire before you are. Come on, straight answer. I’m my mother’s daughter: you couldn’t bullshit her, and it won’t work with me either.’
She frowned as she looked across the wide bay, at the lights of Santa Margarita. ‘It seems that it won’t,’ she murmured. Her eyes snapped back towards me. ‘I had decided that I wasn’t going to broach the subject, you know; after this afternoon, after seeing what a nice life you have now, I realise I have no business interrupting it.’
‘With what?’
‘A mad idea I had. But forget it: it’s quite inappropriate. Your father would go berserk if he knew I had even
thought about it.’
I chuckled again. ‘Dad doesn’t do berserk. Dad does “Primavera knows best”, meaning that if your idea is that crazy I’ll be the first to tell you. So out with it.’
‘If you insist. It’s Frank.’
Why hadn’t I guessed that? I should have known from the off that the only person in the world who could divert Auntie Ade’s attention from her agency and her clients was her precious wayward son.
‘What about him?’ I asked, trying to stay casual. ‘He’s not in trouble again, is he?’
‘I don’t know. The fact is, Primavera, I don’t even know where he is.’>
‘Is that unusual? I mean,’ I added hurriedly, as I saw her eyebrows start to knit, ‘does Frank always make a point of letting you know where he is?’
‘Yes, he does,’ she said, mollified. ‘He always keeps in touch.’
‘How?’
‘Mostly by email: he says he has a lap-top and that he’s on-line virtually all the time. We live in a virtual world now, my dear.’
‘But when did you see him last?’
She thought about her answer. ‘Fifteen months ago, on the first anniversary of the day that I reached the age I never mention. I thought I’d got away without anyone twigging I was a year older, but Frank turned up out of the blue and took me to dinner at the Savoy.’
‘And you haven’t seen him since then?’
‘No.’
‘You said “out of the blue”. Does that mean he wasn’t living in London at the time?’
‘He hasn’t lived in London since they gave him his passport back, and that was going on for three years ago. When he got out of the pokey he had to report to a probation officer for a year and have a registered address, so he moved in with me. But as soon as he was free to travel, he was off. A pity: when he was with me he got involved with the agency. He did very well: for a while I entertained hopes that he’d come in with me as a partner, but when I made the offer, he told me it wasn’t what he wanted to do.’
‘And what did he want to do?’
Inhuman Remains Page 3