Apart from being a riveting read, fast-moving, with quite an unusual plot, THE TELLING is about self-inflicted suffering while, however reluctantly, growing in wisdom, accepting the lessons offered and, like in judo, taking the punches life throws and use their momentum to our advantage.
Anne/Aybee, the protagonist, as fallible as the next women but perhaps even more headstrong than most, falls victim not only to life’s vicissitudes but especially to shame, pride and hubris ... not necessarily in that order and often a combination of all three.
Since the future is a set of probabilities, she – like all of us – has a choice. She can blame everyone else for her own errors and their consequences, or she can take responsibility for her own actions and give it her best shot to solve her predicaments under difficult circumstances. She chooses the latter.
Annemarie Becker (from COMING UP FOR AIR which finishes when she is about 20) doesn't go back home because she is too hurt by what she at that moment can only see as her lover’s deceit. Neither does she fancy going home with her tail between her legs - as she perceives it - to what she sees as her provincial roots. So instead she travels to Antwerp and finds a refuge for a short while in a bar/pension where they offer her work and shelter.
Lucky, ex hooker and lover of Madame Caroline, ex ‘madame’ who owns Copains, becomes her protector, and Lucky’s ex-colleagues become friends. When Anne realises she is pregnant, she is desperate. Having witnessed what illegal backstreet abortions can do, she decides to have the baby but has no idea how to cope without a job, money, future. We are talking 1958, and in those days an 'illegitimate' baby was still a stigma.
She could become a hooker herself so she and her baby won’t starve. However, there is one last alternative but it is equally chilling. Which path will she choose?
She is in her seventies when she meets Oliver, a journalist, in the waiting area of the Madrid Barajas airport where the cloud from Iceland’s volcano is just being announced. She was on her way to London, and Oliver is stuck on his way back from Venezuela. Since they can't fly anywhere anyway she invites Oliver to her finca near Madrid and in those days of waiting tells him her story.
That story is THE TELLING.
From CHAPTER 1:
Madrid Barajas T4 had been a mess. Thousands of stranded would-be passengers were milling about in various states of confusion, standing or sitting somewhere – Madrid Terminal 4 had very few benches. Most of the backpackers seemed to have pulled out their groundsheets, got themselves a place in a corner somewhere – anywhere - as long as it was off the very much beaten track; they had tucked themselves into sleeping bags or had curled up under blankets.
I opened m y laptop to check out the BBC, still the best source of relatively straight information. It said ‘Thursday, 15 April 2010 20:48 UK’ and then I found this entry:
‘1259 From BBC correspondent Jane Peel:
Nats has confirmed that today's closure of UK airspace is unprecedented. After the 9-11 terrorist attacks in America, transatlantic flights were suspended and the airspace over London alone was closed. But this is the first time all flights into and out of the UK have been grounded.
‘1254 So what's behind all the chaos? It's an eruption in the Eyjafjallajoekull area of Iceland - the second in a month. The second eruption has sent ash to far greater altitudes than the previous event. It's now at some 55,000ft - and that means the cloud can travel faster and further than it would were it nearer the ground. Volcanic clouds comprise tiny particles of sharp rock, or even glass, which will damage machinery on contact at high speeds. Hence the threat to aircraft engines.
‘1242 The latest news is that UK airspace is now closed because of the volcanic cloud. The Air Traffic Control Service (Nats) has said no flights will be allowed in or out of UK airspace until 1800 BST amid fears of engine damage. Up to 4,000 flights across northern Europe have so far been disrupted as the cloud moves southwards.
Donna Thomas is among those stuck at Manchester Airport - she's in a party of 10 who had been heading to the US. "I should be in Orlando in Florida meeting Mickey Mouse," she tells the BBC. "I'm gutted but there's nothing we can do.”’
We had also been told via an announcement that a cloud composed of ash from an unpronounceable volcano in Iceland had managed to invade the airspace of most of northern Europe, that all UK airports had been closed – well, all Irish airports too and some of the airports of northern Spain. Ergo, no plane came in, and very few were going anywhere.
My reaction was short and loud. “Fuck this!” I said before I turned to the person on my right. “Sorry, Madam,” I added somewhat feebly. I saw a strong face, lean, with high cheekbones, body thin and erect. She grinned, “My feelings entirely, young man. I suppose you’ve found something on your laptop I should know about?”
That’s how it had started. I had just got back to Madrid from Caracas where I’d sneaked one about Hugo Chavez – which wasn’t at all difficult because he seemed to be omnipresent – but to get close was more of a feat. Being a freelance journalist I knew what would interest my punters, and there was considerable interest in the bad boy of Central America. I had been looking forward to doing a series of articles on the open manipulation of the uneducated masses by a dictator. This was especially worthy of observation and comment – or so I thought - in a country where the poor still didn’t have anything to eat but where the oil and therefore the petrodollars flowed freely, just not into the pockets of those Venezuelans who needed them most. Chavez helped the bankrupt regime in Cuba to hang on in there a little longer, and stirring the shit in the rest of Latin America. I was pretty much decided on whose side I was on, yet observing what was in reality going down in Venezuela had made me feel almost virtuous.
I hadn’t actually written the story yet, neither had I fished out the best pictures, but I was sure I’d sell it well. Everybody was fascinated by Chavez, many feared that his ‘madness’ would soon contaminate the entire continent. But mostly they laughed at him. I remembered my father once telling me that that’s what happened with Hitler; once upon a time nobody had taken the strange little man seriously. And look what happened.
Anyway, there I was, in Madrid, an airport where almost no plane went to almost nowhere, next to this rather beautiful septuagenarian (I had an eye for women of all ages) saying, “Fuck this!”
She told me later that I’d looked so young, with a naughty schoolboy look, and that she was surprised I’d felt the need to apologise. She grinned when she remembered the moment, “It always strikes a chord in me when the young think they’ve invented things, be it politics, rebellion, swearing or sex. That’s what I thought too at one time of my life.”
We got talking that day and liked each other. I say that so easily now, but it was more like me falling in love in a weird way and she accepting my proposal. We had fun. When it became clear we wouldn’t go anywhere for a while (at least until the next day), she hesitated, looked away, turned back to me, searching my face - for what I wasn’t sure but making me feel quite naked - then she held out her hand. I had already noticed her hands: elegant, bony, long-fingered and covered in parchment-like old skin with age spots.
“Hello kid, I am Anne Beck. I don’t live far from here. Who are you and where are you going?”
‘Kid’? Well, from her point of view perhaps. I was 34 years old and just a little shocked to be called ‘kid’. I took her hand. “Oliver Wexford, freelance journalist, just got back from Caracas, on my way to London. Stuck.”
“Alright, Oliver. Going to Caracas right now means you are a crusader of one kind or another, coming back from Caracas in one piece means you are a survivor. I have a suggestion. I suppose you’ve had propositions from women before – but this one’s strictly on the lines of ‘what would you prefer to do, hunt for a hotel in a town you don’t know and where the prices have probably and most mysteriously shot through the roof, or entrust your travelling gear, your computer and yourself to an old woman and a jeep both of whom have seen better days, coming with me to my place in the middle of nowhere to the south-east of Madrid – about 40 km from here?” She grimaced and took a comical deep breath, “... you try and say all this without breathing... Well, let’s see, I offer you a bed and some grub for the time it takes the cloud to piss off and for these guys to get the whole shebang going again. You are free to choose, but I’m going to leave now. I’ve had enough.”
This came as a surprise. All sorts of things ran through my head at that moment. I seem to remember that among them was, not wanting to impose, not losing my independence, not wanting to have long talks with an oldie showering me with her memories, or suddenly fearing she may put me in a cage like the witch who fattened Hansel in the Grimm story with an eye to eventually eating him... yes, I know. And she knew too. So she got up to leave.
“Never mind, next time,” she said, moving rapidly, not like an ‘oldie’ at all, pulling out the handle of her on-board case.
I suddenly felt panic at the thought of losing her. “Hold it right there, Anne Beck, I‘m with you. Don’t you take one more step without me!” She didn’t even turn around to make sure I was following. “Good, let’s get the hell out of here.”
I, the ‘kid’, had trouble keeping up with her. She walked fast and erect, her snow-white hair bunched up on the top of her head. She was wearing jeans and an ‘amazing Technicolor dream coat’ – a loosely fitting, colourful, flowered and beautifully tailored jacket of unknowable origin – which made her look special, elegant and eccentric. She stopped briefly at the parking ticket pay machines, entered what I assumed to be her parking ticket and then a credit card. There were no queues so the procedure only took a moment, and we were already in the lift when she looked at me again and smiled: “Your last chance to get away, you know...” I picked up my macho travelling pack and we got out on some floor in the parking lot. And again I followed.
“I remember when you were so shocked by my invitation. You should have seen your face.”
“Well, it’s not every day a gorgeous blonde is propositioning me without shame. I was simply stunned by my good fortune.”
We laughed. By then we had settled into something that almost felt like an old marriage, a friendship, a family. We had been at the ‘farm’ for two days and the news regarding our prospects of flying anywhere were not encouraging.
The farm – or the finca as she called it in Spanish - was a sprawling place of around one hectare in the middle of nowhere near one of the most beautiful little towns in the Province of Madrid (she said, and I soon found out that she was right). The finca consisted of the main house, outhouses, a stable for six housing four horses, her studio (I was no longer surprised by anything, not even by the fact that she was an amazingly gifted and apparently well-known painter) and what she called the ‘Sun King’s Palace’, a solid structure of about two meters high at the south-facing side, and perhaps six meters high on the north side. The sloping roof was covered in photovoltaic panels and, inside, the place was full of what were for me mysterious boxes, electricity control units (that’s how I thought of them), the batteries to store the electricity collected from the solar panels, toolkits, rat poison, big rolls of electric cable, barbed wire, well, lots of ‘stuff’... and an empty swallows’ nest in the corner at the highest point of the back wall.
“Don’t think we are going to be alone, young man,” was one of the first things she’d said once we had been on our way. “We’ll be chaperoned by Josep. Josep is from Brazil and is my fatherly friend, mother, brother, son, factotum, butler... well, you’ll meet him soon enough. By the way, do you speak any Spanish at all?”
I shook my head.
“Never mind, you’ll manage. He doesn’t speak much Spanish either and we understand each other perfectly.” She laughed. Her laugh was something else. Had we met under different circumstances I’d have made her laugh as much as possible, because her laughter brought the sun in. Well, yes, even today I’m still getting quite poetic when I think of it. There was something about her that sparkled, shone, kind of happy-making.
When we had finally found her ancient Cherokee we soon got onto the A3 motorway heading east. “I can never remember where I park the damn thing. Always make the same mistake. I remember the floor and forget to look at the letters and the numbers.”
“You appear far too efficient for such a lapse...”
“Don’t get fooled by perceptions, Oliver, I am an old thing, after all. Wouldn’t call myself an old ‘dear’ though. Not much ‘dear’ about me.”
“There’s nothing ‘old’ about you, just a few wrinkles which I suppose you’ve earned.”
She laughed again.
“Earned indeed. It’s amazing actually that I’m holding up.”
“What shall I call you? Miss or Mrs? Becker?
“Aybee, like everyone else.”
[...]
“Let’s get going,” she said and walked towards the stables. Aybee (as she signed her stunning and somewhat scary paintings – three hung in the main house) said that she’d rescued four horses from the ‘knackers’ yard’ and I shouldn’t be impressed.
“Well, I say ‘horses’, let’s see... the vet said that ‘Midget’ was an elderly multi-coloured pony of doubtful breeding, just had grown a bit too much and could be taken for a horse.”
As we got closer I saw four faces looking over the lower stable doors. It was immediately clear which one was the pony: Midget’s grey and white head could just about look out over the door; his eyes followed Aybee but he didn’t move. She stopped to stroke his nose while her other hand dug deep into the pocket of her blue, red and green smock, emerging with half an apple. She reached into the box and offered it to Midget who took it gently with his lips.
Next to Midget was Magpie, a big black and white gipsy horse, powerfully built, with a white mane, a white tail, big black patches on his white coat and mean eyes (that’s what I thought at the time – I wasn’t really that familiar with horses, they’ve always been a bit too big for me). Then there was dirty-brown to black Motley, “Even the vet doesn’t know the mix of this one. They used it as a cart horse – in rural Spain that is still a very much used mode of transport - and beat it mercilessly. When I rescued her I could see her scars. She was a very frightened creature, and look at her now.” Aybee touched Motley’s velvety mouth, and the horse whinnied softly and pulled back her lips in what almost looked like a smile. Aybee laughed. “OK, there’s your apple, sweetheart. And here is the pick of the bunch: Marmaduke the überhorse,” she laughed.
“Do you know anything about horses, kid?”
“Only that they are big and throw you off, and they know I’m scared and so they don’t take a blind bit of notice of whatever I say or do.”
“God, yes, that’s how I started out. But I wanted horses here on the finca, it kind of seemed the right thing to have - apart from dogs of course and a cat - so I went with the vet lady and we got to that auction. Everyone was shouting and bidding and opening mouths and counting teeth, and it smelled of sawdust and horse shit and whatever else, and I didn’t have a clue what to do next until I saw a sorry lot on the other side of all that to-do. I asked the girl hanging about by the gate, and she said that those eight were for the slaughterhouse. I looked at them alarmed and saddened and waved Rosario over - that’s the vet. She looked at me as if to say, ‘no you won’t’ and I said, ‘yes I shall... I want the best four of this bunch’. “
“How on earth did you choose?”
“I didn’t really, they chose me. Midget trotted over and stood stock still by my side as though I’d asked him to defect. Magpie came to ‘our’ side and made quite sure we knew what he was about by pushing Rosario backwards with his head. He then whinnied and stood next to me. Motley joined the renegades by coming over and pulling my sleeve very gently.”
“So what did Marmaduke do?”
“Ha! That’s why he’s the ‘überhorse’. Marmaduke played the hero. He trotted over and then turned around, his back to us, but almost as though saying, ‘anyone coming near this lot, watch out, they’ll have to come through me’.” She smiled, and I admit I was touched by her story when I imagined the scene. Marmaduke was a tall chestnut and had what I thought of as elegance. His face was long and slim, with a thin white patch in the middle, reaching from his forehead down to covering his nose, and as Aybee offered him his apple with her left, her right stroked his long jaw.
“Rosario said that he is approximately 30 and a Hanoverian and has been badly neglected. By the way, they are all around that age. When I saw them in the yard they were caked in filth, bruised, with matted and knotted manes and tails. I just trusted their instinct and their decision. Got them for near to nothing, of course, especially since Rosario did the dealing. Between Josep, Rosario, myself and the boys we’ve given them back some of their lives. I’ve taken to Marmaduke in a big way and ride him regularly. I am not a horse woman by any means, but Marmaduke is such a big softy and tries so hard to please; and every time we go out of that big gate he dances a little dance. I assume it’s a dance of happiness and remembering the good times before the hurt he suffered.” I had just realised that all four names began with ‘M’.
“Did you name them or did they come with their names?”
“You noticed! I named them and I can’t tell you for the life of me why they all start with an ‘M’. But there you have it. I have given up looking for a meaning.”
From CHAPTER 26
‘I wonder whether we get points for trying’. Aybee sighed. She looked up to let her eyes caress the old trees and then she held her face into the light that came from the last rays of the setting sun. She shivered.
The earth sent up the moist, warm fragrance of decay and new life beginning. She breathed in deeply and again and again until she felt light-headed. She wanted to record every detail.
She took a shawl from the chair by the window and wrapped it around herself more tightly than was strictly necessary, and still she shivered. Then she descended the few steps to the patio. Down here it was already dark, the sun a memory captured by fat droplets of left-over rain which had ceased only minutes before – shimmering on branches and leaves and glistening in the roses. As her senses opened to this gift of beauty, she allowed her mind to wander. With another deep breath she could smell the sea even at this distance - a little hint of its salty proximity. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue, tasting the air.
Yes, she had been trying: trying to begin again, trying to make sense of it all, trying not to feel sorry for herself, trying not to feel the pain and, for the greater part, she had been successful. She had, as always, compartmentalised her emotions.
When she’d bought this house, Aybee had acquired far more than just a property. More than anything else she had needed inner peace and the chance to let go of her ghosts. And this house, high above the Cornish hills, had been the most beautiful one she’d seen. Stretched out below she watched those soft green hills idly growing the harvest, following their own, slow rhythm, and this summer the weather had been kind.
Aybee had wanted this house for years and had dreamt about it until it became almost an obsession. This would be her Shangri-la, her refuge. And miraculously it had been on the market just when she was able to buy, and she had called it ‘Home’ with a singular lack of imagination but with all her heart and expectations of the future. It had always seemed to her that the house had actually been waiting for her, and now she felt like a traitor. Annemarie Becker, aka Anne Beck, aka Aybee, painter, what have you done? She looked at the large ‘FOR SALE’ sign the agent had nailed to the big post by the terrace only yesterday. Now her refuge had also been invaded by ghosts and defiled.
The sea breeze was stronger now, and darkness brought with it more cold, the cold that creeps over the earth, low to the ground, reaching out and up. Anne shuddered, turned, and slowly, with a heave and an invisible weight on both shoulders, she went up the few stairs and went inside, closing the door firmly behind her. She switched on the small lamp on the table by the big chair and then glanced briefly into the antique, pockmarked mirror.
“Aybee, you’re decaying...” she said out loud, which amused her. ‘There I go’, she thought, ‘already talking to myself, not long before the end...’ But she leaned closer and studied her face. She was 45 but looked 30 and wondered where all her pain had been stored. Her face certainly hadn’t done any book keeping.
For the first time in her life Aybee felt as though it had all been too much. When she’d walked into the road without looking, some part of her was conscious of what she was about to do and hoped that the car would run her over and silence the voices in her head for good. She’d been in London for a few days to see her lawyers, the estate agent, get her passport renewed and generally create order in her life before she was to move on. It had been late, already dark and, as usual, it had been raining. She had looked at the reflections of the city lights in the puddles and, as had been the case so often lately, her mind had been churning over recent events, trying to digest the latest disaster for which she held herself wholly responsible.
Read it all in THE TELLING, paperback or Kindle
Anne/Aybee, the protagonist, as fallible as the next women but perhaps even more headstrong than most, falls victim not only to life’s vicissitudes but especially to shame, pride and hubris ... not necessarily in that order and often a combination of all three.
Since the future is a set of probabilities, she – like all of us – has a choice. She can blame everyone else for her own errors and their consequences, or she can take responsibility for her own actions and give it her best shot to solve her predicaments under difficult circumstances. She chooses the latter.
Annemarie Becker (from COMING UP FOR AIR which finishes when she is about 20) doesn't go back home because she is too hurt by what she at that moment can only see as her lover’s deceit. Neither does she fancy going home with her tail between her legs - as she perceives it - to what she sees as her provincial roots. So instead she travels to Antwerp and finds a refuge for a short while in a bar/pension where they offer her work and shelter.
Lucky, ex hooker and lover of Madame Caroline, ex ‘madame’ who owns Copains, becomes her protector, and Lucky’s ex-colleagues become friends. When Anne realises she is pregnant, she is desperate. Having witnessed what illegal backstreet abortions can do, she decides to have the baby but has no idea how to cope without a job, money, future. We are talking 1958, and in those days an 'illegitimate' baby was still a stigma.
She could become a hooker herself so she and her baby won’t starve. However, there is one last alternative but it is equally chilling. Which path will she choose?
She is in her seventies when she meets Oliver, a journalist, in the waiting area of the Madrid Barajas airport where the cloud from Iceland’s volcano is just being announced. She was on her way to London, and Oliver is stuck on his way back from Venezuela. Since they can't fly anywhere anyway she invites Oliver to her finca near Madrid and in those days of waiting tells him her story.
That story is THE TELLING.
From CHAPTER 1:
Madrid Barajas T4 had been a mess. Thousands of stranded would-be passengers were milling about in various states of confusion, standing or sitting somewhere – Madrid Terminal 4 had very few benches. Most of the backpackers seemed to have pulled out their groundsheets, got themselves a place in a corner somewhere – anywhere - as long as it was off the very much beaten track; they had tucked themselves into sleeping bags or had curled up under blankets.
I opened m y laptop to check out the BBC, still the best source of relatively straight information. It said ‘Thursday, 15 April 2010 20:48 UK’ and then I found this entry:
‘1259 From BBC correspondent Jane Peel:
Nats has confirmed that today's closure of UK airspace is unprecedented. After the 9-11 terrorist attacks in America, transatlantic flights were suspended and the airspace over London alone was closed. But this is the first time all flights into and out of the UK have been grounded.
‘1254 So what's behind all the chaos? It's an eruption in the Eyjafjallajoekull area of Iceland - the second in a month. The second eruption has sent ash to far greater altitudes than the previous event. It's now at some 55,000ft - and that means the cloud can travel faster and further than it would were it nearer the ground. Volcanic clouds comprise tiny particles of sharp rock, or even glass, which will damage machinery on contact at high speeds. Hence the threat to aircraft engines.
‘1242 The latest news is that UK airspace is now closed because of the volcanic cloud. The Air Traffic Control Service (Nats) has said no flights will be allowed in or out of UK airspace until 1800 BST amid fears of engine damage. Up to 4,000 flights across northern Europe have so far been disrupted as the cloud moves southwards.
Donna Thomas is among those stuck at Manchester Airport - she's in a party of 10 who had been heading to the US. "I should be in Orlando in Florida meeting Mickey Mouse," she tells the BBC. "I'm gutted but there's nothing we can do.”’
We had also been told via an announcement that a cloud composed of ash from an unpronounceable volcano in Iceland had managed to invade the airspace of most of northern Europe, that all UK airports had been closed – well, all Irish airports too and some of the airports of northern Spain. Ergo, no plane came in, and very few were going anywhere.
My reaction was short and loud. “Fuck this!” I said before I turned to the person on my right. “Sorry, Madam,” I added somewhat feebly. I saw a strong face, lean, with high cheekbones, body thin and erect. She grinned, “My feelings entirely, young man. I suppose you’ve found something on your laptop I should know about?”
That’s how it had started. I had just got back to Madrid from Caracas where I’d sneaked one about Hugo Chavez – which wasn’t at all difficult because he seemed to be omnipresent – but to get close was more of a feat. Being a freelance journalist I knew what would interest my punters, and there was considerable interest in the bad boy of Central America. I had been looking forward to doing a series of articles on the open manipulation of the uneducated masses by a dictator. This was especially worthy of observation and comment – or so I thought - in a country where the poor still didn’t have anything to eat but where the oil and therefore the petrodollars flowed freely, just not into the pockets of those Venezuelans who needed them most. Chavez helped the bankrupt regime in Cuba to hang on in there a little longer, and stirring the shit in the rest of Latin America. I was pretty much decided on whose side I was on, yet observing what was in reality going down in Venezuela had made me feel almost virtuous.
I hadn’t actually written the story yet, neither had I fished out the best pictures, but I was sure I’d sell it well. Everybody was fascinated by Chavez, many feared that his ‘madness’ would soon contaminate the entire continent. But mostly they laughed at him. I remembered my father once telling me that that’s what happened with Hitler; once upon a time nobody had taken the strange little man seriously. And look what happened.
Anyway, there I was, in Madrid, an airport where almost no plane went to almost nowhere, next to this rather beautiful septuagenarian (I had an eye for women of all ages) saying, “Fuck this!”
She told me later that I’d looked so young, with a naughty schoolboy look, and that she was surprised I’d felt the need to apologise. She grinned when she remembered the moment, “It always strikes a chord in me when the young think they’ve invented things, be it politics, rebellion, swearing or sex. That’s what I thought too at one time of my life.”
We got talking that day and liked each other. I say that so easily now, but it was more like me falling in love in a weird way and she accepting my proposal. We had fun. When it became clear we wouldn’t go anywhere for a while (at least until the next day), she hesitated, looked away, turned back to me, searching my face - for what I wasn’t sure but making me feel quite naked - then she held out her hand. I had already noticed her hands: elegant, bony, long-fingered and covered in parchment-like old skin with age spots.
“Hello kid, I am Anne Beck. I don’t live far from here. Who are you and where are you going?”
‘Kid’? Well, from her point of view perhaps. I was 34 years old and just a little shocked to be called ‘kid’. I took her hand. “Oliver Wexford, freelance journalist, just got back from Caracas, on my way to London. Stuck.”
“Alright, Oliver. Going to Caracas right now means you are a crusader of one kind or another, coming back from Caracas in one piece means you are a survivor. I have a suggestion. I suppose you’ve had propositions from women before – but this one’s strictly on the lines of ‘what would you prefer to do, hunt for a hotel in a town you don’t know and where the prices have probably and most mysteriously shot through the roof, or entrust your travelling gear, your computer and yourself to an old woman and a jeep both of whom have seen better days, coming with me to my place in the middle of nowhere to the south-east of Madrid – about 40 km from here?” She grimaced and took a comical deep breath, “... you try and say all this without breathing... Well, let’s see, I offer you a bed and some grub for the time it takes the cloud to piss off and for these guys to get the whole shebang going again. You are free to choose, but I’m going to leave now. I’ve had enough.”
This came as a surprise. All sorts of things ran through my head at that moment. I seem to remember that among them was, not wanting to impose, not losing my independence, not wanting to have long talks with an oldie showering me with her memories, or suddenly fearing she may put me in a cage like the witch who fattened Hansel in the Grimm story with an eye to eventually eating him... yes, I know. And she knew too. So she got up to leave.
“Never mind, next time,” she said, moving rapidly, not like an ‘oldie’ at all, pulling out the handle of her on-board case.
I suddenly felt panic at the thought of losing her. “Hold it right there, Anne Beck, I‘m with you. Don’t you take one more step without me!” She didn’t even turn around to make sure I was following. “Good, let’s get the hell out of here.”
I, the ‘kid’, had trouble keeping up with her. She walked fast and erect, her snow-white hair bunched up on the top of her head. She was wearing jeans and an ‘amazing Technicolor dream coat’ – a loosely fitting, colourful, flowered and beautifully tailored jacket of unknowable origin – which made her look special, elegant and eccentric. She stopped briefly at the parking ticket pay machines, entered what I assumed to be her parking ticket and then a credit card. There were no queues so the procedure only took a moment, and we were already in the lift when she looked at me again and smiled: “Your last chance to get away, you know...” I picked up my macho travelling pack and we got out on some floor in the parking lot. And again I followed.
“I remember when you were so shocked by my invitation. You should have seen your face.”
“Well, it’s not every day a gorgeous blonde is propositioning me without shame. I was simply stunned by my good fortune.”
We laughed. By then we had settled into something that almost felt like an old marriage, a friendship, a family. We had been at the ‘farm’ for two days and the news regarding our prospects of flying anywhere were not encouraging.
The farm – or the finca as she called it in Spanish - was a sprawling place of around one hectare in the middle of nowhere near one of the most beautiful little towns in the Province of Madrid (she said, and I soon found out that she was right). The finca consisted of the main house, outhouses, a stable for six housing four horses, her studio (I was no longer surprised by anything, not even by the fact that she was an amazingly gifted and apparently well-known painter) and what she called the ‘Sun King’s Palace’, a solid structure of about two meters high at the south-facing side, and perhaps six meters high on the north side. The sloping roof was covered in photovoltaic panels and, inside, the place was full of what were for me mysterious boxes, electricity control units (that’s how I thought of them), the batteries to store the electricity collected from the solar panels, toolkits, rat poison, big rolls of electric cable, barbed wire, well, lots of ‘stuff’... and an empty swallows’ nest in the corner at the highest point of the back wall.
“Don’t think we are going to be alone, young man,” was one of the first things she’d said once we had been on our way. “We’ll be chaperoned by Josep. Josep is from Brazil and is my fatherly friend, mother, brother, son, factotum, butler... well, you’ll meet him soon enough. By the way, do you speak any Spanish at all?”
I shook my head.
“Never mind, you’ll manage. He doesn’t speak much Spanish either and we understand each other perfectly.” She laughed. Her laugh was something else. Had we met under different circumstances I’d have made her laugh as much as possible, because her laughter brought the sun in. Well, yes, even today I’m still getting quite poetic when I think of it. There was something about her that sparkled, shone, kind of happy-making.
When we had finally found her ancient Cherokee we soon got onto the A3 motorway heading east. “I can never remember where I park the damn thing. Always make the same mistake. I remember the floor and forget to look at the letters and the numbers.”
“You appear far too efficient for such a lapse...”
“Don’t get fooled by perceptions, Oliver, I am an old thing, after all. Wouldn’t call myself an old ‘dear’ though. Not much ‘dear’ about me.”
“There’s nothing ‘old’ about you, just a few wrinkles which I suppose you’ve earned.”
She laughed again.
“Earned indeed. It’s amazing actually that I’m holding up.”
“What shall I call you? Miss or Mrs? Becker?
“Aybee, like everyone else.”
[...]
“Let’s get going,” she said and walked towards the stables. Aybee (as she signed her stunning and somewhat scary paintings – three hung in the main house) said that she’d rescued four horses from the ‘knackers’ yard’ and I shouldn’t be impressed.
“Well, I say ‘horses’, let’s see... the vet said that ‘Midget’ was an elderly multi-coloured pony of doubtful breeding, just had grown a bit too much and could be taken for a horse.”
As we got closer I saw four faces looking over the lower stable doors. It was immediately clear which one was the pony: Midget’s grey and white head could just about look out over the door; his eyes followed Aybee but he didn’t move. She stopped to stroke his nose while her other hand dug deep into the pocket of her blue, red and green smock, emerging with half an apple. She reached into the box and offered it to Midget who took it gently with his lips.
Next to Midget was Magpie, a big black and white gipsy horse, powerfully built, with a white mane, a white tail, big black patches on his white coat and mean eyes (that’s what I thought at the time – I wasn’t really that familiar with horses, they’ve always been a bit too big for me). Then there was dirty-brown to black Motley, “Even the vet doesn’t know the mix of this one. They used it as a cart horse – in rural Spain that is still a very much used mode of transport - and beat it mercilessly. When I rescued her I could see her scars. She was a very frightened creature, and look at her now.” Aybee touched Motley’s velvety mouth, and the horse whinnied softly and pulled back her lips in what almost looked like a smile. Aybee laughed. “OK, there’s your apple, sweetheart. And here is the pick of the bunch: Marmaduke the überhorse,” she laughed.
“Do you know anything about horses, kid?”
“Only that they are big and throw you off, and they know I’m scared and so they don’t take a blind bit of notice of whatever I say or do.”
“God, yes, that’s how I started out. But I wanted horses here on the finca, it kind of seemed the right thing to have - apart from dogs of course and a cat - so I went with the vet lady and we got to that auction. Everyone was shouting and bidding and opening mouths and counting teeth, and it smelled of sawdust and horse shit and whatever else, and I didn’t have a clue what to do next until I saw a sorry lot on the other side of all that to-do. I asked the girl hanging about by the gate, and she said that those eight were for the slaughterhouse. I looked at them alarmed and saddened and waved Rosario over - that’s the vet. She looked at me as if to say, ‘no you won’t’ and I said, ‘yes I shall... I want the best four of this bunch’. “
“How on earth did you choose?”
“I didn’t really, they chose me. Midget trotted over and stood stock still by my side as though I’d asked him to defect. Magpie came to ‘our’ side and made quite sure we knew what he was about by pushing Rosario backwards with his head. He then whinnied and stood next to me. Motley joined the renegades by coming over and pulling my sleeve very gently.”
“So what did Marmaduke do?”
“Ha! That’s why he’s the ‘überhorse’. Marmaduke played the hero. He trotted over and then turned around, his back to us, but almost as though saying, ‘anyone coming near this lot, watch out, they’ll have to come through me’.” She smiled, and I admit I was touched by her story when I imagined the scene. Marmaduke was a tall chestnut and had what I thought of as elegance. His face was long and slim, with a thin white patch in the middle, reaching from his forehead down to covering his nose, and as Aybee offered him his apple with her left, her right stroked his long jaw.
“Rosario said that he is approximately 30 and a Hanoverian and has been badly neglected. By the way, they are all around that age. When I saw them in the yard they were caked in filth, bruised, with matted and knotted manes and tails. I just trusted their instinct and their decision. Got them for near to nothing, of course, especially since Rosario did the dealing. Between Josep, Rosario, myself and the boys we’ve given them back some of their lives. I’ve taken to Marmaduke in a big way and ride him regularly. I am not a horse woman by any means, but Marmaduke is such a big softy and tries so hard to please; and every time we go out of that big gate he dances a little dance. I assume it’s a dance of happiness and remembering the good times before the hurt he suffered.” I had just realised that all four names began with ‘M’.
“Did you name them or did they come with their names?”
“You noticed! I named them and I can’t tell you for the life of me why they all start with an ‘M’. But there you have it. I have given up looking for a meaning.”
From CHAPTER 26
‘I wonder whether we get points for trying’. Aybee sighed. She looked up to let her eyes caress the old trees and then she held her face into the light that came from the last rays of the setting sun. She shivered.
The earth sent up the moist, warm fragrance of decay and new life beginning. She breathed in deeply and again and again until she felt light-headed. She wanted to record every detail.
She took a shawl from the chair by the window and wrapped it around herself more tightly than was strictly necessary, and still she shivered. Then she descended the few steps to the patio. Down here it was already dark, the sun a memory captured by fat droplets of left-over rain which had ceased only minutes before – shimmering on branches and leaves and glistening in the roses. As her senses opened to this gift of beauty, she allowed her mind to wander. With another deep breath she could smell the sea even at this distance - a little hint of its salty proximity. She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue, tasting the air.
Yes, she had been trying: trying to begin again, trying to make sense of it all, trying not to feel sorry for herself, trying not to feel the pain and, for the greater part, she had been successful. She had, as always, compartmentalised her emotions.
When she’d bought this house, Aybee had acquired far more than just a property. More than anything else she had needed inner peace and the chance to let go of her ghosts. And this house, high above the Cornish hills, had been the most beautiful one she’d seen. Stretched out below she watched those soft green hills idly growing the harvest, following their own, slow rhythm, and this summer the weather had been kind.
Aybee had wanted this house for years and had dreamt about it until it became almost an obsession. This would be her Shangri-la, her refuge. And miraculously it had been on the market just when she was able to buy, and she had called it ‘Home’ with a singular lack of imagination but with all her heart and expectations of the future. It had always seemed to her that the house had actually been waiting for her, and now she felt like a traitor. Annemarie Becker, aka Anne Beck, aka Aybee, painter, what have you done? She looked at the large ‘FOR SALE’ sign the agent had nailed to the big post by the terrace only yesterday. Now her refuge had also been invaded by ghosts and defiled.
The sea breeze was stronger now, and darkness brought with it more cold, the cold that creeps over the earth, low to the ground, reaching out and up. Anne shuddered, turned, and slowly, with a heave and an invisible weight on both shoulders, she went up the few stairs and went inside, closing the door firmly behind her. She switched on the small lamp on the table by the big chair and then glanced briefly into the antique, pockmarked mirror.
“Aybee, you’re decaying...” she said out loud, which amused her. ‘There I go’, she thought, ‘already talking to myself, not long before the end...’ But she leaned closer and studied her face. She was 45 but looked 30 and wondered where all her pain had been stored. Her face certainly hadn’t done any book keeping.
For the first time in her life Aybee felt as though it had all been too much. When she’d walked into the road without looking, some part of her was conscious of what she was about to do and hoped that the car would run her over and silence the voices in her head for good. She’d been in London for a few days to see her lawyers, the estate agent, get her passport renewed and generally create order in her life before she was to move on. It had been late, already dark and, as usual, it had been raining. She had looked at the reflections of the city lights in the puddles and, as had been the case so often lately, her mind had been churning over recent events, trying to digest the latest disaster for which she held herself wholly responsible.
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