His boots were large and broken, the tops rising well above the ankles.
‘Are the boots not too heavy for the heat?’ the man asked after following the crushing of another cigarette butt.
‘Much, much too heavy.’
‘Why do you wear them, then?’
‘It’s regulations.’
‘Do they cost much?’
‘They cost very much.’ He named an exorbitant price.
‘Why don’t you buy a cheaper, lighter pair in the shop?’
‘It’s not allowed. The government has given the monopoly to this man. All the guardia have to buy off the monopoly. They can charge what they like.’
‘It’s horrible,’ the woman said in indignation.
‘It’s not fair but it is the way it is,’ the man answered.
‘It is the way it is,’ the guardia said as he rose, screwing his last cigarette butt carefully into the floor and taking the gun from where it leaned against the stairs. The man saw him to the door, watched his bicycle light waver into the night, before he shut the door on the sharksmell.
‘This country is horrible. It is a crime to live here,’ the woman said as soon as he came back to the table.
‘The people are not.’
‘They are if they accept it. As the German people were with the Nazis.’
‘Maybe they don’t have much choice.’
‘You are one of them. And you give me no support. You let that man come in and ruin the evening. Don’t you know that there are some people who cannot live if they have to think about the possibility of someone always being about to enter their room? I am one of these. And you give me no protection.’ She was sobbing as she went towards the stairs.
The man watched her go. He said or did nothing but refill his wine glass to the brim from the Soberano bottle.
XII
‘Will you come with me to Garrucha?’ he asked.
‘There’s no solutions going places,’ she retorted. ‘You buy me five postcards that you say I might like to send to my friends or you ask me to come to Garrucha and you think things are as good as they can be. Why don’t you go back to yourself? Do you know that remorse originally meant going back to oneself before the word was poisoned by the popes?’
‘I don’t believe there are solutions.’
‘There are solutions if one tries hard enough. It’s the same old negativism you’ve been drilled to accept.’
‘It’d be nice for me if you came to Garrucha.’ He wanted to avoid argument at any cost. ‘I thought it’d be nice to sit at the café and watch the sea and wait for the boats to come in to buy fish.’
‘You want me to come with you, then?’
‘I do.’
‘That’s different.’ She was suddenly lit with pleasure. ‘I don’t want to go to Garrucha but I want you to want me to go to Garrucha. You’ll wait for me to get ready?’
She took a half-hour to change into yellow sandals and a dress of dark blue denim that buttoned down the front and had a pocket over each breast. She asked many times as she changed if the make-up concealed the scar below the eye, but she was happy on the Vespa and sang a marching song in her own language.
José sat at the red table outside the café and was awkward in the woman’s presence until the talk came round to the Civil War.
‘Yes. We shot the two priests at Garrucha. We took them out and shot them against the wall of the church. And we’d shoot them again if we got the chance,’ José confided.
‘Good, good.’ The woman nodded vigorously.
‘They say the communists lost the war,’ José’s excitement brought Tomás out of the café. ‘The communists did not lose the war. The people of Spain lost the war. The fascists won it.’
José translated what he’d said for Tomás who nodded in his lazy way.
‘Tomás is communist too but he has to be careful since he has a café,’ José explained.
‘I’m communist as well.’ The woman pulled vigorously at her cigarette.
‘How did you escape, José?’ the man asked. ‘When it ended?’
‘I got to Valencia, travelling at night, and got on a boat there.’
‘Why don’t the Spanish do something, overthrow that fascist government?’ the woman asked in nervous indignation. José spread his hands.
‘The people of Spain are tired,’ he said.
A jeep came along the harbour. The magistrate and his glandular son and two farmhands were in the jeep. When the magistrate saw the woman he stopped and got out.
‘You are the foreigners in Casa Smith.’ He introduced himself. ‘I’ve been looking for you. I’ve heard about you.’
Tomás melted back into the café, and José went stiff on the chair.
‘I know English. I like foreigners. I hate Spanish scum,’ the magistrate said. He was grey and lean, a glare in the eyes that sees nothing but his own obsessions.
‘You will have a drink with me? Yes?’ He waved and without waiting for answer he ordered three cognacs, shouting the order into the bar. Tomás’s son came with the three cognacs on a tray.
‘I like foreigners. I hate Spanish scum.’ The magistrate drank.
‘These are my friends,’ the man said, and was about to move his cognac towards José when the old sailor’s hand forbade it. José sat in petrified dignity on the chair.
‘You do not know enough about Spain,’ the magistrate shouted. ‘Drink.’
The man looked at José who made no movement and when the magistrate shouted again, ‘Drink,’ they both drank in bewilderment.
‘We drink and now we go to see my peaches. I give you the first and finest peaches of the summer.’
‘I have the Vespa,’ the man said.
‘There’s plenty of place.’ He gestured towards the jeep.
‘I have to be back for the boats.’
‘The jeep will take you back for the boats. Come. I give you the first and finest peaches of the summer.’
XIII
A large spraying machine on metal wheels stood inside the gate of the peach orchard, and the rows of trees ran farther than the eye could follow, the loose red earth of the irrigation channels between the rows.
‘Thousands of trees.’ The magistrate waved an arm, and when he shouted at the two workmen they ran and turned several water taps on. Water is magic in the south of Spain. As it gushed into the channels, the red clay drinking it as fast as it ran, the magistrate’s frenzy increased. The glandular son sat bored and overcome in the jeep.
‘I have water for my trees,’ he shouted as he waved an arm towards the white moorish village that hung on the side of the mountain, ‘and these scum do not have water for their houses,’ he laughed in crazy triumph. ‘You like my peach trees?’
‘They are very fine,’ the man said.
‘All over the world they go. To London. To Berlin. To New York. They go from Valencia,’ he shouted, his eyes on the woman’s body under the blue denim dress.
‘Come. I’ll give you first peaches.’