The Death of William Posters (31 page)

‘Don't worry,' Frank said. ‘I shan't crease myself.'

‘My name's Shelley Jones,' he said. ‘What's yours?'

Frank called out a good morning: was he going to live on that island? ‘Hell, no,' Shelley responded, cigarette held over the water. ‘I'll stay a few days in Palma, then maybe get me a cab out to that monastery where Chopin shacked-up with George Sand. Then I'll hump the hell out of it – to Morocco or some place. What are you doing then, in little old fascist Spain?'

‘I'm just waiting for the sun to shoot up.' He turned to the empty sea and, seeing that a new tint had been born, stared hard to observe the exact birth of the next colour. He saw shades of dark green on the mountainslope that had jumped there while he watched the sea; and going back to the sea, other colours had spread themselves meantime on the horizon. ‘I'm travelling,' Frank said, passing the brandy. ‘Drifting for a few months.'

‘As long as your wife likes it. What's your work, if you don't mind my discourtesy?'

‘I'm in a factory, but I'm taking time off.'

Careful to wipe the spout, Shelley returned the bottle: ‘I thought you weren't the usual kind of Limey. I even told myself you were a working man.' People were still sleeping on deck, huddled in blankets or overcoats against the sharpening wind. An old woman in black leaned against the saloon, eyes open in a wide stare as if she didn't hear the clink of spoons and coffee cups inside. ‘Even an American recognizes me as a worker!' Frank laughed. ‘There's hope for me yet.'

Scorn didn't put Shelley off: ‘I suppose in 1936 someone like you would have been in this country helping the Republic.'

‘If I'd had enough food in my belly to get here I might. There ain't anything like that, in these days. As soon as we get enough bread and cheese in us we have to start looking for a soul. It's a waste of time though.'

‘What do you want to look for?'

‘A world to build, maybe.'

‘Fine, pal. But you got to pull a few down first.'

‘I don't mind starting that way.'

‘I almost know,' Shelley said, ‘what the sailors of Odysseus must have felt, seeing an island for the first time, that had no soul because they hadn't yet poured out there libations on its beaches. They carried their souls in wine-jars, and that was three thousand years ago.'

‘Cut the Homer,' Frank said, ‘and tell me about yourself.'

Shelley had a gentle way of speech, for he liked to be ironic without giving offence. ‘That's hard. History at Chicago. Then work on Madison Avenue. But I gave that up, though I was careful to save out of my fifteen thousand a year – to do a lot of travelling around. Sure, Frank, I've been around, but we won't talk about that. I have a girl in Barcelona who I love-up and leave every few months – which brings me out to this neck of the woods. One day I think the poor girl won't be here because she's involved with the C N T – the good old C N T – getting their stuff printed and handed out.'

‘I thought that mob wasn't operating any more,' Frank said.

He smiled. ‘Well, you can never stop anybody. Look at the French, they've half a million soldiers in Algeria, and the shindig going on there is no big celebration for any man at all.'

‘You've been there?'

‘Ask me where I've never been,' Shelley said, a jocular brush-off. ‘I go quietly. Pussyfoot. Back in the silent watches of my room – wherever it happens to be – I open my case and play patience, shuffle a lot of little books from one hand to the other, fan them out, and choose a passport. Soft-shoe-shuffling from hot spot to hot spot, after a few lessons in Cuba. In Spanish, you understand?'

‘If you're not a nark,' Frank grinned, ‘how do you know that I'm not?'

‘If you aren't forthcoming, Frank, you cease to operate. Get me?'

‘As long as you get yourself, that's all that matters.' The water was like ink, ship turning in it. A light still flipped its beams from the outermost rock. More people were on deck, and an English voice brayed: ‘I say, what a fabulous colour the water is!' His wife agreed, in a similar bray. Frank reached for the cognac, and told Shelley to drink until he no longer felt the cold. A heavy ball of blood on the horizon. Stars gave final signals. The beige houses of a fishing village passed between sphinx-cliffs. But the sea here wouldn't accept warmth or colour from the sun, clung to its sombre cold. The wind bit now, and people kept back into the superstructure, feet shaken by the stubborn jolts of a donkey engine.

Frank went down the narrow companionway, out of the nagging wind. Myra was about to get her case from the cabin, but a Spanish woman lifted it for her. Frank took it, appreciating her help. ‘Do you want some coffee?'

‘Not till we land.'

‘Sleep O.K.?'

‘Very well. It was so calm.'

‘Let's go on deck then. We'll dock soon, and you ought to see the view first.' She said good-bye to the Spanish woman, to kisses, laughter, and delicate touches of her stomach. Frank went up with her case.

The ship was turning, bows sliding along the eastern hills whose summits slumped above a bank of blue cloud, rounded the headland and carried them into Palma Bay. ‘I'll be staying at the Fonda España,' Shelley said. His face had lost the open truculence of early morning, a stern gaze was still fixed on the island. ‘Call me some time and we'll have a drink.'

‘Let's have one now,' Frank said, ‘There's some left.' As though the hills had pushed towards them an unwanted cloud, the ship ran into a roll of mist, and instead of an all-flanking view of city and waterfront, the boat's fog signal sent its blunted death-hoot over the bay. Shelley grinned, then grimaced, hands for once out of his pockets and pressed together on the rail as if praying. They drank until brown and yellow houses appeared near the shore.

The ship was snapped up by the grey-jawed breakwater, moved slowly towards the towered and pinnacled cathedral shooting up above the ramparts. Grey, jagged mountains to the left were like the fossilized end of some prehistoric eruption. The wind had died, vanished, leaving warmth and sunlight over the seaport and island. ‘I hope the kid in there can feel this sight,' Frank said, holding her hand.

‘There'll be a lot more beauty yet,' she said.

‘Naples and Genoa,' Shelley called. ‘Or New York. New York takes some beating.' Rowing boats moved out of the ship's track like shoals of small-fry confused at the descending presence of a bigger fish whose food they did not happen to be. Frank tossed the empty drink-bottle into green water, then moved their luggage to where sailors were erecting block-and-tackle for lowering the gangway. On one side of the bay were bright and fashionable suburbs; on the other were cranes and warehouses. The ship edged along, almost at a stop. The excitement of people on the quay, and those on the ship about to land, spanned the narrowing channel like electric current breaking down a condenser. Beneath his brandied and buoyant spirits Frank felt layers of tiredness clamouring for rest. He'd been up all night, unable to sleep, his brain matched to the racing engines of the ship.

The train traversed a plain of red-earthed field clouded with almond and carob trees. After half an hour a rocky terrain of olives lifted them into long tunnels, in which everyone stopped talking to wait for the sun to re-flood the wooden-benched carriages. The earthquake rifting across Myra's life left her incapable of focusing herself on the matter within and the world in front of her eyes. Under the sudden warmth her senses rebelled, became sharp. The last months of upheaval couldn't be put down to nothing. Things happened for a purpose. Frank's eyes were fixed more often out of the window than on her, which she didn't mind, but which told her there was no certainty of her continuing to live with him. She had felt at peace with George, but some turbulence in Frank was buried too deep to put her at ease. Maybe to have his baby was the best and most logical solution, enough proof of love for him ever to want. Romance, as Frank had said, is finished. And maybe he was right. Life is difficult enough without that agony piled on top as well. Love is cosmic, real love coming when you spurn the need for it. Love then released goes out to everyone else. But not on its own. One must see that it did.

She shivered. Fresh air had the scent of lemons and oranges, and a subtle odour of snow from the high face of a far-off mountain. It was the sort of air that made Frank feel hungry and ready for love, both at the same time. Myra no longer wondered why her friend had stayed so long out of England. The sea lay in a corner of the horizon, pale blue and calm, slightly darker than the descending light-grey of the mountainsides.

Frank sat in shirt sleeves to feel the new air closer to him. The train swayed downhill with such speed that at one point Myra felt afraid it would shoot over some stony bank and kill them all. Then she smiled at the fact that fear and life were reappearing. ‘Are you glad we came?' he asked, thinking the landscape impressed her. The train slowed along the contour line, turned into the bowl of the valley through lush plants, trees and high cane, over the narrow bridge of a stream.

‘I am,' she answered with a smile.

Joanna was on the platform, a tall woman wearing fashionable expatriate clothes. Myra had told him that she and her husband lived abroad because they were poor, and Frank now saw that there must be more than one sort of poverty. Her welcome was genuine, in that few people passed by or called on them in the winter months. Long hair swung down her back, and she had a tanned, almost swarthy face, a prominent nose, wide lips and almond eyes. Frank was introduced. She kissed Myra: ‘I was sorry to hear it all,' she said. ‘Not that I ever liked George. But I know you'll soon forget' – a look at her stomach and another smile.

Frank carried the cases down the steps and into the little plaza, where a taxi was waiting. ‘Larry thought he'd put in an hour's work, so he couldn't run me down in the car.' They went two miles along the valley, and away from the sea, through farms, gardens and orange groves. Joanna's husband was an American writer, a short thin auburn man with grey darting eyes, and features as sharp as his wife's were generous. From six every morning till one he shut himself in a whitewashed room at the back of the house, bars at the window because a donkey had stabled there before they bought the property.

Frank and Myra had a room under gnarled wooden beams. The bed was mahogany and Spanish, a matrimonial bed hugely placed on the uneven floor. There was a wardrobe, a chair, chest of drawers and a straw mat of island make. Window and wooden shutters opened down the valley, over the smoky autumnal air of citrus trees, a trundling stream with deep banks winding between gardens and tile-roofed houses. Across the valley were the precipitous olive green slopes of the mountain range down which their train had roamed.

Myra sat on the bed: ‘We made it.'

‘Didn't you think we would?' He was unpacking the case.

‘I was too absorbed in travelling. I'm relieved we're here, though. Maybe I can find myself again.'

‘You mean it's an anti-climax? I never want to be myself again. I'm hoping that's impossible.'

‘Perhaps you came out of England to avoid it?'

‘This place is exactly how I imagined it,' he said, ‘with such weather. It's not warm, but it's sunny. This room is fine. This bed, the window, the beams, the crooked floor. There's something heavy and good about it, a sort of dignity, untouched by machines or traffic. It'll be O.K. for a while, but only for a rest. It's not real life – for me.'

She took the dark ribbon from her hair, ran it through her fingers. If she and George had had similar tastes, she and Frank certainly didn't meet in their opinions. It took time to discover such things, but how much less than it had about George! Did that mean she was wiser now, or was Frank a far simpler man? Joanna called out that coffee was ready, and they walked down without speaking.

They sat on the terrace to a breakfast of fresh rolls and cuts from a solid block of jam that Joanna had stopped the taxi to buy, coming back from town. Larry was reticent in his enquiries about their journey. Frank asked how long they'd lived there. ‘Eight years,' Larry said, ‘and it's not a day too long, for me. I never speak for Joanna, but I know she feels the same.' He was puzzled when Frank didn't readily agree that exile and solitude were wonderful. But Frank felt an uncertainty about everything while travelling, in which opinions could only be reactions – yet true enough when they managed to escape him.

Joanna smiled, touched her husband's arm. ‘It's wonderful living here. I couldn't go back to London or America, ever. I'm uneasy when I move off the island, as if I might die before I see it again.' She laughed, to prove her sentiments deep and genuine. Larry thought this unnecessary, too revealing perhaps, and grimaced – but so that she couldn't see it. Frank guessed they must have a rather submerged sort of relationship, a passionate couple fighting each other with torpedoes and submarines, deepsea mines and harbour netting, rather than with tanks and dive-bombers, clubs and boiling oil. They'll take a lifetime to kill each other, and call it love – which was one way of doing it. Such people were cheerful in front of others, and it was a happy breakfast out in the Majorcan sun, with hot rolls and coffee to push the dawn brandy into second place.

‘The main reason for my being on this island,' Larry said, ‘isn't only that I feel I've still got possession of my soul, but that it helps it to stay healthy as well. I can watch the seasons come and go. I can smell and see the real earth. I can see things growing on the trees. It's quiet enough for me to think. This is life to me.'

Myra was inside talking with Joanna, both recouping the gall and breadcrumbs of two married lives. ‘I don't need to pamper my soul,' Frank said. ‘If it doesn't like the life I lead it can lump it. This place would be death to me.'