Medusa Read Free

goin’ ma way.
’
    She came back to the window then, gazing out, but not seeing the sunshine or the golden gleam of the water. ‘That’s the feeling I’ve got,’ she said, and she was looking straight at me. ‘Miguel rang last night.’ I could see it in her eyes. For weeks she had been on at me to take advantage of the rash of villas that had recently come on to the market. She put her cup down, then turned to face me again. ‘It was just before you came in. I didn’t tell you because we were already late for the Rawlings’, and afterwards … Well, it wasn’t the moment, was it?’
    â€˜What did Miguel want?’ Miguel Gallardo was the contractor we used when there was maintenance work we couldn’t handle ourselves. He was now building a villa out on Punta Codolar, a bare, bleak headland in the north of the island that was crisscrossed with the half-completed roads of a new
urbanizatión
.
    â€˜He needs help,’ she said.
    â€˜Money?’
    She nodded. ‘It’s all this build-up of trouble in the Med, of course – Libya in particular. The American he’s building for has suddenly got cold feet and wants out. He’s offering Miguel the whole place in lieu of what he owes him.’ She reached out, her fingers gripping my arm as though she had hold of the villa already. ‘I had a look at it with Petra when you were delivering that boat to Ajaccio, and now he says we can have it, as it stands, at cost. We pay Miguel’s account, and that’s that – it’s ours.’ She gave me the figure then, adding, ‘It’s a chance in a million, Mike.’
    â€˜Miguel to complete, of course.’
    â€˜Well, that’s only fair.’
    â€˜It’s barely half-completed, remember.’ But it wasn’t the cost of completion I was thinking about. It was the political tension building up locally. ‘There’s been windows broken, one villa set on fire, another smashed down by a runaway road roller …’
    â€˜That’s just a passing phase.’ I shook my head, but she went on quickly: ‘It won’t last, and when the panic is over,a lot of people will be cursing themselves for putting their villas on the market at knockdown prices. I’m thinking of the future.’ The cups and plaques on the shelves behind her glimmered bright with memories of days gone. What future? She kept them so well polished I sometimes felt it was the crack shot, the Olympic sailor, the image she had of me, not myself, not the essential lazy, mediocre, ill-educated – oh hell, what deadly blows life deals to a man’s self-confidence! Maybe she was right, polish the mirror-bright image, retain the front intact and forget the human freight behind. And now she wasn’t thinking of us, only of the child. She had less than two months to go, and if this was another boy, and he lived … I hesitated, looking out to the bay. She had a good head for business and a highly developed sense for property, but politically – she was a fool politically. ‘It’s too lovely a day to argue,’ I said, thinking of the smell of cut grass on the Bisley Ranges, the whiff of cordite in the hot air, gun oil and the targets shimmering.
    â€˜You’re going sailing, is that it?’ Her tone had sharpened.
    A bit of a breeze was coming in, ruffling the water so that the surface of the harbour had darkened. She had always resented the sailing side of my life, my sudden absences. ‘I’ll take the dinghy, and if the wind holds I’ll sail across to Bloody Island, see how the dig’s going. You coming?’ She enjoyed day sailing, for picnics and when the weather was fine.
    â€˜Petra’s not there,’ she said.
    The phone rang and she answered it, speaking swiftly in Spanish. A long silence as she listened. Then she turned to me, her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘It’s Miguel.