Rocks, The

by Peter Nichols

  Teniente Coronel Ruiz spoke: “I am sorry for the delay,” he said, looking from Gerald to Lulu. “It was straightforward with these two. We did not believe they were part of the smuggling operation, but a member of the Senate and his friends chose to interest themselves in the matter and this official scrutiny delayed the release by several days.” Ruiz indicated the baggage sitting on the floor before his desk. “This is everything that belongs to both of you?”

  “Yes,” said both Luc and Aegina.

  “Collect your suitcases, then, please.”

  Luc and Aegina stepped forward. They each picked up their own small bag. Aegina took hold of the large suitcase full of shirts.

  Luc knelt and opened his backpack, going through it. “I’ve got the original, the black shirt,” he said.

  “Keep it,” said Aegina.

  Gerald noticed her tone and that she was avoiding looking at Luc.

  “Aegina, it’s yours—”

  “Keep it,” said Lulu. “You drove her down in your car. You’ve done rather a lot for her. Come on, we’ve got the train to catch.”

  “When are you leaving?” Bernie asked her, but Lulu walked outside. Luc stared at Aegina. She still wouldn’t look at him and took hold of the suitcase, and then Gerald moved to take it from her.

  “Do come on, Luc!” Lulu called from outside. “I’ve got a taxi waiting for us!”

  Sixteen

  A week later, Luc rode up the dusty rocky drive to C’an Cabrer on his motorcycle. He knew the whine of the engine growing louder and louder would announce him before he reached the house.

  At the top of the drive, he swung left and stopped behind the Simca. He turned off the motorcycle. The cicadas, silenced by the approaching blast of exhaust, now backfilled the unnatural stillness with the ambient, eternal sound of Mallorca.

  Gerald appeared on the terrace above him.

  “Good morning, Gerald. Is Aegina here?” Would she really not come out and talk to him?

  “Hello, Luc. I’m sorry, she’s in London.”

  “Oh.”

  Gerald saw the boy look down.

  “I’m not sure when she’ll be back. I think it will depend on how she does with the shirts.”

  Luc looked up at him again. “Right. Well, when you talk to her—you don’t have a phone, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, whenever you hear from her, will you please tell her . . . that I came by?”

  Twenty-two years disappeared, and Gerald saw himself below, the devastated supplicant, banished, wanting to say so much and feeling the impossibility of conveying even the most reduced essence of it through an ill-informed, possibly unfriendly, gatekeeper. He felt keenly for the boy but he had no soothing bromide to offer. “I will,” Gerald said. “I’ll be sure to tell her.”

  “Thank you,” said Luc. Then he stood and jumped on the kick-starter and the motorcycle noise drowned out the cicadas. Luc wheeled the bike around with short releases of the clutch and rumbled away back down the drive.

  It burst from Gerald like an involuntary spasm of chorea, a Saint Vitus’s bark:

  “Don’t give up!” he shouted.

  But the bike was well down the drive, and Luc couldn’t have heard. He didn’t stop or slow or look around.

  Gerald had startled himself. He was shaking. The motorcycle noise faded below. Soon he heard only the wind in the pines beside the house and the steady filling drone of the cicadas.

  One

  Gerald and Aegina stood slumped against each other, watching the passengers coming through the opaque glass doors from the Customs Hall.

  Gerald’s face was haggard and gray, as if he had not slept or stepped outdoors for weeks. His right lower eyelid twitched spasmodically. Smoking—the whole normally unconscious business of fetching the pack from his shirt’s breast pocket, shaking one loose, lighting it, raising his hand repeatedly to his mouth and lowering it again, sucking in and blowing out drafts of blue-gray smoke, flicking ash lightly away from his feet—was now a deliberate, meditative procedure offering long, drawn-out moments of relief. It gave him something to do, physical movement, a release of energy that partly masked the trembling of his whole body. And it was so blessedly ordinary.

  Aegina wore large sunglasses; a baggy white T-shirt; small, tight jeans shorts. Her feet, in flip-flops, were black with dirt. She held on to her father’s arm as if she feared gravity would soon cease and he alone could keep her from tumbling off into space.

  “There she is,” said Gerald.

  His sister, Aegina’s aunt Billie, wore a straw hat, a floral dress, and Clarks sandals. She carried a small navy blue canvas duffel bag. She saw them at once, and the thin lines of her mouth, open for air, clamped together into grim resolve as she strode toward them.

  She dropped her bag and embraced them both. She held on to them tightly.

  “Thank you for coming, Billie,” Gerald said into her ear.

  She shook her head slightly, dismissively. “Of course.” She released them, looked at Aegina, and hugged her alone, tightly. Over Aegina’s shoulder her eyes locked onto Gerald’s.

  “I’ll go get the car,” he said. “I’ll meet you out there.” He nodded in the direction of the exit.

  “Right,” said Billie. As Gerald sloped off, puffing clouds, she put her arm over Aegina’s shoulder and pulled her close again and they walked slowly through the small terminal building. Billie’s eyes ranged over the heads of the people crowding the terminal, as if to ward off further attack.

  • • •

  Outside, a lanky man in his thirties, with longish dark hair, was standing on the curb barking at passing taxis. “Oiga . . . Oiga!” He was unmissable in a robin’s-egg-blue jacket, white pin-striped drainpipes, white loafers, but he was nowhere near the line where passengers were queuing for taxis and the taxis ignored him.

  Gerald drove carefully around him and pulled up in the Simca.

  The tall man glanced at them, then looked again, closely.

  “A-gee-nah, isn’t it?” he drawled.

  She turned her large sunglasses toward him.

  “It is.” He stepped forward, grinning at the three of them, then back at Aegina. “Gosh, you look awfully grown-up. What are you now, sixteen?”

  “Fourteen,” she said sullenly.

  “Oh, well, that’s jolly grown-up, then, isn’t it? You must be Aegina’s parents. I’m not sure we’ve met. Dominick Cleland. I come down to the Rocks every summer. Aegina and I are old friends, aren’t we? I’ve bought quite a few of your foot thingies, haven’t I?” He beamed at them. It was his manner, rather than intention, that suggested the freight of salacious double entendre that filled the air between them.

  He saw at once he’d said the wrong thing. Polite, remote pain—the peculiarly English kind managed with tight half smiles and averted eyes—filled the faces before him. They seemed like a family the way they hung on to one another—though not English at all, actually, that sort of clingy behavior—and seeing her now, a little older, away from the Rocks, Aegina in fact looked like some local urchin.

  “I’m Aegina’s father,” said Gerald. “This is my sister—”

  “Billie Rutledge,” said Billie. Not coldly, exactly, but Dominick felt a chill as he took the limp hand she lifted reluctantly to meet his. He shook hands with the father, a dry, brief squeeze. Then Dominick looked at the old Simca.

  “I say, you’re not headed to Cala Marsopa, are you? I couldn’t possibly catch a lift with you? Lulu said someone might meet the plane, but there’s no one here and it’ll take forever to get a taxi.”

  Billie and Aegina were silent. They looked toward Gerald.

  “We’re—” Gerald began to say.

  “I’ve just got the one bag. And a typewriter . . .” Dominick felt a pall settle over them. “But I’m sure I’ll find a taxi—”
r />   “We’re going as far as Manacor,” said Gerald. “We can drop you at the taxi rank there.”

  “That’s on the way, isn’t it? That would be fantastic. Are you sure?”

  “Of course,” said Gerald. He opened the hatchback and lifted Dominick’s large, fat suitcase, which took up the entire footprint of the Simca’s rear compartment. Dominick handed him the typewriter, a slim Olivetti Lettera. “Anywhere you like with this,” he said cheerfully. “Unbreakable.”

  When they opened the doors, Dominick said, “No, I insist, I’ll be fine in the back.”

  “No, you sit in the front,” Billie said firmly.

  “Are you sure?”

  Billie got into the back with Aegina.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” said Dominick feelingly as they drove away from the airport. “The taxis don’t seem to be keeping up with the tourists. I was hoping to get to the Rocks in time for a bathe before drinks, and now I hope, I believe, I shall.” He turned in his seat and grinned at Billie, who had slipped her sunglasses on. “We must have been on the same plane. Are you just down for your holiday?”

  “Yes,” said Billie. She looked at him briefly, then opened the sliding window so the air blew over her and stopped further conversation. She looked out at the windmills made of limestone towers and sailcloth.

  Dominick craned his head farther round to see Aegina. She was expressionless. He couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses. She was looking forward, either at him or past him. “Have you broken up for the holiday, or are you still in school?”

  “We’ve broken up,” intoned Aegina.

  “You’ve got the whole summer ahead of you. Marvelous! It seems endless when you’re young, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Aegina.

  It was an hour to Manacor. Dominick noted the changes that were more apparent every year. The same Cézanney landscape he’d first seen in 1962, but every year the island became more built up. Urbanización Los Eucaliptos, Urbanización Las Almendras, square, unattractive apartamientos sprouting up around the inland towns serving the coastal resorts. More cars. Jerry everywhere now and nobody seeming to remember that they’d popped all those people into the ovens. Hardly saw anyone on a donkey anymore. But the heat, the swarthy peasants, the bright un-Englishness of it all, and the ancient-looking landscape, where it wasn’t smothered by car hire or estate agent premises, still worked for Dominick. He felt as he always had when he came to Mallorca: he’d reached Shangri-la.

  “I’ve been worried about development,” he said, looking at Gerald and then around at the two in the backseat again, “but it’s still ineffably beautiful, isn’t it?”

  They all looked ahead through the windscreen that was spattered with flies.

  “It is, yes,” agreed Gerald.

  They dropped him beside the taxi rank at the bus station in Manacor.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” said Dominick, as Gerald got out and opened the back of the Simca. An alert taxi driver was already out of his car and lifting Dominick’s bag the moment Gerald set it down. “You will all come round to the Rocks and let me buy you a drink, won’t you?” said Dominick. He bent and waved through the back window at Aegina. “Do come and see me!”

  • • •

  They drove on to the hospital and parked. Billie noticed grimly the way the staff smiled at Gerald and Aegina as they walked through the building.

  In bed, there was little of Paloma visible to recognize. Her head was wrapped in a bandage. A ventilator tube was taped over her mouth, the noise of her respiration regular and overlaid with the machine that sounded like a bellows. Her eyes were shut, the lids dark as if sprinkled with kohl.

  Approaching her bed, Gerald spoke to Paloma conversationally. “Hola, querida. Billie está aquí. Va quedarse con nosotros un poco. Aegina está aquí también.”

  “Hallo, Paloma,” said Billie almost cheerfully. She picked up Paloma’s left hand, which lay on the thin blanket beside her thigh, and bent down and kissed it. Then she looked at the patient in bed. “Hallo,” she said with less conviction.

  Aegina sat on the other side of the bed and held her mother’s right hand. Gerald pulled items from a straw bag—bread, small plastic bags of almonds and olives, a piece of Manchego cheese; a corked half-liter bottle of red wine; a tattered paperback, The World of Odysseus, by M. I. Finley—and arranged these on the table between the upholstered visitor’s chair and Paloma’s bed.

  “I can stay now, if you like,” Billie said.

  “No, I’m fine,” insisted Gerald. “Why don’t you go home and relax. Come back later. Or when you like. It’s wonderful that you’re here now. You and Aegina can come and go, and you can leave me here.”

  “All right. Can we bring you anything else?”

  “No. I’m all set for a bit, thanks.”

  “Aegina,” said Billie. “Do you want to stay for a bit? I don’t mind. I’m in no hurry to leave, we can stay as long as you like.”

  “No, it’s all right,” said Aegina. “We were here before we came to the airport.” She stood up.

  Billie looked at Gerald as he settled into the chair. “What, about seven or eight?”

  “Yes. Fine. Don’t wait dinner for me. Whenever you like after you eat.”

  • • •

  In the car, Aegina was silent.

  “Sweetheart,” Billie said, “you must tell me what I can do for you, and for your papa. Whatever you need at the shops. Whatever you both need me to do. It’s what I’m here for. All right?”

  “Okay.” Aegina was gazing out the car window. Her limp body bumped and jostled like an abandoned marionette with the motion of the car. “Thank you.”

  Billie glanced at Aegina. That dreadful man was right: she certainly had grown in a year. She had her mother’s small yet already womanly shape. Still staring through her enormous sunglasses out the window. Billie could think of nothing comforting to say—Mummy may be brain-dead, sweetheart, but at least she’s in no pain wouldn’t be helpful.

  East of Manacor, the land showed less development. The road still ran beside the limestone walls of the terraced olive and citrus groves of small fincas. Above them rose hills covered with small pines and scrub oak.

  “It is lovely here, isn’t it?” said Billie. She immediately regretted her remark. It sounded trite and cheerful. “What I mean, sweetie, is that it’s a beautiful land where your mother comes from, and that is a part of you.”

  Aegina’s sunglasses swung toward Billie. “Thank you,” she said.

  Two

  Arabella Squibb crouched on one foot on the lowermost rock ledge above the water, the other foot lifting the monoski in the air.

  Luc gunned the engine and the speedboat leapt forward. Arabella tensed as the towline whipped up out of the fantail of foam behind the boat like something alive.

  Yesterday, Arabella had spent the entire afternoon learning to let the towline pull her literally off her feet into midair to land on the rapidly deployed monoski without plunging face-first into the water. She could get up on one ski when pulled out of the water easily enough, but once she’d seen Lucy Valence plucked from a standstill off the rocks like a fly by the crack of a whip, Arabella was instantly determined to be able to do it. It was all about the little leap into the air you had to make at just the right moment. She’d got it, twice, yesterday, and then dreamt about it, that little push off into thin air, all night.

  She pushed off—first time today—came down on the monoski, lurched forward from the waist before recovering and wobbling away across the water, precarious but upright, carving a trail of tight erratic curlicues on top of the boat’s wake.

  “Well done, darling!” shouted Richard Squibb. He had come across the road to watch his wife do this new water-ski trick she’d told him he simply had to come and see. He wore a much-creased Panama and a tiny, red man-bikini be
neath his sunburned potbelly. He puffed at a fat Romeo y Julieta Belicoso and watched a moment longer, wreathed in blue smoke in the still air, before he turned and walked back across the road to the Rocks.

  As the ski chattered and bounced beneath her like a runaway horse, Arabella slowly straightened her back until she found the position of relative equipoise she already knew from being pulled up out of the water on one ski. But the thrill of going from nought to flying off the rocks in a single moment with barely a splash to race across the surface of the sea after the boat had reinvented the experience.

  She leaned back and dug in her right, rearmost heel and swooped to the right, with thrilling acceleration, across the speedboat’s wake into the smooth water beyond. She heard a shout from ahead and looked up to see Luc turned in his seat looking back at her, his arm out, raising a thumb in the air, his sun-bleached hair flying about his head.

  Darling Lukey. All of a sudden a very yummy sixteen. His father, an American whom nobody had ever seen who lived in Paris, had bought him the speedboat and engine so he could make some money for the summer. Five hundred pesetas a go, Lukey was charging the Rocks guests, and he’d been making thousands a day. Most of the guests were running a tab, but Arabella handed him the cash each time. Today she’d put a finger into his swimming costume and stuffed the bills into the waistband.

  She zigzagged across the wake, leaning back and shooting off sideways and accelerating at what felt like incredible speed. Every time she turned and sped off in the other direction, Luc raised the Kodak Instamatic she’d given him to take pictures of her. Then he raised his thumb again and grinned. He made her feel that she was doing fabulously. Perhaps she was. At fleeting moments she felt graceful. She knew her body looked good. She skied for the camera—and for Luc. Just for you, scrumptious darling. He was looking at her the entire time through his sunglasses, glancing over his shoulder only now and then to see where they were headed. As the salt spray dried on her warm thighs and stomach and the thrumming vibration of the ski made itself felt in every muscle of her body, she felt tremendously sexy. She gazed steadily, despite the bumps, back at him.