Alentejo Blue (17 page)

She would have to take Rosanna.

Teresa sat down on the bed feeling queasy. She should have eaten. The thought of Rosanna going so far from home made her feel sick.

Those children, what if they cried?

They wouldn’t understand a word she said to them. Teresa rubbed her neck. She was getting confused. She would speak to them in English, not Portuguese. But perhaps they would not understand. Already she wanted to shake them. On the form she had filled out she had ticked Good for her standard of English. Perhaps she should have ticked Fair. The family would test her; on the day she arrived they would test her and say she had tricked them. Her English was only Fair.

‘At school it was my best subject.’ Teresa, sitting on her hands and rocking, rehearsed the sentence a few times over.

‘Ah,’ they would say to her, ‘but when did you leave school?’

The children, now she thought about it, would probably be naughty. They looked like naughty children. And still they expected love.

You’re going to London, she told herself and her stomach growled in reply.

Teresa jumped up and paced the room. She breathed deeply through her mouth, blowing out hard and counting through the length of the exhalation. She rolled her shoulders and shook her arms and bounced on the spot as though limbering up for a race.

She picked up Rosanna and examined her absurd rosebud lips, the cold blue of her eyes, the non-existent nose. Sniffing hard and blinking, Teresa lifted the doll above her head with both hands and brought it down like an axe over the melamine dressing table. She stopped just short. The doll’s head rolled in the air, her hair across her face. Teresa laid her down and then flung herself on the bed.

She was only crying because she was angry. Mãe and Francisco, why couldn’t they be happy for her? Why? Was it really too much to ask?

She looked round her bedroom and thought what a pity it would be to leave it, now that she had finally got it nice, cleared out all that old, dark furniture, the creaky iron bed, and made it modern and sleek.

In London, though, she would have her own television. Her room would be modern, perhaps with fitted wardrobes. She was to have her own bathroom. She wondered if everyone in the family had one.

Once she had told Mãe she would feel better. Get it out in the open, get it over and done. She hugged the pillow and ran the scene. Mãe shrieking, ‘Santa Maria!’ and fainting. Mãe slapping her across the face and hissing, is this how you pay me back? Mãe turning and staggering towards the door, her arm crashing across the dresser and sweeping the glasses to the floor.

In the soaps that’s what they always did. Unexpected news made them crazy and clumsy as well.

But Mãe was no soap star. She wouldn’t know how to act.

Teresa turned over and stared at the bamboo on the ceiling. A spider dangled from a thread. Insects were always dropping out of there but Mãe wouldn’t let her take the bamboo down. God alone knew why.

What was Mãe watching now?
Woman of Destiny
or
Family Ties,
Teresa thought. Or perhaps the next one was on by now. She wouldn’t move until they had finished and then she would sigh and shake her head as though to say thank goodness she was free. Perhaps, deep down, she enjoyed them. Perhaps she was swelling inside, gorging on the passion and power and money, all the things she didn’t have. It was hard to believe. More likely it was comforting because she could despise them, all those people with no self-control.

Teresa stirred it round, knowing she would reach no conclusion. Mãe was always a puzzle; so simple yet so hard to understand.

She spent her evenings watching people talking but pretended talking was a waste of time. Once in a while she told a story, a tale about her grandfather being stung by his bees, or Senhora Carmona’s wild ways; she unfolded the stories and aired them, like linen from the closet, and stowed them away again. Otherwise, she treated words like money and money was always tight.

It was getting late. Teresa changed into a skirt and blouse and took the file and the brochures from the drawer. She remembered Mãe’s prescription.

She would tell her everything. ‘So,’ Mãe would say. ‘London,’ she would say, as though this was exactly the disappointment she had steeled herself against.

‘I’ve got your sleeping pills,’ said Teresa, when she went through.

Mãe glanced at her and nodded, her face floating in the radiant projected light.

‘See you later,’ said Teresa, knowing she would not.

The moon, nearly full, hung low in the velvet sky as if it had bounced off the rooftops. The air was sweet, almost cloying, with smoke from a wood-fired oven and the overripe scent of a lady of the night, the small cream flowers smothering the empty house across the way, obscuring almost entirely the handwritten ‘for sale’ sign that had been there for as long as she could remember. Light spilled out from the other houses, washing the high stone kerbs. Teresa set off down the crooked street.

‘Good evening, Teresa,’ called Senhora Cabral, from her usual seat in her doorway. ‘And where may you be going?’ Her knitting needles flew. She never risked looking down at them in case she missed something.

‘Good evening, Senhora Cabral. I’m going to meet a man. A married man.’

‘Ah, I see you have your brochures. You’re a good girl, Teresa. Always working so hard for your poor mother, for your poor little brother.’

‘Goodbye, Senhora Cabral. I think you’ve dropped a stitch.’

At the corner she almost bumped into Telma Ervanaria, who could scarcely see over her load of neatly folded laundry.

‘I’m just taking it round,’ panted Telma Ervanaria. ‘She’s bedridden now, you know. Everyone’s taking a turn.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Teresa. She had no idea who her aunt was talking about. ‘Anyway, I have to go.’

‘Have you heard? Marco Afonso Rodrigues is coming back to Mamarrosa. You don’t know who he is? He’s closer to your mother’s age, of course, but we knew him when we were young.’

‘That’s good,’ said Teresa. She tried to step round her aunt.

‘Left with a few escudos in his pocket and coming back stinking rich. Made his money in dry cleaning and laundries. Now he’s richer than a king.’

Teresa patted the stack of sheets and towels. ‘Maybe you should start charging.’

‘Two of a kind,’ chuckled Telma Ervanaria, still in love with the idea.

Senhor Marcelo Álvaro Mendes tapped his pipe along the wooden arm of his chair and shuffled his feet.

‘Your
mãe
is well?’ he said. ‘And your Francisco, he is well too?’

Teresa said that they were, very well. She rearranged the brochures on her knee and opened her file.

‘And your aunt?’ said Senhor Mendes. ‘How is she?’ He stuck the pipe in his mouth and sucked and then picked a fleck of tobacco from his teeth.

His wife came in looking flushed and paused in the doorway, listening to check that the children were quiet in their beds.

‘Shall we get started?’ said Teresa. She uncapped her pen to signal that business was under way.

‘Goodness,’ said Senhora Mendes, ‘I thought Henrique would never go down.’

Teresa cocked her head and smiled. ‘How is he?’ she was forced to say.

Senhora Mendes collapsed on the sofa, her legs splaying inelegantly wide. Teresa, striving for focus and a little necessary formality, pressed her knees tighter together.

‘Teething,’ said Senhora Mendes. ‘And you know it can give them the runs. His bottom is bright, bright red.’

‘Well,’ said Teresa, ‘we’ll start with the fact-find. That’s what we normally do.’

‘But where are our manners?’ cried Senhora Mendes, struggling to her feet. ‘I’ll go and make the tea.’

Senhor Mendes knocked his pipe into the grate. He was scared to look at her, Teresa realized, when his wife was not in the room. If she got him on his own he would buy; he would sign whenever she told him, right on the dotted line.

Senhora Mendes stuck her head through. ‘I’ll only be a minute,’ she said. ‘Did you hear about Paula and Vicente? Yes, they got engaged today.’

‘Of course they did,’ said Teresa, capping and uncapping the pen. ‘They are such a perfect match.’ It was typical of Paula, she thought, always trying to outdo everyone. She was certainly welcome to Vicente, who was nice enough if you liked that sort of thing, which Teresa actually didn’t.

When the tea had been brought and poured and the cakes declined and re-offered and accepted, Teresa closed her file and decided to jump right in. The training (two days at a freezing air-conditioned conference centre in Faro) was all very well but those men in their pushy little suits had clearly never been to Mamarrosa. If she went by the book it would take all night and anyway the fact-find was pointless. How many children do you have? Teresa knew their names and ages and even the state of their bowels.

‘The thing about life insurance is,’ she began, addressing herself to the head of the house, ‘that should anything happen to you . . .’ from the corner of her eye she saw Senhora Mendes making the sign of the cross, ‘then your loved ones will be protected. Fully protected,’ she added, as if salvation itself was assured.

‘Oh, foo,’ said Senhor Mendes, blowing through his teeth, ‘what could happen to me?’ He leaned forward to reassure his wife. ‘I’ve not seen a doctor in twenty years.’

Teresa stayed quiet. Senhora Mendes performed a quick check-up on herself, sliding her hands across her shoulders and down her sides to rest finally on her knees. Seeing his mistake, her husband gave a guilty smile. ‘I haven’t needed to go,’ he said, feigning irritation.

On the coffee table was a bowl of plums, freshly picked and bloomed still with dust. Senhora Mendes reached forward, her cuff dark and damp from her labours at the sink, plucked out a tiny caterpillar and crushed it between her fingers.

Teresa considered her options. Senhor Mendes drove a cream-coloured Mercedes taxi, the only one in Mamarrosa. Portugal had the highest road-fatality rate in Western Europe. She kept her eyes low, watching Senhor Mendes’ feet, the way he kept raising and lowering his heels, the creases across his shoes.

She wouldn’t mention it. He spent more time, anyway, washing his taxi than driving it.

She wanted this sale. She needed the commission. When she left for London at the end of November she would give Mãe an envelope stuffed with cash, a surprise, a bonus on top of what she usually handed over to supplement her mother’s earnings from the cleaning jobs at the school and the doctor’s surgery. And there was the flight (the word made her tie her fingers together) to pay for, and goodness knows what that would cost.

Teresa tugged at her ponytail, two hands in opposing directions, to tighten the band. The fine hair at the nape of her neck caught and pulled and brightened her eyes. ‘It’s something we never want to think about,’ she said briskly. ‘Of course we don’t.’ She dropped her voice and said, as if to herself, ‘Mãe never did.’ She smiled then and straightened her papers. ‘But we do all right. You know, we are getting by just fine.’

‘Bless us all,’ said Senhora Mendes, her eyes fixed on her husband. ‘But doesn’t it make you think?’

It was the opening day of the internet café, in the old frozen-fish shop, and at least a dozen people had turned up. Teresa looked in through the window below the lettering that still said Congelados Aquários and saw Antonio with his finger in his ear. The way he scratched, so vigorously that his body vibrated, he looked like a dog with a flea. She averted her eyes and licked her lips to make them shine. After waiting a moment or two she stepped inside.

The walls were painted a futuristic shade of acid green, the chairs and tables had tubular metal legs and by the back wall was a long trestle with two computers which no one had dared to approach. There was a small bar with a notice advertising beers at fifty céntimos a pop, and by the door a couple of shuddering chest freezers plastered with pictures of prawns.

Vicente was talking to Antonio. Teresa said, ‘Congratulations, Vicente. Have you set a date?’

Vicente stood there, lording it over them. He held his head unnaturally high and was constantly sucking and rolling his cheeks so it seemed as though he would spit on you. He slapped Antonio on the back and said, ‘You’re looking at a condemned man, my friend.’

They offered fists to each other and rubbed knuckles. Teresa crossed her legs.

‘So,’ she said when Vicente had moved away, ‘what did he say to you?’

Antonio squeezed her knee under the table. ‘What do you mean? When?’

‘The wedding. I suppose he was talking about it.’

Antonio put his hands on top of the table, waiting to catch hold of hers. The palms were scrubbed pink but his fingernails were lined with engine grease. His mother had stitched up a tear in his overalls using white thread. It looked like a scar across his chest. ‘No. Not really,’ he said. He smiled plainly at her and she conceded a hand to his.