Oranges From Spain Read online

  For four days there was no sign of change in his father’s condition, but he was very ill, and his chances of recovery hung in the balance. He visited the hospital twice each day, once in the afternoon, when Elliot covered his class and let him slip away half an hour before the end of school, and once in the evening. His father lay in a semi-conscious state, unable to speak. When his eyes did open, they communicated no acknowledgment or recognition. He was in a room of his own and there was no restriction on the visiting time. The minutes dragged by, and as he sat at the bedside he searched his father’s hollow face for some spark of life or familiar expression, but there was none to be found. Then, self-consciously at first, he began to talk, in the hope that his words might evoke some response. His voice sounded faltering and uncertain in the stillness, different from the one he heard each day in his classroom, but gradually it took courage and stepped diffidently into the silence. He talked about anything that came into his head – the weather, the garden, events in school, things he had read in the newspaper, about himself.

  ‘I know you think about the past a lot. I’ve been thinking about it too. There’s something keeps coming back to me, it comes back clearly all these years later as if it was yesterday, and I can’t get it out of my head. It’s that first holiday – do you remember it, dad? I was about eight years old and you’d rented that old ramshackle house that backed on to the beach – the one with the bed bugs and an outside toilet that I wouldn’t use for the first couple of days. Do you remember that beach? I must’ve lived on it for the whole two weeks. It’s what comes back to me now – that wide stretch of sand, with its stinking wrack of seaweed and shells shining among the shingle like coloured glass. Standing there and skimming stones, standing there and suddenly feeling very small and frightened. Frightened by the sea, by its depth and size, frightened by the waves breaking and breaking and never ceasing. Frightened that it might snatch me off the shore and drown me in its deepest, darkest depths. I feel frightened now, dad. All these years later, and it’s come back.’

  He paused while outside in the corridor some kind of trolley rattled by. Voices in his head urged him to stop, but as his tongue savoured the unaccustomed sweetness of freedom, he brushed them recklessly aside.

  ‘There’s a new girl in my class. Her name is Lysandra. I’ve never told you about her, have I? I wanted to talk about her many times, but I stopped myself. She’s a strange girl – not like any of the rest – with a mind of her own and very clever. Sometimes there’s no telling her, and when she does art, half the time she makes up her own measurements. Dad, can you hear me? Her name is Lysandra and she can play the piano better than any child I’ve ever heard. Sometimes, I imagine she’ll come to the house and play our piano for us. That’d be something, dad, wouldn’t it? Maybe when you’re better she’ll come, maybe when you’re better we’ll start having a few visitors about the place, try to get out of the rut we’ve got ourselves stuck in. What about it, dad? What do you say? And she’s not frightened of me – sometimes she looks at me and I’m not sure what it is she’s thinking. When I notice her looking at me I feel …’

  He froze in embarrassed silence as a nurse came into the room to check his father. She offered him a cup of tea, but he mumbled a refusal and told her he was just about to go. He waited until she had gone, then stood up and buttoned up his overcoat against the rain that was falling outside. Neither his father’s expression nor position had changed during the visit. Bending over the bed, he touched his father gently on the shoulder, then turned up the collar of his coat and made his way out into the darkness and the rain.

  His father died two days later. Although he had been preparing himself for it, the actual moment still came as a shock, but he felt no rush of grief, only a kind of numbness, a vague nothingness that seeped through his whole being. He searched inwardly for the appropriate emotion, but could not deceive himself, and as a substitute, busied himself with the necessary arrangements and formalities. Visitors called to offer sympathy – an unpleasant embarrassment for all parties. He wished he had inserted a ‘house strictly private’ line in the newspaper death notice. Mrs Mitchell arrived early one morning with two tins of buns she had baked, because she knew he would need to provide hospitality for his visitors. He thanked her sincerely, and he could see that she was genuinely upset by his father’s death. He had always assumed that his father had merely represented a difficult and uncooperative charge, and it surprised him to realise that some kind of relationship had existed between the two. When everything was over, and all his father’s affairs were settled, he resolved to make her a final payment in respect of her faithful patience. Then it struck him that she would not be coming to the house again, and he thought of asking if she would like to pick something to take with her as a keepsake, but he did not know how to put it to her, and, fearful that she might be offended, he let the moment pass. He watched her put on the headscarf with its pictures of Paris, and, walking her to the gate, stood watching as she hurried out of his life.

  There were not many people at the funeral, just a few dutiful family representatives, some people he recognised from his mother’s former connection with the local church, and a sprinkling of casual friends and acquaintances. Elliot was there, blandly sympathetic and irritating with his trite reassurances. Worse than that was the fact that he had brought six pupils from his class. What had the man been thinking of? He felt angry and disturbed, but it was too late to do or say anything about this intrusion into his personal life, and he would not look near them nor meet their curious stares. Standing at the graveside with their eyes fixed on him, he felt disturbingly defenceless, almost naked before them, and he longed for the barren ritual to be over. But to his annoyance, the minister, with his audience’s minds focused unavoidably on eternity, preached at length and eventually he let his eyes wander round the faces of the assembled group. To one side stood Elliot with the children grouped about him, and as he looked at them, they averted their eyes as if caught in a guilty act. Only one face met his. He looked into her eyes and saw again the emotion that he had come to recognise, but could put no name to. She stared at him and in that moment he knew that what he saw, and had always seen, was pity. Only the strength of his will held him to the spot as the world blurred before his sight, and the minister’s closing words faded into oblivion. People were shaking his hand and he mumbled incoherencies in response as he searched in his pockets for the envelopes that contained the money for the gravediggers, and for a moment was unable to find them. The minister was making some excuse about having to hurry to his next engagement, while he scraped the sole of his shoe over an edging stone to free it from the mud that had caked to it. People were moving away in little knots of twos and threes, and the gravediggers impatiently handled their spades in readiness, but he stood motionless, watching as the mourners walked briskly in the direction of their cars. Then suddenly, and without his being aware of her route of approach, she was standing before him. Her face was pinched with the cold, and wisps of black hair flicked in the breeze. She pushed them away from her eyes with her hand, and stood looking at him, and for a moment neither of them spoke. When she did, her voice was quick and nervous.

  ‘I’m very sorry about your father. I hope you’ll be back to teach us soon.’

  Then she turned away and began to walk towards where Elliot was shepherding the other children into his car.

  He called after her, his voice sounding weak and wavering.

  ‘Lysandra!’

  She stopped and turned to face him again. He hesitated, then held out his hand towards her.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’

  For a second, he held the small warmth of her hand in his, and then she, too, was gone. He watched as she started to run towards the waiting Elliot.

  He was alone now, and pulling his coat tightly about him for strength, he looked deliberately into the grave for the last time. Finding composure at last, he stepped off the wooden boards and walked quickly and steadily t
owards the funeral car. As he did so he could hear the spades of the gravediggers shovelling the sodden clay on to his father’s coffin.

  The heavy wooden pencil case clattered to the floor, shattering the dream of silence that had settled lightly on the room. Its noise was terrible to him, splintering the soft web of memory he had woven and letting the present wash coldly over him once more. Pencils rolled thunderously across the floor, until trapped by the legs of chairs and desks. Their owner frantically scrambled after the contents, banging her head on the bottom of a desk in her desperate haste to restore the calm she had so carelessly disturbed. The sound of the pencils rattling back into the box speared his soul, and his whole being urged her to be still, but he could not bring himself to speak. About the room heads lifted, glad of the momentary distraction from their work, and watched the embarrassed girl take her seat again, then sheepishly reorganise the objects on her desk. A restless quiet surfaced again, but feet shuffled and chairs creaked. He knew it was time to inspect their work, time to punish Thomas Murray, but he could find no strength to do either. From the back wall, the red flowers burned so brightly that his eyes could not bear the fierce intensity of their flame. He gripped the sides of his desk, but felt only her hand on his shoulder, saw again her red shoes with their scuffed and scratched leather. And then, in an older memory, he heard his feet scrunching the gravelly shingle that beaded the beach, felt his fingers picking out precious stones that glistened with jewelled dampness – finding a smooth, flat stone and skimming the waves, skipping through their curled crests like a winged dolphin. A chair scraped across the floor. Someone coughed. He knew it was nearly time. Suddenly, the sky blackened and arched over him like a great predatory bird hovering in readiness, its yellow stalking eyes the only stars. The laughing sea darkened and deepened, and each wave that broke called gently to him, whispering his name, calling him home. Somewhere far off, he could hear a bell slowly ringing. Impatience began to ripple through the room. He sat on, motionless and silent, oblivious to everything, feeling only the waves washing slowly and relentlessly over him.

  Louise

  Louise found the mirror unkind. During the course of any day she spoke to it many times, but when she listened to what it had to say, it never told her what she wanted to hear. Louise never fully believed what she heard and so she would often slide back before it in the hope that it might tell her something new. When her hopes were unrealised, her spirit was not crushed, but suffered only a little twist of disappointment. She knew the mirror did not really wish to be unkind and she knew, too, that there was always tomorrow. Sometimes when she walked by it, and knew it was not really thinking of her, she would glance secretly at it in the hope of capturing the truth by stealth.

  The mirror told her that her nose was too short and stubby, her eyes were closer to a grey colour when they should have been green, and that she had too many freckles. She saw red hair that was short and waveless, and bristling with an anarchy that defied the most ruthless brush. Her face was open and devoid of mystery. In her heart she believed truly that the face the mirror showed her every day was not her own. It could not be. The spirit that fountained and dolphined inside her could not be matched with such a face. Someone, perhaps, had taken hers by mistake, and left this one in its place. She wondered what her real face looked like. Sometimes in a magazine she saw a beautiful woman and wondered if she might be the thief. She squinted at the mirror and tried to believe that time would bring her beauty. There were moments when she felt so beautiful inside that she was sure it must seep through her skin and be visible for all to see. Now her thirteenth birthday was approaching, she looked at it more often and a kind of desperation grew in her looking.

  As the date approached, she became quiet and preoccupied, so absorbed in her own thoughts and feelings that her parents’ suggestion came as a complete surprise. She was delighted. It was the most exciting birthday treat that any girl could wish for, a colourful prospect that promised her thirteenth birthday would be a complete success. The very word ‘circus’ conjured up a vision of sparkling spectacle and magic moments that was more attractive than any party. Although she had never admitted it to anyone, her last birthday party had not been a success. The boys had been bored and restless and spoilt many of the games with their rowdiness. They had not mixed well with the girls, preferring to tease them and engage in competitive roughness. As for the girls, they had divided into tight friendship groups and made little effort to mix. At times, Louise felt she was not quite the centre of attraction that a birthday girl might be entitled to expect. The party had eventually petered into nothing and despite her cheerful public face she had been disappointed and a little hurt. Even the sum total of her presents had not amounted to much – small, impersonal, functional items that did little to cheer her failing spirits. A birthday should be special, one of the most special days of the year. And so Louise received the news that she and her younger sister were to be taken to the circus with relief. Although she suspected that her parents had conceived the idea to avoid a party, it did nothing to diminish its appeal.

  As the day grew nearer, Louise found herself looking more closely at the mirror. She knew what she hoped to see, but could find no trace of it, searching with an intensity of desire that gave her pain. She sought no dramatic transformation but would have been satisfied with even the slightest indication of change, some small step on the mysterious path that led to beauty. But no matter how often she looked, the mirror did not tell her what she wanted to hear, and she began to hate it. She brushed her rebellious red hair until her arms were sore and saw no difference from when she had started. Her grey-not-green eyes stared hungrily into its depths and turned away empty and unsatisfied. But there was still time.

  One afternoon when her parents had gone shopping she was left to look after Frances. Leaving her younger sister watching television cartoons she slipped into her mother’s bedroom. Sitting at the dressing table she gently touched the jars and bottles, delicately opening lids and closing them again after smelling the contents. The bottles and containers were themselves attractive, and she fingered each one with pleasure before making sure she returned it to its exact position on the dresser. She sprayed perfume lightly on her wrist and sniffed the fragrant scent. Then she began to apply make-up in the ritual sequence that she had watched her mother follow so many times. Thickly spread foundation cream camouflaged the stippling of freckles and blusher fanned her cheeks into flame. With her mouth round and open in concentration, she applied mascara slowly and precisely, then painted her eyelids pearly peach. The mirror told her that everything was wrong, but like someone painting a picture, she persevered in the hope that the final stroke might make everything right. Then with a final flourish she pursed her lips and coloured them deepest red.

  ‘You look like a clown, Louie.’

  The lipstick clattered on to the dresser, fragmenting the trance she had drifted into. Spinning round, she saw her young sister standing in the doorway of the bedroom, one hand clutching a crumpled bag of crisps and the other a favourite blanket.

  ‘You look funny, Louie. What you got on your face?’

  Like a thief caught with her hand in a pocket, Louise felt a shock of panic. In her rush for an escape she paused for neither subtlety nor guile.

  ‘If you tell mummy, I won’t take you with me to the circus.’

  Frances stared into her sister’s angry grey eyes with the peach-coloured lids and her fiery mouth, and was frightened into silence. Tears welled in her eyes.

  ‘I won’t tell, Louie. I won’t tell. Promise.’

  The look of fear on her sister’s face stabbed Louise with remorse. She crouched down and rested her hands on the child’s shoulders.

  ‘It’s all right, Frances – I didn’t mean it. Everything’s all right. The circus will be really good, won’t it? It’ll be really good. Just keep this a secret – our secret. Now go back down and watch television and I’ll be down in a minute.’

  Trailing h
er blanket, Frances left the room, a little sprinkling of crisps from the burst bag flaking in her wake. Grabbing a handful of tissues, Louise scoured her face clean, then went to the bathroom and washed and scrubbed till there was no trace of make-up.

  A week before her birthday, Louise was taken by her mother and with her guidance was allowed to pick a new dress. They went on a Saturday afternoon and the shops were crowded and unhelpful. At first the trip was a frustrating failure as their initial enthusiasm dissolved into a pessimistic trudge. Eventually, however, they found a dress that they both liked and which fitted perfectly. After its purchase they went into a coffee shop and Louise felt a firm flush of adulthood. Opposite their table sat two girls in their late teens who were very pretty and wore elegantly fashionable clothes. She watched them with a deep fascination that distracted her from the fragile cake she was too nervous to eat. She envied their effortless good looks and wondered what they had been like as children. Surely it could not be just a question of pure luck – if it was, then life was cruel and unfair to reward some and reject others. She knew she was not ugly but she knew, too, that she did not see in the mirror what she wanted to see. It was not that she wanted to be uniquely, head-turningly beautiful, but she did desire, more than anything else in the world, to possess the face that was truly hers. What her true face looked like, she wasn’t sure, but she believed in her heart that some day she would find it, a belief born not out of optimism, but grounded in an eternal conviction of the inevitable triumph of truth.

  When she returned home, she tried on her dress in the privacy of her own room. The mirror told her that it was pretty and expensive, but that the overall effect was not quite right. She looked and looked, but could not put a name to what was wrong. Brushing her hair with passion, she pulled it back from her face in a variety of styles, but it resisted stubbornly any suppression of its unbridled freedom. Balancing precariously in a pair of her mother’s high heels, she tottered unsteadily about the room. Suddenly, she heard her sister bunny-hopping up the stairs and, turning too sharply, tripped over herself and sprawled on the floor. In fear of creases and fluff, she scrambled to her feet just in time to hear Frances close the bathroom door behind her. She sat on the bed and felt foolish and just a little afraid. Time was growing short.