Murder Grove, page 2
‘And if it doesn’t work out in Val Verde,’ says Rich as we continue to speed along the motorway, ‘we can always return to London and pick up our lives where we left them.’
‘Yes, you’re right. But do you think you’ll miss anything about London?’
‘What, the pollution? The ridiculously high cost of living? Or the sweaty armpits on the Tube?’
I smile back at him.
‘And it will be perfect for you,’ he continues. ‘You’re always complaining that you never got to have a proper conversation in Spanish.’
Again, he’s right. Although I loved teaching, my capacity to communicate in a language I adored – sometimes a language I dreamed in – had been limited.
‘And it will be good for you,’ I reply. ‘It might give you the opportunity to … well … to finally learn Spanish.’
This is a touchy subject for Rich, as it’s tied up with his parents’ bitter divorce and the conflicted feelings he has towards his mother.
‘Perhaps,’ he says, running a hand through his hair.
‘How will you feel … going back there?’
‘What? To Casa de la Luz? I’ll be fine. After all, the thing that held me back – namely, Marianne – has gone now.’ He calls her by her first name, rarely Mother. ‘She’s out of my life.’
‘She can’t have been that bad.’
As Rich moves the car into the middle lane, his fingers grip the steering wheel and a darkness hardens his grey eyes. ‘Let’s not talk about her. Not now, not today.’
‘Okay,’ I say, stretching across to place my hand on his knee.
He smiles, and for a moment the thoughts of the past melt away. From what he’s told me of his mother she was a selfish, narcissistic woman. She’d been an actress, a great beauty in her day – ice queen blonde hair, cat-like green eyes, amazing figure – who resented the fact that she’d married young. When she got pregnant – with her only child, Rich – she blamed her husband, James Ellis, a successful architect, for ruining her career and curtailing her freedom. She hated being a mother and had taken to drink. The situation had got so bad that she soon started to neglect him. She went on terrible vodka binges, and one time when his father was out she left a candle burning after collapsing in bed. It had been up to five-year-old Rich – who had been in his bedroom when he smelt smoke – to try to get help. Luckily, no one had been hurt that day, but the incident led to James getting custody of his son. James, who brought Rich up in Wandsworth, wanted to settle the matter in a civilized manner, and so he had paid Marianne a large amount of money to leave, money which she used to travel to Almería, where she’d once made a film. She’d settled in Val Verde, already a village known for its ragbag collection of wild spirits and bohemians, where she restored an old cortijo, La Casa de la Luz.
‘I still can’t believe I’ve never seen it,’ I say. ‘The house, I mean.’
‘Unfortunately, that would have involved a visit to see Marianne, and I didn’t want to inflict her on you. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about her.’
His tone is strained and I don’t pursue the subject. We lapse into silence, each of us staring into the gloom of the road, and I think about the sad circumstances surrounding Marianne’s death. She had been found in her house after going on what seemed like an epic binge. Empty bottles of gin and vodka were discovered by her corpse. She’d been suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and Rich had told me that her once angelic face had become bloated out of recognition. She knew that if she wanted to have a chance of living she would have to stop drinking, but Rich said that she loved the bottle more than she loved life, certainly more than she’d ever loved him. He’d flown out for the funeral in August, while I’d stayed behind in London – although I’d offered to travel to Spain with him, he told me that it would be better if he went alone.
Rich starts to fiddle with the radio, but there’s no reception and a series of jagged noises spits from the sound system.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ he hisses as he repeatedly hits the search button to find a station.
He focuses on the radio and in that split second, just as I’m about to say I think he should concentrate on the road and I’ll find something for us to listen to, a lorry – a slow, lumbering thing – pulls out in front of us.
‘Rich!’ I shout, feeling adrenaline flood through my body like a terrible poison.
The back of the lorry looms so close I can see the traces of rust mottled across its black paintwork like a rush of cancerous cells. Rich hits the brakes, presses hard on the horn. I slam my feet down on the floor of the car in an instinctive but useless reaction. Rich swears again. I don’t dare look at him. I don’t want to die here. Like this. Just as we are on the cusp of trying to make a new life for ourselves.
I see things from the past flash into my present. No, it can’t be like this. I can’t have my life end here. I’ve done so much to win a chance of happiness, I won’t allow it. I hear the screech of brakes, the smell of burning. A wave of water from the lorry hits our windscreen. We are so surrounded by water, it feels as though we could be falling into a lake or a river. The windscreen wipers, on top speed, clear the screen, before another wall of water hits us. I feel my jaw clenching, locking, my teeth gritting themselves together.
I ready myself for the impact. I feel like saying something to Rich, but I can’t get the words out. My tongue is paralysed. The car continues on its seemingly inevitable path. Only a few minutes ago, I’d been thinking about how Rich controlled the Saab like an arrow on course to meet its target. But I never thought the target would be this.
I close my eyes, expecting the collision, the impact of metal on flesh, the feeling of glass shredding my skin. The noise of the crash. The smell of burning rubber, the rank aroma of blood. Something threatens to rip me back in time. But then, when nothing happens, I dare to open my eyes again. The lorry is still in front of us. We are still behind it, but with what looks like only a couple of inches to spare.
Rich checks his mirrors, indicates and pulls out into the fast lane.
‘Fucking idiot could have killed us,’ he snarls. He speeds past the lorry, pressing his horn as he does so.
2
RICH
It’s almost dusk by the time we reach the village. I would have liked to have arrived in daylight so Mia could have seen the contrast between the dry, almost lunar landscape of the hills, and the slash of green that runs through the bottom of the valley.
I spent the final part of the trip telling her again about the geography of Val Verde: how rainwater percolates through the gypsum rock beds into underground pools before rising to the surface, the source of the small river. Unlike the majority of ramblas, or dry riverbeds, which only fill with water during one of the heavy but infrequent bursts of rainfall, this rio flows all year round. And although you can’t drink it – you have to go to one of the local fuentes to collect drinking water – the householders pump water from the stream into tanks, while the gardeners use it to irrigate their strips of land. It seems as though vegetables have been grown here for hundreds of years, and it’s thought the irrigation line that runs through Val Verde dates back to Moorish times.
As I relate this to Mia, I get the sense that she’s not listening. Perhaps it was the incident with the lorry that upset her – that idiot could have caused a serious accident – but she seems to be in one of her moods again. I’ve learnt that it’s usually best not to try to talk her out of it, otherwise there’s a tendency for her to slip back into a black hole. Carry on as normal, that’s always been my motto. And it seems to work. After a few hours of silence, when I don’t know what the hell has been going through her mind, she’ll emerge as if nothing has happened.
‘So this is it,’ I say as I direct the Saab into the communal car park at the edge of the village. I find a space next to a beaten-up, mustard-coloured camper van. Its back doors are open slightly, through which I can see movement. I turn to Mia. ‘Welcome to Val Verde.’
I keep the lights on as we get out of the car and watch as Mia gazes at the jagged cliffs around her. There’s an empty quality to her ice-blue eyes.
‘I think we’ll unpack the bulk of the car in daylight tomorrow,’ I say. ‘And we can meet some of the neighbours then, too.’
I swing my rucksack over my shoulder and, just as I’m about to start wheeling Mia’s suitcase down the track, I smell a whiff of marijuana on the night air. The aroma immediately seduces me, forcing me to relax after the long journey. It also makes me desperate for a smoke.
‘Buenas noches, mis amigos,’ says a male voice. I turn back and see a figure standing by the camper van.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘You’re English?’ he asks. ‘Looking for the eco-charity? Desert Shoots?’
‘Yes – and no. I’m Rich, and this is Mia. We’re actually going to be living here. In Casa de la Luz. Do you know it?’
‘Is that the big house where …’ he trails off. ‘Cool, I’m Hans,’ he adds, raising a spliff to his lips.
I breathe in the air, greedy for a quick hit. I almost feel like reaching out and grabbing it from his fingers. I sense Mia’s eyes on me.
‘If you need anything,’ he says, stressing the last word, as if he can read my mind, ‘just let me know.’
‘Will do, thanks,’ I reply, turning away from him. I feel a bit embarrassed as I start to wheel Mia’s bag, hoping Hans will understand that it doesn’t belong to me. ‘It’s different to Hackney, right?’ I say when we’re out of earshot of Hans. ‘Everyone uses wheelbarrows to fetch and carry stuff here.’
I hear Mia’s footsteps behind me as we make our way past the whitewashed houses silhouetted against the darkening sky.
‘It’s difficult to see at the moment, but this is Payton and Bill’s house up here on the left. She’s been looking after the house. I told them we didn’t want any kind of welcoming party. I knew you wouldn’t be keen on that idea. Next on the left is the charity house, where the people from Desert Shoots hang out. They’re probably enjoying one of their communal suppers right now. They have a constant flow of new people from all over the world, but they’re usually a nice bunch. Oh, and be careful; down to your right is a sheer drop – below are the terraces of vegetables and fruit trees. I’ll give you a proper tour tomorrow.’
We walk past another of the charity houses, and outside it stands the figure of a woman I don’t recognize. ‘Hola, buenas,’ she says, words I echo back to her. We carry on past the crystal path that leads up to the cluster of houses at the top of the village, and continue down the camino towards La Casa de la Luz. I stop outside a pair of enormous wooden doors and tell Mia that we’ve arrived. I put down the bags, hook my hand inside a circular hole and slide the doors back. I see the outline of the palm tree in the courtyard, the lion’s mouth of the fountain, which is running dry at the moment. A blast of icy February wind cuts its way across the terrace, whipping Mia’s scarf into the air.
‘Let’s go inside, we’ll soon warm up,’ I say, taking her by the hand. I feel the edge of the key in my pocket, but I’m pretty sure I won’t need it as Payton will have left the house open. ‘Val Verde is the kind of place where people don’t need to lock their homes.’ This isn’t inner-city London, where we were always vigilant. One of Mia’s rituals was the nightly check of the locks on the door and the windows. And who could blame her? London was rife with robberies, rapes, knife attacks. That’s one of the reasons it felt so good to leave.
With my free hand I carry her suitcase across the terrace. I open the door for Mia, switch on the light and gesture for her to step inside.
3
MIA
I smell woodsmoke in the air and through a decorative archway I see the flames of a fire licking the glass of a chunky wood-burner. I immediately go and stand by the fire and tell myself I need to relax. The incident with the lorry had obviously put me on edge. But Rich had saved us, saved me, and now we’re here in our new home. And what a home. Whenever I asked Rich to describe La Casa de la Luz he always ended up talking about his mother and making himself angry, so in the end I stopped. I hadn’t pictured it as grand as this because he’d always said it was an eco-house, something I imagined being only one or two steps up from a teepee or a yurt.
As I look around I take in the clean, tiled floors, the ceilings made from bamboo canes, the white plaster walls, and the expensive furniture that wouldn’t look out of place in a Georgian country pile. The walls are decorated with old Spanish paintings, landscape sketches, portraits of princes and paupers, and a set of still lives of fruit in varying stages of decay. It’s clear that Marianne had exquisite – but quite expensive – taste. I walk through some double doors to a library, complete with desk, and then another set of doors which takes me into an enormous space that serves both as a kitchen and a living-dining room. There’s a table large enough to seat ten, a couple of squidgy sofas, and a vaulted roof with exposed wooden beams which Rich tells me were hewn from a local eucalyptus tree. At the back of the house is a larder and storeroom and finally an enormous bathroom with marble bath and sink.
‘It’s amazing, Rich, like a really proper house,’ I say, as I wander back into the dining room.
‘Of course it is, my mother needed her creature comforts.’ There’s that familiar note of bitterness in his voice which he uses whenever he talks about Marianne.
Soon after meeting Rich, I’d done my own research on her. Whenever I had the flat to myself I’d watch some of her old films online, something I kept hidden from Rich. In her prime, her beauty was unreal. Her skin was translucent, flawless, and she had that ability to compel you to gaze at her, lose yourself in her. Critics had written about her possessing that almost undefinable trait – star quality – and it was true. Whenever she was in a scene, she really did light up the screen. I’d rather think of her like this than the sad, tragic figure of Rich’s recollection.
‘Anyway, I love it,’ I say. ‘And I love you.’ I worry the words sound slightly forced. I walk up to him and put my hands around his neck. ‘Sorry for being in a mood earlier. It was …’
‘It’s fine, I understand,’ he says. ‘What do you say we explore upstairs?’ He points to a spiral staircase in the middle of the room. He leads me by the hand up the stairs and flicks on a switch to reveal another sitting room, with a floor-to-ceiling window. The view from here is spectacular, he says, something I’ll see for myself the next morning. He tells me that there are three bedrooms that lead off either side of this room, but informs me that he doubts I’ll want to sleep in the largest one. This is where his mother died. He opens the doors, pushes a light switch and the first thing I see is a wall covered with multiple reproductions of Marianne’s face. The effect is dizzying.
‘I told you she was a narcissist,’ he says.
‘She really was amazing looking,’ I reply as I walk up to one of the larger black and white photos, an image of Marianne in a short skirt and black boots that looks as though it had been taken somewhere like the King’s Road in London.
‘I certainly don’t want to go to sleep with that face looking down on me, do you? It gives me the creeps.
‘In fact, I don’t know why she kept these old shots. It must have been bloody painful for her to see herself looking like this, especially towards the end. Maybe she was a masochist too? No wonder she drank herself to death.’
I wish he wouldn’t talk about her like this, but I don’t tell him what I think. Rich walks over to the bed, an enormous affair covered with highly patterned throws that look as though they’re from Morocco, and pillows the colour of the darkest red wine.
‘Is that where …?’
‘Payton’s done a nice job of tidying it all up, but yeah – this is where they found her. Payton and Bill. They told me what happened when I came over for the funeral. Marianne was supposed to drop in on Payton for a cup of coffee and when she didn’t turn up, she got worried and came over. The door wasn’t locked – as I say, nobody locks their houses here – and she let herself in, calling my mother’s name. When she didn’t hear anything she ran back to get Bill. They found her here on the bed, surrounded by empty bottles, and thought to begin with that she’d just passed out. They were used to Marianne’s drinking binges. Of course, her friends had tried to persuade her to stop – and sometimes Marianne did have a few months off – but I suppose the guilt of what she’d done must have caught up with her.’
‘Guilt?’
‘Yeah – leaving me like she did. I think she never got over it. I think she realized she’d made a huge mistake. It ate away at her soul like acid.’ He turns from the bed and takes me in his arms. ‘Anyway, enough of the sob story.’
He leads me past an old-fashioned television console, twinned with an ancient VCR, and a bookcase lined with some of Marianne’s old films on videotape. We pass back through the upstairs sitting room and enter a set of rooms in the other part of the house. The guest quarters, which share a bathroom, are more spartan and functional: in one room there’s a pair of twin beds, and in the other there’s a large double bed covered with a duvet encased in a plain white cover, an old wooden wardrobe and chest of drawers, a bookcase and an old mirror spotted with rust.
‘The view isn’t nearly so nice – it looks out into the street below – but I thought for now it would be better for us to sleep here,’ he says. ‘We can always move back into my mother’s old room once we’ve cleared out all the photos and paraphernalia – we can put them into storage in the studio outside. Who knows – perhaps we even need to do an exorcism?’
He makes a woo-ing noise like a cartoon ghost, and tries to tickle me under the ribs in an attempt to laugh me into bed, but jokingly I tell him to cut it out. I wriggle free and go and stand over by the window. Just then I think I see a shadow pass by the entrance to the house. I squint to try to get a clearer view. I’m sure there’s someone down there by the archway. I’m about to say something to Rich when it melts away into the night.
