Mr Lynch’s Holiday (13 page)

He opened the wardrobe. The combined scents of dust, wood and perfume settled upon him. Here were the clothes Kathleen hadn’t needed in her final years. The best coats, the going-out dresses, the wedding hats and silk scarves. They were folded neatly on shelves or hung from good wooden hangers, some still in the polythene sheaths of dry-cleaners; after years of such delicate handling he couldn’t bring himself to let them drop into the bin bag he had ready beside him. He went over to the other wardrobe and reached for the suitcase on top. He laid it on the bed and started to fold the dresses and coats gently into it before stopping short. He would need the suitcase back and that would cause a problem at the charity shop. He pictured them tipping the dresses out into a heap on the counter and handing him the case. He wondered, should he have waited for Anne’s help before he started with all of this? He took the dresses out again and laid them on the bed. He dismissed once more the idea of the bin bag and went in search of an alternative. He settled in the end for some of the good-quality carrier bags that Kathleen used to keep in the understairs cupboard. Large House of Fraser, Marks & Spencer and Debenhams carriers she had accumulated and preserved over the years. ‘Is this what you were keeping them for?’ he asked aloud.

Back upstairs, he sat down at her dressing table. It was unsettling to see his reflection in the mirror. He was used to seeing her face framed there, engaged in various arcane ministrations. He unzipped the large padded bag in front of him and the
weighted compacts and pots slid out on to the surface. Here were the tiny tools she had used to perform her adjustments: miniature paintbrushes for her eyes and lips, compounds of colour and powder, a hundred different mysteries encased in shellac. He suspected they could all go in the bin, but he would let Anne make that decision. He started opening the drawers on either side of the dresser, mechanically reaching in and pulling out the various different subspecies of underwear and letting them fall into the bag. If it had been he who had gone first, she would have had to contend with only one drawer of pants and one of socks. He did not try to fathom the purpose or classification of the different items, he knew only that some were slippery, some springy and some tendrilled and knotted.

At the back of the bottom drawer he felt something solid. He reached in and pulled out an old shoebox, the lid held on with elastic bands. He placed it carefully on the bed and studied it for a moment before removing the bands and lifting the lid. Inside were bundles of letters in faded blue Airmail envelopes. He lifted a bundle; they felt light and insubstantial. He sat on the bed, the letters on his lap. In all the years he’d seen only a handful arrive. He had thought them sporadic updates, occasional good wishes, but they were the ones that had slipped through the net. The rest had been hidden from him. Their arrival, their reading, their storage – all concealed.

Later he gathered together the eight bags he had filled, put on his jacket and cap and set off for the parade of shops around the corner. He was buffeted by a stiff breeze, the bags bumping against each other and against him, but he kept up a good pace. When they were courting Kathleen would pull back on his arm and say: ‘Can’t we stroll? Do we have to march?’ and he’d slow down for a few yards, but the brisk pace always returned.

The woman in the charity shop didn’t seem thrilled at the
sight of him and his bags. She looked to Dermot like the type not thrilled by very much at all. She asked him to drop them on the floor at the rear of the shop and showed no inclination to examine their contents. When he returned past the counter he felt the need to say: ‘It’s good stuff in there, well looked after too.’

She nodded and smiled as if he were simple. As he was leaving he noticed a mannequin in the window. He imagined passing by in a few days’ time to see it dressed in Kathleen’s clothes. His wife rendered in white, polished plastic, surrounded by piles of jigsaws and DVDs, watching his comings and goings.

‘God Almighty,’ he said aloud, and hurried out.

He went home and sat, still in his jacket and hat, looking at the envelopes scattered across the bed. When it grew dark he gathered them together and put them back in the box. He felt its weight in his hands. So many words and only half the conversation.

The afternoons had always been difficult. Even with Laura there he had often found them long. Any promise the morning held seemed to burn off in the sun, and the night with its surrender to alcohol, or whatever other distraction could be found, remained a distant spot on the horizon. Since she’d gone the afternoons were deep, dark holes that he had to carefully edge his way around.

Still studiedly avoiding his mounting pile of work, he wrote an email to her, a follow-up to the one he had sent in the morning. He sent her his daily text. He refreshed his in-box in case she had been moved to reply straight away, but found only some submitted assignments from students and a couple of mails from friends in England. He left them unopened. There were already a dozen messages from friends awaiting replies he could not write. When he and Laura had first arrived in Spain, he’d send entertaining little summaries of their new life to pals back home: amusing misunderstandings, baffling encounters, culinary discoveries. Now he found it impossible to transform his daily life into anecdote. Moments of despair did not alchemize into nuggets of wry self-knowledge. Moments of despair only turned into hours and then days.

He regretted now not joining his father on his afternoon stroll. He felt the silence build steadily like snow falling around him until it seemed a palpable presence in the apartment, pushing him out. He closed the laptop, put on his hat and stepped out into the heat. He would call on someone. He would talk to another human being.

It was punishingly hot and the summer had yet to take hold. It had taken him only a few months of living in Spain to realize that there was nothing wholesome or cheering about the sun. The sun was straightforwardly malevolent, its hostility relentless. He lived his life coated in creams and charms to ward off its evil.

He walked with no particular destination in mind down the middle of the road, the silence as heavy as the heat. Increasingly he felt something curdled in the atmosphere of Lomaverde, though he did not know what. Whatever it was, it was there in the glare of the midday sun as much as the night-time shadows of his room: a presence, a watchfulness. It was a generalized sense of unease not helped by slaughtered chickens and tales of the Civil War dead. It was ridiculous to think of ghosts and yet he felt himself sometimes irrationally fearful. He wondered if it was possible to be haunted by phantoms of an unrealized future. The lives that never came to Lomaverde. He imagined disembodied Dutch retirees, floating French Web editors, semi-transparent Danish designers, but these conjured-up presences remained banal rather than spectral in his mind.

The real ghosts of Lomaverde were the cats, legions of them now, snaking up and down stairwells, darting for cover at every footstep, yowling by the bins at night. Eamonn was fond of cats. Having grown up with Mr Socks for a pet, it was impossible for him to understand why the animals were seen as superior or haughty. Mr Socks was as affectionate as he was dim-witted. Sometimes, when Eamonn was little, feeling the loneliness of an only child, he liked to imagine that Mr Socks was his brother, but then the cat would get his head stuck in a crisp bag, or run around with a pair of Eamonn’s pants stuck to his paw, and Eamonn would feel the need to dissolve the familial link. As a schoolboy he had read that come nuclear Armageddon, cockroaches would inherit the Earth, but in the
smaller, less radioactive collapse of Lomaverde it was feral cats who were making hay. And these survivors were nothing like Mr Socks. They had not been spoon-fed rabbit-flavour Whiskas or given Dairylea triangles as a regular treat. They were skinny and twitchy. Eamonn had no idea where they had all come from. He had seen one once in Nieves the sales manager’s office and somewhere in his mind lurked the theory that the tubby tabby reclined on the photocopier was the unlikely progenitor of the sprawling street gangs that now roamed the development. Whoever the original settlers were, they had been deceived, just as their human neighbours had, by the promise of good times and, more specifically, plentiful food to come. They had bred prodigiously and now there were too many of them for the leftovers and scraps of such a sparsely settled community.

He thought of Roger ranting about the cats and felt an unexpected surge of fondness for him. There was no polite conversation with Roger, no space for silence or thoughts or doubts. Eamonn realized that what he wanted to do more than anything at that moment was drink cold beer and listen to someone loud and inattentive.

His only qualm was Cheryl. She would join them and she would not allow Eamonn to be a passive observer. She would demand responses, interaction, capitulation of one sort or another. She communicated by shaking her big hair, alternating arbitrarily between disdain and flirtatiousness. He and Laura found her frequently hilarious. The pouting and the flouncing, the dialogue straight out of a bad soap opera; her entire conversational repertoire a ragbag of tired, old lines she’d been hoiking around since her heyday. She was not like any woman he had known. She was older of course, but it wasn’t just generational. She seemed a different species, an exotic creature, a cartoon – both funny and fascinating. He
found her face remarkable. High cheekbones, fiercely shaped brows, grey eyes. She looked like an evil queen from a children’s book. A superbitch from an 80s TV movie. She had glamour, he supposed, a kind of harshness about her clothes and make-up. There was something both anachronistic and ridiculous about her, but behind Eamonn’s laughter was confusion, because a part of him still fell for it.

This small, unwanted attraction was fed by a sense he had that she was there for him, available. That Roger and Cheryl wanted both Laura and him. There had been times when the flirting had turned into something else. A queasy, usually drunken blundering into sexual territory in conversation. It was always the older couple who initiated it – hypothetical questions, stories they’d heard, a kind of probing. Once Cheryl had cornered Laura and interrogated her about her sexual history. Laura had attempted to laugh it off, but Cheryl had seemed irritated at her unwillingness to tell all. On another wine-soaked evening, Roger had appeared to suggest that they swap partners but then insisted it was just a joke.

‘Christ, Laura,’ Eamonn said, ‘did you see their eyes? They’re like wolves. It’s like they want to consume us.’

‘You’d get off lightly. At least Cheryl is an attractive woman. I’d get Lovejoy!’

He shuddered. ‘My God. Wife-swapping in El Dorado. We’re trapped in retro-porn.’

After that they seriously started to extricate themselves from Roger and Cheryl’s company. Laura was less extreme. She found them creepy but ultimately harmless. She would sometimes keep up appearances to avoid looking rude. Eamonn however was assiduous in his efforts to elude them. He had a terror that the older couple would somehow detect the hairline crack in his armour; that, like animals, they would pick up the scent of the tiny, unwilled grain of desire he had for Cheryl.

Lost in his thoughts he had walked too far, missing the turning for Roger and Cheryl’s house, and now found himself walking down an uninhabited street at the bottom edge of the development. He swore aloud at the prospect of traipsing back uphill in the heat. His head pounded violently and he wished he had thought to have a drink before he left the apartment. He stood for a moment with his hands on his knees in front of one of the unfinished houses but had a curious feeling that he was not alone. Scaffolding surrounded the structure and loose plastic sheeting hung down over the partially built walls. He raised his head to look through the door frame into the empty shell of the building. In the shadowy interior he thought he saw something move across the opening.

‘Hello?’

The afternoon silence hung heavily. He tilted his head, squinting into the dark. He shielded his eyes and took a step forward. There was a different quality to the darkness in one spot, something denser, more solid. He stepped closer and there, for a split second, he saw a pair of eyes looking back at him. He jerked backwards and as he did felt a shifting in his head, like sand sliding from one side to another, suddenly black flies seemed to be everywhere at the edge of his vision and as he batted them away his ears filled with a high-pitched screeching.

The first thing he became aware of was the heat of the tarmac pressing through his T-shirt. He moved his hand and discovered he was flat on his back. He was aware of a presence beside him.
He opened his eyes and saw the outline of what appeared to be a boy’s head looking down at him, silhouetted against the deep blue of the sky. He couldn’t make sense of the image and closed his eyes again. Some time later there was a voice.

‘Eamonn. Eamonn. Can you hear me?’

He opened his eyes once more to see Roger’s face leaning over him.

‘Jesus, thank God, I thought you’d carked it. Are you all right? Can you move?’

He sat up slowly. ‘I think I fainted.’

‘I thought you’d had a heart attack.’

‘Sorry.’

Roger sat down heavily next to Eamonn. ‘Fainted? What am I supposed to do? Loosen your stays?’ He reached into a side pocket on his shorts and produced a small metal flask. ‘Have some of this.’

Eamonn took a swig of brandy. ‘You’re like a St Bernard’s. How did you find me here?’

‘I was returning from the hunt.’

Eamonn focused on Roger’s appearance, some kind of overfed Bavarian assassin. ‘You’re carrying a gun.’

‘Beretta. Very nice.’

Eamonn shook his head, trying to bring the world back into alignment.

Roger took a slug of the brandy. ‘Been out since dawn. Going for the “Grand Slam”.’

‘You’ve been playing tennis?’

‘Not tennis, you dick. The Ibex Grand Slam.’

‘Are Ibex the sponsors?’

‘Are you concussed?’

Eamonn felt helpless. ‘I don’t understand anything that’s happening. Me. You. The pain in my head. The words coming out of your mouth.’

‘An ibex, Eamonn. It’s not that hard to understand. It’s an animal. A goat … I think. Big horns anyway. You’ve got four types in Spain – your Gredos, Ronda, Sierra Nevada and … the other one.’

‘Right.’

‘So. You kill all four and that’s your Grand Slam.’

Eamonn put his head in his hands. ‘Oh God.’

‘Here we go. Here comes the hand-wringing. I’m embracing the culture. You should try it sometime.’

‘A day killing goats. All kinds of goats.’

‘It was just something to do. Ian and I thought we’d give it a go.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Another bloody con. No fucking goats in this country as far as I can see.’ He pointed the gun at the empty house. ‘The hunting element was getting all the gear really – choosing the guns and the clothes. After that it was a drag. I don’t know what the fuck we’d have done with a dead goat anyway.’ He wiped his face with his sleeve and spat. ‘We don’t see you any more.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. Just been busy, work, you know.’

‘We should stick together. All in the same boat. Sod all else to do.’

‘Yes.’

Roger stood and reached out a hand to help Eamonn up.

‘Thanks.’

Eamonn straightened up, rubbing the back of his head, which was throbbing steadily.

‘Haven’t seen lovely Laura for ages either. I thought we had a nice little scene going on. The four of us. We had some laughs.’

Eamonn said nothing.

‘You need to unwind. Relax. You’re too uptight. Both of you. Let yourselves go a bit. Let Uncle Roger and Aunty Cheryl sort you out.’

Eamonn forced a half-smile and started to walk away, but Roger called him back. ‘Hey! Don’t forget this.’ He picked up a bottle of water from the road.

‘It’s yours, isn’t it?’ said Eamonn.

Roger shook his head. ‘I stick with Señor Torres.’

Eamonn took the bottle. It was cold, wet with condensation on the outside. He looked over at the house. ‘You didn’t see anyone about, did you? Before you found me.’

Roger looked at him. ‘No. Why?’

Eamonn hesitated. ‘I thought someone else was here.’

Roger looked around. ‘You see?’

‘What?’

‘Another reason for this.’ He patted the gun. ‘Something rotten in the state of Lomaverde.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘We’re not wanted here, Eamonn. Vultures are circling the stricken ship. Do you think Esteban’s going to stand in the way of the mob?’

‘What mob?’

‘Whoever they might be. The country’s in collapse. Civil unrest. It’s just a matter of time. We need to be ready.’

‘To shoot people?’

‘Hopefully it won’t come to that.’

‘Is that part of the Grand Slam too?’

‘I hope you find it funny when it happens.’

‘Do you think it’s possible that you’re losing your mind?’

‘Hey, I’m not the one who imagined I saw someone. I’m not the one who passed out.’

‘It was probably just a local kid.’

‘Yeah, casing the joint.’

They started walking back up the road.

‘I can’t believe someone gave you a gun licence.’

‘You might be grateful someday.’

‘Yeah, when the goats come for us.’

Eamonn glanced back over his shoulder. He felt them still, the eyes, watching his every step.