“You watch your child,” Ricardo said.
Graham hauled on the brakes and slid to a stop; Felix almost collided with his back wheel. He pulled up a few feet ahead, and stared back at his dad, concern pulling all of his features into the center of his face.
Ricardo seemed genuinely nonplussed. “What is it that went wrong? Your bike, it is old and unresponsive?”
Now he read a very definite slight in their guide’s words. Ricardo knew the language better than he was letting on. Graham’s arms and legs were shaking with anger. He felt weak and febrile, as if he were suffering from low blood sugar. “What do you mean, ‘watch my child’?”
“It is in all the news in the Alentejo region. You have heard of O Sedento?”
“No.” Graham shook his head. His breath was as empty as the dry, pallid drift of seedpods collected at the side of the path. “What is it?”
“Not it. A him. A person. O Sedento. Meaning the English, it is the thirsty.”
“The thirsty?”
“This is the correct.”
“Thirsty for what?”
Ricardo licked his lips and his tongue was like an undercooked steak, far too big for his mouth. He winked. “O Sedento de Sangue. The thirsty of—”
“The bloodthirsty,” Graham corrected him.
“It is like the Draculas coming out of Pennsylvania shadows, no?”
Any other time, Graham would have found Ricardo’s abject malapropisms funny; endearing even. Now they gave him the creeps. He pressed on against the pedals, trying to put some distance between him and the guide. His stomach churned.
They completed their bicycle ride at a car park where a minibus was waiting to take them back to their hotel. While the others stood around admiring the view, Graham told Felix to stand with Sheila while he paid a visit to the toilet. Once there, he urinated lustily, but was appalled to see his stream of urine was the color of rust. Hadn’t he drunk a good liter of water that morning, in preparation for this arduous task? Then it must be the plant’s fault. Yes, there was the same mealy smell; it had gone through him like the odor of asparagus. No more bush tucker. He was looking forward to the evening. Steak all the way. And a carafe of wine.
He left the cubicle and washed his hands; he felt his heart perform a little tumble in his chest.
Remember that time…
Stop it. The one thing he hated about Cherry was the way she was constantly harking back. She never seemed to look forward. Forget that he had lost forty pounds over the last six months. Forget that his cholesterol levels were the lowest they’d ever been, or that he treated his body to a mainly Mediterranean diet these days. No. He imagined her at the table tonight casting disgusted looks at his red meat and chips. You’ll not be needing the dessert menu after all that?
Remember that time…
He didn’t need the reminders. It hadn’t even been a proper cardiac arrest. If anything, it was a shot across the bows. He’d been at school, patrolling the playground with his usual cup of tea (milk, two sugars) when the first signs arrived. He’d been annoyed because he’d been asked by the Head to attend a meeting that evening in his stead, and there was also a problem with Felix who was either being bullied or bullying others depending on the rumors knocking around. Also, that morning he and Cherry had somehow got into an argument during sex, and she had pushed him away. There was an ache in his jaw and a pressure growing—like indigestion—around his breastbone. Later he felt breathless climbing the stairs to the gym after work. He’d decided then, feeling mild palpitations, that exercise was not something he should be doing. A visit to the doctor the following morning led to his GP calling for an ambulance.
A cardiologist conducted an ECG and gave him the all-clear, but there were lifestyle choices to make. He made them. Now his mid-morning tea was sugarless and, invariably, green. He cut down on calories and stepped up the exercise. Butter became olive oil. Battered cod became grilled salmon. He ate salad and brown rice. The pints turned into occasional glasses of red wine. The weight fled from him. But Cherry was unimpressed. Maybe it was jealousy; as they both approached middle age, it was she slowly being overcome by avoirdupois.
Remember that time…
He wondered now, as they filed back into the minibus, whether the juice of the plant had carried some kind of poison that was deleterious to the heart. Felix sat next to him, his head against his shoulder, as he thought of his parents (long dead, both heart attacks) and their love of gardening. His father had only ever referred to a plant using its Latin name, just one of the many ways he had tried to trump his only son’s greater academic achievements.
Now he thought of monkshood and belladonna, of sweetshrub and Christmas rose. Oleander and foxglove. As a child he had loved apricots and rhubarb, but his father had wagged a finger, telling him that he was a step away from a horrible death. Rhubarb leaves contained oxalates that could cause kidneys to fail; cyanide lurked within apricot stones, and would put you in a coma from which you would not revive. He often wondered if his weight gain had come from such nightmare threats: bread and cake, as far as he was aware, could be consumed without any danger of toxicity.
He was nudged awake by Ricardo. They had arrived back at the hotel. The sun was low in the sky, but its heat seemed undimmed. It struck Graham that the juice on the guide’s chin was the color of the vernix that had coated Felix’s body at birth. Stiffly he climbed out of the back of the minibus, trying to combat the beats of nausea. Felix was ahead of him, already trotting down the path to the apartments. He could hear splashing and gales of infant laughter from the pool area. Beyond that was a tennis court, and the soft thwock of volleys. There was no sign of Cherry in their rooms, and no note to explain where she might be. Graham chased Felix into a hot shower and they dressed for dinner. He brushed his teeth but the taste of the plant remained, an oily film on the back of his incisors.
“Let’s find Mummy,” he said.
Cherry wasn’t at the poolside, though a lounger was adorned with proof of her occupancy: a novel by her beloved Patricia Cornwell; a drained glass carrying her plum-colored lip imprint; the silk scarf with which she tied back her hair. He found her at the bar, another strawberry daiquiri before her, laughing too loudly at the things a much younger bartender was saying.
“We made it,” he said, and sat alongside her. One split second. But he noticed it: the expression falling; her flirting over.
Cherry fussed over Felix for a while, telling him what a big boy he was for cycling so far, and for looking after Daddy. They agreed that he could have twenty minutes in the pool before dinner. Cherry took her drink to the poolside table and Graham joined her after ordering a martini for himself. “Productive afternoon?” he asked, as he sat down.
“No need to be snippy.”
“I’m not being snippy,” he said. He shifted in his seat and felt the efforts of the day leap in his muscles. His thighs sang, but it was an agreeable pain, a righteous pain. Tomorrow morning might be a different matter though.
“Did you overdo it today?” Cherry asked.
“Define ‘overdo.’ You booked the exertion… sorry, excursion. Maybe you were hoping it would be too much for me and I wouldn’t make it back. Then you could laugh at shit bartender jokes to your heart’s content.”
“I do worry about you, no matter what you might think.” Graham took a deep swallow of his drink. Ice cold. And what was it they used to say back during his student days, he and the others in the cocktail club? Drier than the dust from a druid’s drill-stick. The guy might have been trying it on with his wife, but he was an excellent barman. The martini suffused him with good will, not least because it helped to mask the flavor of the plant. He gazed at his wife, at the expression on her face, that will we, won’t we look. She seemed ready for a scrap. Was there ever a dinner eaten that benefited from a fug of bad domestic air?