Not Just a Soldier’s War Page 9

  ‘Hey, let me freshen up that tea. Like a dash of milk? It’s goat’s milk, really good for you. Maybe you just needed to cry. It’s nature’s way. I’m a great one for home-spun remedies.’

  Oh yes, Eve Anders did indeed need to cry. About the child, and about the woman and about Florentin who had done his Charlie Chaplin act, and the school-children, the idlers, the boy with the mule, and the soldiers who had guarded their little convoy. She needed to cry for herself, and for Ozz who had found that dreadful memento. But she was afraid to cry; afraid that if she did so then she might never stop. She turned her mind to her surroundings.

  All kitchens have a unique smell, but this one was reminiscent of the farmhouse kitchen in which Eve had spent her happiest days. That too had old stone walls, a flagstone floor and a cooking range. It too had its efficient but easy-going woman, the aunt who, when life had threatened to run out, had wound Eve up and set her going again. The scent conjured up a memory of Ken coming in carrying a shot-gun and a dangling pheasant, glowing and full of himself. He’d probably be carrying a gun now.

  She helped Sweet Moffat for a while, then when the sky lightened she took her drink and sat curled up in the front of the Mercedes, and indulged herself a little by imagining how they were getting on at home. Thinking of her elder brother, Ray, was even more affecting because she had been closer to him than to Ken.

  Ray hadn’t really understood why she needed to get away, believing that she had been driven out by his unexpected relationship with Bar. People said two women in a house never worked, but it had, and for months she and Bar had shared a happy life with Ray. She and Bar had loved each other for a long time before Ray gave in and let himself fall for her. As girls, they had loved one another deeply, with the kind of perfect passion that only girls burgeoning into womanhood can ever know: mystical, romantic, physical, total. Without being overtly sexual, they had established their maturing sexuality, tested their enticing sensuality. It had been in that tender encounter with Bar, who had been the conjuror of spiritual experience with herself as the acolyte, that they had become for a while two halves of the same spirit. ‘We are the one soul,’ Bar had said. ‘You the fair and I the dark. You the summer and I the winter,’ except in her rites Bar, in her fey and wise role, was inclined to say ‘Thou ist’ and ‘I be’.

  There had been a Christmas when Duke Barney had stalked into the kitchen as he stalked into her thoughts now. Dark and proud, he had been so damned sure of himself, so damned sure that she desired him, which she did. In self-assurance she was his equal. She knew that she had a good brain and how to use it. She could do anything she wanted, be anyone she wanted to be. Duke Barney would never be the man for her, but he was the only person who knew who and what she was.

  Ozz appeared with a bucket of water and some rags, and insisted that they do right by such a well-bred motor. ‘Ain’t she a beaut?’

  They agreed to take Helan Alexander at her word and take a day’s leave for Eve to give the motor a good run. She settled into the pleasure of being at the wheel of such a powerful car which was wonderfully easy to control. When Ozz encouraged her to increase her speed on a good main road, they seemed to be gliding along. Ozz, with a map on the dashboard, directed their route. Sharp corners, good roads, hair-pin bends, winding tracks where goats strayed, Eve took every change of road as though she and the car had been together for a long time. She loved it guiltily.

  As the morning drew on, yesterday’s experiences and the last vestiges of her disturbing night withdrew, closing the doors after them.

  ‘Y’ look born to the good life, Andy.’

  ‘I know.’

  He took out two new, uncrushed, American cigarettes, lit one and put it between her lips.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Don’t light yours, we can share this one.’

  He took the proffered cigarette and drew on it. ‘Spoken like a good mate.’

  That was how she felt when she was with him, not that she had any great wish that they should be anything other than good mates, but she was used to men eyeing her. She was puzzled by him. Her good mates had always been girls of her own age. Men? Well, they were the opposite sex, prospectors, predators, yet Ozz had so far treated her in almost a brotherly way. What would she do if he did make a pass? He was desirable, that was for sure. She heaved a sigh at her own perverseness.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘Take no notice, that’s just me, sorting myself out. I’m leaving the route to you. Where are we headed?’

  ‘Keep going till I tell you to stop.’

  He handed her back the cigarette. ‘Pull off the road just up here.’

  She did so, and turned off the engine. Hitching one knee up on to the seat, and resting his arm along the plump leather back, he turned to face her. She clutched the steering wheel and kept facing front, even though she felt the first stirrings of interest. It would be the most natural thing, two young people who liked one another engaging in a mild flirtation.

  ‘Listen, Andy, don’t go off the deep end, and tell me to mind my own bloody business if you like, but it won’t make any difference, I have t’ say it.’ He held up his forefinger. ‘One. The driver is always in charge of the vehicle. Two. The driver must always know the destination. Three. The driver always checks the proposed route before setting out. Four. Spare tyre, can of gasoline, can of water – the driver is responsible.’

  ‘I thought you put the cans in the boot.’

  ‘How can you be sure that I did?’

  She flung open the door, went to the boot and flung that open too. He came round, leaned against the car and smiled.

  ‘OK. So you did see to it. OK, I didn’t check. OK?’ Back in the car she added, ‘I won’t forget again.’

  ‘Good.’ He took the cigarette, drew upon it and handed it back. ‘There’s another, but I don’t want to get you mad.’

  ‘Why should I get mad?’

  ‘You don’t take criticism easily because you don’t like to believe that you’re not perfect. It makes you feel guilty not to be perfect. Am I right, or am I right?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. I’ve always been able to accept criticism.’ He was the most irritating man. ‘OK, let’s get the wigging all over at once.’

  ‘Five. If the driver’s a lovely young female and she’s wearing a skirt that’s too tight for driving, she should be sure that she can control the car if her passenger can’t control his urge to find out how far up her legs go.’ He took back the cigarette, but didn’t look at her.

  She sat very still, staring through the spotted windscreen. Her immediate impulse had been to pull her skirt down. I’m damned if I will!

  He sucked on the last of the cigarette, blew a stream of smoke out of the window, then flicked away the stub. ‘You said you wouldn’t get mad.’

  ‘I’m not mad.’ She turned on the engine, but made no attempt to put it into gear. ‘Let me see the map. Please.’

  ‘You are mad.’

  ‘I’m not! And if you don’t hurry you’re going to waste that half-inch stub of cigarette smouldering over there.’ Such a childish remark. He turned casually to look at the thin trail of smoke. ‘What the hell, let it burn. I’m in an expansive mood.’

  He was needling her. She was determined not to respond, so she looked fiercely at the map. She switched off the engine and realized that the map was upside down. She traced the routes of their recent convoy journeys with her forefinger. He was right, she was mad at herself. She became as aware of her exposed knees as if they had been her naked thighs.

  Ozz sat, half turned in her direction, seemingly quite at ease as she pored over the map. ‘Six,’ she said at last. ‘Do you want to know number six, Mr Lavender?’

  ‘Sure, Andy,’ he said amiably. ‘If it’ll teach me anything, sure I want to know.’

  ‘OK! Six. Drivers who are given a bit of sensible advice never allow themselves to get mad – it makes them feel so damned foolish.’

  ‘’Fraid that’s n
ot a new one, Andy.’ Opening the door, he said, ‘I’ll just get it before it burns right down. Shame to waste good tobacco.’

  Opening the door on her side, she said, ‘Come on, now that we’ve got that settled I’m going to stretch my legs for five minutes.’ She had pulled off the road into the lee of some craggy rocks which shielded the view. When she walked round to the other side of the car, she was amazed to discover that beyond the rocks the land dropped away into a valley so beautiful that it might have been a fantasy. More than just beautiful, it was exhilarating, enchanting, and at the same time humbling and alien. Here was a landscape in which she knew she was a foreigner, the stranger in a strange land. Where had that phrase come from? Well, it suited her mood just now. Alienation invoked in her a sense of risk, of uncertainty. Tomorrow could bring anything at all. In the weeks and months ahead, she would become used to this exotic countryside, but not too soon, for she wanted to continue falling in love with this place.

  She became aware of Ozz standing beside her, and he too was gazing reflectively over the red-earth valley striated with even rows of bright green narrowing into the far distance and ending in craggy outcrops, similar to the one where they found themselves. ‘Makes me feel pretty homesick,’ he said.

  ‘Those are grapes, aren’t they?’

  ‘Sure. We got vineyards back home. Our place has good acidic soil, right amount of rainfall, hill-slopes open to the sun, what else but grapes could you grow on land like that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I assumed you were a truck-driver.’

  He hunkered down close to the rough, dry ground, crumbling a handful of earth which trickled through his fingers. She sat beside him, covering her knees without making a point of it. ‘I am, weekends, evenings and holidays,’ he said. ‘It’s all I’m really fit for on my dad’s spread. The big boys won’t let me near the vines. I don’t mind, I’d rather have grapes poured cool straight from a cool bottle. Chateau Lavender. It’s true. My old man makes real good wine. Good as French, but it’s fragile. Don’t travel too well. You Brits turn up your noses at it, and I can’t blame you. Aussie wine should be drunk close as possible to where it grows.’ He leaned back on his hands and stared up at the dear blue sky. After a few minutes of restful silence he said, ‘In the real world, I’m a school-teacher.’

  It was the last thing Eve would have guessed from his sunburned skin, his unruly hair, his powerful physique. Her ear picked up the change in his vowel-sounds as he talked about his home. He dropped the stagey good cobber.

  ‘Lavenders is a family wine business. You’d know Lavenders if you came from Down Under. Good stuff, not like this battery acid they drink in Spain. Dad and my brothers tend the vineyards.’ He pointed to the green rows. ‘I can tell you just what you’d find if you went down there. Thousands and thousands of sprays of little flowers, some still blooming, some showing the first titchy little grapes. You come back in a couple of weeks and they’ll be neat little green grapes big as… big as your fingernail. Seven Lavender brothers. Mam reckoned she always wanted to see one son in a white-collar job, so being the youngest I guess I was it.’ He wagged his head and smiled a lop-sided smile. ‘Just as well she didn’t want a son in a dog-collar job, I’d have made one hell of a Father Lavender.’

  ‘Did she mind you coming to Spain?’

  ‘Mam? She was the first one to come up with the idea.’ He smiled as he mimicked the Welsh tongue, ‘Mam’s a Thomas, you see.’ He changed his tone. ‘From Welsh Wales. Her da was a miner, but what is the use being in the coal if it’s killing you and it is just a bit of sun on your back you need? So Granda took Nana and my mam and her brothers and sisters, and set off for New South Wales on a loan from some old auntie. My little mam still has the Welsh in her – clings to it like grim death. Granda didn’t know anything about growing grapes, so he moved on to where there were people who did, and set up shop on his own until he met another Welshman – Bryn Lavender – with two sons and a variety of grape that was made by the Good Lord to blend with the one Granda grew. Ah, to hear the story properly, you should hear little mam tell it.’

  ‘You love your mother a lot, don’t you?’

  ‘I guess I do, but your mam’s always just your mam and you don’t ask yourself that kind of question.’

  ‘Do you take after her?’

  ‘In looks? I suppose I do.’ He grinned fondly. ‘She’s older, littler and a bunch of pregnancies hasn’t done a lot for her shape. I don’t know, like with the love bit, it isn’t easy to look at your mam objectively. She’s my little old Welsh mam, and she’s got a sense of what’s right and what ain’t more than anybody I ever knew. You two’d get on like a house afire.’ He looked at his wrist-watch. ‘I was thinking we might drive as far as the coast. What do you think?’

  She smiled. ‘I’ll just check the map.’

  ‘It’s not that far to Jávea, I wouldn’t mind having a look now we’re this close.’

  ‘I’ll go along with that. Do you know this part of the coast?’

  He shook his head. ‘In the classroom back home, there was a picture of a bay on a calendar that I inherited along with the ten-year-old kids. I’d give a lot to see the real thing. I’d like to write to the kids, tell them I was there. I expect the picture’s still on the wall, they could mark it with a cross.’

  ‘As good an excuse as any to cruise around like tourists.’

  ‘To hell with your conscience. The war will still be there tomorrow and didn’t Alex say that we were to give the Beaut a good test, and have a day off?’

  They made for Chinchilla de Monte Aragón, halting briefly to take photos of its massive, sandy-brown castle which seemed to have thrust its towers and fortified walls out of a sandy-brown bed. The town itself was old and set on an isolated ridge overlooking the plains. Its streets radiated out from an old church and were so steep and narrow that at times Eve’s heart was in her mouth, but that did not lessen her delight and curiosity.

  Some miles further on, Ozz announced, ‘Almansa,’ and got his camera ready for anything that would please his mam. Here they stopped for a drink and some gasoline. This town too had its dominating castle, on a conical outcrop, looking as picturesque and dramatic as anything dreamed up for a Hollywood film. The church was gothic and imposing, and there was an ancient convent.

  The day was now hot as hot, and the sky blue as blue. On the last few kilometres of the journey, the landscape oscillated, the red-and-black paintwork of the Mercedes shimmered, and those roads which were metal-surfaced seemed to be detached from the vehicles driving on them, giving cars and carts the appearance of floating a foot above the ground.

  Tracing the map with his finger, Ozz gave Eve a series of directions, none of which brought him to the point from which his classroom picture had been taken. ‘OK, I give up. Go south and it looks as though we ought to come to some small coves. If it’s not too public, we might take a dip.’

  They reached a point where it appeared they might get access to the sea. Eve manoeuvred the wide car along a road that dropped steeply down, becoming narrower as it went. Suddenly, they were confronted by a breathtaking view over the deep blue bay of Jávea, an expanse of still water enclosed within hills that sloped down to pale buff-coloured headlands and beach.

  Ozz pushed forward in his seat. ‘Hey! That’s my picture. Would you believe it? It actually exists.’ The sun was almost overhead, and as they got out the heat slammed into them.

  ‘Smell the sea, Ozz?’

  Ozz nods.

  ‘My father was a sailor, we lived by the sea.’

  Ozz peers at her, she seldom lets on about herself. Curious as he is about her, he knows better than to show it. Opening the boot he takes out a large green golfing umbrella. ‘Bet you never reckoned there’d be a use for this. It’s the real McCoy.’

  ‘I’m surprised nobody’s pilfered it.’

  ‘C’mon, dig out a couple of bottles and let’s go see what the beach is like.’

  A spontaneous picnic. The f
eeling of elation as she unearths the red wine and fizzy lemonade and packs into her haversack some of the tomatoes she bought along the road, is straight out of her childhood: taking strawberries and honey-water in a bottle to sit with feet dangling in cool water.

  There is a wonderful purple shade beneath the slender dark-green pines. Holding hands they scramble and slide down the deep litter of needles, fooling about and laughing as they stumble into one another until, hands still tightly clasped, they leap over a small outcrop of rocks and fetch up on a stretch of pale golden beach that in the brilliant sunlight appears dazzlingly white. He squeezes her hand and, letting out a low whistle, says slowly, ‘Hey, hey. Will y’ just look at that, sweetheart.’

  The bay that they had seen from above is a crescent of rocky foreshore bordering a fiat beach of fine, powdery sand. Behind the rocks the pine wood slopes steeply, dark against the deep blue sky. There is no sign of life, only birdsong.

  ‘Listen, Andy.’ They hold their breath, listening to the ribbon of song. ‘D’you know what that sounds like?’

  ‘Yes, but it can’t be, can it? Not here.’

  ‘Can’t be what? Listen. Go on, say what you think.’

  She laughs. ‘It can’t be, it’s ridiculous, but I think – a nightingale?’

  ‘Yeah. I think a nightingale too. Can y’ believe it?’

  ‘Honestly!’ Then she giggles like a happy schoolgirl. ‘This is not real, you know, it’s a Hollywood film set, and that’s sound-effects.’

  ‘OK. Scene one, take one!’ He hurls one of his boots in the direction of the sea. The rest of their footwear follows in a kind of contest. Then he opens the huge umbrella, shoulders her haversack and with arms around one another’s waists, they brave the hot dry sand in hops and leaps as far as the damp strand. There, Ozz angles the umbrella against the sun, and they sink gratefully on to the firm sand. They share one of the bottles of sweet lemonade that spurts over them as Eve opens it.

  ‘Nectar of the gods. I’m goin’ to peel off and cool down if it’s OK with you? I’m decent. Athletic strip,’ he explains as he reveals that he is wearing vest and running shorts. ‘I went for an early run.’ He removes the vest. In spite of the dream fantasy that had shaken her in the early hours, Eve finds herself responding to Ozz’s marvellously athletic body and long bare legs, muscles shaped by the training specific to a hurdler and long, narrow, white, cared-for feet.