to the ground.There is something unnatural about Nathan’s posture, it’s a little too masculine and contrived – and Emma seems threatened by it.
The vendedora leans across the rows of ruched and marbled fabrics at the front of the stall and offers Nathan a different-patterned T-shirt. Jenn can make out no more than her slender, brown arms and the beaded ends of her hair as they swing forward, yet there is something queasily familiar about her; something in Nathan’s smile and the self-conscious ruffling of his hair that is priming her for something unpleasant.
This particular design is a garish kaleidoscopic, but Nathan takes time to consider it carefully before declining with a tactful shake of the head. Jenn slips in and out of the rugs till she’s close enough to get a proper look at the girl. It takes a moment for the penny to drop, and when it does she is blindsided with a furious envy. It’s her, the hippy girl from the cave yesterday. She is flirting with Nathan and he is flirting right back. And in an instant her jealousy turns to anger, directed not at Nathan, nor the hippy girl, but at herself. It’s obscene, it’s ridiculous , that she’s standing here in the first place, spying on them. And yet now that she is, she cannot prise her eyes away. She watches Emma fixing her hair and letting it down as she tries to effect nonchalance. She wants to go to her. And yet, coiling around herprotective instinct, slowly strangling all parental concern, is a smug and sinister satisfaction at the sordid role play.
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 ofa 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
The vendedora leans across the rows of ruched and marbled fabrics at the front of the stall and offers Nathan a different-patterned T-shirt. Jenn can make out no more than her slender, brown arms and the beaded ends of her hair as they swing forward, yet there is something queasily familiar about her; something in Nathan’s smile and the self-conscious ruffling of his hair that is priming her for something unpleasant.
This particular design is a garish kaleidoscopic, but Nathan takes time to consider it carefully before declining with a tactful shake of the head. Jenn slips in and out of the rugs till she’s close enough to get a proper look at the girl. It takes a moment for the penny to drop, and when it does she is blindsided with a furious envy. It’s her, the hippy girl from the cave yesterday. She is flirting with Nathan and he is flirting right back. And in an instant her jealousy turns to anger, directed not at Nathan, nor the hippy girl, but at herself. It’s obscene, it’s ridiculous , that she’s standing here in the first place, spying on them. And yet now that she is, she cannot prise her eyes away. She watches Emma fixing her hair and letting it down as she tries to effect nonchalance. She wants to go to her. And yet, coiling around herprotective instinct, slowly strangling all parental concern, is a smug and sinister satisfaction at the sordid role play.
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 ofa 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
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