Last Guests of the Season (29 page)

I don't want to say goodbye for the summer/but I'll fill the emptiness
…

She closed her eyes, and began to go through every moment they had spent together, starting at the beginning, with the first day, when she had come up the steps to the terrace and seen them all standing there, just arrived, with their luggage everywhere, and he smiling at her as Claire introduced them all, holding out his hand as if meeting a grown-up, saying ‘How do you do'in his beautiful voice. Had she known, even then? It felt as if she had always known, though she didn't understand how someone who could be so nice could be so frightening, too. What had happened yesterday? Why had he been like that?

Darling, I promise you this
…

The song was growing louder, as music sometimes did before you fell asleep, as the voices of her parents used to in the car, when she was small and going to sleep in the back. She yawned again, pulling her hair, which felt all warm, across her face, and fell asleep, as Oliver, out on the terrace, traced with his fingers the outline of contours on the map, and worked out where he should go.

Guida went home, leaving piles of neatly pressed and sorted clothes on the deep landing window-sill.

‘Tomorrow,' said Claire, over tea on the upper path, ‘Robert and I thought we'd go into town again – we're getting rather low in the larder.' She handed out mugs and glasses. ‘Anyone else like to come?'

‘I'd planned to go walking,' said Oliver, ‘if no one objects.'

‘Where?' asked Jessica, fiddling with her beads.

‘As far as the eye can see,' he said, sounding more friendly again. He indicated the ridge beyond the village. ‘There are other villages, there's another valley. I need to see a bit more, I need the exercise …'

‘Do you need to be by yourself?' asked Jack. ‘Mum says people do, sometimes.'

‘All right, Jack.' Claire looked at Frances, lighting a cigarette. ‘Would you look after the children?' she asked her. ‘If they don't want to come into town.'

‘Of course.'

‘I don't want to come,' said Jessica. ‘Oliver? After tea will you play chess with me?'

‘I'll see.'

But he didn't, though she sat by the board and waited, pretending to work out moves.

‘How do you play?' asked Jack.

‘Go away. Please, Jack. Please.'

She sat there after tea, and she sat there after supper, hoping and hoping, but he didn't come, he stayed out talking to her father, looking at the boring boring map, while Frances and Claire put the boys to bed and she was left all by herself.

Oliver left next morning at eight, wanting to get going before the heat. Trying to feel like a proper group, almost succeeding, they all went to see him off at the garden gate, watching and waving as he walked away down the road. He was going to make a circle, crossing the river at a bridge a mile or so further on, climbing the first ridge of mountains on the far side, down into the next valley, then up again and round, walking along the top of the ridge that ran to the right of the house. He would come home through the pine woods and down by the path from where Jessica had seen him emerge yesterday morning.

He was going to walk for miles and miles, about twenty, he said. She couldn't imagine anyone walking so far, or even wanting to, when it was so hot. Why did he have to go? She didn't know what to say, except goodbye.

‘Goodbye, then,' he said to them all, not to anyone in particular, not to her. He was wearing his straw hat, old cotton trousers and a T-shirt, carrying a canvas shoulder-bag with drink and map and apples. He looked wonderful, tall and fit, and she wanted to run after him, ask if she could come too, to have them all watch her going away with him, jealous because it was she whom he had chosen, but instead it wasn't at all like that, it was miserable, going back into the garden with everyone else and a pointless empty day ahead.

‘Are you sure you wouldn't like to come with us?' Claire asked, as they went up into the house for breakfast, and Robert and Jack went to let out the hens. For a moment Jessica hesitated, thinking perhaps that would fill up the time, and be better than hanging around with the boys, but then she thought Oliver might change his mind, or get tired, and come back early, and she didn't want to be stuck with her parents doing boring shopping when he might want to talk to her, so she shook her head.

‘No thanks.' Beside them, Tom was making his noises. ‘Oh, do stop it,' she said crossly.

‘Jess …' Claire looked at her reproachfully. Whatever else this holiday, Jess had not been bothered by Tom, it was only Jack who needed watching. Well – Jess had hardly been around the boys anyway, had she?

‘It gets on my nerves,' she said now, as Tom went wandering into the dining-room, where Frances was putting out cereal bowls. ‘
Why
does he make those noises?'

‘I don't know,' said Claire, ‘but if it really gets on your nerves do come with us – we'd love to have you.'

‘I've
said.
' Jessica looked stubborn. ‘I've said I don't want to.'

‘Okay, okay.'

Through the open dining-room door Claire could see Tom following Frances round the table, putting out a handful of spoons she had given him, one by one. How nice. How nice and companionable and ordinary for him, and how rare. Well – perhaps it would be a good day for them all, Frances clearly more at ease now Oliver had gone. And now there were hours for her and Robert to be by themselves for once, to take their time in the market, to have lunch together and make it up. All the anxiety she had grown used to feeling fell away at the prospect: what a treat.

‘I want to come with you,' said Jack, coming in from the terrace.

‘Oh, Jack …'

He pulled at her, whispering. ‘I don't want to stay here with her.'

‘Oh, Jack …' Oh, dear. ‘Where's Dad?'

‘Here,' said Robert, coming in too.

‘I want to talk to you.'

In the end they persuaded Jack to stay, feeling a mixture of guilt and relief as they drove away, waving, soon after ten.

‘After all,' said Claire, turning from the window, ‘it really won't do him any harm to be away from Mummy's side for a little while. Sometimes I do worry that he's too attached.' She turned for a last look through the back as they rounded the bend by the butcher's shop, seeing the little group up by the gate in the beating sun, still waving, Tom holding his mother's hand, Jessica standing well apart, Jack visibly saddened. Well, it was only a few hours.

‘Can you see Oliver anywhere?' Robert asked, as they came out of the village and crossed the bridge. They scanned the view, but could not see him, only the great stretch of valley and mountain beneath the burning sky.

Already the river – not their river, but a tributary – was a long way below him, a gently winding thread of blue, intermittently obscured by trees. This valley was of a different nature to the one they had grown familiar with: he was looking down now not on pine and eucalyptus woods but upon a sweeping corrugation of terraces, bordered with drystone walls. The mountain road had been cut a few hundred yards above the lowest terrace; clumps of oak trees had been planted at intervals all the way down the slope below. This, he knew from one of the books he had found in the house, was cork oak, functional, like the eucalyptus, but less erosive. The terraces themselves were mostly bare and uncultivated: where once crops had grown there was now only grazing down near the river and here, halfway up the ridge, parched earth. A few were still planted, with pumpkins and damson trees, but mostly what he was looking at was evidence of a retreat from the land.

He thought of the young couples who appeared now and then in the village, coming to visit the place of their childhood in their shiny suits and shiny cars, driving all the way back to Oporto, even as far south as Lisbon. Whereas in Ireland they would have gone across the water, here they were emigrants in their own country, working as chemists, lawyers, teachers, anything but farmers. It was only the old who remained on the land, working on their tiny squares of maize and on the vines, fattening a pig, subsisting.

It was growing very hot; the map showed a stream near here, and a path. He was making for a hamlet, perched beneath the summit, powered, he had read, like most of the dwellings high up the mountain, by solar panels. He wanted to have a look at them; was curious to see what it might be like to live up here. More than either of these reasons for coming, he wanted distraction.

The heat, in itself, was that: already he had taken off his shirt, and hung it across his shoulders as protection. Sweat ran into his eyes; he wiped his face every few yards, searching for the stream, and here at last it was, bubbling from rocks above, coursing down towards him. He stopped gratefully, splashing himself, drinking, letting it run over his face and head, standing up again, dripping and refreshed. A baptism. He ran his hands through his soaking hair. Baptism cleansed and washed away sin, which Robert had so curiously said he believed in. And so do I, thought Oliver, but that is less curious: a fucked-up Catholic would.

He could see the path now, a baked cart track running from one of the upper terraces to the hamlet, and down again to the distant road; he could see, too, the shining solar panels set alongside: large rectangles, criss-crossed with mesh, upturned to the open sky. It was hard not to expect to hear a humming as he approached them, but there was no hum, and the hamlet, when he entered it, was silent.

On its threshold stood a little shrine: a cave of piled-up rocks, with a plaster Virgin, much smaller than the one used in the fiesta, set within, plastic roses laid at her feet. He didn't want to think about the fiesta, or the events which had followed it, and he looked beyond the shrine to a ragged cluster of stone houses, roofed in weather-beaten tiles, set along a narrow cobbled street. It was barely mid-morning, but already the shutters were closed: except for a few trees, blown out to the side by winter gales, there was otherwise no protection from the sun. There were no geraniums on balconies, no little brown bird in a cage. This place, perhaps two thousand feet above the river, felt deserted, abandoned: who could bear to live up here?

Oliver walked slowly over the cobbles, seeing with relief at the far end of the street a stiff old man loading a cart with cabbages. Between the rails a drooling bullock blinked away flies. Well. If there were cabbages there must be gardens, brave and exposed, with crops for market, watered from the pump he could see near the cart, fed by the stream. Life, somehow, went on. The shutters were closed, but some of the doors stood open, hung with plastic strip curtains; outside one of them a dog was curled up asleep, flea-bitten, dull-coated, thin. There were dogs like this everywhere in their own village, but this one seemed somehow different, though until he drew closer he couldn't work out why. Then, at his approach, it raised its head and he saw: its neck was ringed in spikes.

They were there for the animal's protection – but against what? There were no wolves any longer; what might come prowling along here at night, ready to kill? Whatever it might be, the effect of the spikes was threatening and disturbing, and meeting the eyes in that long mongrel face, with its cruel-looking frame, he hesitated, and stopped.

Slowly, the dog rose to its feet, seeing a stranger; he growled. Oliver felt the sweat on his back grow cold and he looked away. The old man at the end of the street had his back to them: if he called out – and what should he call? – it might provoke more than growling. He could hold out his fist for the animal to smell, but that gesture, too, might be misinterpreted. So he stood, without moving a muscle, looking about him, and then the plastic curtain in the doorway was pushed aside, and an old bent woman came out, carrying a basket. She looked at the dog –
‘O que éque tens?'
– and then at Oliver. He moved forward, raising his straw hat.

‘Bom dia.'

‘Bom dia.'
She looked at him with a sharp inquisitiveness much as the dog had done; at her command he retreated to the step, still watchful. She and Oliver regarded each other; he pulled out his map and gestured at its folded pages, and at the mountains beyond; he smiled in reassurance, and the old woman nodded. Side by side they went along the street, she in cracked and flattened shoes, in widow's black, with eggs in her basket, calling to the old fellow loading the cart. He looked at Oliver with slow-witted curiosity, took the basket of eggs from the woman and put it carefully into the cart, then stood staring after Oliver as he walked out of the village.

The cart track wound away towards the mountain road below; he was crossing stony ground now, broken by tufts of coarse grass. Up ahead was the ridge he was making for, strewn with boulders. On the other side was his own valley: a long, exposed climb lay before him, but then he would come down among trees again, the familiar dense plantations giving shade. He put the map back in his bag and began the ascent, turning every now and then to look down upon the diminishing village and the bullock cart making its slow way down along the track between the terraces, towards the road.

Like his gesture with the hat, the scene was something from another age; there might be twentieth-century solar panels up here, but everything else felt medieval: a remote mountain village where travel was by cart, where hungry wolves once roamed and where a scrawny dog still wore a vicious-looking collar.

It was a long time since Oliver had felt afraid, as he had done at the sight of those spikes, hearing that growl. He had forgotten what fear felt like. He wanted to forget it now, among many other things, not least the fact that in the last forty-eight hours what had most frightened him had been himself. He had come on this walk for distraction; he began to climb higher, panting, pouring with sweat.

The ground was stony and hard. Beetles and little clambering creatures moved through occasional clumps of fern and leggy heather, but there were no birds, no cicadas, no trees. The sun beat down from a sky of cloudless blue; his legs were beginning to tremble, but he climbed on, forcing himself not to give in, to reach the top of the ridge without stopping, thinking of nothing but the next few steps, the next scattering of rocks or boulders. There was only the climb, the summit.