"Eugh!" I've never seen anyone so hairy in my life." That's what my
wife said as she came in through the archway to the patio after her
early morning walk. Typical of her - expecting me to remind her of her
behaviour at the club the previous night, and wanting to change the
subject before it had been raised. I don't mind her letting off steam
by having a bit of a go at me when we're alone, but it's a bit much
when there are others present.
As it happened, I had something else to tell her. That morning, the
bread van had made its usual stop; I'd bought a loaf for lunch, and a
croissant and an ensaimada to go with our Saturday coffees in the cool
of the morning; and Antonio, all excited, had told me the news.
"Who do you mean?" I asked mildly, looking up from my brandied coffee
and the magazine I was reading. She was flushed. Perhaps a touch of
sun, though it had only come up over the crest of the mountains an hour
before, and the air was still pleasantly cool.
"Vicente," Judith said. "I think he's got a mistress up by the pigeon
loft. He's always got his shirt off, flexing his muscles. Hairy like a
monkey."
Judith usually walks down the lane to the golf club and then up the
sunken path between the greens, along the dry stream-bed to the
village; but she sometimes heads off through the almond groves, past
the old mill and the beehives, and the little field where Vicente and
his friends keep their pigeons. There are the lofts, of course, and a
cosy little shed off in the corner. It's got a tiny bedroom that's
never used, and a fireplace and benches where the men sit and drink and
cook paella of a Sunday afternoon. Someone goes to tend to the birds
every day. When it's his turn, at the weekend, and we're back in Hong
Kong, Vicente slows as he passes the house, to see that everything's
undisturbed. Every now and then he'll park his old van at the back and
walk round our house, rattling the shutters and using his key to check
on my precious car under its tarpaulin in the garage. Back at home, in
the humid heat and the dirty smog of Hong Kong, I often imagine that
stroll across the dry earth: the crunching carob beans and the weak
winter sunlight; Vicente's breath - though in my imagination it is my
own - a tentative mist in the bright air; white walls, a blue sky to
drown in, and the yellow glow of the earthy afternoon. It's what keeps
us going in the filth of what I like to call our money pit, out East:
the thought of our Spanish home, the acres of orchard and vineyard,
Judith's walks and her hours of golf, my wine cellar and the pool, my
beloved car, and our simple friends in the village.
"Well, someone fancies him, even if you don't." I waited for the
inevitable question, but she was already disappearing through to the
kitchen.
I had to admit that I agreed with her, though. Vicente isn't the most
attractive of men. When he shaves, it's to cut a bald, swarthy swathe
between the beards of chest and chin; though most of the time there's
just a dark, stubbly path between his hairy ears. You can see the
tangled mat cushioning the muscles of his back through the transparency
of his damp shirt as he turns from the bar to reach for a bottle; and
there are always wet patches under his arms. It isn't just that he is
enormously hairy - he also sweats abundantly and peers at his world
through thick spectacles. His magnified eyes swim brownly about behind
his glasses, and he stutters loudly in the presence of women, cursing
his impediment as he struggles to overcome it. But he and I have been
friends for over twenty years - since my parents' first summer holiday
here - and there's real affection between us, born of the shared
optimism and energy of our youth. Isaac and Esau, I used to joke.
During the village fiestas, he'd drag me over the barriers and onto the
slippery cobbles where we'd run with the bulls, skittering up the
wrought-iron window grilles at the last minute, Vicente hauling me up
by the collar as often as not. I could never catch and turn the
skyrockets that were fired down the Calle Mayor by the village youths,
but there were always lots of admiring boys - and girls - around us in
the bar afterwards. He shouted and laughed and his energetic presence
always seemed the centre of attraction. The hair and the muscles and
the sweat and the stutter never seemed to offend the simple tastes of
the crowd he always gathered. I suppose I sort of basked in his glow.
That said, I'm aware of a peasant clumsiness about him now that I never
noticed as a young man. And Ana María - I was surprised at the
way she went to seed after the children: I'd always thought of Vicente
as having someone young and beautiful and energetic - well, someone
like Judith, really. The fact is, there's a whole world of background,
education and travel - and experience - that separates us. In all
modesty, the glow is now mine. Perhaps it was I, the holidaying
visitor, accepted but on the edge, who was always destined for wider
success. But we talk little about that, and our conversation is mainly
of old times. To entertain Judith - whose Spanish is not good - and Ana
María - who has no English - we discuss the harvest, the
pigeons, and the desperate business of making ends meet when prices are
rising and tourism declines.
Last year, when the recession came, Vicente got his weekday job driving
a refrigerated truck full of serrano hams around the Mallorcan bars.
But before that, Judith and I would often go out with Ana María
and Vicente on a Tuesday, their night off. We'd drive off in my new Jag
and eat at one of the restaurants on the beach, or in one of the
villages up the valley; or they'd come out to the house and sit
blissfully by the pool as someone else, for once, sweated in the
kitchen. Then, in the after-dinner darkness of the stars, or under the
rising moon, we'd sip at the rough brandy he'd brought. It always
tasted fine in their company, but I never brought a bottle back to Hong
Kong after that first year. It didn't travel well. Our reminiscences
flavoured the liquor with the warmth of youth and the excitement of our
madcap exploits in the bars and the beaches of our bachelor days. Ana
María and Judith would sit, quietly contented, in the softness
of the night, or busy themselves in the kitchen with the cleaning up.
Ana María was always grateful to be spared the preparation, but
by the end of the evening she was itching to get back to her place in
the kitchen.
We invited Vicente and Ana María to my daughter's wedding in
Hong Kong - they couldn't come, of course, but we did invite them - and
we were to have gone to Vicente's younger sister's wedding that very
Saturday afternoon. As it happened, Judith was out of sorts - perhaps
her walk had been a little too strenuous - and in the event we didn't
go.
Only a few weeks before, though, Judith had taken pity on Ana
María's dreary life and had treated her to a mid-week shopping
trip to El Corte Inglés, the big store in Valencia. As a matter
of fact, we were a little surprised at Vicente's reaction when he got
back from Mallorca on the Friday night and found out. He stormed on
about extravagance, about gallivanting while he was away from home
sweating for a living, about neglecting the bar and losing customers,
and there being little enough money as it was without her having to
prance off to Valencia to spend it. It didn't seem to help that Judith
had paid for everything; and though Vicente calmed down, the atmosphere
was a little strained in the bar that weekend.
"He wanted to show me the new babies." Judith was back with her mug.
"They'd just hatched, but there was a barrow of droppings by the shed
and I couldn't bear the smell, so I stayed on the road."
"What took you so long, then?"
"Bloody dogs. That Ronni was out in the road again. Gate left open."
She paused, standing by the table, and sipped her tea. She put the mug
down and fiddled with her hair. "What do you mean, someone fancies him?"
"Antonio came by with some gossip as well as the pastries while you
were out."
"Yes - I saw him up by the pigeon loft on his way back to the village."
She spoke casually, gazing vacantly at the wall; but I caught a sudden
glance, as though she was expecting me to say something about last
night. She was nervous, and I can't say I blamed her. I must say, she
is hard to manage, these days.
I waved at the plate of pastries. "Here, have an ensaimada."
Antonio's mainland ensaimadas were plain, flat little spirals of dusted
pastry, the size of a side plate - not like the enormous, feathery,
boxed wheels stuffed with cream that Vicente brought over to the
mainland on the Mallorca ferry every Friday night for Ana María.
The ensaimadas Vicente got were special ones, too: each in a scarlet
box with splendid gold writing in a spiral round the lid. The island is
famous all over Spain not just for its prosperity - which had lured
Vicente - but for the delicacy and flavour of its renowned ensaimadas.
Almost every traveller returning to the mainland, by air or by sea,
carries a parcel of the pastries in wide, shallow boxes, one on top of
the other, packed like a stack of sweet pizzas and neatly tied with
hairy string.
She'd not been happy, Ana María, being left to run the bar by
herself, with two children to look after and only that clumsy boy from
the village to help - and Vicente playing mine expansive host at
weekends, when his friends all crowded the room. But she accepted the
inevitability of it; the bar was in a side street of the village and
only old customers or those who knew the family ever bothered to come
in during the week. The new places on the main road, with their music
and the rows of mopeds outside, were where all the passing tourists and
the young people went. Vicente's bar echoed emptily with the television
and the loud voices of the three or four old men who were the bar's
weekday fixtures. They sat, in their dirty black jackets and trousers,
as far apart from each other as possible, shouting deafly across the
room and sucking coffee and small beer through weathered, wrinkled lips
into their toothless old mouths. In the empty road outside, fat old
ladies with their black dresses and bunned grey hair punctuated the
pavement, perched like crows on little low chairs, cackling small
gossip across their distances up and down the street.
The new job brought a welcome increase in income to Vicente and Ana
María - though the ferry, the rental of the truck and the room
in Inca meant that what Vicente brought back with the weekly pastry was
hardly enough to make a real difference. Ana María consoled
herself with most of the ensaimada at the end of the week's only busy
evening, pursing her lips as she cut each of the children a narrow
slice. We'd been in the bar on the Friday night a week before, when
Vicente had returned at about midnight, as usual, from Mallorca - or so
we'd all believed. Ana María had been run off her feet: as
usual, too busy to chat. Her face was damp, her eyes were listless, and
her shapeless dress stretched against her amiable bulk as she leaned
towards the counter with the last plate of glistening tripe for the
last shabby old man.
Vicente had filled the bar with his greetings, drowning out the
television and startling the old fellow into a squawk of laughter at
something he said. He'd nodded at me and kissed Judith on the cheek,
whispering something outrageous to make her blush; and in the same
movement had swung the ensaimada up in the air like a trophy for his
wife. That, at least, brightened Ana María's eyes. She pushed
back a tired strand of hair with the back of her wrist, wiped her
fingers on her apron and reached out her hand for the flat, octagonal
parcel of cardboard and string.
Judith sat down opposite me at the patio table. She ignored Antonio's
limp pastries.
"Well?"
"Well what?" I replied innocently, though I knew perfectly well what
she meant.
"The gossip!" There was an extra edge of exasperation in her voice that
morning. The dogs must have unsettled her.
"Oh. Well, it seems that our Vicente has been playing fast and loose
behind Ana María's ample back." I grinned, but her face was
blank, waiting. I continued: "Antonio could hardly contain himself. You
know how taciturn he usually is - just a hoot of the horn and a grunt
as he takes your money. And today he came right up the drive - opened
the gates himself - and told me everything."
Judith's chair scraped, and she squirmed with impatience. She rolled
her eyes. Very edgy, this morning. I'm not surprised, after being so
outspoken last night - and then the dogs.
My calm deliberation annoys her - she expects everyone to be as giddy
and energetic as she is. Of course, someone has to keep things on an
even keel, be organised, keep the money coming in. And if I were as
irresponsible as she is, where would we be?
"For Christ's sake, get on with it! What did he tell you?"
I cleared my throat. I don't like to be rushed, and I was ready to
enjoy drawing the story out - for my pleasure, if not for hers. But she
gets irritated if I tease too much, and so I did get on with it.
Apparently, Vicente had gone off, as usual, well before dawn on the
Monday morning of the week in question. Again, as usual, Ana
María had stayed in bed until about five. Then she'd got up and
gone across the street to the bar to open it up for the first
customers, the men from the builders' merchants on the edge of the
village, at six. The beginning of a normal week.
On the Friday, Vicente's younger sister Estela - tall girl, good figure
- had come round at lunchtime in a bit of a panic. The local florist
had been let down by her supplier, and neither the bouquets for the
bride and bridesmaids nor the decorations for the church would be
ready. Without the flowers, it would be more like a funeral than a
wedding - that old church is a drab place at the best of times. Anyway,
in desperation she'd phoned one of the shops in Valencia; but she
didn't drive and would Ana María please leave her in charge of
the children and the bar and drive up to fetch the flowers?
Ana María was exhausted already, but of course she had no option
but to say yes. And so off she went, with the address on a scrap of
paper: opposite the station in Calle Federico Lorca, between the Hotel
Madrid and the Panadería Libertad. Though she had seldom visited
the city, she had her bearings from the ill-fated shopping expedition,
and found a place in the same car park at the side of the station,
almost exactly across the road from the florist's.
By then it was nearly six, and the shops were open. Ana María
looked left down the one-way street, crossed over to the pavement
opposite, and was just about to enter the florist's shop when she was
stopped in her proverbial tracks by two things that intruded from her
peripheral vision to her right. As she told it to Antonio, and he to
me, she was so startled and puzzled by what flooded her consciousness
from its edges that she stood still - "gawping", said Antonio, "and
frozen like a statue" - except for her head, which was swinging like a
puppet's between the window of the bakery and the kerb. Behind the
glass, in a carefully fanned display, were a dozen scarlet ensaimada
boxes, draped with a narrow silk banner that read "Ensaimadas de
Mallorca: Diarios por Ferry". And, leaning with the camber against the
kerb, its wheels in the cobbled gutter, was Vicente's truck, with
"Jamones Serranos" in matching scarlet letters, curved across the white
of the truck's back doors.
Her head stopped swinging when she saw her husband backing out of the
bakery's doorway. He was preceded by the scarlet package that dangled
from the fingers of his muscular arm, held out behind him; and his body
was bent forward, into the doorway, revealing, as he emerged, that he
was attached at the lips to a strikingly neat and elegant woman, whose
arms cemented their union and her reluctance at his departure by their
firm entanglement around his retreating neck.
His eyes, enlarged by surprise and shock even more than they were
magnified by his glasses, met those of his wife at the very instant
when his lips parted company with those of his secret beloved. Ana
María's fury was, according to Antonio, something to see. The
whole street had stopped: the florist had emerged, beaming - and then
bemused - and laden with flowers ready for the wedding; voices were
raised, blows were struck, and screams were heard. Vicente was made to
drive home behind his fuming wife, having backed over the hapless
ensaimada, which had ended up in the gutter at the first blow. He'd had
to give up his job in Valencia with the hams, and was back behind the
bar on the following Monday. As an afterthought, Antonio also told me
that when Ana María's back was momentarily turned, Vicente had
winked, grinned, and mouthed, "Me queda una" - "I've got one left."
Antonio seemed to find that very funny, but wouldn't say any more.
"I wonder who she is?" I mused. " What a rogue!"
Judith gasped. "The sly bastard!" She was clearly shocked at Vicente's
treatment of Ana María.
"Mind you," I said to her, "that's not to be repeated." Ana
María would kill me - to say nothing of Antonio and Vicente. Of
course, the children know nothing, but Vicente had had some awkward
explaining to do about the missing ensaimada.
"Dark horse, eh? He never let out a whisper to me. I must say, I'm a
bit miffed - he's always told me about his bits on the side and this
time I didn't have an inkling." I was a bit more than miffed, actually
- we've been the best of old friends, and had, as young men, boasted to
each other of our conquests. Well, him more than me, I suppose.
Judith startled me with a sudden, high laugh. "I'm not surprised," she
said, wryly. She shook her head, but seemed a little calmer. "Remember
all those ambitions you two used to boast about? Travelling the world?
Making a fortune? Making fools of all the smug old bastards? Look at
you! You may be rich, but you're not exactly God's gift, are you?" Last
night's nasty edge was creeping back into her voice. "And where's it
got him? A fat wife and his dead father's grimy bar in a back street?
At least he keeps himself in good nick and has enough about him to go
out and grab a bit of life!" By the end of that little speech she was
quite worked up again. Hormones. She is flushed and edgy. Perhaps, when
she's more in the mood, I'll suggest a shorter walk.
I cleared my throat and was about to reply, but she went on. "I'm hot.
I'm off for a swim." She put the mug abruptly down on the table - a
little clumsily, I thought - and I had to reach out to stop it from
tipping over. Then she was gone.
"Put some cream on," I called. "I think you've caught the sun already."
I stood up and took the mugs in one hand and the plate and bottle in
the other. But as I was about to go through the archway and into the
darkness of the house, I saw a bright smear of white and dark green on
the sunny terracotta tiles where Judith had been standing. I put the
plate and the mugs and the bottle back down on the table and looked
more closely. Bird droppings. I looked up at the sky - rather
pointlessly, of course. Perhaps it had been one of Vicente's pigeons.
Must have quietly dropped its little message before Judith had arrived,
while I was reading - and I hadn't noticed. She must have stepped in it.