The Lemon Grove (9 page)

The transaction seems to be drawing to a conclusion, the hippy girl is bagging up a T-shirt, and Nathan is shaking his hand to indicate that she should keep the change. Jenn feels her bowels loosen a little, her throat start to prickle. She moves in the opposite direction, back towards the road, past the wind-chime guy who, on seeing her, repositions himself at the side of the stall and holds out the chimes, already bagged up. She pushes past him and crosses the road back onto the cobblestones, and hard right into the alleyways. She can see Greg, right at the top, walking in slow, deliberate circles, still on the phone. He looks stooped; smaller, somehow.

8

The teenagers are late. Jenn has offered to wait up in case they need a lift back from the village. She’s promised Greg that no more than one small glass of Rioja will pass her lips, but one glass has led to another and she’s flopped out on the dusty sofa. The crime thriller, beach-wrecked, has been slotted away in Benni’s library. She will never finish it. On her lap, in its place, is
Walden
, a book she adored in her youth; a book of which she’s been a fierce champion in debates with Greg. She is revising her opinion, now, as she drifts off.

She sits up: something innate and chemical tripping her from sleep. Dry-mouthed, and feeling the first seeds of
a hangover she hasn’t really earned, Jenn gets up and goes to the sliding doors. A pair of headlights are moving closer to the villa, and now she can hear the diesel thrum of the car’s engine. Out there, the darkness is as dense as a coma. There is no moon. Way beyond the ravine, the clap of a hunting gun reverberates through the mountains. It was sounding off early this morning but in the darkness the shots seem more pronounced. As the ricochet echoes to nothing, she abandons Thoreau and takes herself upstairs before they stumble in.

She is brushing her teeth when she hears the slam of the taxi’s doors, the scrape of the gate below. There is a sniffling from outside. Is that Emma crying down there? She steps up onto the bath and peers down through the window’s grille. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust: one, two silhouettes. Not human, though – a couple of donkeys have strayed into their garden and they are standing beneath a tree with their heads lowered to the ground; possibly asleep. Way up in the hills, as though flying through the rolling slabs of black, the receding taxi’s brake lights blink red at each twist of the switchback. She hears it again – not tears, but laughter. Emma
is giggling and the knowledge of it plants something raw and uneasy in her stomach. Jenn snaps on the air conditioning and climbs into bed. Gregory stirs. His boozy, stale breath asks:

‘They back, darling?’

She squeezes his hand. He’s flat out again within seconds. Jenn lies there, unable to shut down, listening to the wind rise, the crash of the waves; the hiss as it sucks back through the shingle on the shore. The sound and fury of the tide takes her back there once again. Thoughts of the cove; thoughts of him. She bumped into him in the corridor before, on his way out. Handsome in his jeans and white vest. Brown arms. From Nathan, there wasn’t even a flicker. He’d smiled as he passed her, and a pain like a hunger pang shot through her.

It’s a while before they come inside the house. What have they been doing out there? They do not bolt the kitchen door. She hears the skid of the refrigerator door. A stool knocked over – more giggling – then footfall on the stairs. They seem to hover outside his room for a while. Jenn torments herself with the image of his hands on
her
tiny waist. No soft padding on Emma’s hips; skin as smooth as a newly laid egg as his fingers prise their way under the hem of her denim shorts.

But then Emma is passing – no, she is
stomping
past – their
room. Is she imagining this? No. Her bedroom door slams and she hears muffled sobs, as though Emma is buried beneath her sheets. Should she go to her? No. Jenn shuts her eyes and tries to shut it out – all of it. She craves the sobering reality of a new day. But she’s thirsty now; her brain is fully engaged and she can’t shut down. She fumbles out for the glass on her bedside table, tilts it right back; it yields but a dribble. She lies there, staring out into the dark, but she knows she won’t sleep until she’s cleared her throat.

She gets out of bed, irritated by her husband’s snoring. The bedroom floor is cold, the air cool. She switches off the air con and goes downstairs. As she steps into the kitchen she sees that the big oak outer door has been left wide open. She curses the pair of them as she heaves it shut, slotting the big iron cross-bar in its groove and planning the conversation she will have with Greg tomorrow. Will he rebuke his daughter as he would her? Of course not.

As she comes back into the kitchen she smells the drift of tobacco smoke before she sees him. He’s there with his back to her, sitting on the steps below the back door, staring out at the night sky. She’s unsure whether to say something or to inch back upstairs unannounced.

‘Hello, Jenn,’ he says. He doesn’t move. A jet of smoke sails upwards.

She freezes, says nothing. He stays dead still for a moment longer, then flicks the cigarette out onto the back garden and twists his upper body round. He gets to his feet. His eyes are black sockets in the darkness but she can feel his gaze all over her. He stumbles slightly as he advances towards her. She can smell beer on his breath. She knows she must speak up soon or her silence will be misconstrued. She struggles to inject authority into her voice:

‘Make sure you lock the door.’

He is less than two feet away. She takes control, turns and walks to the foot of the stairs. He hesitates, then kicks his shoes across the kitchen floor. Sure, now, that he has her attention, he walks over to the big oak door, unlocks it and steps out onto the terrace. He heads down the steps. The terrace light trips on, isolating him in a bright white halo. She should go upstairs, back up to bed to where her husband sleeps in deep oblivion. But no – she goes back to the kitchen to slam the terrace door shut, to let their house guest know he’s overstepping the mark. As she grabs the handle, he turns to face her. He tugs off his T-shirt, peels down his jeans with his thumbs, drops his boxers. She does not look away. Naked, he crosses the terrace to the pool’s edge, his muscular bottom backlit in the neon blue of the underwater lights. He hesitates on the lip of the pool and turns, just long
enough for her to see his dick, before gliding cleanly into the water.

Jenn takes the stairs two at a time, closes the bedroom door, leans against it, panting hard. It’s nothing her inhaler can temper, this time. She climbs into bed, stricken by the proximity, the very presence of her unwitting husband, queerly reassured by the barrier he forms. Greg’s long arm loops around her and pulls her close. She lies very still, her thighs squeezed tight, ankles locked together. She tries to snuff it out. No use. Her stomach flips her over and inside out, the pulse between her legs fervent, painful.

She drags and guides his hand, moves it down and under the rim of her shorts. His fingers hang there, too somnolent to submit to her need. She ducks down beneath the covers to rouse him, hearing the kitchen door slam shut as she takes him in her mouth.

9

The shutters are closed but as soon as she wakes, Jenn senses a full-bellied sky out there – she can feel it in her chest, too. The peal of goat bells on the hillside confirms what she already suspects: there’s a storm brewing.

Jenn drops an arm down the side of the bed, fumbles for her morning inhalers – two blasts of pink, then one of the blue.

She pads out to the balcony. The tiles underfoot are cooler than usual. The grey weight of the sky seems to hover just above the sea, and way up beyond the village, a veil of black grazes the mountain like a gauze. From inside the bedroom she hears movement: the rustle of sheets, a hard stream of piss hitting the toilet basin. Her stomach tightens. Seconds later, he stumbles out to join her.

‘Morning!’ Greg trills. He is grinning at her. He ducks down and kisses her deep on the mouth. Jenn stops short of flinching away from the stark unfamiliarity of her own embarrassment. ‘Sleep well?’

There is devilment in his eyes, and something else, too; awe? Whatever – last night’s exploit has blown his mind. Greg is gay and light of step and she cannot stand it. Fearing a reference to the blow-job, or worse, expectation of a repeat performance, Jenn extricates herself from his grip and leans over the balustrade. She looks out to the horizon.

‘Not really, actually. My chest was awful. Must be a storm due.’

‘It’ll be the pollen, darling.’ He advances on her again, kisses the back of her neck. ‘It’s going to be dry but overcast this morning; blazing hot sunshine by this afternoon.’ He slides a hand under her top, squeezes her breast too hard. She squeals and jerks away – if Greg takes umbrage, it doesn’t show. He slaps her bottom playfully. ‘Perfect weather for the walk. We should do it today.’

She nods. ‘Sure.’

Her attention has been snagged by movement on the terrace down below. Greg follows her eye line.

‘Morning!’ he shouts down.

The boy looks up to them – at her – nods, then carries on to the pool. He is carrying her novel.

Jenn drives up to the village for supplies. Emma has not emerged from her room – still sleeping, or sulking, she supposes. Nathan is lapping the pool. As she reverses out of the path and turns into the dirt track, she spies him in her wing mirror levering himself out of the pool on the flats of his hands. He stands, poised, watching the car. She rounds the first bend – out of sight, out of mind. The boy is Emma’s problem, not hers.

The village shop is opening as Jenn pulls up on the single yellow line outside. The papers and fruit have not yet been laid out. Jenn decides that, today, they can do without both. She shuts down the engine and goes into the shop. A boy no older than Nathan stops her on the threshold, a palm held up like he’s stopping traffic.

‘
Diez minutos
,’ he says, rather brusquely.

‘Oh, right,’ she says, more inconvenienced than annoyed. Can she be bothered going back to the village car park? It wasn’t just finding the coins for twenty minutes’ parking, it was the whole rigmarole involved in turning the car back round. She might as well just carry on towards Valldemossa and use the mini-market instead. She pictures Greg’s face as he unpacks the bags and finds prepacked croissants rather than the oven-fresh bread and pastries he’s been coveting. She strikes a deal with him in her head: she’ll grab a coffee in the bar across the road while she waits for the shop to open; but if the parking wardens
arrive on their mopeds, she’s off. Greg will have to make do with a microwaved breakfast.