The bus from Barcelona dropped them at a village at the foot of the mountain. There were six of them in the group, and they waited under the shelter until an open-backed truck pulled up in a cloud of dust, a tanned arm slung from the driver’s window raised in salute. Sheena and her friend Adriana took their places in the cab alongside the driver, a swarthy-looking guy in dirty Levis and a white vest who introduced himself as Mateo. Michael and Faye climbed up into the tray at the back along with another couple – Greg and Bree were their names – whose white-blond hair made them look more like siblings than lovers. Michael chatted with them as the truck careered along the winding road up into the hills, but Faye, he noticed, remained silent.
They reached the house as the sun started to dip down behind the hills, the sky bruised with lilac clouds. A low, long, ranch-like dwelling with dirty yellow walls and a terracotta roof sat in the clearing. Some of the roof tiles were missing in places like gaps in the mouth where the odd tooth had come loose. The yard surrounding it was pocked with scrubby bushes, and a clutch of tall eucalyptus trees off to one side seemed to loom over the house itself. He felt Faye’s silent disapproval, and his own heart sank a little at the carcasses of various cars rusting in the dust, weeds growing up through the cavities where the upholstered seats should have been. A couple of picnic tables nearby sported scalloped parasols, Orangina logos fading in the fabric that fluttered in the occasional breeze that blew through the hills.
Mateo cupped his hand around the flame of his lighter and lit a cigarette; squinting through the smoke and tilting his head towards the house, he said: ‘Go. Find rooms. Make yourselves at home.’
Sheena asked: ‘Which rooms should we take?’ but Mateo just shrugged like he wasn’t interested in the particulars.
Michael picked up their bags. ‘Shall we?’ he asked Faye, mock-gallant. Her mouth was a tight line as she followed him inside.
After the glare of the sun, the interior of the house seemed very dark. A long corridor stretched through the house like a central artery, rooms radiating off on each side. A stale smell hung in the air: marijuana mingling with a dank bathroomy odour. They followed the giddy laughter of the girls down the corridor, glancing into rooms as they went: tatty curtains hung over windows grimy with dirt, sleeping bags ruched and unzippered, thrown over mattresses, windowsills lined with toiletries and empty beer bottles. Something crunched underfoot, and Michael looked down and saw a line of buttons from the eucalyptus trees outside. Someone had left them lying in a row along the tiled floor of the corridor, like Hansel and Gretel, he thought.
They found an empty room near the end. It was devoid of furniture, but there were a couple of camping mats and an old Navajo blanket sitting neatly against one wall, and Michael put down the bags and looked around at the space, saying: ‘This is okay, isn’t it?’ One window gave on to the yard, and he went to it now and drew back the curtain, rubbing some of the dust off the panes with the flat of his hand. ‘I mean, it’ll do for the short term, right?’ he went on. ‘And it’s free.’
He needed her to relax and fall in with the others, to make the best of it as he was doing. But the spring inside her seemed tightly coiled, her shoulders high and stiff, hands clutching her elbows like she didn’t want to touch anything.
‘What is this place, do you think?’ Faye asked.
Michael shrugged. ‘It’s just a house.’
‘Don’t you think it’s a bit weird? I mean, who are all these people? Is it some kind of commune or what?’
He laughed, affecting an ease he didn’t yet feel. ‘Of course not!’
‘Then what are they all doing here?’
‘Same as us. Looking for someplace temporary to stay until all of this blows over.’
He knew what she was getting at. It didn’t have the feel of a house that had suddenly been thrown open in response to the ash cloud and the crisis it had created. There was a listlessness to the place, a settled air of staleness and drift, that suggested this was something other.
‘Hey, listen. If they start preaching or trying to brainwash us, we’ll get out of here, okay? If they turn out to be Scientologists or, I dunno’ – he scrambled for an example – ‘Branch Davidians or whatever the fuck, then we’ll leave immediately. Okay?’ He was laughing again, genuinely this time, tickled by the idea of the two of them stumbling accidentally into some Doomsday cult.
He could hear the others outside now, amassing in the space beneath the trees.
‘We should go and join the gang,’ he suggested, and she acquiesced, although he could tell she’d already had enough of them. Sheena and Adriana grated on her nerves – their constant giggling, and the way Sheena kept flirting with Michael, a point he didn’t try to refute. It was obvious to everyone, and, besides, he was doing his best to discourage it.
They walked back down the corridor, Faye pausing outside one of the doors, her attention caught by something in the room. Michael looked past her into the dim space and saw a little girl staring up at them through small blue-framed glasses, a large flesh-coloured plaster covering one eye, her hair in bunches. She looked to be no older than four or five, the expression on her round face grave and dignified. Michael could make out a shape on the bed behind her, a woman’s dark hair falling over a pillow, the rounded hump of her hip. The little girl put her index finger to her pursed lips, her one small dark eye flaring with warning. They heard a grunt and a sort of snuffling noise, but the woman didn’t stir. Over the hump of her hip, Michael saw a tiny bunched fist briefly flailing. An infant, suckling at the woman’s breast while she slept.
‘Mi hermano,’ the little girl whispered, her voice surprisingly deep and husky for such a small child.
‘Come on,’ Michael whispered, stepping away from the door.
But Faye continued to stand there, transfixed.
‘Faye,’ he hissed, and finally she moved away.
Later that evening, when they were all outside, gathered around a campfire that had been set and lit at a distance from the house, he saw the woman again. Through the blue smoke of the fire, he observed the long curl of her black hair falling over one shoulder as she came down along the track towards the others, the hem of her skirt catching at the grass as she passed. The baby’s equally black hair was visible above the crook of her elbow where his head rested. The little girl held on to her mother’s free hand, stepping carefully, her one good eye behind the glasses fixed on the uneven ground.
The woman moved like water, a slow ripple of ease, the gentle sway of her hips, the placid smile on her face. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was striking – regal with her square-set shoulders, her self-possession. She seemed at once so much older than the rest of them gathered there. She had a worldly air, a sort of condescension as she took her seat among them on a sun lounger that had been vacated by one of the others at her arrival.
As the night wore on and the sky above them darkened to show a smattering of stars, his gaze kept getting drawn back to her. She was called Amaya and the little girl was Amalia. The baby was never called by his name, but always referred to as bebito. He was handed around like a parcel from one to the other, each of the adults taking turns to hold and placate him, to rock him back to sleep whenever he became fractious. He was tiny – perhaps no more than eight or ten weeks old – wisps of black hair curling in a whorl about his crown. Michael noticed Faye tracking him with her eyes, her attention drawn back again and again to the fat little legs, the bleats and cries that he emitted.
Later, in their room, huddling under the heavy blanket that smelled of dust and mouse droppings, Michael said to her: ‘Who do you suppose the father is? Of Amaya’s baby.’
His arms were around her, his body tense against the cold which had come down quickly with the night. It was spring and the real heat had not arrived yet, and up there in the mountains the temperature plummeted during the hours of night and early morning.
‘I don’t know. I had assumed Mateo,’ she answered. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I just wondered. It hadn’t been clear to me which of them was the father.’ He didn’t need to say Mateo or Efrain. They were older than everyone else by a good ten years, and both men held a casual authority. Efrain rolled joint after joint, then passed them around.
‘He’s a cute baby,’ Michael remarked, tentatively. ‘I saw you looking at him.’
‘Was I?’
‘All evening. Your eyes kept going back to him.’
She said nothing, and after a minute his hand moved and came to rest on her tummy, his fingers spreading there.
‘Don’t,’ she said, pushing his hand away, the uprush of her irritation so strong it stung him.
They didn’t speak further, the two of them withdrawing to their individual mats, suffering the cold and the silence apart.
Michael watched them over the next few days: Amaya and the coterie that swarmed around her. She seemed to be at the centre of things without ever really involving herself with the others. There was something magnetic about her – the calmness she exuded, the dreamy indifference, the sinuous way she moved through doorways and around furniture, like a cat. Once or twice, he tried to speak with her, and she stared at him through her large hooded eyes, blinking slowly, then offered him her trippy smile. She had bad teeth – the one chink in her overall beauty. They were large and unevenly spaced, each tooth outlined with a brown rim at the edges – a smoker’s teeth. Evidence grew that Efrain was her partner, while Mateo acted as some kind of uncle to the children. Their bedroom was a constant hub of activity. Noise drifted from the room – music playing from tinny speakers, indie rock mostly, the occasional pop songs that Amalia sang along to in her sweet husky voice. Sometimes, he could hear the accomplished plucking of a guitar, the plaintive notes of some vaguely familiar tune.
It was driving Faye crazy, she told him. The constant noise.
‘How am I supposed to study,’ she demanded of him, ‘with that racket?’
‘Look on the bright side,’ he pointed out. ‘At least you’ll get some notes now. Something to work with.’
One of her lecturers – the course coordinator whom she’d emailed in a panic to explain her predicament – had rung her that morning, informing her that he had emailed some PDFs of articles that were pertinent to his course. There were also scanned copies of lecture notes one of her friends had attached to an email. Michael had arranged for Mateo to drive them to the nearest town, where Faye could print them off at an Internet café.
While they waited for her, Mateo and Michael leaned against the truck, Mateo smoking one of his little rollies. He was a lean man, with an angular face, stringy sinewy limbs that moved slowly.
‘We thought it would be just a couple of days,’ Mateo said. ‘But now? This cloud is going nowhere, man.’
‘What are you saying?’ Michael asked.
Mateo grinned and scratched at the stubble along his jaw.
‘Lots of people are stuck here. Everyone’s looking for some place to stay.’ He shrugged, his grin widening, taking on a wolfish air. ‘I got bills to pay, man. Mouths to feed.’
Michael understood. He asked how much and when Mateo named the price, Michael baulked.
‘For a week?’
‘Hey. You got the first few days free, didn’t you?’
‘Even still. That’s more than they charge at the hostel.’
‘In the hostel you have to share a room. And they don’t pick you up and drop you to the Internet café, do they?’
It was a lot of money, but Michael felt his bargaining power was limited. Mateo was right about a growth in demand, and, besides, Michael didn’t want to start looking for alternative accommodation. It would be only one more week, surely, and then normality would resume.
He acquiesced, and, taking the wallet from his jeans pocket, he removed the agreed sum and watched as Mateo counted the notes, then slapped him amiably on the shoulder, saying: ‘Appreciate it, dude,’ before sauntering around the truck and climbing into the front seat just as Faye exited the café.
Michael waited until they were back at the house and alone in their room. He watched her expression changing as he told her in a hushed voice about the exchange with Mateo.
‘I know, I know,’ he said, before she even had a chance to utter a word, but he could see the indignation in the way her mouth fell open, and already anticipated her concern. ‘But it’s not like we have much choice.’
‘Three hundred euro?’ she repeated, then threw her pen down on to her notes in a display of petulance. ‘But that’s most of the money we have!’
‘We can get more –’
‘When? And where from?’
‘We’ll go back to the city in a few days. I’ll go to the ATM –’
‘Michael –’
‘You don’t need to worry –’
‘But I am worried!’ she countered.
A snort of laughter came from the next room and Faye heard it, a frown coming over her face. She beckoned him to come closer and he joined her on the sleeping mat. She lowered her voice to a whisper, but her anxiety and indignation were still there.
‘We need to start saving some money,’ she told him.
‘Okay. But, come on, this was an unforeseen event, right?’
‘And what about the other unforeseen event?’ she asked pointedly. He noticed now that she had one arm wrapped protectively around her tummy and his eyes settled there, as if trying to see beneath the layers of clothing and skin and fat and membranes the curled form suspended like a white silken cocoon.
‘We’ll figure something out,’ he told her.
‘I looked it up online. Do you realize how much an abortion costs? Five hundred euro,’ she said gravely. ‘I don’t have that much money, do you?’
He shook his head.
‘We’ll have to get it from somewhere,’ Faye went on, and he put his hand out to steady her.
His mother would have it. She would give it to him if he asked for it, but he couldn’t stand to think of the look on her face when he told her what he needed it for – her unmasked disappointment, yet another grave error to add to the long catalogue of sorrows he had caused her over the years. Also, he knew that Nuala disliked Faye, a fact that just compounded his aversion to asking her for the money.
‘Let me talk to Min,’ he suggested instead, kneading her wrist, the tenderness of bone there, the striation of blood vessels where the skin thinned.
The thought seemed to pain her, and she winced. ‘Christ, she’s going to love that. It will confirm everything she ever thought about me.’
‘I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion. I think she’ll want to help us. Once we tell her what’s happened and what our plans are – she’ll want to be involved, to be a part of it.’
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘What do you mean – she’ll want to be a part of it?’
It was risky territory, but he’d seen the way she’d been watching Amaya and her baby. He’d noticed how her eyes had feasted on the infant, alive to every wave of his fist, every gurgle from his mouth. Michael had felt it in himself when Amaya had given him the baby to hold while she saw to Amalia’s dinner. Without warning, she had wordlessly dumped the little bundle into his arms and turned away to stir the spaghetti, and Michael had felt like she’d given him something precious but frightening, like being handed a jewel-encrusted grenade. He’d felt the soft weight in his arms, the infant instinctively turning his head inward towards Michael’s chest, and it amazed him, the squirrelly movements of the child, the sheer delight that bubbled up inside him in response. For the last few days, the feeling had wormed around inside him, and, whenever he caught Faye looking at the baby, he suspected she was experiencing the same thing. It was natural that she should feel afraid, but he began to understand that she needed reassurance from him that it was possible. That there was another path they could take.
So he ploughed on: ‘A part of the baby’s life.’
Instantly, she snatched her hand out of his grasp. ‘No –’
‘Just listen a moment –’
‘No, I won’t listen! Don’t tell me to listen, when you refuse to hear a single word I’ve said. I’ve made up my mind – don’t you understand that? Why can’t you just accept my decision and support it instead of putting up obstacles?’
‘But there is another way! Surely, if we’ve learned anything this week, it’s that we can make this work. If they can make it work, why can’t we?’
‘You can’t be serious?’ She looked shocked, and then an ugly smile came over her face that looked more like a sneer. He felt himself draw back from it. She tossed her head in the direction of the room where the others were gathered – Amaya, Efrain, their little family – and said: ‘You call that making it work? Open your eyes, Michael. They’re living in poverty. Amaya is stoned half the time, and I’m not entirely sure what the situation is between her and Efrain and Mateo, some twisted threesome. Those kids are neglected. And that’s what you aspire to? Jesus Christ, wake up.’
‘Keep your voice down, will you?’ he hissed. ‘They’ll hear you.’
He glanced up quickly at the walls, which were paper-thin. But she had already turned her attention back to her notes and he felt shut out from her. There was little else he could do, so he pushed himself up off the floor and moved to the door. Their argument made him uneasy – not the outcome, not even the seriousness of the subject matter. It was the new sense of anguish that had materialized within him – that she didn’t really need him any more, and that by heedlessly starting a baby together, they had somehow heralded the ending of their own heartfelt love.