The Lemon Grove (2 page)

‘Can you ask Emma to pick up some dental floss?’ she says. ‘The silk one. Can’t get it over here.’

Greg holds up a finger and shakes his head, not so
much a rebuttal of her request but a plea for quiet. Emma is taking him to task over something or other and he is doing his usual thing of tiptoeing around her, taking the path of least resistance. Jenn puts down the empty glass, holds her palms to the sky and rolls her eyes. She steps inside to locate her inhaler. She came away with three – now there are none. She’s certain she left one on the floor by her side of the bed. She turns out the solid wood drawers, gets down on her knees to search beneath the bed where, in the absence of rugs, the cool hardness of the ceramic tiled floor bites through to her bones. She gets to her feet, tips out her make-up bag, noisy in her frustration.

Greg hisses through to her, ‘Under your pillow!’

Not one, but all three of them placed neatly in a row.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ she says. She blasts once, twice; better.

He holds up a hand to silence her while increasing the pitch of his voice. ‘Now, Em, worst-case scenario, Jenn and I are out …’

It hurts like mad that. All these years on and, when it suits him, whenever he senses a scene, he drops the ‘Mum’.

‘… take a taxi to the village and try Bar Luna. Benni’s bound to be there. He has a key.’

She makes a big thing of closing the shutters, putting
on her jacket. She observes herself in the wardrobe mirror, puts a hand to her mouth and snorts. Yesterday morning, she bought this white cotton dress in the village store. It was a pure impulse buy, something she wouldn’t dream of wearing at home. Yet it’s the kind of floaty, classic, broderie anglaise frock she’d always imagined herself pottering around Deià in if they moved out here for good. Eyeing herself in the shop’s mirror, she liked what she saw. She was elegant yet enigmatic and, yes, sexy; a perception no doubt helped along by the interior candles that shaded her skin a copper brown, the musky incense, the piped flamenco music and the cute gay assistant who stood behind her, lifted her hair from her shoulders, and whispered, ‘
Qué bonita
 … your eyes are like amber stones,’ on her neck. Now she feels duped. She drags the dress back up over her head, and her loosely tied-up hair falls to her shoulders. She is gratified to spy the label still intact. She hangs it up in the wardrobe and straightens out the creases. She looks at herself again, her deep cleavage accentuated by her tan and the Spiced Auburn shade of her hair, coloured only this morning, and she decides that, fuck it, she’s going trashy for one night. Gregory may well tut and bite his lip, but she’s on holiday and she’s showing off what she’s damn well got in tight black jeans and a low-cut silver tee.

As she dresses, she sees that Greg has twisted his upper
body round the chair-frame to observe her. He makes gestures with his hand that indicate a preference for the dress, and her hair worn up. With her jeans pulled halfway up her thighs, she shuffles closer to the wardrobe, takes the dress out for one last appraisal. Even at half-price, seventy-five euros was no bargain; and even with the label intact, she anticipates a struggle getting her money back from the camp assistant. She could easily envisage that charm turning to bitchy contempt. She holds it against herself in the mirror. Elegant. Safe. Middle-aged. She’ll never wear it again, once they’re home; she should wear it now, just for him.

He is still watching her. She can hear Emma losing patience with him.

‘Oh, Poppet, it’s fine,’ he cajoles and turns his gaze away from his wife. ‘I’m sure Jenn can live without floss for a week or two.’

She places the dress decisively back in the wardrobe and returns to wriggling into the jeans. Was she like that as a teenager? Probably, given half the chance – but she was blighted with acne at Emma’s age, she was nowhere near pretty enough to get away with it. She shuts the wardrobe door a bit too loudly and leaves him to it. She clumps downstairs. They’ll be late now, whatever.

She takes the last cigarette from the drawer in the kitchen, unhooks the cooker lighter from the whitewashed
wall and moves out into the lemon grove. The stark white petals on the overhanging vines glow fluorescent in the dark. Her night-vision plays tricks on her: she picks out goats grazing in the grove that, on closer inspection, are no more than tree stumps or bushes. Last night, tipsy from the shots of
liquera manzana
that accompanied their bill, Jenn coaxed Greg into walking back down along the river path. But even beneath the brilliance of the moon, they were forced back onto the road, the rough path made all the more hazardous by loose stones and jutting roots. Tonight, they’ll be taking it easy. No matter how fulsome the welcome or how insistent the offer of nightcaps on the house, tomorrow they must wake with clear heads. Tomorrow, a different kind of holiday starts.

She squats down on the rough, dry grass. Lights up. Sucks the smoke down deep in her lungs and holds some back on the exhale, popping out a sequence of smoke rings. How will it be, she wonders – playing gooseberry to a couple of teenagers? And what of this boy Nathan? Nate. The way Emma says his name irks her – curt, territorial and loaded with significance, as though
Nate
were a novel species of itself, one which she herself had discovered.

Jenn has met him, once, a few weeks back, if that awkward exchange could be classed as meeting him. Up until then, Emma had been referencing Nathan with
increasing regularity, but thwarting her parents’ invitations to tea, dinner, lunch, whatever. It came as some surprise, when she got home from a late shift, to find Gregory reversing down the drive with a youth she took to be Nate hunched up in the back. He was wearing a beanie hat, tugged down over his eyebrows, his jacket zipped up to his chin. It was dark and he kept his eyes glued to the back of the passenger seat, so she barely got a look at his face. She tapped on the window and made a bumbling gesture with her hand to indicate that he should come over again – soon. Even from there, she felt Emma’s annoyance at her clumsy intervention. The boy flashed a meek smile but Emma stared straight ahead into the darkness, poking at her father to drive on. Later that night, when they got back, she said nothing to her – she sat between her dad’s legs, the two of them spooning ice cream from a tub, thick as thieves. Jenn had taken herself off to bed, needled at how easily Greg let Emma exclude her these days. Yet it was she whom Emma turned to when she needed an ally over this – the holiday: ‘You
have
to talk to Dad. He said no, he won’t hear of it … Nate
has
to come to Deià. All my friends’ parents let them take their boyfriends on holiday. Dad’s living in the dark ages. You saw him, Mum! Boys like him don’t hang around waiting for you. He’s
bound
to meet someone while I’m away.’ Jenn couldn’t help but
bridle at ‘all my friends’ parents’; these were families who only technically holidayed together. They took their relatives, friends, colleagues, neighbours and respective au pairs away with them, Jenn reckoned, because, deep down, they couldn’t stand one another. But she didn’t venture this to Emma. Instead, she focused on Nathan. The gauche bushbaby she’d glimpsed in the back of the car. He didn’t look like the type of boy who’d start putting it about, the moment his girlfriend’s back was turned. ’Em, come on.
You’re
the one who’s going on holiday. It’s going to be twice as tough for him. And in spite of what your friends’ parents say, I still think it’s a little soon for him to be coming away with us. You’ve only been dating a few months.’

Emma was inconsolable. There had been other boys before, but they were nothing compared to this. This was different. This was Big – the one against which all future relationships would be measured. Jenn could empathise; she’d been there herself at a similar age. Looking back, she realised that hers had been a manipulative little shit: the lead singer of some dismal shoe-gazing band, and the sex, like the music, was blurred and badly improvised. Yet she remembers each and every beat of it. She would have walked through fire for Dan Matthews.

‘Please? Can’t you make Dad change his mind?’

‘Oh I don’t know, Emma … we’ll need to meet with Nathan’s parents first.’

‘I’ll get his mum to ring you right now!’

‘I haven’t said
yes
yet.’

‘Oh, Mum! You’re the best. D’you know that?’

She only ever called her that these days when she wanted something. Somehow that hurt more than the slow, inevitable retraction of the word itself.

She regrets it now, crumbling so easily; regrets grinding Greg into submission. The pair of them worked so hard to be able to afford this holiday, in spite of Benni, the villa’s owner, ramping up the price year on year. He knew what he had, Benni. He knew that they needed it. And with the new Dean coming in September, there was uncertainty over Greg’s ongoing role at the university too. Was he still Head of English? The former community college had only stepped up to full university status five years previously, but already there was a new board with new, business-driven ideas. There was a pressure on Greg that hadn’t been there before; there was more teaching, more admin, PhD students to supervise, and he was now expected to adopt a more hands-on role in upping the annual student intake. So yes, they
needed
their annual fix in Deià, at their beloved Villa Ana. Jenn was determined it was going to be special this year; she imagined they might drive the entire spine of the Tramuntana,
from Deià right through to Pollença. Emma was old enough now to enjoy the hippy markets of Estellencs and Fornalutx, maybe the Picasso museum in Sóller, too. They could lunch under the grand old orange trees in the square, then she and Emma could browse the boutique shops in the old town. She was going to buy her something symbolic – a pendant, perhaps, or a bracelet. She wanted something that acknowledged their journey together, their unusual and very special bond. Yet she wanted something peculiar to Mallorca, too – a gift that spoke of the times they’d spent and memories made on the island.

So it was settled. She and Greg would fly out a week ahead and Emma would move in with Greg’s mum. They could have their boring adult time discovering hidden coves and falling fast asleep after long, lazy lunches – then Emma would come out and they’d spoil her to bits. But it was no longer just Emma flying out. Now, tomorrow, they would be opening their door, and their holiday, to a stranger – and no matter how much she tries to tell herself she’s done a good thing, Jenn simply cannot shake off her misgivings. She should have stood her ground with Emma. She should have said no.

It is cold now. Up above her, more stars spike the sky. A bat flits past – there, right in front of her, then gone. Observing the house from outside, lit up, its solid blue
shutters absorbing some of the light from the moon, she’s stricken with nostalgia for these last few days. Already, there’s a sense of loss. This week – their week – has shot by. It’s as good as over, now.

They park on the lip of Deià, by the Robert Graves School, then walk the gentle incline up to the village. The main drag is buzzing already, people strolling from café to café, perusing the menus or lingering at estate agents’ windows to ogle mind-blowing villas with infinity pools; villas they can never own. Candles are being lit on the terraces of tapas bars, and all along the curving road, stout wooden doors in stone walls open up to reveal bijou restaurants with giddying panoramas. From their patio table at Jaume tonight they’ll be able to see right down the gorge, past Villa Ana, and out to sea.

They pass the grocery store where they buy their bread each morning. The store is closing down for the evening and dark-skinned men are ferrying in crates of furry, fat peaches from the roadside. Jenn lingers on the pavement, turning out her old leather handbag, filled with junk – brushes, lipsticks with their tops left off, unopened mail – as she tries to find space to
squeeze in a couple of peaches for tomorrow’s breakfast. Greg hooks his arm around her back and strokes her ribcage with his thumb, ushering her away from the grocer’s.

‘Quick,’ he says.

‘What?’

Too late. The slovenly, florid-faced man standing in the doorway of Bar Luna has spotted them. He hails them and hastens down the steps, pipe in mouth. Greg strides on but Jenn is trapped.

‘Benni. Hi.’

His thin, fussy mouth clamps down on his pipe and he nods slowly, his eyes raking over her as though he’s caught her and Greg in some terrible lie. He looks as though he’s been drinking since lunch. A breeze sends a strand of grey, oiled hair flickering across his face.

‘Again! You eat out
again
?’

He chuckles to let her know he’s teasing, but there is a curve of disapproval on his mouth as he puffs his pipe and rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet.

Jenn forces a smile.

‘Our last night of freedom, Benni. Emma arrives tomorrow.’

Greg is forced to a standstill further down the road. He tilts his head to the sky, unable or unwilling to disguise his impatience as he waits for her to end the
charade. Benni comes closer, his yellow teeth bared like a donkey’s.