Page 73 of The Last Postcard

I tried to rehearse my confession, whispering to the fruit I cut for Hilde’s supper. I even tried to say it to the mirror, imagining that he was my reflection. I watched my lips part, my lungs fill with breath, but every time I tried to speak, the words turned to dust in my mouth.

‘Did Monsieur Langham say when he would be back?’ I asked Bouzid, as we drank glasses of tea by the kitchen door, trying to catch the breeze. I resisted the urge to press the hot glass to my cramping belly.

Bouzid took a slow sip. ‘No. Monsieur is often away on business.’

His manner was cooler than usual; a few times during the day I had caught his eyes on me. If Langham did check on my story while he was in Gibraltar, what would he learn? He knew Cabrera; it followed that he knew Bautista too, however dubious company the smuggler seemed for someone as fine as Langham. Bautista knew nothing about me, I reminded myself; he’d confirm my story, and I would be safe. I was a young man from nowhere, with a few pesetas in his pocket. That was all.

The next day dawned sweltering and muggy, and the hours heaved their way past. I didn’t leave Dar Portuna; I was still too nervous about the napkins hidden beneath my trousers, covered by three pairs of underwear. They were hot and uncomfortable, clinging around my sweat-damp legs. Luckily, we had no guests, so there was not too much for me to do. I made small, light meals for Hilde, to try and tempt her, despite her lack of appetite. I made more rustic dishes for Bouzid and me to eat at the kitchen table. When Hilde rang the bell on the second day of Langham’s absence, and Bouzid told me to take her some refreshment, I welcomed the distraction.

Perhaps she was bored too, for she beckoned me over to the rug where she lay. The room was dim, shuttered against the heat and I saw that she had been at her pipe, though not enough to put her in a stupor.

‘Take that away,’ she said, pushing at the pipe with her bare foot. ‘Sit and talk with me for a while, so I won’t smoke any more.’

I did so, and instead poured seltzer water with ice and mint and made her a drink. She took it, rolling the cool glass against her forehead.

‘I won’t do it for ever you know,’ she said. ‘I’ll stop, some time. I just need it now. While I’m renovating myself.’ She smiled up at me, with her lovely, sad grey eyes. ‘I’m trying to outgrow her, Mrs Francesco de Luca. You understand.’

I thought of the woman I had outgrown, hiding beneath her stained apron, looking at the world with her head lowered, like a dog expecting to be kicked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I understand.’

That day passed, quiet and drowsy, and then another. I kept myself busy taking inventories of the bar and pantry, with polishing pans and brining olives. Although none of us said anything, it was obvious we were all anxious for Langham’s return.

Hilde was the one to break the unspoken vigil. On the fourth day she emerged at noon, looking clear-eyed and impatient. I was feeling better too, more my usual self. My course seemed to have finished, and my body no longer felt swollen, my breasts had stopped their aches and protests beneath the tight brassiere.

‘Bouzid,’ I heard Hilde calling, ‘telephone Mademoiselle Alisée, tell her that I will come this evening after all. Oh, and could you send my blue gown to be pressed? It is on the table here.’

She came into the kitchen after that, ostensibly to ask for some lunch.

‘I can’t stand this waiting,’ she whispered to me, ‘and I don’t want to be here when he gets back. I can’t lie to him, he’ll know something has changed the minute he sees me.’ She stepped away abruptly as Bouzid came in. ‘No need to make me supper, del Potro,’ she said crisply, ‘I shall be dining out this evening.’

So she did, breezing from the house in a cloud of powder and scent and tinkling jewellery as evening began to blossom in the sky above the casbah. In truth, I was pleased to see her out and about again, though the thought of facing Langham alone made me more nervous than ever. Bouzid too told me that he had business in town to attend to, and would not require any supper.

‘And Monsieur Langham …?’ I asked.

‘Will be back tomorrow morning, no doubt,’ he said smoothly, before taking his leave.

Alone in the house once more. First I tried the study, but found it locked. Bouzid had taken the key with him, meticulous and mistrustful as always. But Langham’s bedroom was open, as clean and cool as it always was. At his dresser I sat and opened his pot of hair pomade, smoothed a little of it over my own short black curls. The scent lingered; wax and attar of roses. It smelled like him. I closed my eyes and breathed it in.

Sunset was orange and ochre, casting a spectacular mural of light on to the white bedroom wall. I stood, staring out at the sea and sky and boats, drifting through colour. It was as if Dar Portuna was a tower at the edge of the world. Slowly, the room turned old gold, then shadowy violet. I sat on the bed and lay my cheek on the crisp cotton pillow, thinking of how different this wide room was to my cramped, creaking cot next to the stove at the inn, with my coverlet of flea-bitten cats, and the rats running across the floor, their claws like the tapping of rain …

I opened my eyes to pitch darkness. For a second, I had no idea where I was, though I could smell roses and the earthy-salt scent of rain on the sea. I could hear wind, mouthing at the walls, sticking its tongues through the gaps in the carved shutters. I pushed myself to my elbows in horror. I was in Langham’s room, had fallen asleep, where anyone might have found me.

Eyes wide, I listened. Everything was quiet in the house, only the sound of drenching summer rain and wind, throwing a tantrum-like squall to break the endless, sticky days. I got to my feet, feeling my way in the darkness towards the window. There was a little light from a drowning moon, and I closed the shutters, hoping none of the rain had found its way inside. Out in the corridor, I tried to remember where the switch for the light was. I found it eventually, sending a sickly, yellow glow down the stairs. It flickered as the wind blew the wires and I shivered, more from unease than cold.

No one had returned. I was the sole guardian of Dar Portuna. The house had an abandoned feel to it, as if its doors had been left open to the wind and weather for years as I slept.

In the kitchen I splashed myself a tumbler of cooking wine and sat down at the table, to wait out the loneliness, and the storm. I was nearing the bottom of the glass when I saw something through the window: a flicker in the darkness of the garden, like a firefly tossed between wet leaves. I stopped, the wine halfway to my mouth, sour on my tongue. There, again, a spark, moving in a strange, weaving pattern. Despite the humid air, my body turned cold. It was torchlight. Someone was out there.

Carefully, I set down the glass, keeping my eyes fixed on the light as it swayed closer to the house. Whoever it was, they hadn’t come through the front gate: I would have heard. They had come in another way, as I once had, illicitly, like a thief.

I stood, careful not to let the chair squeak on the tiles. There was a knife on the table, the long serrated one for cutting bread, crumbs clinging to the blade. It would have to do. I crept to the back door, keeping to the shadows. The torchlight was nearer now, and I could hear footsteps, the thrash of wet leaves on fabric. When it was within spitting distance I couldn’t stand it any more. I shoved the door wide open, the knife clenched in my hand.

‘Who’s there?’ I yelled, as harshly as I could.

The torchlight stopped, not eight feet away. In the rain, I could see a shimmer of drenched fabric, a pair of dark, wet shoes. Whoever held the torch was keeping it away from their face.

‘Who’s there?’ I called again, shifting my grip on the knife. ‘If you don’t—’