Seville

Was it too mawkish? Had he overshot it? He didn’t know. A stubborn summer rain peppered the windscreen and a final looking tube of light forced its way through the rafters of cloud. The evening was coming.

Peters scrawled his signature on the card anyway, a bewildering squiggle of ink that whorled beneath the note he’d written in the middle. Peters liked the open promise of white, the crisp smooth surface of the new card. You could put anything on there, change a meaning, give a hint. It could be anything you wanted it to be.

He stuffed the card into its envelope, climbed out of the cab and ran to meet Lars. Lars wasn’t a friend yet but Peters had high hopes for him. They’d met the way Peters met most of his acquaintances, on a bar stool, shoulders drooping, spouting increasingly slurred declaratives that neither of them were likely able to back up.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” said old Lars, as Peters approached. He was a thick necked brute with a head like a ball of plasticine and tattoos on each hand. A Swede apparently, although his accent was weak.

“What?” replied Peters who was no slouch himself, a thirty five year old Englishman, over six foot with size thirteen boots. He patted his back pocket to check the card was still there.

Lars pointed to the taxi with a smirk.

"Him."

The front passenger door was open and the driver was leaning down with his sallow face just visible, jabbering in Spanish and waving at Peters.

"Oh."

Peters stalked back and with eventual effort managed to count out the appropriate coins. “Fucking peseta’s. Don’t expect a tip little man.” He dropped the money straight onto the seat, avoiding the driver’s outstretched palm.

In the bar Lars displayed real promise. He bought the first couple of rounds and Peters was delighted to find that he smoked the same cloying cigarettes as him. Sitting down, Lars hunching, Peters tapping a finger on the card he had forced into his pocket, they talked, swapping army stories and drinking as much as they wanted to. The low lit bar with it's spinning overhead fans and it's population of drinkers, flies and lizards was not the type of place where you were made to stop what you were doing because you were doing too much of it. No one cared here, you were alone as long as you found your own way home and left with little fuss. That was the way Peters liked it. It was the kind of attitude he understood. This bar was one of the only places he respected in this country.

The army talk went on for a while, but although it might have been nice, it couldn't go on forever. It was a time that was over and Peters himself was done with it. He found that dwelling on such finished matters produced a sense of being slowly crushed, as if time and the sense of its passing suddenly lay heavy on the back. He avoided too much talk of that history when he could, the things he’d done were best left the way they were, a clouded fog of buttoned down malaise. Confiding in people was not something he was familiar with and besides, he believed that holding things back afforded him an air of real, palpable mystery, which was another thing he liked.

After a time it became clear that it was Peters turn to buy the drinks, so he obliged, counting out the pesetas on the table whilst Lars smoked and looked out the window at the dusted white pavement and the people that walked on it. As he counted, Peters grumbled about the stupid foreign money and the stupid foreign people and stood and walked to the bar to order. He was new here and he felt at odds with the city and the sweating humid constancy of the days, of the evenings and the nights.

He returned to the table with two bottles of beer and a pair of amber whiskey chasers on the tray and set them down. Then as he sat, he found that with a smoky sigh and a sense of crippling inevitability, Lars had begun to brag.

Lars was drunk already. He laid a hand on Peters shoulder and declared that he’d come to Seville by night, by boat then on horseback, on the run of course, though whether it was from the law or the mob he wouldn't say. He told Peters he’d killed a man in a brawl in self-defence. He stood enthusiastically and acted out the process of smashing the metal bar stool round the poor fellows face. Lars said that the man had taken the blow right in the temple and had fallen to his knees, then the floor.

"He was crying as he fell, but I expected he would be. You know what he'd done? Called me a stinking ass and came at me with a bottle. Would you believe it? I put him to the ground. What would you have had me do, huh?” Lars said, "I'm a man." He implored Peters and held his grubby hands up in a gesture of innocence. Peters shrugged. He’d never killed anyone face to face, he had no real frame of reference.

"It doesn't sound like he deserved to die."

"Well who does deserve it? Not like I killed him on purpose."

Lars had been in the city a while and had apparently seen many things; prostitutes with penises, weekend long parties, 12 kilo fish at the end of his fishing line, choking motorbikes that worked anyway, all kinds of meat and all kinds of money. He told Peters about a time when he’d been chased by a pack of stray dogs near the San Sebastian Gardens. Lars claimed to have caught a dog’s mouth in his hands, keeping the jaws prised open and preventing it from biting him.

“I looked him in the eyes and I told him ‘NO.’ We respected each other. We were brothers not foes. I let him go and he was on his way. His friends too, they did not dare face me,”

“You’re full of shit.”

“I’m telling you,” said Lars, eyes like lumps of coal, “don’t you call me no liar.”

Peters told his companion about some of the times before he came out here. About the walks up to the fell ridge with his brother Frank and his two slobbering dogs, about the card games, the smell of the fire and the way you could see the buzzards cruising in the sky on a clear day. Peters used the Faulkner quote he had memorised to highlight the anecdote. He liked to try to impress people with it and often had to go to great lengths to shoehorn it into conversations.

“Faulkner said if he was reincarnated he’d come back as a buzzard. He said nothing hates the buzzard, nothing envies him or wants him. He said he’s never in danger, and he can eat anything,”

“Who the fuck’s Faulkner?” said Lars, “what are you talking about?”

Peters emptied his glass into his waiting mouth and gulped the burn back. He hadn’t told Lars about the feel of Franks soft little wife underneath him, her hot breath and the feel of her hungry teeth biting him on his bottom lip. He hadn’t mentioned the black eye that he could still almost feel that Frank had given him in return. He’d had her on the kitchen floor and it had almost been worth everything it had cost.

By eleven they were both drunk and the talk had turned to women. The bar was still full, populated by unshaven natives who ignored the two men. The locals were easy working guys and the place was without tourists. Everyone there was drinking to forget and to enjoy it, just to do it. The air felt full of smoke.

“Women are easy. They love me,” said Lars. “I see a women I like and I take her immediately. I say ‘come here,’ and you know what? They always do. They like strong men like me. Men who take everything.”

“Guys like you?” Peters snorted.

“Your tone. I can see you don’t believe me. But you haven’t seen me with women.”

“I don’t need to see you with anyone. That's not how it is. I had a wife, I have a daughter. They’re certainly not easy, I’ll tell you that. You’re talking out of your arse.”

“Wrong. You're not doing it right. They think you are weak so that’s why it’s not easy. Show them your strength, like I do.” Lars pulled back a sleeve to reveal an arm that looked like a bag of footballs. “Show them you are a man.”

Peters pulled the blue envelope from his pocket and rested it on the table, ignoring the bent corners and rumples it had picked up. He placed a hand on it, as if he was trying to feel the brusque apology it held inside.

A glass at the end of the bar smashed the moment his hand touched the name written on the envelope. Peters looked up. As the responding laughter rang out he gazed across the room and took in the camaraderie. He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. All of a sudden he felt like he couldn’t stand to be in this country, or anywhere at all for that matter. He lifted his hand from the card, from the black ink of the name Susan. Everything seemed so forced, so full of lies and the truth that people left out. How the hell could everybody stand it?

Lars continued.

“I’ve been here six months and there isn’t a woman I haven’t tried that I haven’t had. I’ve fought animals and men without thinking and I’ve drank every night.”

“Come on, give it a rest.”

“I tell you. I’ve fought eight men in Seville alone. I fought my own barber, he cut my head when he was shaving it and laughed in my face. So I hit him.”

“Sure. And you won every fight did you?”

“Of course! I am successful in everything I do. I’m strong and I have my confidence,”

“You’ve got a big mouth.”

“Big enough to keep you quiet. Big enough to please your wife if you show me where she is. What do you think of that?” Lars laughed. The light shone dimly on his sweating forehead. Peters was drunk too, and now he’d had enough.

“I think you’re a stupid lousy lying Swede and you’re full of shit like everyone else. I think I could take you, I think you don’t know anything about anything!”

Peters took what he wanted when he wanted it and this bilious oaf didn’t know a thing about it. He’d finish up here and then send the card like he was meant to. It was just another missed birthday, his daughter would have to suck it up and he’d have to go on and be damned like everyone else wanted him to be. He wasn’t going to waste his whole life being sorry.

“I don’t like the way you talk to people. No one talks to me like that.”

“I’ll talk to you how I like Lars. I’m tired and I don’t like liars and you won’t stop talking,”

“I told you don’t call me no liar!”

“I am calling you a liar. And I’ll bet you,” he emptied the contents of his wallet over the birthday card, and put a hand flat on the table, “that I can take you right fuckin’ now.”

“You think you have strength, but you really have none.”

Peters ignored him. He set his right elbow firm on the wetness of the table, his shirt sleeve rolled up, his left palm flat on the thigh of a long bent leg. Lars did the same, his eyes were bulging and a warm red colour had begun to mantle his cheeks. He threw back his whiskey and smiled at Peters.

“Take a drink!”

Peters did as he was bid and grinned at Lars. “After three we go OK? One round, winner takes all,”

“Good. Here. My wallet.” Lars tossed it onto the table on top of the money Peters had set down.

“Good.”

Their hands met with a start, clapping together. Lars gave the count.

“One. Two. Three.”

They started the arm wrestle. The pair of them tensed with the effort and leaning in toward each other, their arms forced and as firm as possible. Peters had his trousers gripped, the fabric of his jeans bunched in his fist. Lars sweated, making odd grunting noises through gritted teeth.

After barely half a minute had passed Peters thought he had the best of it, he’d boxed as a youth and was not without strength. He held Lars off and slowly worked at the man, centimetre by grudging centimetre through the humid Spanish air. He was with it he felt, focused upon the task and managing to gain the upper hand, in the lead for certain. He tried to make eye contact with Lars and stare him down, attempting to out psyche him as much as out muscle him, just like he used to do with brother Frank who could never take it.

But Lars was not Frank. The big man had extra reserves of strength. The Swede really began to go for it, craning his head down and beginning to force Peters arm back away from him. This was disconcerting. Peters had had their hands barely an inch above the wooden surface and had been on top, so perilously close to victory that he could taste it, but now their two hands were fixed in a clenched hovering embrace. They were still, hands suspended, bodies shaking with the effort. It was the kind of time when a man might have a hernia, burst a vein.

Lars fought back. He leant in even further, almost turning fully in his chair with the exertion, and managed to force Peters' hand back up so that their two arms were upright again, just like they had been at the start. Then Lars bent his wrist down and towards himself, making it hard for Peters to draw the strength from his upper muscles. He steadily began to push Peters’ arm back towards the table.

With that final surge Peters knew he was done for, that he could not summon the strength to fight back from there. There was nothing else for it: he took action.

Peters shifted in his seat slightly to allow himself more room, drew his leg back as far as he could, then kicked Lars under the table, hard, steel toe capped boot connecting with shin bone. Lars grunted and the strength suddenly, momentarily left his arm. In that instant, Peters took his chance and pounced, slamming down their hands to the damp wooden surface with relish, his hairy paw a winner on top. Susan’s card fell quietly to the floor as their hands slammed onto the table, landing in a puddle of beer where it lay unnoticed, soaking up the liquids and the dirt.

Peters stood and swept the money off the table, stuffing it in his pocket and laughing. No one in the bar had noticed them, they weren’t important enough.

“That’s the one!”

“A cheat! A dirty trick.” Lars stood. His two tattooed hands slowly taking hold of the back rest of the chair nearest to him.

“I still won didn’t I?”

Peter’s returned to the bar and blew a load more pesetas. “I won,” he said to the bartender and downed a tequila. He sucked on the lemon that came with it.

“Que?” said the man. He didn’t understand.

“I said I WON. Me,” and he pointed at himself with his thumb.

“Que? lo siento mi amigo, que no hablan Inglés,” said the barman, smiling politely.

“Jesus, you people. Why don’t you ever learn any English?” he said, spitting a lemon seed onto the wooden surface in front of him where it rolled off to the ground.

Peters shook his head. His last thoughts before the chair hit him from behind were that no one ever understood anything and that it would all be a hell of a lot easier for him if they just did. This was Seville and this was everything and he wished he could forget it all.

Apply Liberally When Necessary

It was in the afternoon, peering through the daggers of the October light. Jim didn’t see it so much as smell it, that rubber strawberry tinge coming from the stuff that she was wiping on her lips. It really took him back.

“You’re always putting that stuff on. It stinks,” he said. He was shaken. It didn’t take much these days, the past affected him, made him think too much.

“It’s for the cold. My lips don’t like it when it gets like this, they get all crusty.” Becky held up the little yellow tube of balm in her hand, the domed red lid pointing up towards the sky, and she read the instructions. “Apply liberally and evenly as often as necessary. See?” She smeared more on her mouth with her long tanned finger, staring toward the sun in the distance as she did.

Jim grunted disapprovingly, barely audible above the throbbing siren of the police car that flashed past them. “It still stinks,” he muttered.

They were in the little park. It was sparse and placed too close to the main road, dropped there almost as an afterthought to compensate for the squat grey buildings, shabby shops and lumpen roads of black that made up that sullen London area. Clapton wasn’t exactly what you’d call a home town, Jim rented a flat there. It was a roof and it was four walls and it wasn’t much money. It was nothing else, nothing more. But that was what he’d wanted.

The park wasn’t large. It was fenced off with black iron and dominated by a pond that sat in the middle. There was a thick patch of bullrushes in the bottom corner of the pond and a bridge to the far left that connected the tarmac paths on either side of the water. The bridge was a Chinese style design, a Willow Pattern knock off, painted in peeling green and made out of wood.

Although she’d never told him, Jim was by far Becky’s favourite. They met there every other day, sometimes talking and sometimes not, but always looking to the middle of the water where the large fountain was. The fountain had something that seemed to appease them both, a reverential ambience that the sun lent it at certain times of the day. Its stone base was like an upstretched palm and it had many fingers of water that left it, straining up into the air and catching the light so they shone.

Stamping his feet and hunching his shoulders Jim’s eyes were drawn to the shape of the ripples that formed in the pond. He followed the trails and splashes of the water fingers as they fired up in the air and fell down into the darkness of the pond’s surface, making dimples that circulated and spread outward, markers of nothing in particular. He shivered and sank his chin beneath the zip of his collar, feeling rather uncomfortably summed up by the way the marks in the water disappeared,unnoticed by anybody except him.

“I’m cold. It’s chillier all of a sudden don’t you think? What happened to the summer? Where the hell did it go? It was barely even here in the first place.”

“You’re such a grump man, you know that?”

Jim’s hands were entrenched in his pockets stand-offishly, but Becky, in a moment of tenderness that surprised her, reached out and pinched his elbow with her forefinger and thumb.

“Poor old Jimmy,”

“I’m just saying,”

“It’s not so bad, I like it. You appreciate Autumn, you notice it. You don’t notice Summer unless it’s hot, and Winter’s something else. Here, look I’ll warm you up.”

Emboldened, Becky pushed her hand through the crook at his elbow and linked arms with him, huddling closer, the bright red of her bubble jacket brushing close to the black of his anorak, the colours contrasting nicely. For a moment, in spite of himself, Jim moved closer and almost fully relaxed into her. But that would have been too easy. He realised what he was doing and almost without thought retracted into self awareness, his consciousness scrambling back to maintain its distance, wary and tentative, needing the contact but unable to let go and just accept it.

“I like the pond too,” she said, “I don’t know why but I just do.”

Jim said nothing. He was unable to speak. With Becky’s utterance he’d caught a whiff of that lip balm again, the glossy fruit sheen drifting from her mouth, those two red sleeping bags. Strawberry memories flooded back to him; three of them, and they floated, vying for precedence.

The first memory was years back. He was riding his bike; a red BMX, white wheeled and without gears. He recalled two little fists gripping the ridged handles, and two reckless feet pushing on the pedals. It was a hot July and he was ten, riding along the gravel street behind the terraced houses near his dads old house. The washing lines that were always there in the summer were full, stretched from hooks on the brick walls of the back yards to posts that were planted opposite; blankets and clothes hanging from them like captured ghosts. He used to ride with his friends, as fast as they could, hurtling along beneath the lines and letting the easy hanging fabric touch their faces. The soft coolness of the clean linen and the fruity smell of the sheets would drape across their skin and slide crisply over their heads as they rode blindly, never thinking about what was beyond them or what might be coming because it was irrelevant.

The second. A pillow on his bed and the sweet traces her hair had left, the smell of her still on it where she’d lain, and him rolling over to touch his face to the cloth; reminding himself all over again, and heaving then, returning over onto his back, thinking he wouldn’t see her for another two months, not knowing that that was actually the last time. He recalled sitting up from the pillow and burying his face in the small of her naked back as she sat up to begin the process of leaving. He recalled the messages he sent her for months after. He recalled the thud to the stomach when he knew she’d gone back on everything she ever said. He recalled trying to forget her, consoling himself with the distracting things she’d say in bed, her naivety that had been cute but grew tiresome, her maddening sense of propriety, her drunken vigilance for perceived slights:“What did you say Jim? What did you mean by that? So what I’m not allowed an opinion now?” But it was no good, the smell she left on that pillow was what made the real mark, the thought of her when it was good was what he missed the most.

Number three was clearest, the last time he ever saw Uncle Tony. It was the old folk’s home at Christmas and the room was suffused with the smells of cheap canteen turkey and people who’d plain given up. Tony’s face, like a bone that was once broken and never quite healed, was pale and confused and his crinkled eyes were almost lost in skin. He was eating from a plastic plate and his food had already been cut up for him like he was a baby. “I haven’t seen you in years,” the old man had said to Jim, when his nephew sat down and gave him the hello pat, the gentle smile. Jim had told Tony that in reality it had been just a week previous, and that Jim had brought him those DVD’s and didn’t he remember? Tony had listened, sighed and then in a moment of implied coherence had held Jim's wrist with his shrapnel digits and hissed in a horrified voice whilst staring down into his crotch, “hold onto it boy; for as long as you can! I mean it. They take it from you in the end, you lose everything! There’ll be nothing left of you!” Jim had yanked his hand away like it had been burned and Tony had returned merrily to his food.
Across from them there’d been another old man in an armchair, his head lolling back toward the ceiling and the ever spinning air con fan. Jim remembered sipping on his water and looking at him. He could not reproduce the face of that old man but his strange posture was still familiar, bent up and forced like a fossil trapped in stone. The mans body had looked flattened and twisted as if he’d been glued to his seat in any old way, as if it didn’t matter whether he was comfortable or not because soon he’d be dead. Jim had looked at that other man and at the winking Christmas tree, he'd heard the tinned carols coming through the speakers in the corners of the conservatory, and he'd sworn he’d never come to a place like this ever again. Then he’d turned back to old Tony, the man who’d taught him chess as a boy, mercilessly beating him every time they ever played, the man who'd slapped him in the face when he caught him stealing, the man who always smelled of the outdoors, of wet leaves and the wind; Tony, in that brown chair at Christmas in the old folks home. And his uncle had looked back at Jim with his walnut eyes, and a moment had seemed as if it was about to come, some semblance of clarity, of pathos, something memorable for all the right reasons. Jim had opened his mouth to speak, to say something nice maybe, or to let loose some truth about himself, something they could both share, but the old man had shushed him with a impatient flap of a hand, put down his knife and fork and leaned backward so his chair was hovering on its back two legs alone, the front two up in the air. And Tony had just said, “boy the one thing I can’t stand in here is the smell. It smells like fucking strawberries!”

The traffic hadn’t stopped and nor had the light or the passing of the day. Jim steered the two of them towards the bench which they sat down on. Becky had to remove her arm from his.

“Here, I’ve got your money,” he said, handing over the twenty to her. That was how much it cost. “Might as well pay you now, there's only five minutes left.”

“Oh, thanks,” said Becky, taking it and stuffing it hurriedly in her coat, before, and not without careful consideration, hesitantly offering a little more of herself. “Jim, you know if you wanted maybe next time we could go somewhere. You know, inside to the room. No talking, not if you didn't want. I could show you what I show the-"

“Don’t you get tired of doing that all day?” he spat.

"I dunno, I hadn't thought about it. Sorry I-"

“If I wanted that from you I’d ask.”

“Suppose you would.”

“That's not what this is now.”

“Alright. Sorry, I didn’t mean to-” she actually felt embarrassed, which was strange for her, she’d thought she was passed the embarrassment phase, that she’d gone beyond it. That blanching feeling curdling in her stomach felt new all over again, it was almost as if she'd just downed a shot of a toxic drink that had made her sick years ago and that she swore she'd never touch again. The sensation was familiar but just as alien and unpleasant as it had ever been.

“Forget it, it’s fine."

"Yeah, it is fine." She was suddenly defensive, straining to salvage something, even if it was a negative upper hand. "I mean fuck me, what are you surprised? What do you think this is? Don't get all superior with me alright that's not fucking fair, you're the one who asks for me OK, you're the one who-"

"I know I do. Look I said don’t worry about it. So don't. Forget it, it never even happened.”

He was like a shock absorber. He was made that way.

"Look I'm going." Becky said, and stood, unsure, her hands sagging by her hips that felt overly exposed all of a sudden.

“Don't get upset. It’s not worth it.”

“I'm not upset."

"Well that's good then.”

"Yeah it is, isn't it. I'm not ashamed you know. Not about any of it."

"I know you're not."

"Good."

"Will I see you again?"

"Maybe," she said. She was half right.

“Ok then.”

Becky applied more of the lip balm and frowned at a distant point somewhere above Jims head.

“I'll see you Becky,”

“Bye Jimmy,”

Becky about turned, with next to no aplomb, and left. Jim watched her as she went, crossing the road in her large heels that weren’t quite in keeping with the suburban afternoon. He pushed his hands back into his pockets and turned, squinting in the sun, watched her figure disappear from view, missing her already. The smell of her lip balm was there, faintly, fleeting, in his mind as much as his memories.

Jim turned back to the water and the shadows of the trees that were reflected on the surface of it, and breathed again. There, finished for the day; Becky's dark hair, her white teeth and so too the fruit smell, all gone, and with them everything else. That was that. That was all that was needed.