‘I can’t rest at the moment.’ He raked stray bits of paper closer to the fire. ‘I prefer to sleep at night.’
‘Do you like being in this community?’
‘I can’t live anywhere else, so I have to,’ he said, kicking a pile of school exercise books into the flame.
‘You’re honest. Why not?’
‘My wife’s here. I have shelter. That’s a good reason to like it. And I eat good food.’
‘Do you agree with their ideas?’
‘I don’t have to,’ he smiled.
She sat on the log. ‘If you have pride you do.’
‘What does anyone want with that?’ he laughed — uneasily.
‘Aren’t you a man?’
‘A gentleman,’ he said firmly, and she was afraid of the violence in his voice, ‘who has all the pride he needs. I believe in doing as little harm as possible to my fellow-men, and living as quietly as I can.’
‘That means you consider yourself one of the elite, living off those who do real work.’
A smile disguised his face. ‘There’s a lot of unemployment in the country. It would be unjust of me to take somebody else’s job.’
‘With a socialist system there’d be work for everybody.’
‘I suppose there would be a lot of pushing around,’ he said. ‘Who do you live off?’
‘I’ve worked since I was sixteen. I’ve picked olives off the ground, or harvested oranges, and have done domestic work in hotels. I’ve worked in prison. I’ve worked in the textile factories of Sabadell. I’m not a stranger to it.’ She was angry with him.
A bag of broken plastic toys swept into flame, and they moved from searing heat. ‘Those who don’t work,’ she said, ‘should have no food. In a democratic system a steel-worker and a coalminer would have ten votes on the electoral roll because they are what Shelley used to call “primary producers”.’
‘What about doctors and teachers?’
‘They’re important, too.’
‘Everybody is important,’ he said. ‘Your beliefs and Dawley’s are similar: ruthless justice. Two of a kind. To me all people are equal.’
Her eyes were full of scorn. ‘I don’t understand that sort of equality.’
Large drops of rain were spitting on to the fire. They watched it, drawn by its noise and little puffs of vapour. Grass and earth sent up a heavy smell of pungent soil. The rain seemed weightier than the steely needles of water that fell among the olive trees behind her village at home. The soil here soaked up water, whereas there it ran into gullies and fed the Ebro, unmistakable in its purpose.
Ralph wanted to go into the house where it was dry and there’d be fresh hot tea to drink, but he couldn’t move or run while Maricarmen stood there. Her thin blouse was quickly soaked, the upper part of her breasts showing pink through the material. Noting the colour and shape, he blushed and looked towards the hedge.
She smiled at his stupid embarrassment, and didn’t think Dawley would turn away so readily. Nor would Handley, who often stared at her either as an artist, or with the brazenness of an older man.
She walked to the house. Everyone agreed that she and Dawley would get on well together, but so far she had avoided him so successfully that she thought he was deliberately keeping out of her way, which only proved how guilty he felt because of what he had done to Shelley. This made her more determined to settle him for his crime. Yet she must have proof. Her sense of justice required it. To kill for a good reason was still murder. If society killed for a bad reason, it was justice. Yet where was the difference if you had no belief in the so-called rights of the State?
On the other hand, to kill someone when you had proof of his guilt was also an act of revenge. Was that better for your conscience than an act of passion? Society carried out these acts of revenge all the time, and in her name who had never sanctioned it. And yet why should she imitate a society she despised? It confused and worried her. But the fact that she had to kill Dawley kept her calm, though she couldn’t do so till she had proper evidence on which to convict him. If she didn’t find enough proof to back up her intuition, which could only mean that he was innocent, then she would go quietly back to political work in Spain.
She went to help in the kitchen. Enid, stirring a huge pan of sauce on the stove, turned at the noise of the door: ‘You got caught in the rain. I’d change if I were you.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘You won’t say that if you get pneumonia. I’ll lend you a blouse if you haven’t got a clean one. We’re about the same size in front.’
They looked after her as if she were some delicate flower who might perish in their hideous climate, not knowing how bad Spanish weather could be, how she’d often been caught in snow and rain on journeys that none in this house might survive. Such persistent solicitousness affronted her pride, yet out of natural politeness she said nothing, and went up to change.
In her room she rubbed herself dry. Her only other brassiere was still damp, so she put on a vest and clean blouse. Suddenly tired and tempted to lie down, she wondered whether such lethargy hadn’t come on her since seeing the person she had decided to kill, a state of somnolence in which the act would resolve itself without any effort at all.
She looked at the grey light of the window, rain hammering the glass, full blown trees creaking in the garden. Who wouldn’t be sleepy with such a green and deadly landscape? Who wouldn’t act in it?
A dozen cups and saucers had been set out over the formica-topped table, and two-year-old Mark looked on gravely from his highchair as Myra clattered a spoon into each saucer. ‘He’s an intelligent child,’ Maricarmen said.
‘They are, at his age.’
She liked Myra, though they had made little contact so far. She sat down, but feeling livelier in face of such activity, and the high wattage bulbs radiating in the large kitchen. At the slightest sign of dim weather, or hours before dusk, even if it was bright outside, every houselight was turned on. In Spain one small bulb sufficed for a whole thrifty family, and here the continual waste made her uneasy. ‘Who is Mark’s father?’ she asked, not finally clear on who belonged to whom.
‘Frank. I had Mark in Tangier just after he went off with Shelley. Whose did you think he was?’ she asked, seeing an expression on her face as if a needle had been stuck into her.
‘I thought maybe he was Handley’s. It’s a strange house.’
Myra took a cake tin out of the cupboard. ‘It is if you’re a stranger to it.’
‘I mean,’ said Maricarmen, ‘it’s very normal in one way because all the women stay in the kitchen, while the men do their own work. It’s not what I’d call a liberal community — the men plotting revolution and equality, and the woman kept at their traditional labour.’
Myra laid pieces of cake on a platter, and cut bread for sandwiches. This girl was saying what went continually through her own mind. ‘There isn’t too much to do. It’s shared between Enid, myself, Mandy and the two au pair girls. It’s mechanised. Ralph and Cuthbert, as well as Albert now and again, take care of the garden and garage chores.’
‘It’s the principle of the system,’ Maricarmen went on.
Myra was interested to know how she would alter it.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘There you are, then.’
At that, she was stung to reply: ‘Everyone over eighteen, male or female, should do a day’s work in the kitchen. That would include Mr Handley, who may be an artist, but even an artist has to eat.’
Myra laughed. ‘Let’s talk to Enid, then we can put our new system forward at the next meeting. You’re living in the house, so you can vote, and that’ll make four of us. It’s a pity Nancy left, because she’d have been with us. But if Mandy can talk Ralph to our side that will be five. Cuthbert might back us for devilment if he sees his father’s against it. That’ll be six-four. We may do it.’ She was surprised at her optimism, and renewed energy at the thought of breaking the usual flaccid routine. Mark clattered his spoon against the highchair tray, and made a noise as if asking for cake — which was passed to him in a plastic dish.