Air and Fire (14 page)

‘Did you ever see her again?'

‘No,' he said. ‘I never did.'

‘Did you look for her?'

‘I passed through Monterey a few years later. Somebody told me she'd got married. Maybe it was that man who came out of the fog.' He laughed quickly.

‘Has there been anyone else?' She felt she could ask him almost anything, so long as she used the voice he used, and did not look up from her work. The truth could only be drawn from the thorns and petals of the rose.

His eyes explored the air above her head. ‘No.'

She had embarrassed him, but she talked on through his embarrassment as if she had not noticed. They were doing favours for each other
without acknowledgement, which was ground on which friendship could be built.

‘But it must be lonely,' she said, ‘when you are always travelling from one place to another.'

‘You don't travel by yourself. Mostly you team up. Especially if you're heading into dangerous territory.' Wilson sat back in his chair, easier now.

He told her about a trapper, name of Mickey Noone. They were riding across the prairies of West Texas together. Noone was after hunting beaver on the Colorado River, the Gila too, but the beaver were strictly incidental. He just seemed to have a natural bent for killing things. His rifle always lay in his arms, one restless finger in the region of the trigger. One day Wilson had asked him what he liked killing best. Noone shrugged. ‘It don't matter what,' he said, ‘though, on general principles, I'd prefer an Indian.'

‘I think I'd rather travel alone,' Suzanne exclaimed, ‘than travel with such a man.'

‘I don't believe he ever killed an Indian in his life.' Wilson smiled down at her. ‘He was a terrible shot. Once I saw him miss a jack rabbit from six feet away.'

The rose, complete with petals, stem and leaves, had almost dried when they heard the grating of carriage-wheels in the street. From the shadows of the veranda they watched Montoya leave his carriage and climb the steps to the de Romblays' house. At this distance they could not see his face, only the scarlet of his tunic and the epaulettes that clung, like huge glinting spiders, to his shoulders.

‘My God.' Suzanne had only breathed the words.

‘What is it?' Wilson asked her.

She shook her head. ‘I've just remembered something.'

Last night she had dreamed that she was standing in a house. It was late. No lamps or torches had been lit. There was not even a candle to see by. Only the moonlight falling through a high window, pooling on anything that had a shine to it.

She was standing at the foot of a stone staircase. She could look up and watch the stairs come sweeping down into the hall, almost like a river or a tide, each stair gifted with a silver edge. She could see details; the smooth wooden rail of the banister and how it curved towards her, curled into a snail-shell. She reached one hand out, let her fingers trace the curve and final circle of the wood.

She heard a shuffling close by. She had been expecting something to happen on the staircase – someone to descend, perhaps; but the sound had come from behind her. She looked round.

Two women were dancing with each other on the flagstone floor. They were Indian women, with oval faces and splayed toes. One wore a scarlet tunic. The other wore pale breeches with silver buttons. Otherwise they were naked. It was a slow dance; they scarcely lifted their feet from the ground. Round and round they shuffled, on their big square feet. Round and round. There was no music.

She had woken that morning believing the house to be Montoya's.

‘Sounds like the uniform was his,' Wilson said.

‘You know something, Wilson? He has invited me to tea.'

‘Montoya?'

She nodded. ‘Yes.'

‘Then you'll be able to find out, won't you?'

‘Find out what?'

‘Whether it was his house that you dreamed about.'

They watched as Montoya emerged from the house up the street and climbed back into his waiting carriage.

‘There are men like him in Paris,' she said, ‘but I did not expect to find them here, in Santa Sofía.'

Wilson squinted after the carriage. ‘He's not a typical inhabitant, certainly.'

She began to laugh, and found she could not stop. It was the thought he had given to his judgement, and the gravity with which he had delivered it. He, too, began to laugh.

‘Though I don't know how I can talk,' he added, a few moments later, ‘with a red rose painted on my foot.'

After Wilson had left, her smile faded and she sat on the veranda for a long time without moving. She was more shaken than she had realised. It was not the dream that had disturbed her, as she had let him believe. It was not the dream itself, but the nature of the dream.

There had been this, when she was young.

She had dreamed about her china doll. She had watched the doll come tumbling down a slope. Head over heels over head over heels. That tall blue summer sky above. And a faint breeze across the grass. And quiet. Just the china doll all folded up at the foot of the smooth green hill.

It did not happen quite like that, of course.

When she left her house the next morning she was not frightened in the slightest. There was no reason to be: no tall blue sky, no smooth green hill. It was the first time, and she had not yet learned to recognise the pathways, how they bend round without you noticing, how they bring you out in some new, remembered place.

She met her friend Claire at the edge of the woods, as agreed.

‘What's the time?' Claire whispered.

Suzanne shrugged. ‘I don't know. Early.'

It was a secret, this crime that they were about to commit, and yet they must have looked so obvious, two girls threading their way through the trees in clean white dresses. They might almost have been daring the world to catch them in the act, but the world had been asleep that morning; the world saw nothing.

The tip of Claire's nose was red and every time they hid behind a tree, thinking they had heard something, Claire sniffed.

‘Be quiet,' Suzanne whispered.

‘I am quiet.'

‘You're not. You keep sniffing.'

‘I can't help it,' Claire whispered back. ‘I've got a cold.'

‘Just don't sniff, that's all. Do something else.'

‘Like what?'

‘I don't know. Wipe it on leaves.'

The canal lay to the east of the town, beyond the woods. It would be a warm day later but, at that hour, the grass was sticky with mist; it licked at their brown boots, stained the toes and heels black. Suzanne listened to the birds sending their long calls looping through the trees. She could smell the bitter sap in the stalks of plants.

It was still early when they reached the canal. The apple lighters were tied up, two abreast, along the towpath. Here was the threat: the huge dark hulls coarse with rust and sloping steeply into water that was coated with a thick green scum. They were not yet full of fruit. That would take a few more days. Then they would be setting off for Paris. Paris was where the canal ended. Paris was where the apples went.

The two girls crouched in the bracken at the edge of the towpath. They had to be careful. Sometimes there were men.

Insects hovered on the slime below. No one came.

When Suzanne decided it was safe, they ran across the gravel and clambered on to the nearest lighter. Breathing fast, they crouched again.
The silence held. They climbed down a vertical metal ladder, and then they were standing in the hold. It was darker down there, though still open to the sky. The sweet smell of peel rose into Suzanne's nose. She began to fill her bag.

‘Look at me.'

Suzanne looked up.

Claire was balanced on the hill of apples, her toes pointed, her arms held out sideways. She must have climbed back up the ladder and out along the walkway. It was strange. Claire was usually the more cautious of the two, but now she seemed to have fallen into a kind of trance. Perhaps she thought she was the girl who walked the tightrope when the circus came to town.

‘We're supposed to be stealing,' Suzanne whispered, ‘not doing tricks.'

Claire did not take any notice.

Before Suzanne could speak again, a noise began. A murmuring and then a drumming. Then a rumbling. She saw Claire's face tilt. As if the power of the trance were being tipped out of her. The apples jumped from under her feet, and one of her legs swung up into the air. She came tumbling backwards down the slope, and when she reached the floor she did not move.

‘Claire?' Suzanne was still whispering. If she shouted, men might hear.

Claire was folded up against the side wall of the lighter. The apples had almost buried her completely. There was even an apple resting in the socket of her left eye. Her head looked funny on her neck, like a flower when the stalk has snapped. The tip of her nose was still red, and a clear liquid slid towards her upper lip.

It was then, in the silence that followed the avalanche, in that sudden silence, that Suzanne remembered the dream – the tumbling doll, the smooth green hill – and she dropped her bag and ran for the ladder. She cut her finger as she snatched at the first rung, but she did not look back, not once, not even when she was safe behind her bedroom door.

She filled her wet boots with newspaper and hid them in the cupboard; she would clean them with polish as soon as they were dry so nobody would know. She sucked her finger until the blood slowed down, then she undressed and put her nightgown on. She climbed between the sheets. They were cool against her feet, as if whole days had passed.

She lay in bed with her eyes wide open and waited for somebody to come and wake her up.

That afternoon a policeman visited the house. He sat in a chair, and she had to stand in front of him. She could still remember the dark cloth of his uniform, the bright metal buttons. He asked her whether she had seen Claire that day.

She thought carefully and then said, ‘No.'

‘Claire has disappeared,' the policeman said. ‘Do you know where she might have gone?'

Again she answered, ‘No.'

‘Claire's your best friend, isn't she?'

‘Yes.'

‘But you have no idea where she might have gone?'

She shook her head. ‘No.'

The policeman put his hands on his knees and prepared to stand up. She felt sorry for him suddenly. She would tell him something.

‘She had one favourite place.'

Everything fell quiet then. She could hear a wasp trapped between the curtains and the window. Outside it was the end of summer.

‘You know the boats on the canal, the ones they put the apples in? Sometimes she liked to go there.'

Suzanne rose shivering from her chair and moved to the rail of the veranda. The mountains were in shadow now. It would soon be dark. She could hear their maid, Imelda, moving inside the house. She had not even noticed the girl arrive.

The dream about the women dancing was the same kind of dream. Some coded version of the truth, a message in disguise. But she was out of practice. It had been years since this had happened. Six, at least.

It seemed to her, as she watched the dusk come down and the French begin to leave their houses, that the town was offering her some link back into her childhood. It could have been as simple as the presence of the sea: steamships and lighters moored along the quay, the smell of kelp and gutted fish and brine, that salt-water grittiness in the air. It could have been. But the feeling rose in her – and it was a feeling she could not dispel – that there was another side to this that she had still to understand, that it was not just some surface familiarity, some coincidence, but a deeper link, inside her mind, below the skin.

Towards midnight Wilson left the Hotel La Playa. He took the long route to Pablo's bar, passing through the church on his way. It was strange how the bare arches had the appearance of remains – some creature that had perished in the desert's grip and then been stripped by vultures; it was strange how the beginning could imitate the end. What he could not imagine, as he limped among the pillars and the stacks of metal, was what came between: the final shape of the building, its place in the life of the town.

It was dark on Avenida Manganeso. The only light came from the pool-hall, which was used for cock-fights and illegal lotteries. He stopped in the entrance. Three smoking oil-lamps lit the room. A man was sleeping on a table, with an empty bottle for a pillow. There was a smell of warm urine. Wilson moved on, his arms aching from the crutches. Stars massed in such numbers above his head that it looked as if somebody had spilled chalk-dust across the sky. As he passed along the north side of the municipal square he heard a baby crying, and then silence. At last he pushed through the door of the Bar El Fandango.

The first person he saw, leaning against the zinc counter, was La Huesuda. He could tell from the angle of her head on her neck that she already had a few drinks under her skin. He began to ease backwards through the crowd, but she noticed him. Downing a shot of clear liquor, she swilled it round her mouth, spat it on the floor, then elbowed her way across the room towards him.

‘So,' she said, ‘American.'

He touched the brim of his hat.

‘Where have you been hiding?'

‘Nowhere special,' he said.

‘You've been lying low, haven't you. Avoiding me.'

He glanced down at his foot. ‘I've been resting. The doctor told me to rest.'

Her eyes followed his.

‘That's a pretty flower,' she said. Her voice had sharpened at the edges.

‘It's not bad.'

‘Who painted that on there?'

‘A friend.'

‘More than a friend, I'd say. That's a woman, did that.' Her thin face scraped the air. ‘Am I right, American?'

He nodded.

‘Mother of Christ.' Her eyes were knocking around in their sockets like two drunks in a cell. She was muttering some language that he did not understand. All teeth and saliva.