Seven Lies South

7

Beecher got up early the next morning and swam for half an hour in the small pool at the foot of his garden. The day would be perfect, he knew, as he saw the blood-red sun emerge from the sea. Now it was cool, with a suggestion of moisture hanging close to the earth, but by ten o’clock the air would be dry and clean and hot, and the purple and red flowers and the tawny sides of the mountains would be burning vividly in the transparent atmosphere. The sea would be calm under the immaculate blue sky, and the horizon pierced by the white sails of the fishing boats.

When Adela brought his breakfast tray of buttered toast and coffee to the side of the pool, he told her he would like a picnic lunch by noon if possible.

“For two?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“She’s very pretty,” she said, with simple, friendly confidence. And then she ran back through the garden to the villa, stunning the birds with a rill of flamenco.

Beecher drove down into the village later to buy wine and cigarettes. The shops were crowded with Spanish maids and housewives fingering, commenting on, and occasionally buying from the fresh stocks of vegetables, the early catch of fish, and the hams and rabbits and sides of young beef hanging in the butcher’s doorway. He bought two bottles of white wine which had been grown up north near San Sebastian, and several packs of American cigarettes. These last were a luxury, three times the price of the Spanish brands, but he doubted that Laura would be up to the local product after only a few days in Spain. She probably had all the American cigarettes she could use, he thought; cartons tucked away in smart leather luggage, sharing space with vitamins, Kleenex and huge supplies of cosmetics. But it pleased him to buy cigarettes for her. Beecher went up the main street of the village to the central plaza and bought the Spanish newspapers. He was returning to his car when Lynch hailed him from the terrace of the Bar Jerez.

“Any chance of golf today?” he called. There was a bottle of beer on his table, and he seemed in his usual beaming spirits; his face was bright and cheerful, and his long bony legs were stretched out comfortably. The blue-and-white Moroccan cap was perched on his fair head, and his eyes were like clear blue glass — the eyes of a man who had slept an easy ten hours with sea air blowing through his room.

“I’m afraid not,” Beecher said.

“Tomorrow then?”

“I’m going to be busy.”

“I say, that is a pity. I’m packing off Monday.”

“I thought you were staying the month.”

Lynch grinned. “Yes, that was the drill when I left London. But a quite amazing thing has happened. I’m going down to Rabat Monday night. A chap I knew in the war, our RSM as a matter of fact, is onto a good thing in Dakar. Runs a trucking line into Bamako. Dare say you’ve never heard of the place. At any rate, he’s offered me a chance to throw in with him. The letter bobbled around my digs in London for a week before my landlady had the presence of mind to post it on here. My friend will be in Rabat Tuesday. We’ll have a chat, see what works out. It’s fortunate I don’t have to drop all the way down to Dakar, considering the state of my exchequer.”

Lynch’s smile had remained bright and steady during this explanation.

“I see,” Beecher said. He hesitated then, oddly puzzled and uneasy. The warm human tumult of the plaza beat around him, and the wine bottles under his arm pressed coldly against his ribs. “I may be going down to Rabat Monday,” he said. “Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?”

“Good show! We’ll bring a bottle to help make the flight jolly.” He was still grinning. “It can’t be business taking you down there. I gather you fancy your leisure too much to spoil it with work.”

“Don Willie’s offered me a job in Rabat.”

“Don’t take it, old man. You’ve got the world on a string here. Sun and beaches, women and wine. Where will you find a setup like it again?”

Beecher looked at him steadily. “I think I’m in your debt,” he said.

“Please, old man, I wasn’t serious. Just pulling your leg. Look into the job, of course.”

“I don’t mean the job. Last night at Don Willie’s you intercepted that Frenchman who’d been giving me a bad time.” For the first time in their brief relationship Lynch seemed embarrassed; his smile became awkward, and he cleared his throat self-consciously. “Hadn’t thought you noticed it,” he said. “Damn nuisance, wasn’t he? But I thought it best to let him chew on me for a bit. I was alone, after all.”

The explanation was so civilized and sensible that Beecher’s vague suspicions seemed, in contrast, unreasonable and churlish.

“Well, I’m sorry about the golf,” he said at last. “But I’ve got a date.”

Lynch laughed cheerfully. “Golf is one thing, lovely American blondes are quite another.” He raised his bottle of beer to Beecher in a good-humored salute. “No offense, old man.”

You couldn’t take offense at him, Beecher thought, as he walked across the plaza to his car. He was too good to be true, all the best in England, mint-conditioned Wodehouse. Lynch seemed to be a caricature of proper British strength and proper British absurdity, and this fact nagged at Beecher as he drove up the winding road to his villa, sounding his horn constantly to scatter chickens and goats and children. Lynch reminded him of Maurice, the Frenchman. They had both exaggerated their poses until the original tracings were hard to find; the net result was a kind of camouflage. In some circumstances, he thought, a shout caused far less stir than a whisper. But where was the need for mystification or camouflage? The only mystery, he decided, was that there wasn’t any.

Beecher packed the lunch and wine in the back of the car and drove off to get Laura. They swam that day at the foot of a steep cliff, off an isolated beach a dozen miles from the village. The mountains were shaped like a bandshell behind them, deflecting the wind sweeping over the baking tablelands, and keeping the water in the bay as still as a millpond. Laura wore a two-piece knit bathing suit under a simple skirt and blouse. She undressed and kicked off her brown loafers, while Beecher tied a line to the wine bottles and put them in the water to cool. He smiled as she ran toward the line of foaming breakers; she was delightful to watch in motion, the small bra and brief tan shorts clinging to her snugly, and her slim lovely legs flashing in the sunlight. She cut into the water at a clean, competent angle and struck out for the horizon with a rhythmic crawl. Beecher followed her out a hundred yards or so, churning strongly to keep up with her deceptively smooth stroke. Finally she rolled over on her back and floated with the gentle waves. He was glad to rest.

“Nice, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Mmm.” She might have been lying on a vast soft bed; her eyes were closed, and her arms and legs were spread wide, drifting lazily and weightlessly in the water.

When they returned to the beach Laura set out their lunch on a flat rock at the base of the cliff, while he retrieved the bottles of wine from the sea. They had platters of cold chicken, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and fresh rolls, and with that, the wine from the north, which was wonderfully cold and sharp on their tongues. They ate ravenously and finished the bottle of wine. Beecher lit cigarettes, and they stretched out on their backs in the full baking glare of the sun. They were stunned with the sea and the sun, the food and the wine. Neither of them bothered to talk. There was no strain between them now. They finished their cigarettes and flipped them away. Laura remembered something comical that had happened at Don Willie’s, and they laughed about that. There was a sense of drowsy, comfortable communion between them, and they talked in a rambling fashion about other beaches, other picnics, other bottles of wine.

“I’m going to turn over,” Laura murmured. “I’m falling asleep, I can’t help it. Would you do a Samaritan bit with the suntan lotion?” She unhooked her bra and lay face down on the hot sand, resting her cheek on her folded arms. “Use lots and lots of it,” she said sleepily. “It’s a new American brand. It prevents sunburn, refreshes tired blood, and you can get twenty miles to the gallon on it in an emergency.”

Beecher sat up and looked for the bottle of lotion. It was under her towel. The brand name was Astro-Nut-Brown. A bronzed young man on the label was diving into a galaxy of blazing stars, wearing nothing but a smile and brief swimming shorts. A nut all right, Beecher thought. He knelt beside Laura and rubbed the cool oil over her shoulders and down her back. The sun was hot on his neck, and a strand of his dark hair hung over his eyes. When he brushed it away he realized his hands were trembling. Her legs were like satin; the palms of his hands slid smoothly over the backs of her thighs and calves, and the oil gleamed like pale gold on her lightly tanned skin. He saw the sparkle of fine blonde hair in the sunlight, and felt the shape and tension of her slim muscles under his moving fingers. And he discovered that he could close his hand completely around her delicate ankles.

In a soft voice, she said, “Thank you, Mike. That’s fine.”

“You said to use lots and lots of it.”

“I know.” She turned her head to look at him, and he saw that her eyes were strangely clear and bright. “But you’re not playing with modeling clay,” she said, with a careful little smile. “I’m a real live girl.”

He felt a falling coldness in the pit of his stomach, as if he were dropping swiftly in an express elevator. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what I meant, I guess. Except that I don’t want...” She sighed and closed her eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

Beecher put the bottle of lotion aside. He kissed her bare shoulder and stretched out a foot away from her, feeling as tense and nervous as if he were gambling his life on the turn of a card.

She opened her eyes and looked at him with a quiet smile. “Now that was nice,” she said. “Night, night.”

Beecher grinned and put an arm up to shield his eyes from the sun. He felt ridiculously excited and happy.

They swam again after resting for half an hour and drank the second bottle of wine sitting in the shade of the cliff. There was a delicate tension between them now, a sense of significance and urgency; it was the stimulating current of a new awareness, and it was curiously intensified by their deliberately casual conversation.

“I don’t see how you can bear to take Don Willie’s job,” she said, smiling at the calm sea. “Where else could you find a place like this?”

“It’s got its points.”

“Are you thinking about taking the job?”

“I told him I’d let him know Monday morning.” He scooped up sand and let it trickle over the backs of her legs. “I don’t know why I put it off. Laziness, maybe. But let’s don’t worry about it. As you said, where else will we find a spot like this?”

“Yes. Let’s don’t waste it.”

They ran into the water and played for fifteen or twenty minutes in the waves, letting themselves be tumbled about in the churning white froth until they were numb with cold, and stunned into a delicious languor by the weight of the rolling seas.

They rested again, panting with a satisfying exhaustion and laughing at one another for no reason at all.

“You looked so funny,” she said. “Your hair was like a fright wig.”

“But you were great. Like a Maidenform ad. I dreamed I got seaweed in my Maidenform bra.”

“In my Mer-Maidenform bra, please.”

“Cut it out.”

They dressed finally and went back the steep cliff to Beecher’s car, pulling themselves with weary contentment up the rocky, uneven pathway. At the first posada they stopped for tea and discovered that they were desperately hungry. The waiter brought buttered bread, and a platter of thin serrano ham which had been cured on snowy slopes in the mountains. It was pinkly transparent, and their plates were garnished with tiny sweet pickles.

Afterward they made quick stops at Laura’s hotel and Beecher’s villa to change, and then drove off for Málaga, following the high winding road that flanked the sea. The air was cool and dry.

“I want to show you the bull ring,” Beecher said.

“But I’ve seen it,” Laura said. “When did I get here? Last month? Last year?” She laughed. “It’s all mixed up. But the day I arrived a cab driver pointed it out to me.”

“The Beecher tour is special,” he said. “Wait and see.”

Beecher knew most of the caretakers at the ring. He parked on the palm-lined avenida which faced the docks of Málaga, and they walked a half block to the plaza de toros, a huge beige bowl in the soft afternoon sun, with entrance-ways brightened by brilliant posters of tomorrow’s fight. Beecher pounded on the tall wooden gates at the back of the ring, and an old man he recognized pulled them open and looked up at them. Beecher explained what he wanted and offered him a five-peseta note. This was refused at once with a stern headshake; refused a second time with a grave bow; and finally accepted with a shrug and a smile and an injunction to the Deity to protect Beecher and his dear ones from all harm and danger.

They visited the chapel first, which smelled of roses and cold marble, and then the infirmary, which was sterile and foreboding, and finally walked out onto the bright red sands of the bull ring. Several youngsters were playing with capes against a contraption similar to a wheelbarrow armed with horns. The boys ran up to them and spoke to Beecher. They were underfed and scrawny, with horny toes sticking out of tattered alpargatas, but the merry excitement in their faces was very appealing.

“They want to put on a show for us,” Beecher explained to Laura.

“Let them, please. Please, Mike.”

He smiled at her enthusiasm. “Of course.”

The boys performed with a flamboyant energy, shouting insolently as the bull’s horns were pushed past their bellies, and their capes swelling like sails in a high wind. They were charged with pride and full of charitable contempt for their one-wheeled adversary.

Beecher thanked them when they finished and gave them a handful of one-peseta notes. The shade was cutting across the sand now, but there was one more thing he wanted her to see. He led her up a flight of stairs to the linked walks which overlooked the sorting pens. A five-year-old bull with thick, in-curving horns became watchful as they stopped at the waist-high railing to look at him. He trotted forward slowly, weight balanced perfectly, and his small dull eyes watching for any movement within range of his horns. A gray cat came through a hole in the heavy fencing and stretched out on the sand, ignoring the pawing bull.

“More nerve than I’d have,” Laura whispered.

The bull tore a splinter from the fence with a swift, irritable hook of his right horn and then backed off and looked up at them, the muscles in his shoulders drawing up in a flaring crest.

“He’s beautiful,” she said slowly. “It seems a shame he has to be killed.”

“He’ll give someone a lot of trouble before that happens,” Beecher said. “I think we’d better go now. We’re worrying him.”

They spent the evening in a crude, dirt-floored bodega in Málaga, a gamy and smoky place with ancient, black barrels standing in rows behind the bar, and a waiter who kept count of their drinks by chalking numbers on their slate-top table. They ate ham and cheese, strong, goaty manchega, and tiny birds cooked in garlic and oil. The place was a favorite of Beecher’s, and he was happy and pleased that she liked it. The smoke became very thick as the night wore on, and the bar was crowded three-deep with laborers and fishermen, most of them in their bare feet, and with heavy growths of beard on their pleasant, impassive faces.

An accordionist stopped at their table and played for them. He played the fiesta music from Pamplona, “Uno Jenero,” and Beecher sang the words along with him. An old man sat down and told Beecher a long and possibly true story of having been swept from a fishing boat ten miles from shore. Without stars or wind to guide him, he had chosen a course blindly, trusting to God that he was making for Spain and not for the open sea. At dawn, with strength and faith deserting him, he had seen the square towers of Málaga’s cathedral standing out against the mountains. And he still went out every night with the boats, he added, and kissed the back of his thumb. He was considered a lucky omen; everyone was happy and confident when he was in the boat.

When he went away after several glasses of wine, Beecher told the story to Laura.

“I believe it,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re smiling at it. I believe every word of it. I want to believe everything tonight.”

Later, when the fishermen had begun to sing, she put her head against his shoulder. “Why are you making me so happy?” she said gently.

It was very late when they got back to her hotel. She was almost asleep on her feet. But she smiled when he kissed her on the forehead, and she was still smiling when she walked into the elevator. There were a million stars in the sky and a great wind coming off the mountains, as Beecher drove back to his villa.