Inhuman Remains

Three

There’s one problem about an earthly paradise. After a year or two, it can become a little stale, a little. . what’s the word?. . yes, a little boring. (I suspect that’s also true about the Other Side, but I’m in no hurry to check it out, not least because I doubt that my CV would get me past the first interview. As Jim Steinman wrote, and Meat Loaf sang, beautifully, ‘Heaven Can Wait’.)

When we moved here Tom was in the process of becoming five, and looking after him was more or less a full-time job, but once he had started school in L’Escala, things started to change. I had time on my hands during the day, and my recent history indicates that when I’m in that situation I don’t always fill the hours as constructively as I might. That doesn’t mean I drink too much: if I over-indulge in anything, these days, it’s coffee. No, my tendency has been to get myself engrossed in projects, wild schemes that usually lead to disaster.

At first, my intentions were pretty good. I enrolled on distance courses in Spanish and Catalan, so that I could keep up with my son’s developing language skills, but I found pretty quickly that I had already progressed beyond the stage where they could do me much good. I looked into going back to nursing, part-time, and went so far as to enquire about job vacancies at the local primary-care clinic, but I bottled out when I saw a section on the application form that required me to declare criminal convictions. I thought about starting an estate agency, until I looked at a copy of the local Yellow Pages and found that there were almost fifty such businesses operating already in that one small town. I did a few afternoon waitress shifts in one of the four restaurants in the village, but that came to an abrupt end when a fat tourist groped me as I walked past his table and I buried a paella, still in its pan, in his face. (He shouted something from the floor, in French, about suing, until the proprietor called his bluff, and the police, and he legged it.)

My problem, all that time, was a lack of motivation. I have enough money invested to afford my son and myself a very nice lifestyle, without ever needing to work again, and the apartment I sold in London more than paid for the house in St Martí. Looking back, I reckon that my efforts to fill my days fruitfully owed more to my Scottish Protestant (I’m not discriminating here, I just happen to have been born one, so don’t get on my case, okay?) work ethic than anything else. So, after a while, I settled for my new life as a home-maker, and a full-time mum.

The house was spotless. I didn’t have the heart to lay off the cleaner, but everything she did I did over again as soon as she’d gone, and a bit more besides. The rest of my time was spent exercising (swimming in the sea, or running on the country roads), reading, and messing about on my computer. That was when Tom was in school; when he was home I concentrated on giving him the best time I possibly could. He got a bike; so did I. He asked for a PlayStation for Christmas; now I’m a gamester too. Soon we added a dog to the family: my son assured me that we were the only household in the village without one. . a distinction that was okay by me. . and kept on raising the subject, until I raised a hand in surrender. His name is Charlie, he’s a golden Labrador retriever and he is, I swear, the only dog I’ve ever known with the ability to frown when he’s puzzled about something, which, being essentially thick, he is quite often.

The one thing I did not go looking for was a man. Tom’s a good boy in many ways, not least in that he doesn’t talk much about his father. Whatever his current level of understanding about death, he knows that he’s not coming back, and he’s come to terms with it. I’m sure he was helped by the fact that Oz was only in his life for around a year, but still, he keeps his picture by the side of his bed, and that’s nice. I don’t know if he’s waiting for me to fill the vacancy, but if he is, I’m afraid I’m going to have to let him down on that one. Two people, one dog: that’s our family and that’s how it’s going to stay. Sex? Twice in all that time, and the first time barely counted. Emotionally, I still haven’t left the Algonquin; maybe I never will.

Unlike my auntie Ade; she’s spent her life moving from one ship in the night to another. She passed the seventy mark a couple of years ago, and yet she insisted that the fancy still took her until she hit that number. It may have been all in her mind, but somehow I doubt it.

Her phone call, six months ago now, took me by surprise, and her announcement even more so. My son answered, when it rang: most of the calls we receive are for him. He keeps nagging me about a mobile, but I don’t reckon he’s quite ready for that yet. After a few seconds he switched to English. ‘Yes, this is Tom. Yes, Mum’s in.’ He passed me the handset with the Catalan raised eyebrows and the shrug he’s picked up at school. The boy’s going native.

‘Primavera,’ the voice at the other end boomed.

‘Yes?’ I replied, tentatively.

‘For Christ’s sake, niece!’

‘Auntie Ade? Is that you?’

‘Unless your mother had another sister I’ve never heard of, it bloody well has to be, does it not?’

‘It’s great to hear from you,’ I told her, meaning it at the time. ‘How are you?’ I paused, as a small spasm of dread gripped my stomach. ‘This isn’t bad news, is it?’

‘That depends on you. Does that house of yours have a spare room?’

‘Three, actually.’

‘That’s good. I’m coming to visit. That okay?’

‘Of course it is. Where’s the fair?’

‘What bloody fire?’

‘I said “fair”, Adrienne, as in book fair. Barcelona, is it?’

As I understood it, since the Las Palmas adventure that had led to Frank’s arrival, every trip she had made outside London had been work related, to book fairs in Germany, Australia, Prague and the US.

‘This isn’t business, girl. I’m going into semi-retirement, and I plan to celebrate by coming to visit my niece and great-nephew for a few days. At my age, I can’t afford to ignore any members of my family any longer. I got your number from your father: he said you’d be pleased to hear from me. Bugger didn’t give me your address, though, just in case.’

Good for Dad, I thought. ‘It’s all right, really. When are you coming?’

‘In a couple of days, I thought. How do I get there?’

‘Find yourself a peanut flight from London to Girona. Let me know the date and number and I’ll pick you up.’

‘I don’t do cheap flights, dear. I always travel business class.’

‘Not to Girona you don’t. But don’t worry: at this time of year and with that sort of notice it won’t be all that cheap.’

Auntie Ade sighed. ‘If I must, I must. I’ll have my PA book for me, and give you the details. Will it be hot?’ she asked.

‘Don’t pack the mink,’ I told her. Adrienne had turned up at my mum’s funeral dressed all in black, and encased in a fur coat that she made a point of telling me was ‘Wild, dear, not ranch. As with salmon, the farmed variety just isn’t the same.’

‘That sounds promising,’ she said. ‘I look forward to seeing you. By the way, what strange tongue did young Tom speak just now?’

‘Catalan.’

‘Ah, that explains why I didn’t understand a bloody word of it. There’s no market for book translations in anything other than Castilian Spanish. Can he read and write?’

‘In four languages.’ Actually he’s not very literate in French, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.

‘Bloody hell, that’s as many as me.’

We said our farewells and I tossed the phone back to Tom, to replace in its cradle. ‘We’re having a visitor,’ I announced. ‘Your great-aunt.’

‘Is she as great as Auntie Dawn and Uncle Miles?’

‘In her own special way.’

‘She sounded funny.’

‘She’s all that.’ He frowned. ‘You don’t mind if she comes to stay, do you, Tom?’

He shook his head vigorously. ‘No, I don’t mind. I like it when we have visitors. I liked it when Grandpa Phillips came to see us, and Auntie Ellie and Uncle Harvey, and Auntie Dawn.’ My dad had come to Spain twice in the time we had been there, and Dawn once. Oz’s sister and brother-in-law had called in too, on the way to a legal convention in Barcelona, to see Tom, of course, not me.

I looked at him, suddenly concerned. Had I missed something? Had I screwed up his young life by uprooting him from the rest of his family and bringing him to yet another country, the fifth in his short life? ‘Tom,’ I asked him nervously, ‘if you didn’t like it here you would tell me, wouldn’t you?’

‘I love it here, Mum,’ he replied, without a pause for thought. ‘I like visitors because when we have them you’re never sad.’

I stifled a gasp. ‘Tom, I’m not sad.’

‘But you’re lonely. You don’t have anyone.’

He’d made me want to cry. ‘Son,’ I told him, ‘I’m not lonely. I have you, and I promise you, you’re all the company I’ll ever need.’