The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine (11 page)

‘Yes, please, if it is still water.’

‘Sure.’

She walked over to her bookshelves and produced a large bottle of Evian and two ugly plastic tumblers, which she placed on the table in front of us. I waited while she poured me some water.

‘Thank you.’

‘So, the heritage series is going to keep us busy well into next year and I’m very keen to know which sites you’d particularly like to cover,’ she said.

‘Do you have any ideas?’ I asked her.

I did not see why I should go through the motions of appearing excited about her project. Tim and Stephanie had already had their meetings with her and they were full of it. Tim had bagged Italy and Stephanie was going to do the sites in Greece.

‘I was hoping you might have a preference, Heja.’

I shook my head.

‘Well, I guess you could do the Finnish sites. Would that appeal to you?’

She moved a list in front of me.

‘There are seven sites and you probably know them all. We wouldn’t include the burial site or the landscape sites. We’d like to cover the other four.’

I looked at the list – the Fortress of Suomenlinna, Old Rauma, the Petajavesi Old Church built of logs and the Verla Groundwood and Board Mill.

‘I visited them all as a schoolgirl. I did not find them very inspiring then. I do not think I could find anything interesting to say about them now.’

‘Oh, OK. I was just thinking that having the language you might get more out of any interviews...’

‘The curators of these sites will all speak excellent English.’

‘Of course, of course...’

She twiddled the ring on her right finger. It is a thick gold Wright and Teague ring with words etched on its circumference. I have noticed that she always plays with that ring when she is thinking. She looks down at it and turns the ring so that one particular word is uppermost. She rarely looks at the rather modest wedding ring on her left hand. She pushed the list of all the sites in front of me.

‘You’re sure there’s nothing here you’d really like to do?’

I scanned the list. There are many famous sites throughout Europe. I do not want to travel anywhere. When I reached the United Kingdom I saw that Durham Castle and Cathedral were on the list, and the island of St Kilda and Hadrian’s Wall.

‘I would like to do the British sites, especially those in the north of England and Scotland,’ I said.

‘Are you sure?’ There was sweat on her face, I noticed.

‘Quite sure.’

‘Well, OK, thank you, Heja, that would be great. I’m sure you’ll bring a fresh perspective to them.’

She stood up. I remained seated.

‘Will you give me more details of the format you want us to follow?’

‘Oh, yes. I’ve created a template on Siena – let me make a copy for you now.’

She grabbed a board from the side of her desk and hurried out of the office. I looked over at her desk. There was a new photo frame by the phone and I could not see the picture from where I was sitting. I got up and walked over to her desk and turned the frame round. It was a medium close-up shot of Markus seated in a chair by a window with Billy on his lap. Markus has his large hands round the baby’s body. Billy is leaning his head back against his father’s chest. Both are looking straight into camera. The baby’s face is serious. Markus has a quizzical, almost embarrassed smile on his face. A shaft of sunlight illuminates the right side of his face and his hair is almost white in its light. I did not recognize the room. I do not think the photo was taken at her flat. I turned the frame back and continued to look out of the window as she walked back into the room.

‘You have a good view from here,’ I said.

‘I love it. That maple tree is a joy, especially in the autumn. Here’s a copy of the sample board. I’d like us to give some historical background and key details on each building. Not too much text, though, you can use this as a guide.’

I glanced at the A3 sheet. ‘I see. I’ll get started on it, then.’

‘Thank you, Heja.’

Sometimes I talk to Tim when the others are not there. He has been at the magazine a long time and I find him the least irritating of the team members. I was asking him about the Andrea business. He told me it had caused major trouble when Philip started his affair with her. He said Andrea had been one of the gang before that, she was a lot of fun and then she changed. He thought she was very ambitious.

‘She started to call herself Arndrea,’ he said.

‘Did Kathy get on with her?’ I asked.

‘Sort of, I think, until Andrea became the bloody queen bee!’

Tim looked over towards Philip’s office. The door was closed.

‘Bit of a taboo subject, Heja, around the boss.’

This evening it was still warm and I put down the roof on my car and drove to Richmond to sit in the Great Park. I often come here. How quiet it is. The tall and ancient trees are still. There is no breeze to stir even the topmost leaf. The children have all gone home. There are three silver birch trees that stand apart in a triangular formation. Their barks are ivory white and etched with grey horseshoe markings and they gleam in the evening light. I like these trees even better in the winter when the leaves have gone and their delicate branches are silhouetted against a leaden sky.

There is something resilient about Kathy. She was cast down by her failure at the board meeting. Now she has bounced back. I noticed at our meeting that she seems to have recovered her zest. I think she must have parents who made her feel secure and loved as a child. That is why she does not see the threats around her. She and Philip are going through a bad patch, though. She may have got the team on side. I can make Philip my ally.

A large crow flaps by the white trees and makes a clumsy landing. He squats on the grass and examines his oily wings, digging with his beak between the black feathers with energy, almost with aggression. Then he lifts up his head and lurches back into the sky. I sit until the light fades.

I will not go back to Finland this summer. My mother is a carrion crow. She would peck at my body in its weakened state. I miss my father. I miss Arvo Talvela. I miss Markus most of all.

JUNE

When I was born my dad said with fond amusement, ‘Why, she looks like a little wrinkled olive.’

‘No, no,’ my mum protested, mistaking my father’s humour for criticism. ‘She’s our little dove.’

This became the great family joke, told again and again, and explains my ridiculous name, which is Katherine Paloma Olive. My mum, Luisa, is Portuguese. She came to work in London in the late sixties and when she met my dad she introduced him to olives. Dad was Norfolk born and bred and at that time Norfolk had barely seen an olive! You could get carrots, onions, turnips and swedes in winter and lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber in summer. So he thought that olives were the height of exoticism, a bit like my mum really.

She is flamboyant, warm and expressive and my dad was crazy about her; he still is. They’ve had their difficulties. A year after I was born my mum was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She had to have a hysterectomy. My father was terrified that she would die and he’d be left with a one-year-old baby girl to look after. The gods smiled on them, she made a good recovery and the cancer has never come back, thankfully.

My mum was stricken that they couldn’t have more children, though; she had planned to have a big family, so I became the beloved one and only child. My dad told me that Mum’s cancer changed his view of life. He became less ambitious, he said, and found more pleasure in simple things – cooking, walking, spending time with us. During my childhood we spent every summer and many Christmases in Portugal and those are the times that I remember my mum at her happiest. Now that Dad has retired they have settled there permanently. He did that for Mum.

I stepped off the plane with Billy at Aeroporto Da Portela. It was the last week of June, a lovely time to be in Lisbon. I’ve noticed that when you step off a plane there is always a different smell to the air and I’m convinced that every country has its own unique smell. I love the smell of Portugal, which is slightly sweet with a peppery edge to it. My parents were waiting for us at the airport and after exuberant hugs all round my dad drove us to their apartment. Lisbon is an easy city to live in because it has kept its human scale and charm. As we were driving to their flat I pointed out the yellow trams to Billy.

‘When he’s a bit older I’ll take him on the trams,’ I said.

My mum and my grandmother used to take me on the yellow tram to the parades on saints’ feast days and I remember many such days during my childhood. When I was little I was frightened of the giant wooden figures that would be paraded through the streets, especially the effigy of the Devil. I could exactly recall his painted bright red angry face with black horns on his forehead and his grotesque smile; a fearsome grimace. My grandmother had a strong sense of sin and she would talk about the Devil as if he was a real person; a person you might encounter at any time. You had to be prepared and your rosary and your prayers were your best defence.

Sometimes my dad came with us too, although he is not big on religion. He is an easygoing man who does not like extreme views of any kind. When he came along he would lift me onto his shoulders so that I could see the parade better. Men would carry the giant wooden effigies through the streets and I did like the figure of the beautiful lady who wore a white lace mantilla. The procession of figures was always led by a band of drummers who beat out an ecstatic rhythm and we would follow them into the main square. In the winter months there would be a bonfire as well as the parade. The band of drummers would beat to a crescendo and then the bonfire would be lit to cheers from the crowd.

Afterwards Dad would take me to the street stall selling candied nuts. There would be the most delicious smell of melting sugar as the vendor swirled the nuts in his large metal bowl and coated them with hot caramel. Dad would buy me a bag and I would crack the sweet crunchy nuts between my teeth.

My grandmother was a formidable woman and I think my mum loved and feared her in equal measure. I wondered sometimes if Mum had come to England to get away from her mother’s loving but oppressive care. Certainly there was conflict between them. I know they sometimes argued about how I should be brought up; and of course my mum had married an English Protestant. As Mum grew older, though, the pull of Lisbon and of her Catholicism seemed to strengthen its hold on her and she was certainly happy to be living there again now.

My parents have an apartment with a view of the river Tagus from their large balcony. This is their favourite space in the flat and they eat most of their meals out there. There’s a canvas canopy over the balcony that used to be dark blue. The sun has bleached it to paleness, like a weathered sail, and the raffia chairs round the table have a comforting sag to them. We sat around that first afternoon and had a long rich lunch of pork with clams –
carne de porco à Alentejana
, one of my mum’s best dishes. Then Mum said, ‘Now you must sleep,’ so I went to bed for two hours, pulling the blind down against the brilliant sun, while they took Billy for a walk up the cobbled streets.

In the evening I helped with the dinner. Mum was pulling out all the stops for us. She had soaked a large piece of salt cod in the pan and she asked me to peel and slice some garlic. She poured us each a glass of white wine and sat at the table with me.

‘Dad looks well, don’t you think?’

‘He looks great. Retirement suits him.’

‘What about you, sweetheart...?’

‘I’m not as tired as I was. For months I was in a kind of daze. Mum, did you and Dad have any difficulties when you first got married – I mean, coming from different countries?’

‘Oh, yes, many times. We had lots of rows. Dad thought I was far too emotional. Sometimes he couldn’t put up with it, especially if I cried, and he would just walk out of the house and not come back for hours!’

‘Men hate tears! What happened?’

‘Most often we just hugged and made up. We couldn’t bear to be cross with each other for long. And then we got used to each other’s ways.’

‘Did he tell you much about his life, before he met you?’

‘Not so much. There was another woman before me, an English woman. He didn’t say much about her, and I didn’t want to know about her. I was usually the one telling him my stories.’

‘Me, too. I did all the talking when we first met. Maybe it
is
a male–female thing. You know with Markus I think it goes deeper than that. He is
so
reserved.’

‘Yes, he is. I saw that at the wedding. That’s his way, darling. It’s not a bad thing.’

My mother had been delighted and relieved when I got married and I had expected her to stick up for Markus.

‘Now, have you two talked about the christening?’

‘Not yet... One thing I do know about Markus is that he’s very anti-religion.’

‘Your dad wasn’t a believer either but he let me christen you. He knew it was important to me.’

‘We’re still reeling from being new parents.’

‘Talk to him about it when you can. It’s important, sweetheart.’

The next morning I set off early for the Torre de Belem, leaving Billy with my parents. I had arranged for a local photographer, Hector Agapito, to meet me there. I’d seen examples of his work and thought it was first class. We had never met. I was standing on the pavement, looking at the tower, and the sun was so dazzling that it hurt to look at the brilliant white façade. I was getting my sunglasses out of my bag when this man with a camera case in one hand and a tripod in the other called my name out loudly.

‘Kathy?’

He was dressed in black jeans and a grey T-shirt. I studied him as he walked over, noticing his long black hair curling around his neck.

‘Hello, I’m Hector.’

He put down the tripod and we shook hands. He looked at me in a way I can only describe as thorough, as if he was assessing the contours of my face.