Garden of Stars (23 page)

Hugo didn't reply.

Sarah took a deep breath. “I'll put the towels back in the bathroom,” she muttered, but her words were lost amongst the screams and screeches. She left the room before she could say something she would regret.

“Daddy, my turn, my turn,” Ruby squealed as Hugo picked her up and flung her onto the bed. “Again, again!”

“No, me now, me now. She's had more than me!”

From down the corridor, Sarah could hear the thwack as they landed on their beds, accompanied by the dull groan of the mattress springs.

“Off you go!” Hugo's voice was raised in triumph. But this time, the thud was followed by a pause, and then a blood-curdling yell. Sarah flew back to the bedroom, her heart thudding violently in her chest. Ruby was howling, tears pouring down her reddened cheeks.

“What have you done to her?” Sarah was conscious that she was shrieking but couldn't stop herself. Ruby held out her arms to her mother and Sarah took her and hugged her tight.

“Calm down,” retaliated Hugo, angrily. “She landed on this wooden train, that's all. She's OK, she's just shocked. You shouting will only panic her and make it worse. What's a train doing in her bed, anyway?”

Sarah shook with fury, not knowing whether to be more cross about the fact that Ruby was hurt or about the thinly veiled accusation that she should at all times know what toys the girls had taken into bed with them. She ran her fingers through her daughter's unruly curls as Ruby clutched onto her, still sobbing.

“It's OK. You'll be fine. Don't cry. Be brave, good girl.” Sarah buried her face in Ruby's hair and covered her with kisses.

Once Ruby had calmed down and was settled in her bed, Sarah carefully extracted herself from the child's embrace. On her way out of the door, she noticed a fluffy white rabbit half hidden under a beanbag. Picking it up by its ears she hurled it towards the toy box, but missed, and the rabbit fell to the floor where it lay, nibbling an orange felt carrot, blank plastic eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“Blast!” Sarah made a face at the rabbit and muttered “stupid thing” under her breath.

“Mummy!” murmured Ruby, her eyes still shut and her face half-buried in her pillow. “Stupid is a bad word.”

Sarah bit her lip. “Yes, you're right, it is. Sorry, Ruby.” She pulled the door to behind her. “Now go to sleep, sweetheart. Mummy loves you.”

She didn't have the energy to go downstairs, to talk to Hugo, to prepare, cook and clear up after yet another meal. She could hear him on the phone and decided to go to bed and leave him be.

18

Portugal, 1936

By five o'clock, the train was nearing my hometown's tiny station. I went to stand on the steps outside the carriage, hanging onto the handrail and leaning out to watch the engine puffing up the grades, twisting around the curves of the single track line. As soon as the platform hove into sight I could see my father, waiting, waving. Frantically, I too began to wave and was still doing so when the train juddered to a halt and I was able to descend the steps and fall into his waiting arms and, without protesting once, let his handlebar moustache tickle my ear while he clasped me to his rough cotton jacket. Then he let me go, pulling his cap firmly down over his forehead, collecting my luggage from the guard and slinging it as if it weighed nothing (what a fuss John had made!) into the back of the pony cart, drawn as ever by the faithful Pimento. With the evening cool came the scent of wild honeysuckle and I drank it in as I held my face to the dying sun and watched the sky gradually darkening above as we headed for home.

“Inês! My darling Inês, I'm so happy to see you.” My mother was waiting for me in front of the farmhouse, and threw her arms around me, her eldest daughter, as soon as I got down from the cart.

“Look at you! You're too thin, what are you eating there, in Porto? Nothing, or so it would seem. Come on in and have some bread – it's just out of the oven – and cheese, you must be hungry.”

Her chattering continued all the way into the house and as she sat me down at the kitchen table with a crusty white loaf and homemade goat's cheese, plus a glass of red wine to wash it down. My father had gone, ostensibly to feed the chickens, but I suspect to get away from mother until she had calmed down a bit.

“You've been away for far too long, you will find so many things changed. Your sister Maria is growing up so fast, these young girls now, they're in a hurry for everything. She went to visit a friend in the village but she'll be home soon, she's desperate to see you. And Jorge – Jorge must surely have stopped growing now, or so I hope, for he's already a head taller than your father and eats like a horse, or two horses more like. I've made a
feijoada
for the evening meal, the way you like it, and there's sausage to go with it…”

I put my hands over my ears. “
Mamâe!
Give me a chance to get a word in edgeways!” But my mother simply couldn't stop, falling over herself to tell me all the news, and when she was done with that, to ask question after question about life in Porto, intrigued by every piece of information, every detail of life that differed from the way it is lived here in the south. I humoured her, repeating what I have already told her in numerous letters, and also listening patiently to what every other member of the family was up to; my cousins, aunts, uncles, second-cousins and so on until the family link became so tenuous as to hardly exist.

Carrying the burden of being the oldest daughter isn't always easy; I worry about being so far away from
mamâe
. And my brother Jorge, eighteen now, might not be here much longer; he talks of being a doctor, wants to travel to Brazil or Africa.

“Well, it's the
tradicâo
, the tradition, isn't it,” my mother sighed as she told me of his application to medical school. “The Portuguese have always left their land for better places overseas.”

“Don't worry about it,
mamâe
,” I implored her, revived after eating copious amounts of the bread and cheese she had thrust upon me, as well as two slices of a cake that she had produced from a shelf in the cavernous larder. “I'm here, for a whole month. I can help you with anything you like.”

“So come with me to the storehouse. We need to see what we have and make room for what we are gathering in.”

I love the storehouse. The shelves are packed with cheeses and underneath stand vast bins of dried peas and beans, barrels of pork pickled in brine and garlic and fat streaky bacon. From the ceiling hang rings of sausages and huge hams, alongside white loops of lard that are stored in intestines with the ends tied together. There are baskets of nuts, and jar after jar of tomatoes and olives. Soon it will be time to pick and tread the grapes and then the new wine will replenish supplies for another year.

Breathing in the familiar smell of the meat and the cheese and the slight mustiness that hung in the cool air, I realised that however much I missed my old life, I would never return to it. I cannot go back. But still I felt my stomach clench tightly as the fleeting thought crossed my mind of what would happen to the
montado
if neither my brother nor sister nor I could take it over when our parents get too old. Perhaps Jorge would change his mind about Brazil…perhaps our parents would prove to be immortal.

Back outside, one of the farmhands was pulling up water from the well and filling the huge troughs for the goats and cattle. The donkey who lives in the field closest to the house brayed, long and hard. The fig and almond trees were laden with fruit, and deep in the cork oak woods, the acorns were ripening. When autumn comes, the pigs will be sent to forage for them, and the richness they contain will fatten them for slaughtering.

This is the simple life of the country and exactly what I need just now.

The month has passed so quickly. It is my last week here and yesterday evening brought my favourite harvesting event of the year – an
esfolhada
party at a neighbouring property. Everyone in the village turned up to help strip the tough husks off the newly picked maize cobs – to
esfolhar
, deleaf, them. However hard the work, however tough the job, no one goes home from these events until it is finished.

There was already a flurry of activity in the yard by the time my family and I arrived at the
quinta
at around 6pm. I was seized upon by people whom I hadn't seen since my wedding day. “How is Porto?” “How is your husband, such an excellent man, so successful!” “What, no baby yet? What are you waiting for?” “Call me old-fashioned, but a home isn't a home unless it's full of children.” Their words rang in my ears and spun around my head as I sent answers flying in all different directions: “John is very well, thank you”, “Porto is fabulous; we're very happy there”, “No baby yet, we decided to wait a while”, “I have so much to do, looking after John, he's so busy now that he is a partner in the firm.”

The notion that my husband has moved so far up the corporate ranks as to be a partner thankfully silenced many of the questioning voices and I was able to disentangle myself from the crowd and make my way into the barn. There, piled high in giant baskets, were the maize cobs waiting to be stripped. A few industrious types with no desire to gossip were already seated on low stools, hard at work.

As I looked around, inhaling the smell of the corn mixed with the fustiness of the old barn, a pair of hands suddenly clapped themselves around my eyes and I heard stifled giggles coming from behind me.

“Meninas!”
I cried out, breaking free and turning around to find Ana Sofia and Paula, the girlfriends I had gone to school and grown up with, standing beaming at me. I could see now how different they are to the women I mingle with in Porto. Ana Sofia is short, plump and pretty, with shaggy mousy-brown hair that has never been cut into any recognisable style and red, rosebud lips that were always the ones the boys most wanted to kiss. Paula has a long, plain but kind face, and her best feature, her thick, glossy dark hair was tucked away under a headscarf for the evening's work. Both wore sensible brown shoes; clodhoppers, no less.

I exchanged embraces and kisses with my friends, and then the questions began all over again.

“Tell us all about Porto! Do you miss the farm, your parents, the fresh air?”

“How do you find being married, Inês? I am so happy, it's better than I ever thought it would be – to have my own home, to look after Marcos - and of course now we have the baby to look forward to, Marcos is so excited, he's convinced it's a boy…”

I answered that Porto is a most agreeable place to live, if very hilly, unlike our flat Alentejo plains, congratulated the six months-married Ana Sofia on the speedy accomplishment of a pregnancy…and inside felt silent and downcast. There was simply no getting away from it.

We took our seats on the little three-legged stools and sat side-by-side, taking cob after cob, slitting the tough leaves with sharp knives and then tearing them off with our hands, and tossing the bare cobs into a great golden heap in front of us. We gossiped as we worked, and I must confess that I propelled the conversation away from myself and towards anything and everything else. It was good to receive updates on all the news I have missed out on since I left for Porto. Paula, still single at twenty-four, is starting to worry about being a spinster for the rest of her days. But I noticed a frisson of excitement, an undercurrent of tension, every time that the young men whose job it was to gather up the stripped cobs came round to our corner of the barn.

“So which one is it? Surely none is good enough for you – you're too beautiful and intelligent for any of them,” I teased.

Paula looked down at her work and grinned bashfully. “Inês! It's fine for you to talk like that, married already and to such a catch!” She knew I was joking, but still protested.

“If you must know – it's António,” butted in Ana Sofia, with a proprietorial smile. Paula squeaked in indignation mingled with delight. “The one with the camel's eyelashes and the sexy walk,” she continued, feeling free to take ownership of her friend's love life and future, now that her own was so satisfactorily taken care of.

I looked over to where Ana Sofia had indicated. António had dark brown hair cut close to his scalp, and was short and stocky like many local men. But I couldn't deny that there was something attractive about him and his eyelashes were indeed remarkably long. He looked as if he might be fun underneath the rough and ready exterior. As I studied him, he disappeared through the barn doors along with his workmates, taking the cobs to the thatched
canastra
where they would be stored. Ana Sofia turned back to her task, redoubling her efforts on Paula's behalf in order to bring the boys back to collect the cobs sooner. In the corner of the barn a fiddle was playing and every now and again there was a burst of singing, followed by more talking and laughter.

As the evening progressed, the jokes got more ribald and the songs saucier, and ever more frequently the cry would go up, ‘
espigo rei!
', alerting everyone to the fact that someone had found one of the rare red king cobs. This is a prize indeed, as if found by a man, he may kiss all the girls present, and if found by a girl, she may kiss any man she chooses. Discovery of a king cob was generally quickly followed by much flirting and ventures into the darkness outside, from which both boys and girls would return giggling and blushing.

I noticed Ana Sofia and Paula exchanging glances, followed by a great deal of fumbling amongst her clothes by Ana Sofia, until she pulled out from under her skirt waistband a giant king cob which she handed discreetly to Paula. All three of us burst out laughing and Paula, buoyed up by our encouragement, stood up, tore the scarf off her head and enthusiastically waved the cob in the air, her shouts of ‘
espigo rei
' almost getting lost in the expanses of the barn.