‘But that’s criminal in this age,’ she said.
‘What is there to do?’
‘There’s contraception.’
‘In Spain there’s not.’
‘They could be brought in.’
‘If you can I’ll pay you,’ he said eagerly.
When she sent back the completed translation she asked the theatre’s editor if he could send the contraceptives with the next commission. She explained why she wanted them, though she reflected that he would think what he wanted anyhow. The contraceptives did get through with the next commissioned play. They wanted a new translation of The Seagull, which delighted her. She felt it would bring her closer to Chekhov and that when she had finished it she would be able to begin what she had come here to try to do in the first place. The only objection the editor had to sending the contraceptives was that he was uneasy for her safety: it was against the law, and it was Spain, and policemen were as notorious as other people for wanting promotion.
She thought Manolo was nervous and he left her quickly after she handed him the package that afternoon, but she put it out of mind as natural embarrassment in taking contraceptives from a woman, and went back to reading The Seagull. She was still reading it and making notes on the margins when she heard boots and voices coming up the gravel and a loud knock with what sounded like a gun butt on the door. She was frightened as she called out, ‘Who’s there?’ and a voice she didn’t know called back, ‘Open. It’s the police.’ When she opened the door she saw Manolo and the jefe of the local guardia, a fat oily man she had often seen lolling about the market, and he barged into the house. Manolo closed the door behind them as she instinctively got behind the table.
The jefe threw the package she had given Manolo earlier in the day on to the table. ‘You know this?’ As she nodded she noticed in growing fear that both of them were very drunk. ‘You know it’s against the law? You can go to prison for this,’ he said, the small oily eyes glittering across the table. She decided there was no use answering any more.
‘Still, Manolo and myself have agreed to forget it if we can try them out here.’ His oily eyes fell pointedly on the package on the table but the voice was hesitant. ‘That’s if you don’t prefer it Spanish style.’ He laughed back to Manolo for support, and started to edge round the table.
They were drunk and excited. They would probably take her anyhow. How often had she heard this problem argued. Usually it was agreed it was better to yield than to get hurt. After all, sex wasn’t all it was cracked up to be: in Paris the butcher and the baker shook hands with the local whores when they met, as people plying different trades.
‘All right. As long as you promise to leave as soon as it’s done.’ Her voice stopped him. It had a calm she didn’t feel.
‘Okay, it’s a promise.’ They both nodded eagerly. They reminded her of mastered boys as they asked apprehensively, ‘With the … or without?’
‘With.’
The jefe followed her first into the room. ‘All the clothes off,’ was his one demand. She averted her face while it took place. A few times after parties, when she was younger, hadn’t she held almost total strangers in her arms? Then she fixed completely on the two sentences The word Oysters was chalked on the wagon that carried Chekhov’s body to Moscow for burial The coffin was carried in the oyster wagon because of the fierce heat of early July, her mind moving over them from beginning to end, and from beginning to end, again and again. Manolo rushed out of the room when he had finished. They kept their word and left, subdued and quiet. It had not been as jolly as they must have imagined it would be.
She showered and washed and changed into new clothes. She poured herself a large glass of cognac at the table, noticing that they must have taken the condoms. Then she began to sob, dry and hard at first, rising to a flood of rage against her own foolishness. ‘There is only one real sin — stupidity. You always get punished for behaving stupidly,’ the poet Severi was fond of repeating.
When she quietened she drank what was left of the cognac and then started to pack. She stayed up all night packing and putting the house in order for her departure. Numbed with tiredness she walked to the village the next morning. All the seats on the express that passed through Vera were booked for that day but she could take the rápido to Granada and go straight to Barcelona from there. She arranged for the one taxi in the village to take her to the train. The taximan came and she made listless replies to his ebullient talk on the drive by the sea to meet the train. The rápido was full of peasants and as it crawled from station to small station she knew it would be night before it reached Granada. She would find some hotel close to the station. In the morning she would see a doctor and then go to Barcelona. A woman in a black shawl on the wooden seat facing her offered her a sliver of sausage and a gourd of wine. She took the sausage but refused the wine. She wasn’t confident that her hands were steady enough to direct the thin stream into her mouth. Then she nodded to sleep, and when she woke she thought the bitter taste of oysters was in her mouth and that an awful lot of people were pacing up and down and waving their arms around. She had a sudden desire to look out the window to see if the word Oysters was chalked on the wagon; but then she saw that the train had just stopped at a large station and that the woman in the black shawl was still there and was smiling on her.
A Slip-up
There was such a strain on the silence between them after he’d eaten that it had to be broken.
‘Maybe we should never have given up the farm and come here. Even though we had no one to pass it on to,’ Michael said, his head of coarse white hair leaning away from his wife as he spoke. What had happened today would never have happened if they’d stayed, he thought, and there’d be no shame; but he did not speak it.
‘Racing across hedges and ditches after cattle, is it, at our age. Cows, hens, pigs, calves, racing from light to dark on those watery fields between two lakes, up to the tips of our wellingtons in mud and water, having to run with the deeds to the bank manager after a bad year. I thought we’d gone into all this before.’
‘Well, we’d never have had to retire if we’d stayed.’ What he said already sounded lame.
‘We’d be retired all right. We’d be retired all right, into the graveyard long years ago if we’d stayed. You don’t know what a day this has been for me as well.’ Agnes began to cry and Michael sat still in the chair as she cried.
‘After I came home from Tesco’s I sorted the parcels,’ she said. ‘And at ten to one I put the kippers under the grill. Michael will have just about finished his bottle of Bass and be coming out the door of the Royal, I said when I looked at the clock. Michael must have run into someone on his way back, I thought, as it went past one. And when it got to ten past I said you must have fell in with company, but I was beginning to get worried.’
‘You know I never fall in with company,’ he protested irritably. ‘I always leave the Royal at ten to, never a minute more nor less.’
‘I didn’t know what way to turn when it got to half past, I was that paralysed with worry, and then I said I’ll wait five minutes to see, and five minutes, and another five minutes, and I wasn’t able to move with worry, and then it was nearly a quarter past two. I couldn’t stand it. And then I said I’ll go down to the Royal. And I’ll never know why I didn’t think of it before.
‘Denis and Joan were just beginning to lock up when I got to the Royal. “What is it, Agnes?” Denis said. “Have you seen Michael?” I asked. “No.” Denis shook his head. “He hasn’t been in at all today. We were wondering if he was all right. It’s the first time he’s not showed up for his bottle of Bass since he had that flu last winter.” “He’s not showed up for his lunch either and he’s always on the dot. What can have happened to him?” I started to cry.