Preocupações:
As coisas estão difícies para os dois.
Força negativo no caminho.
Não é a felicidade.
Alguma mulher antiga que atrapalha ainda o caminho.
No há felicidade com uma ou com outra.
Há alguma coisa a atrapalhar o caminho, cuidado.
Não aparece nenhuma ligação aqui no Brasil.
Arranjar logo a esposa porque teu duas meninas à sua espera.

Part 2 - Musical Chairs

I'm sitting in a comfortable living room, flicking through some old albums, mostly stuff from the 1970s and 1980s and some even earlier. I come across an early Rolling Stones one I haven't heard of before and although I don't recognise any of the titles, I can hear the tunes in my head as I run my eyes down the track listings. I put it on a turntable in the corner of the room, a modern machine that reads the whole album and plays it from the beginning, allowing me to take it off the platen and return it to its sleeve as the music continues playing. I handle the vinyl lovingly, slipping it back into its cover with a gentle caress and take it through a small alcove down into another part of the split level room at the front of the house, where there are others sitting listening to a different music.

Another music in a different kitchen, and appropriately enough it's The Buzzcocks. Although there is another song (not the one I was playing) playing in the background, it is a Buzzcocks song that is being sung by a woman in the room, softly and barely in tune, in a low register that conveys more tragedy and sincerity than was ever in the original. I know the song and I think of the last line - "Until the music stops." (Only later when I check the lyric sheet do I realise that the last line is rather more sinister.

Her fellow is sitting near, if not quite next to her. He doesn't seem interested but I am captivated and I can't help myself, can't keep my eyes off her. Eventually she looks up and returns my hypnotised gaze directly.

I fidget and turn a matchbox over and over in my hand. It has writing on the back, telling of weird and wonderful inventions. Berrington Biro, from Nottingham, has discovered or invented the world's slowest growing onion. I wonder how they could have measured this but then I remember someone I knew from Nottingham with a similar sounding name. It can't have been him though, he didn't even smoke.

Finally I'm back at my childhood home in Kinnerton, playing as a kid, but with my own kids. I race the girls back to the house, them on the opposite side of the street, me on the furthest side from the house. They are all dressed up, we're on our way back from a fancy dress Hallowe'en party.

In the middle of the road stand several raised flower beds with early morning mist drifting gently in between and around the greenery. It's frosty and our excited breath wreaths our laughter as we run panting, almost out of puff as we approach the end of our race. The first two get into the garden ahead of me but as I turn the last corner, I see the youngest through the leafless hedge that has been cut back severely to encourage fresh growth in the spring.

I play at hiding and I can see that she has seen me as she rounds the corner and I turn the tables and allow her to be the one who shouts "Boo!" and I feign a fright. She springs forward and nudges me into the hedge as she runs through the gate laughing, saved from finishing last. I voice some indignation at being so relegated.

Everyone is happy. (Everybody's Happy Nowadays?)

I look again but she has gone. "Did she get into that van?" I ask as the pale blue Mercedes Benz disappears round the curve of the tunnel. I say blue, but it might have been any pale colour, the artificial light down here in the undercut renders most everything the same colour, even the concrete of the tunnel lining that curves overhead in this subterranean tube has the strange turquoise pastel tinge of the electric blue lighting. "It's OK, we know them" the escort replied after a moment's thought, outwardly amused but quietly impressed by my avuncular concern. "Yes but they were on the other side" I softly protest, though I know that there is nothing I can do.

However long we have been here, and although we had probably only spent the last few minutes in this sector, it seems like many hours, stretching into days. Strange to have come this far, to have waited so long to see her off only to miss her actual leaving. Perhaps better this way. No hesitation, no tears. Keep moving forward, as I had always told her and with that in mind I turn and nod, indicating my readiness to head back to the holding stage.

The young Interim Government agent adjusts the positioning of the automatic weapon's webbing across her shoulders and turns away, striding purposefully along the walkway back in the opposite direction to that in which we had come. The missing girl had been there allright, waiting on the other side of the carreterra on an elevated platform identical but symmetrically opposite to the one along which we now moved. It was as much as I could have expected, a fleeting sight but that was all that I had been promised.

I re-run the first sighting through my mind. It had come and gone so quickly I could not be sure that it had all really happened. She had immediately recognised me and waved with a half smile as the service vehicle drew slowly alongside, barely stopping before moving off again at some urgent speed, leaving behind only empty space and a ghostly persistence of vision, an imaginary silhouette of where she might once have been. Her smile, her wave, her presence would remain indelibly somewhere in my head, at least until the next time.

The Arab girl moves quickly and confidently, glancing back briefly to check that I am keeping up before stretching into a springing step, extending and hanging in the air like some fabulous anthropomorph, a desert hare or antelope moving faster and faster. I follow as close as I can, clearing my mind of anything but the rhythm of her movement, in synchronised stride of identical length and frequency so that the footfall begins to sound like a gallop, echoing around the tunnel into a thundering herd and then fading into silence as the movements become swifter, longer, our feet barely touching ground now but striking with greater strength and certainty until any motion becomes reduced to a fuzzy khaki blur against the clinical glare of the cemented halogen light.

We take flight once more and soar out from the gaping tunnel entrance, up into the starry darkness, leaving the soft blue glow of the portal far behind and below. I extend my arms up and outward and find her hand, her slender brown fingers slip between mine as we turn to face one another and pierce the temporal membrane in the default safety position, the submissive embrace, holding, waiting and eventually ready for recovery.

I found a CD with an old 'dream almanac' from 1999. I thought a lot of these were lost, as can happen when a hard drive dies. Also on the cd is my diary from Brazil in 1991! So I have a lot more research material to work with, fab. Some more photos on the flickr site now too. I will re-work these short pieces to bring the style up to date and so they may re-appear in modified form over the coming weeks, before I edit everything down to a more fluent narrative.

Dead On Arrival, Alive On Departure

 

I remember that fateful day in the campsite upriver from Manaus, on the Rio Negro. It was baking and humid and when it came time for a swim I followed the crowd, the water being so warm and inviting. I almost drowned.

 

After stroking boldly from the shore a small island, I lost my rhythm and found myself completely out of my depth. I turned around only to realise that the shore was some 25 metres or more away. I had forgotten what a rotten swimmer I was. After turning onto my back to help save myself, I found the water repeatedly overwhelming my increasingly feeble attempts to stay afloat.

One last gulp of air and I was under, stroking for my life under the surface, watching the events of the previous 37 years flash before my eyes in a froth of bubbles and mud. After one last attempt to strike for the surface I found a toehold, the water by now just over my chin. I hopped and stroked gingerly forward, coughing and spluttering as the others called out to me and I crawled out onto the bank like a mud skipper, barely breathing but vividly alive.

1991, in Amazonas, a small group of tourists play in the hot afternoon after a sweaty trek through a few miles of the jungle around the camp. Someone suggests swimming to an island across the flooded forest lagoon on the edge of the Rio Negro, and although I am not a strong swimmer I'm up for it, it's only about thirty or forty yards. Halfway across though and I'm struggling to keep up. I start to panic and try to return but by then I'm struggling to stay on the surface. Once, twice, three times I go under, thinking 'This is not good'.

Within moments I am sinking slowly to the bottom, lungs half filled with murky black water as I try to stay calm, relax and float back up and catch one last breath. The helplessness of this moment still haunts my bathtub daydreams and nighttime slumbers.

Outstretched toes touch the sandy bed and instinctively start walking, one step and then another, arms aloft and eyes half closed. Then sunlight glints above me and as I stagger out onto the bank the locals advise me to thank the saints for my life.

In Candomblé one must pay homage to Exú, whose domain lies between the Orixás and this mortal plane. My forfeit was a small piece of my soul, left to walk down the Amazon riverbed, across the Atlantic's  depths and ridges, and up the Dee and home via the tunnel under Halkyn mountain.

I felt that long imaginary walk was over when I dreamed the missing details - flying in flooded treetops with the Amazonian pink dolphins and their leading me to shore, hearing the softly spoken call of native people on the riverbank during the several minutes I had been missing and then their laughter at my frightful reappearance.

It never rains.

It's Behind You

Unwanted

I am wanted for a suspected crime, although I am innocent and misunderstood – the classic 'Fugitive' scenario. On the run, I am overtaken by events when trying to return home on foot. I encounter a search party but they fail to recognise me and I join them in their cross-country run. We pass through the abandoned anti-aircraft battery, keeping to the lanes and bridle paths. We arrive at a barn, where I stash away my fishing rod and line in a secret space behind a window frame. The building is sparse, as if it is in the process of renovation for re-occupation. Thinking aloud, I describe the fishing gear as my catchpole. I have two small fish, maybe bait, and some ledgers in my hand that I somehow keep concealed from the others.

Soon we are running again and I am well ahead, so I hide and let the others pass me and get themselves lost. I am approaching a motorway flyover over a derelict waterway, a long-since permanently closed structure which would once have swung open to allow shipping to pass. The road crosses at an angle, as if on a bend, but carries on following the canal, overgrown with reeds. But I am not in the water, I am moving just above it at a speed just a little faster than jogging, as if surfing on the eddy that carries in the tide. There is a factory at the waterside, where they are making washing powder. I fly over the various process areas; steam and gases are all around me, the sweet chemical smell of soap and perfume. Then there is powdery smoke all about, I am over the drying area and women are collecting the powder in buckets.

High above the open fields I see three ominous thunderclouds approaching, reaching from the top of the sky to the ground, dark, almost black and laced with flickering lightning. I have to move faster to reach the safety of shelter and I am no longer alone, others are flying alongside me. There is an enormous blackened tree in the centre of the field. I hear myself saying, "He likes lightning, look how many times he has been hit" and the skeletal tree laughs aloud in agreement.

There come a number of stone or brickwork arches into view, as a road or railway viaduct grows nearer. The first few spans are vast and low, but their ironwork construction cautions me from seeking shelter there. It is the lightning that I fear most, not the rain nor the noise of the approaching storm. I pass under and through a number of arches until I see a concrete elevated motorway appear out of the gloom and I head for it as fast as I can fly. It takes me no time at all. I reach the structure and turn to look around to see that the storms have passed and are dissipating into the horizon, by now some distance away and no longer fearsome. I am walking, trying to place my exact whereabouts. This is the edge of a motorway, somewhere in the heartland. I am standing on the north side and I need to cross but here back on the ground I am afraid to negotiate the fast moving traffic. I lie on the soft grass and try to imagine a solution and I wish the obstacle away.

There is a low moaning somewhere near, and I am uncertain if it is the sound of someone's fear or ecstasy. I wake up and I slip my arm around her. She is talking in her sleep and I don't want to wake her but I kiss her head softly and whisper gently, slowly, into her ear. It's OK, it's OK, everything's allright. Don't be aftraid. I love you. She is soon calmed and quiet. She breaths a low sigh of release through her nose, sounding soothed, contented and I feel her tension surrender to the deep. I try to remember if this is a part of the dream but the moment is gone and I too fall fast asleep.

The Baptist

Walking along a hedgerow, there is someone above me and someone to my left, the other side of the hedge. We are all carrying unbroken loaded shotguns, though not for any apparent reason. We are not hunting and wildlife is all around. I am carrying the shotgun cradled over my forearm and pointed towards the ground ahead of me.

I see a figure crouched at the base of a tree on the edge of a wood beyond this field, about a hundred metres ahead and about fifty from the corner at the end of the hedgerow. I put my shotgun down on the ground so as not to appear threatening to the figure, who hasn't turned around in any case and who seems uninterested or unaware of us.

He (or she) reaches into a hollowed part of the trunk at the base of the tree and produces a pair of small white or grey animals, rabbits. He plunges the rabbits into a shallow pool at the base of the tree where they bathe underwater untroubled and then spring out to shake themselves dry. The rabbits return into the tree and appear from the other side, where they are joined by several others, some larger, some smaller and some of equal size. All of the rabbits disappear into the wood.

Rising Shine

I was sleeping on the sofa after an unresolved argument. I tried to persuade myself that the previous day had not happened and that I was in bed next to her but it didn't work. At about six in the morning, I heard the alarm clock ring upstairs and the sounds of her rising. She passed through the living room in darkness and I feigned being asleep as she busied herself in the bathroom for several minutes, washing, brushing her teeth and flushing the lavatory. I tried to call her attention with a stir and a grunt when she passed back through the living room towards the stairs but she didn't stop. She seemed startled though and said "Sorry", hardly breaking stride as she left the room. I was breathing deep and rapidly. After about half an hour I wondered if she had gone back to bed and got up to see why she hadn't come down to leave for her work. I entered the bedroom to find her deep asleep, the clock still ticking, not yet six o clock.

Waterfall

I am walking in a stream ankle to calf deep, the floor of which is smooth gravel. The water is clear and warm, and disappears into the ground every few metres only to re-emerge stronger and deeper further on. Every so often the stream is deep enough to bathe in, but the water is never threatening and there is no fear of drowning. I am walking against the flow but I do not reach the source.

I arrive at a dam or bridge and I am driven to climb it through a sense of daring. After a series of struggles through railings at the top, and at risk of a fall from a great height, I surmount the wall and find myself on level ground. It is an anticlimax and the reason for my ordeal is insignificant. I drift back into a deeper sleep.

I sit up in bed in my dream to see a 'long lost' friend, someone I knew as the friend of a former girlfriend sitting in an armchair in the room. I have not seen her for several years and the sight of her is a delight. I invite her to join me in an adjacent bedroom, remarking that it would be inappropriate for us to get it together in the same bed that I would normally share with my present girlfriend, who has left for work. She is enthusiastic and whips off her shirt to reveal a voluptuous figure-hugging pair of briefs, drawn tight unto her body. I leap out of bed and then I am in the stream at the start of the first dream. The cycle repeats several times.

Where House

I arrive at a warehouse under a railway arch where taxis wait for repair. Men are hanging around looking unconcerned although I am nervous and suspect this may be a  pick-up zone.

I move into the next street where there is a busy warehouse with its doors high and wide open. Inside is piled high with pallets of pasta, olive oil and other Italian foods. A man approaches me with some indifference and shakes my hand. He appears to be in charge and he recognises me, I have been here before.

The atmosphere is like a delicatessen, a mixture of delicious food smells. I notice a concrete type mixer at the side of the building, whose blades are brilliantly clean and I suppose it to be used in the manufacture of pasta or dough. It does not appear to be part of a vehicle and the machine is part of the installation, ready for production. It is not in use though, and the place appears better suited to storage and handling than manufacture.

The manager is dismissive and I feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. There are two packages, which I mistakenly think are electric guitars wrapped in sackcloth standing upright on the floor. I pick one up, thinking to place it leaning against the wall. I then realise that it is a large glass bottle of olive oil. I pick up the second but then I am aware that the manager is watching suspiciously. I quickly put it back and he picks it up and lays it on a shelf, but it falls. I try to catch it but if bounces out of my outstretched hand and hits the floor neck first. It does not break but bounces back and I catch it unbroken.

The telephone rings and I hear the manager talking in Italian. I ask a friend what he is saying as I think he is talking about me. He tells me that the boss has told the manager to "Let them sleep." I have stumbled into a serious situation. I bid them goodbye and leave.

Flower Girl

I am in my room in a shared house, it is fairly bare except for the TV and a sofa. I leave the room and go to the bathroom. There is a girl. She tells me about her journey home from a club or party the previous night, through some back lanes where she picked up some plants, which somehow arrived home before her.

I envisage marigolds being taken, roots and all, from a flowerbed. She goes on to talk of plans for the garden and I remember my old garden, which would not fit in these urban surroundings. She has ideas of something altogether more floral and she seems to be discussing these ideas with another person, another girl.

I lose interest and leave the bathroom, picking up the FT as I return to my room. It is not my copy so I only look at the front and back pages, and then the centre spread. Here I read a feature about man described as '19 in 1971' and then 25 years of age. This places the date at 1974/5. I hadn't realised, but this is my own age.

The Building Trade

I am in a rectangular concrete tower block, and I see my room at the far corner. I have left briefly and the door is open and I am outside. There is a series of climbs and ascents around the stairwells, involving my having to walk outside the safety of a rail in order to negotiate railings and corners. I am afraid of falling. Then I see her leave, I run after her to ask her where she is going, but she doesn't know. She is unhappy and there is the suggestion of a suicide pact.

I am afraid again and I want to climb down to avert the danger. On my way down I meet a young man, my age, who tells me that the place we are in is used for storage by the shops below, but it is presently unused and the part I am in is my own. I continue to climb down and I am unable to find my way back to my room. I eventually get there and notice armed policemen in hiding around the outside. As I move to enter I encounter them with a man who has been brought down from the roof. They are holding him. I ask where he has been he says 'up there'.

I ask where I have been he says 'at the football'. We are the same person. I am outside still and there are a number of others building a wall from large polystyrene blocks of red and white and dark blue. There is music, someone is singing 'You're supposed to be building houses not knocking them down' to a melody that is very simple but very direct. There is a harmonica refrain, which calms the anger in the crowd.

Single Parent

I was resting in a hospital ward. It was night, but activity increased and I became aware of a number of young people in the room. They were a family group, with their young mother. Everyone was in black, their being institutionalised. She was attractive in a damaged sort of way; maternal yet sexually appealing.

Familiar Holiday

I am back on the island, and I remember the first time. That was when I had to reach the station in order to catch the last train home. There was a headland and we had been walking at around 500 feet overlooking the beach. This time around we have to clear the hotel room and get back to the airport after returning the hire cars, a pair of vintage Cadillacs.

Watch The Birdie

I met a friendly hoopoe, preceded by a stranger, spotted flightless bird. The hoopoe  was magnificently tailed and its crest formed a perfect crown of pink, white and black feathers, majestic as it strutted about. It had come to lead me somewhere, somewhere safe and warm.

Turning the bed means I now sleep in a different position and dream in a different direction.

I was in make up, my face painted red all over, a thick black bar across my eyes. The hoopoe has returned. 'A Poupa', a frugal person. I am the hoopoe, and it is my guide.

Home Cooking

I am at work in the hotel. People are busying at the beginning of the evening and the dining room is being prepared for dinner. There is a huge pie in a rectangular aluminium dish, around four feet square and as people pass they admire its pastry and delicate appearance, passing hands over it and occasionally lift a corner, remarking how it did not stick to the base of the pan.

I suddenly leave the building. I am going home to change into a clean suit. I am running towards the exit doors. People are leaving intermittently and there are two sets of doors, which swing open fast to allow people out and then close slowly and re-lock themselves. I am unsure which door to head for as I need to catch one open in order to pass through the foyer.

Wild Water

I am a passenger in a car being driven along a mountain road somewhere in Wales. We pass an elderly couple, whom I recognise and wave. They wave back.

We are en route to a fishing expedition and I am baiting a large hook. I am told of how my companion and others had introduced mackerel to Normandy or Brittany and how they move with the coastal currents. He tells me that the bass are running and another in the back of the car tells how he had a bite from a big bass earlier that day. The ocean is angry and wild and we are optimistic of a good day's fishing.

Dink Deep

I am in a bar but I am not drinking. There is an adjacent exhibition of marine life in large glass tanks, we enter to explore and be warm, it is cold outside. In between the tanks, which reach the floor and curve outwards towards our feet at the bottom, there are a number of exhibits of glass panels and three dimensional artefacts hanging on wires, some framed in black. I notice that some of them are accompanied by plaques denoting their origin.

I notice that there are no fish but that the tanks are a part of the exhibition and I lie on my belly as if swimming to closer inspect some of the exhibits, bumping into other visitors as I slide up and down the gallery floor. I remark how I should spend more time here in this beautiful region, it being so near to where I live.

Conduct Unbecoming

I recognise the island. I am still not drinking although thirsty and I leave the bar and my companions, about half a dozen in all, follow. Outside we encounter some people in the street talking to a shirt sleeved, helmet less policeman, and the village bobby. They are talking in Welsh. I ask where we can find a certain café, the name of which is again Welsh. I explain that I want to hear some music and someone directs me to a bathroom or toilet. I decline, until someone else says that this is the way and we pass through a very large, empty, clean bathroom onto some steps to a large Victorian hall, bigger than a dining room and with a high ceiling. It is gothic, with wooden panelled walls and antique leather upholstered sofas and chairs and a large table, its wooden floors carpeted with tapestry rugs. The ambience is fresh and welcoming, with a dry yet austere warmth I associate with wooden buildings. A man enters and puts a log onto the glowing embers in the hearth. Although the log is small and appears damp, the rekindled fire begins to throw up a few flames.

I suggest we have a large pot of tea. At the far end of the room, or hall, a curtain opens and a young woman dances into the room. She is dressed in black and I see others dressed similarly inside the adjacent dance or drama studio, where they are rehearsing a production. I am only a casual observer. I am reclining in an armchair near the fire and I sink back, tired and begin to slumber. Music starts, it is "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted" and I think of loves lost and departed. I start to choke and I am heavyhearted.

Shoe Suede Blues

As I watched the bus arrive, it started to spot with heavy rain. The rain turned into a torrent, which lasted over an hour. I waited in vain having missed the last train, at the High Level station in an iron shelter well above the surrounding rooftops as lightning crashed all around and the rain fell vertically in sheets. I walked home in the tail of the storm. When I got in my feet were blue with the dye from my shoes.

Overtaker Undertaker

I am driving along a motorway, which runs parallel to an airstrip and planes are landing. I am at the terminal and stewardesses are handing out towels to a passing line of businessmen. I think to join the line but I am casually dressed and decide they will find me out so I do not. I am driving slowly and try to overtake a slower moving car, but there is another oncoming so I pull back into the right hand lane where an old style white ford cortina mark3 hits me head on. It bounces back off and though my first thought is for the children (are they even with me?) nobody appears to be hurt and the cars do not appear damaged. I cannot remember what I am driving.

 
Footnotes from a lost chord

There is a young man, bespectacled and slightly built who seems to be following and observing me. I casually approach him and strike up a conversation. He is testing something, with an apparatus like a hand held sighting jig. It has a paper screen at one end and a pair of circular lenses at the other, made of brass and collapsible. He says it is for measuring adhesion.

It is post apocalyptic and someone is helping me, a dishevelled figure, who says he knows just the place. He leads me to a deep cellar, a bunker. In the main dorm there are dozens of beds filed with wounded and derelict people, all moaning. The place is rank and decrepit. We sit in a pair of dentist-like chars, which emit a pneumatic sound and slowly recline automatically. As I look up from my reclining position, I see the bed opposite me. It appears the occupant is reading a piece of paper before then I realise it is my pursuer measuring me with his scope.

Flashback to daybreak

Since he'd been driving what felt like all day and half the night before and with only a half hour turnaround, he took the opportunity of stretching his legs in the truck stop yard. She was inside freshening herself up after two cups of coffee and a couple of rounds of stale toast, hard and crunchy around the crusts and soft and rubbery in the centre, soaked and steeped in a yellowy goo that you'd better believe had never been butter.

She'd been asking could she drive all the way down and with a lighter load of empty cartons on the way back, it would be easier to handle, so long as she wasn't as tired as he felt, and so he asked her would she take the wheel for a spell. At least she had slept some after the first coffee stop out on the moor, a break for air that inevitable turned into a roll in the grass. The heady scent of the abundant mayflower filled the air and filled their heads with thoughts of one another and the rites of spring as the last of the daylight faded and a near full moon crept over the distant tree line at the edge of the great forest.

Love in the open air, a connectedness with the earth, the stars and all of the surrounding wildlife that sang silently with the raw energy of a greater common spirit. It was a feeling they had always shared and which bound them with the chains of an eternal longing, a taste of something bigger than either of them that kept them coming back to places like this, places in the middle of nowhere that through their passion became the centre of everything. After an hour's sleep and in places like this she'd be ready to go again and readier than before but the driving would keep her keen, the lights cut low and the engine almost idling with the lighter load, cutting through the night like an ocean liner, windows all open and the crisp night air swathing the inside of the cab like the soft caress of a mothers lips on a newborn brow.

Café con Letícia

I'm making coffee but it won't run clear, I cannot filter it, so I pour the mixture through a sieve into a glass bowl and leave it to settle on the ground, somewhere near Bury in Lancashire. I fly off and I'm back near home in Wales when I hear a voice on the radio asking about the blend. I pick up the telephone and I'm talking to her, explaining about the coffee. She understands and I tell her where I bought it, about my favourite brands and how fresh the coffee smells. She understands and she asks whether I ever tried guaraná, she thinks I would like it and in contemplating the flavour I can already feel its effect.

Map reference

I look again at the map and I see that there is actually another way, a minor road that runs through a private estate that is shorter and more direct than the previously planned route. We take this road and arrive at a gatehouse where we ask for consent to pass through the grounds on foot. There is some concern as there is a royal visit today and many aristocrats have already arrived. An equerry asks us to wait whilst he checks with his superiors and as we wait we walk in the small courtyard.  I hear a voice calling us and then I see a smartly dressed couple approach. She is a stranger, wearing a curious smile but I recognise him. Tall, fair haired, softly smiling, he wears a look of laboured benevolence and he has good news, we may carry on but without delay.

There is a handsome medal lying on the ground, jewelled and on a burgundy velvet ribbon. I do not pick it up and watch as people walk around it, unaware.

I look around for her but there is no sign and as I pass through the waiting crowd, excusing myself along the way I find her waiting on the steps outside. We walk in each others arms, hers around my waist, mine around her shoulders, pausing every few steps to kiss until we stop and engage in a lengthy embrace, kissing with passion. It feels good to be here, like this, knowing where we are going and that we have a safe passage.

Fear of falling

Talking to the girl who'd been born with a broken heart, the young one, less than half my age. We'd got closer after three weeks on the course though a mutual attraction was there from the start. She left the aftershow party early but returned to sit quietly beside me for another hour, leaving exhausted and with a lingering look straight into my eyes at the door. I knew I would be in love with her were I to but allow myself to fall.

I later overhear her mother talking about her to her stepfather. She's got four or five "good years" left. I break down and weep. Later I feel a weight lift from me, and I break into another dream state. She's there and I hold her in my arms. I feel her touch against my chest, my belly and my around the small of my back. There are fierce demons all around and I am anxious and in some fear. The dream breaks into another, darker state but I hold onto the thought of her and passing deeper and deeper into darkness the demons all fade away, insignificant, leaving each of us alone but safe in our own company and side-by-side, asleep.

Endless cycle

We're on a bike, riding to the Old Town for sake of the coast ride back around the bay. Everything gets easier once we're over the hill, but after a while it's not clear whether we are going uphill or down, and in which direction. At one stage we're rolling backwards, so we make a three point turn and figure we've arrived.

We're at a disused coal yard, or maybe it's a Sunday and it's closed for business. There's a cricket match, though all the players are gathered in a hall. The scores are tied so they are having a deciding competition, a bit like darts, where each of the players has to throw at a target, a small box at the top of a scoreboard and for 1 each hit registered, for every miss a 0. These are chalked onto a blackboard divided into squares in green paint, the target three boxes at the top.

If the home team miss their next throw, the visitors win with several throws to spare. They miss and a ripple of cheering breaks the tension. Polite applause as players from Glan Conwy and 'DDD' mingle over tea and biscuits.

We slip through the crowd and through a tiny wooden door into the Post Office, where two people are speaking Welsh, using vocabulary I understand though their conversation is mundane. You could buy anything here; I know this village shop well.

We step outside into bright sunshine and disappear into the light.

Imitation of love

No matter how well we know the course, still we drift from safety in the shallows and into parts where the water runs swift and strong, its hidden currents dark, forever deep, a near enough imitation of love to assuage the aching emptiness of a life alone.

Microwave

We have fled the hotel and the boy and I are in the car, waiting at the multi storey. I'm not his Dad but instead of having me address me by my first name I ask that he call me Pops and he is happy to do so. He is my stepson. We have to pay to get out and neither of us has any money. An angry looking man appears and runs towards us, the boy gets out and runs to a door and down a flight of steps, the man follows. I take off up the stairs and wait at the elevator, which soon arrives and the boy emerges.

We run to the escalator down where I see the brown skinned woman who passes me the keys and we exchange a momentary intimacy. We take the car to the exit where I stall it and pull the catch to open the bonnet. I get out and there is soon a queue behind. In the confusion the boy starts the car and drives through. I am left with an electric cooker at the top of a double flight of steps. I manhandle the cooker through the double doors onto a landing and down the first flight. It is not heavy and I am soon at the street waiting for the car, knowing that we are safe and on our way home at last.

Costa Del Boys

We are staying at the resort but Tony wants to start for home. I didn't realise at the time but he was in withdrawal from the heroin habit he had just begun. Had I insisted he stayed it may have changed or even saved his life, but as it was his melancholia put such a dampener on things I felt I had to somehow meet him halfway even though I wanted to stay on there indefinitely.

We were in a small rented apartment in Andalucia near Benalmadena, a few miles west of Malaga, outside the town and off the main drag. It was an ideal location for peace and quiet as well as the beach and nightlife in Marbella and Torremolinos, although my original intention was to find a place over the border in Portuguese Algarve, somewhere near the village of Olhão, outside Tavira.

The night clubs in th smaller Portuguese resorts attracted a more interesting crowd, a good mixture of pan-European visitors and locals instead of the Eurotrash  hardcore druggies, perverts and hookers in the Spanish places were likely to find ourselves in, and the dope was legal in Portugal. That was the trouble though, and I should really have seen it. The dope wasn't enough for Tony and he couldn't get the quality of smack here that he'd got used to in London. How familiarity truly breeds contempt.

We were sharing with a local couple and it was only when he revealed that I was paying the lion's share for the smallest room that I became convinced that we should move, though once again with hindsight he had probably lied about that too.

I decided we should make our way home through Portugal, around the coast and across the mountains from Lisbon then across the Basque country to Andorra.

From there it was a series of straightforward hops, to Biarritz, across Brittany and across the channel from Calais, though it was probably a journey I would complete alone.

 There was dancing first though. My brother was there. We had some disagreement about his moving in but we found a happy resolution.

Ghosts

She is in the house, moving around, acting naturally, and just living. Being at home. I hardly flinch as I watch her flitting around with her characteristic swiftness, grace and economy of movement, a natural purpose and poise about her that draws my attention as a moth to a flame. She turns and smiles and I gasp. As I watch enthralled I realise that she is simply familiarising herself with the contents and artefacts here, picking up and gently wiping each piece in turn, wiping its place and putting it back, occasionally examining something with a critical eye and dropping it into a black polythene sack that she moved around with her feet, familiarising herself with a familiar place, performing a spring clean of my imagination.

I'm back in London, walking in a hurry. As we cross Westminster Bridge I realise that I have lost my shoes, and my jacket. I stop and look around before I see what I at first think is my lost jacket at the side of the road, off the pavement in the gutter. I pick it up but it isn't my own coat, it is a tweed ladies' jacket, still heavy with its wearer's perfume and laden with personal effects, make up, a pencil, scraps of paper, a notebook and a wallet. I open the wallet as two strangers watch on with interest.

I open the wallet and take out a wad of banknotes, a dozen or so separate bundles of twenties, each bundle more than a hundred, maybe two hundred or even five hundred.

 The wad has the appearance of having been immersed in water; the notes are stuck together and faded. I speak to the two onlookers and suggest we find a policeman but one of them, a woman suggests that we simple split the money three ways. I say 'That sounds like a workable arrangement' and I am back on the move, wearing my shoes and carrying a third shoe, which has a hole in the upper part. Someone near me explains the reason why I'm carrying this extra shoe and it makes sense.

I'm back at the apartment, there is furniture in the previously bare rooms and it looks like I have moved in.

Hotel Hypnopompis

I'm back at the Hotel Amizade, The Avenida Palace, the Queen Hotel, The Central, the Hotel Dona Joanna or whatever it calls itself nowadays, checking myself in, checking the old place out. The day after tomorrow, amanha de amanha I'm due to catch a flight in the early hours of the morning on the 'Litoral' and so I intend to spend one last night here in familiar, comforting surroundings before a rendezvous and eraly hours departure from the more expensive Tropical Hotel overlooking the airport. That's all I know so far but I feel at home here, immersed in this grandeur, its deep red velvet upholstery, walking on its cushioned burgundy carpets and intoxicated by the caramel smells of the illicit rum still in its cellar that pervade the building.

A pair of midget Sikh soldiers stand sentry at the foot of the wide staircase, rifles at the ready, their royal blue and turquoise tunics gleaming, their silken maroon turbans adding a touch of reality to their otherwise crenulated alabaster solemnity. Theirs are friendly, smiling faces in a city of strangers, though in an inverted reality, from the outside looking in, it is me who is the stranger even though my pale face is more familiar to these citizens than I know.

I sign the register and the frail old lady at the reception gives me hand signals to the top of the stairs and left to the premier suite. It's directly over the front door with a small balcony giving an imperial view over the decrepit square outside, a room it would be easy to suppose the original owner might once have occupied. I'm going to miss this place, these people. I move to pick up my heavily overstuffed and battered suitcase but the porter is there before me. Paulo, according to the name badge on his impressive double breasted, gleamingly buttoned but well worn blazer. He could be a miltary dictator or a high ranking ambassador in his immaculately pressed pants and shiny black shoes, but he wears the uniform with a confident ease. He is the Amizade personified. Though Paulo is probably his 'proper' first name I know by now that his preferred 'given' name is Pelé, that's what all the staff and other townspeople call him.

He's not only the porter, he's the overnight barman, probably the breakfast chef and who knows what else. He all but runs this place. Though he is slightly shorter than me and probably a little older, he is stouter and broad shouldered and he lifts it with ease. But before he can throw it over his shoulder by the carry strap I pick up my briefcase and the carrier bags with my dry cleaned suit, so he swings it in his giant chestnut hand by its battered handle, smiling broadly. "Very nice to see you again sir" he says, his fluent English an obvious source of some pride. He's still grinning, wider than ever. He means it. "Thanks Pelé" I say, returning the compliment by using his familiar name, "It's good to see you too my friend. My last night here, for a while at least."

He laughs. "Oh, you'll be back" he says knowingly, "Everybody comes back here" He turns as we enter the waiting elevator, its jaded gilt and careworn carpet faded but immaculately clean and its sparkling mirrors bearing the minute surface scratches of a thousand dusters. I wonder if Pelé carries a yellow polishing cloth in his pocket to keep up these appearances on his many return trips alone in this lift, stopping in between floors to add a shine to its glass and brass. He presses the button for the first floor, the longest hop in the five-storey building, clear of the high ground floor ceiling. It's a small colonial palace, a relic of a finer era full of the pretension of a lost colonial empire and it wears its specious splendour well with age.

The lift doors swish smoothly shut, a moment's hesitation before their final coming together and then closing with a satisfyingly firm but gentle clunk. The ascension starts with a little jolt as the drum takes the weight, humming softly and reassuringly and then slowing before quivering to a standstill, a short ride that thrills the senses with its simulated weight and momentary weightlessness. One might almost expect to step out onto another world but the doors swish apart in the same slightly hesitant then reassuringly decisive way that they closed. There is a mannered stammer about everything here, the place runs like the well-oiled but mechanically worn machine that it is after nearly a century of heat and humidity. It must require a lot of oil and caring effort to keep things running this smoothly, however one may suspect that chaos reigns just below the surface and may only be a blown fuse or leaking pipe away at any given moment.

Pelé turns the polished handle and pushes the heavy door which swings silently ajar then he steps aside, just far enough to hold it open and leaving me to enter first before taking a single step into the room and looking around to see that all is in it proper place. "I'll leave you to it sir" he says with an inevitable smile, positioning my case on the raised suitcase stand with a self-satisfying flourish, taking an obvious delight in the perfection of its positioning. We've been through this many times before and as I fumble for a tip he again laughs. "Don't be silly!" he says and so I ask if he will join me for a drink later that evening instead, he must get the occasional night off? "Rather!" he responds in an enthusiastic skit of an English received pronunciation. "That would be an absolute pleasure" he beams and so I suggest we meet in the lobby at about eight and take a walk into town. He is delighted and says he will show me around some places he knows that I may not have seen but then adds that it would look inappropriate for him to be seen to "stepping out" with a guest and so he writes the name and address of a place in the old town and hand it to me. We both laugh and he leans forward with a small salute as he leaves.

Taking in the by now familiar surroundings, I contemplate his sense of etiquette and morality, and I reason that someone like Pelé must take care how he treads what some might see as the thin line between importunity and opportunity, between being the proprietor and effecting any impropriety and even, as I would later contemplate, between seduction and entrapment. In any case, he's way ahead of me and I like him a lot, both because of and in spite of that. I turn and lift my bulky travel bag onto the suitcase stand before throwing open the full length window onto the small balcony to allow a cool aftershower breeze into the room, billowing the net curtains with a familiar smell of sun dried cotton and carrying with it the smell of the river, the forest rain and the sounds of the mid morning hubbub of the marketplace below. I close my eyes and savour these familiar sensations and feel at home in this foreign but strangely familiar place, holding the moment, making an effort to impress this feeling on my memory.

Remember This

There are far worse places to be, I have known some and others no doubt await me. I turn and collapse onto the soft double bed, its fresh cotton cover alive with the scent of sun and summer rain and I drift into a travel weary dreamless sleep. When I awaken it is well after six and already going dark. I shower and change before heading out into the night to the downtown address Pelé has given me. Just off the red light zone, this part of town is just coming to life as the bars open and charruscerias get fired up and I find the address he has given me easily, where Pelé stands elegantly at the counter, cigarette in hand, looking sharp in a scarlet suit, Hawaiian shirt and patent shoes. I feel underdressed in my pressed linen jacket, jeans and sandals but we each look the part, him the tropical man about town, me the casual visitor.

The atmosphere is timeless, we could be in the 1950s, 60s, 70s or 80s; lost in the late 20th century as sounds playing in the nearby bars swirl around the narrow streets in a heady cocktail of musical styles, mainly jazz and a little early rock and roll, some bossanova, lambada, samba, some early soul too plus the occasional strain of heavy metal, wailing guitars and thumping house disco. Jungle rhythms with a western swing. Pelé is holding court with a group of local guys and a couple of girls in micro short figure hugging dresses that show off their every curve. Pelé introduces me to the girls as Mr Wright, I quickly interject by asking them, Pelé included, to call me Billy. They are Martha and Ronny, "com ipsilon - with a y". Martha is the shorter of the pair, typically nordestina looking, almost oriental, part caboclo with a distinctive coppery skin tone. Ronny is taller, almost my height in her heels, around five seven, a beautiful brown girl with her straightened black hair in a French pleat. She looks so much like the 60s Motown singer Ronnie Spector that everyone has called her the same name since she was in high school, though that couldn't have been all that long ago. She's added the Y herself, an affected Anglicisation that adds a little extra élan, though her looks and poise are classic by any name.

Gradually more and more people arrive and the music grows ever louder and more Latin orientated. Soon we are all shuffling and dancing, slipping and sliding to the rhythm. The music plays, car engines race and motor bikes arrive and zoom away in an aromatic ballet of barbecued meat, tropical fruit, cane drived alcool fuel, booze and perfume. At one point I'm looking into Ronny's face, and she's smiling right at me and I like it, even though I can feel myself blushing. She seems to like me and I somehow I don't feel deserving or even able to convey the charm or confidence to smile right back, not that way, nor to take hold of her and kiss her like I want to. Pelé is at my side and he whispers a word of caution, that I should tread carefully, she's a boss's girl and he can see the mutual attraction. I feel he knows how I am affected, and that he knows how I want her. I'm not any sort of a 'boss' but I enjoy some curiosity value and affection from the local people. I'm still an outsider though, all but a tourist, but I'm one who they know has been at least partly assimilated by the time I've spent amongst them through my regular work visits and by having some understanding of the language and customs. I am accessible and they know that I like them and that I want to be liked by them.

I start to chat to her and she moves closer to me, we brush against one another and there is an emotional charge that is almost electric. For conversation's sake I ask her real name and though she is coy and won't tell me at first I say it doesn't matter and I smile with the acceptance of her reluctance. She reconises my unwillingness to cause her discomfort and it disarms her, she starts to spill it all out, Âmbar Veronica Constantinha Rocha da Silva and  I repeat it. I tell her how poetic and romantic it sounds, and this either casts or breaks a spell and she is a different person, warmer, gentler, closer. She's a little drunk and she starts to look at me differently and then she starts to cry softly and in consoling her, I hold her close and she releases her pent up distress like a breaking floodbank. I kiss her tenderly and she responds with passion, we kiss again and again and in between trips to the bathroom to compose herself and the barman pouring more rum and cola she slowly pours out her heart, telling a convoluted story of deception, betrayal, disappointment, abuse and exploitation.

I leave her with Pelé in the bar and I make a payphone call to arrange a meeting with my contact from the company. I need to clear my head, make the final arrangements for tomorrow and get things written down before I get too drunk to remember. I reach Murphy, the agent, on his cellphone. He is in another nearby bar and when I get there some fifteen minutes later he introduces me to my intended travelling companion, the cargo, my 'consort'. He doesn't speak much English but he has to get to the agency's homebase in London where he can be discreetly treated at a private hospital. He is pale and unwell and cannot get help here without revealing too much about the nature of the company's work. He looks bad, pallid and sweating and the nearby customers look very wary of him and us, keeping some distance away.

Healthcare is a hit and miss affair here at the best of times and contacting a fever can be fatal without the means to pay for early treatment. Every so often someone like this will appear out of the forest from one of the many garimpos, the illegal gold mining sites upriver in search of treatment and unless they have cash money, US dollars or sterling, or more frequently, raw gold, they are shunned and driven away or worse. I arrange to meet the pair of them at the Tropical Hotel in the late afternoon the next day for an early hours start for the airport, we can be on the plane and on our way to the capital and a connection to London by dawn, checking in at the last minute after we see the plane arrive. In the time it takes for it to disembark and refuel we cancross from the hotel before it taxis to the departure gate. Timing will be critical as the sick man could be quarantined if his condition is noticed but no-one pays much attention in the early hours and at worst we can make it to London and get quarantined there, well away from any connection with the company and whatever he has been doing in the forest. But even though he will receive modern treatment, whatever it is that's wrong with him is probably best treated here in the forest with the indigenous peoples' own medicine, a combination of plant remedies and something close to magic.

I return to Max's Bar where Pelé is in full flow, entertaining a couple of newly arrived German tourists and with Martha at his side. Ronny sits with them relatively quietly and whilst the tourists might get the idea that Pelé is 'running' these girls, it's probably his intention to convey this very idea. Everyone gets a piece of the action. Ronny's eyes light up when I enter and her chest fills with the unmistakable delight of dispelled disappointment. We move off into the night as a foursome and it all becomes a blur of bars, tapas, music and seduction until we hear the sound of a gunfight of sorts very close nearby. Pelé shepherds the girls into the back of the bar and they disappear through the kitchen. We are deep in the poor quarter of town, on the edge of the favela but we make for the sound of the shots as the source is in the direction of the hotel.

People are crowding around the streets, doors and windows, all eager to see any action as the drama unfolds. Their natural curiosity and hunger for drama and gossip overwhelms any fear as stories and rumour sweep the crowd in waves of embellishment. Pelé grabs my sleeve and drags me towards an open doorway, down a narrow alleyway and out into an open courtyard behind the main action "What if we meet the shooters coming the other way?" I say but Pelé is unconcerned. "Stay close," he says and he darts into a building with me doing my best to keep up, past startled inhabitants who call out after our flight, possibly mistaking us for the shooters or their targets. We emerge into another wide street, this time the other side of the throng. The agent, Mr. Murphy appears, all in grey and carrying his suit jacket over his shoulder. To my surprise, he and Pelé are acquainted and slightly antagonistic towards one another. Murphy is not at all happy to see me with Pelé, who greets him with a laugh, and even less so to see me with Ronny. He glares at her, visibly seething and struggling for words. "Well, well, well, Mister Moo!" says Pelé and he laughs again, perhaps a little nervously at first but unafraid. Then there are more shots and shouting, nearer still now and we are on the move again, Murphy in one direction, towards the shots, and us in the other. I reach for Ronny's hand to keep her with me but we become separated and I have to find my own way back to the hotel

It is near daybreak when I get to the Amizade. Everything is as it should be and I find my key in my back pocket. I am carrying a bottle of rum. The bottle is half drunk although I am by now sober. I turn through the lobby to the lift and I'm met by a bottle of the homemade cachaça, suspended on a paper chain at eye level. There is a label pasted on skewed, and a note attached makes it obvious it is for me; it reads, "For Mr Right, enjoy the local produce!" I recognise the handwriting as Pelé's and I take down the bottle but leave the paper chain hanging.

I get into the lift but it is a tight squeeze as there are several other people trying to get in too, all well dressed English revellers here for pending Carnival next week, acting somewhat gauche and haughtily which I find slightly embarrassing. I tell them they will need to select their floor buttons and ask the nearest, a plump little woman in a beige woollen suit to press button 1 for me. A man's voice, slightly drunken sounding, interjects, addressing me with a note of disdain "English are you? You look as though you've been here some time. No good going native you know!" and he laughs. The lift doors do not move and so I struggle past the fat woman and get out. "I think I'll take the stairs," I say and I leave them all looking bemused at the lift's inaction.

I open the door and see a figure lying asleep on the sofa. I turn and check the room number but it is mine, room 13 at the front of the building over the entrance. The figure stirs but does not awaken. It is Ronny. I undress and slip into bed, exhausted and drift into sleep, imagining her beside me.

All Day Breakfast

It is well past noon before I wake. A small tray of fresh hot coffee and fresh tropical fruit sits on the dresser, covered with a sheer muslin cloth, their combined sweet smells filling the room and stirring the senses before the first sip. I stretch out my left arm behind me across the soft bed sheet and turn to focus on the breakfast tray and then on the vacant sofa. I am alone in the room and memories of the night before begin drifting back. I pick up the bedside telephone and call the reception desk. Had there been any calls for me? No, but there was a message, a handwritten letter left early this morning and marked 'Urgent' but the 'Do Not Disturb' notice on the door meant it still sat in its pigeon hole at the front desk. I ask for it to be brought up immediately and within a minute there is a rap at the door. I slip on a thin white cotton bathrobe, 'AMIZADE' stencilled across the shoulders, giving its wearer the appearance of an undercard boxer or a detainee  and I cross the room as a pale buff envelope appears from underneath the door. I check my movement towards the handle and move instead to pick it up, reading my name on the front which has been carefully written in a neat, cursive hand. I open the door but the courier is gone. The heavily embossed and monogrammed Tropical Hotel envelope is  tightly sealed and I take a teaspoon from the breakfast tray and slip its slender handle into the bottom corner, slitting it open. It's from Murphy, an International Consolidated Explorations memo slip, its handwritten message almost scribbled, in contrast to the envelope, which was almost certainly written by someone else, probably the Tropical Hotel clerk it looks hurried and untidy. "1pm,  room 141, be flight ready."

I am to meet him and the 'consort' earlier than planned, almost half an hour's cab ride out of town. I feel around under the pillows for my wristwatch, 12.17 and then I find a white satin ribbon headband, perfumed and with a couple of stands of straight, slightly crinkled black hair entwined. I remember the girl her asleep on the sofa but nothing more, not even her name though the creases and lipstick smudges I now notice on the linen suggest someone had shared my bed at some stage of the night.

I splash cold water on my face and call down for a cab. Pulling on a clean pair of boxers, I look around the room for my suit, left crumpled on the floor last night but carefully folded now and hanging in the wardrobe with a freshly ironed white shirt. Everything I need is already in my briefcase, my wallet, passport and cell phone, useless here but invaluable once I got to Madrid, Paris and then London.

I check the contents and throw in my cigarettes and lighter, and then I fold the ribbon, taking care to retain the strands of hair and slip it into the document pouch in the briefcase lid, thinking to ask Paul about it later. I didn't know as much then but it would be a long time before I would be able to ask that question, and whether he knew what had happened the previous night. But he knew all right, he knew more than anyone would ever know he knew.

I arrive at the Tropical Hotel to find Murphy pacing anxiously in the foyer. I was a few minutes late and he is already nervous, the first time I'd ever seen him like this. Everything has been moved forward, the consort's fever is worse and we have to take a flight out that afternoon, not the 'Litoral' round to Rio and on to Frankfurt as planned but an earlier DC10 out of Montevideo to Miami, one that calls here and then Mexico City, and then on to Madrid and then Paris before switching to the commuter shuttle to Heathrow. Easy.

Murphy has the tickets, terminating in Paris but the transfer is straightforward, the shuttle is a walk-on standby and the company AMEX means we will pass through all but unnoticed. We are scheduled to arrive at CDG around lunchtime, off-peak and likely to get us into Heathrow mid afternoon, mid morning tomorrow here. I was to take the consort by cab straight to the company surgery in Harley Street. Murphy gives me two virtually identical bottles of pills, one a high strength chloroquin anti malarial compound, the other a morphine based sedative in case the consort became delirious and raving, as had been known to happen in the reduced pressure atmosphere of a the transatlantic airliner.

The pills were made up with an effervescent base, bicarbonate of soda or something kike it so that they looked like an anti-indigestion concoction in the glass and the pharmacy labels described them as such, the morphine discernible only by a chip in the plastic cap.

The consort's travelling name is Edwards although he is probably Polish or Lithuanian. He speaks little English. He sits, pale and shivering with fear in his glassy eyes. Murphy hands him a couple of large white and yellow capsules that he struggles to swallow with a tumbler of water that he can barely hold steady. As planned, the room overlooks the airport but now our flight will not spend long on the tarmac and so at ten past two we set off, departure scheduled for three and check-in already being called. Within half an hour the big bird has landed and sits refuelling as we shuffle along the gangway, me still hungover and nauseous from the previous night's liquor and libation, Edwards groggy with the fever and Murphy's dubious medication.

The stewardess eyes him nervously as he hands her his boarding card with a feebly grimaced smile. "Making good time," I intone, calling her attention from him. She is plainly Spanish, her olive skin noticeably paler than the coppery tones of most of the dozen or so passengers boarding here. "Si, graçias" she smiles in response, her large brown eyes flashing at me as she takes my card. She looks concerned at Edwards' pallor though and she will be keeping a careful watch on him, as I now must on her. Any signs of sickness could mean quarantine in Mexico City, a place where no one would want to spend any length of time at the best of times, and not least in this most humid and claustrophobic season. at this time of the year.

I sit next to Edwards and when the stewardess comes around taking orders for drinks as we make our timely ascent, I ask for a tonic water and a mineral water, the latter for Edwards, who is already dozing from whatever it was Murphy gave him. I mix one of each of the tablets into his water and wake him to drink, telling him to keep up his intake of fluids. Thankfully, within half an hour of takeoff he is fast asleep, and sleeping he looks much more relaxed and almost healthy, his breathing deep and steady, He remains this way for most of the next fourteen hours, barely shifting in his seat at Mexico and only waking to pee and take more tablets halfway across the Atlantic.

As we make our final approach towards Madrid though I notice that his breathing is very shallow and he doesn't react to the seatbelt call. He's been belted in for several hours now, shifting only once to visit the lavatory in the early hours. He sleeps through both meal calls, and is left undisturbed, having gestured to the stewardess that he has a stomach upset on his toilet trip.

The seatbelt lights are on and I lean across him to draw the curtain and take the early morning sun from out of the glazed; half open eyes that peered from behind pitch dark sunglasses but which see nothing. He is dead and cold. I tug the airline blanket up onto his shoulder to make his posture look more like that of the typical red-eye passenger hoping to slumber through the short call at Madrid before the last leg before of a fourteen hour flight and I take a seat further down the half empty plane, ostensibly planning a day's business by writing in my diary but in reality scouring my mind for the fastest route out of this fix.

I have no intention of facing the Spanish, French or any other police to answer questions about this dead Ukranian, or whatever he was, someone I hardly knew and know nothing about. Someone far from home whose great adventure had ended in the sky. There is some consternation as passengers disembark and a stewardess attempts to wake Edwards and an emergency call goes out for a doctor to. I join the other passengers in a semi circle of concerned on-board onlookers and when the stewardesses invite us to leave the aircraft and spend a short wait in the transit lounge I am off and gone, through customs and with no luggage to wait for.

Edwards had checked in a couple of bags and that had covered for my travelling so light and I am aboard the rapid transit into the city centre before any alarm has been raised. I keep moving.

I take the automated walkway to the rapid transit station, muzak playing as paramedics rush in the opposite direction. In my briefcase, Edwards' tickets and passport and anything else that could identify him. Playing overhead, the Doobie Brothers. What A Fool Believes. I tap my fingers on the moving rail in time to the music and check my wristwatch against the digital timepieces in the concourse, I'm still four hours behind. It's now 8.22 here but Manaus is still sleeping.

I take the first long distance train, an express TGV or Talgo out of the main southbound station to Granada and Sevilla, the Andalucia Express. I plan to arrive in Malaga by late afternoon. It will be another couple of hours before I can call Murphy, the time we would have expected to arrive at Victoria. He will not be pleased by my news.

Asleep on the train

I board the train and find an isolated space in a near empty car. I am exhausted after not sleeping on the flight and then the adreneline rush of my escape from Barajas but the journey time is only an hour and a half. I set the timer on my cellphone to wake me and drift into a deep and fitful sleep.

This time we are a long way out, further than we'd ever ventured before but the sea is still afar, barely there. The girl looks sad and disappointed. I ask her if she wants to go for the paddle I know she's come for and her face lights up with excitement. So we start towards the distant water's edge, crossing belts of shale and pebbles until the first wave tentatively licks the soles of her sandals. She stoops to unbuckle the strap but before she has time to take them off and save her socks from a soaking the next long and shallow little wave hits, tricking over her toes and seeping in through the sandals' patterned holes.

I catch her hand as she stumbles, dancing to the music of the surf on sand and pebbles, hopping backwards from toe to toe in delight at the irresistible risk of dipping a toe in the water. The next wave comes close behind, onto her shoes and almost laps her ankles. It is warm and a cool offshore breeze keeps the atmosphere comfortable and the sky cloudless but neither black nor blue, it is deepest purple and gold. Looking to my left, away out to sea, I see a large full moon, rising in the sky and it is clear the tide has turned.

We both know it is already time to go back and turning round, I see the full extent of the shore behind us, stretching right across the mouth of the dying river, its flow slowed to the trickle of a tiny stream. Is that really Liverpool that lies in the distance, a ribbon of shimmering silvery urban grey in the otherwise unending stretch of rolling green hills and golden sand? I fantasise of walking across to this mysterious distant citadel, a fantastic notion as it must be at least fifteen miles away and everything in between would be deep underwater by the time we could even halfway complete such a trek.

I take her hand again and we head briskly back to the others waiting at the rocky land locked island, she skipping over the sands in her play-pony clippety clop, flicking sand and shells behind her as my own feet glide a few inches above the ground. Back at the picnic site I climb to a higher viewpoint before lifting her to my shoulders so she can see the city's distant skyline.

We are standing on a rocky, crystalline or basalt like outcrop. There are crystals lying on the ground, some growing out and up in hexagonal columns, other lying with sheer, smooth facets through which one can peer deep into the rock at blurry shifting shapes and images peering back, ghostly faces in the darkness. I pick up a broken piece, its hexagonal cross section intact and about the size of a house brick, but I know that I must not, cannot keep it.

My Mum had long since told me that if every visitor took a piece home there would soon be nothing left and this was all that marked the edge of land and sea.

In the gathering rush to escape the rising tide I no longer remember whether I'm still carrying it or not, though its strong metallic taste still lingers in my mouth. I wonder who I am, and who I was with. Which of these my daughter, which my mother and which one me, or were we all the same, united in some imaginary night-time trip to the seaside, a fanciful flight to higher ground?

The cellphone bursts into life with an urgent beeping. I think am in Sevilla, but the train has stopped and I am still on the outskirts of Madrid, still in th endless sprawling concrete suburbs. I shuffle in my seat and doze off again.

I see a bald headed man burning torn up newspapers in the garden. I have just got up and descended for breakfast. I go outside and I ask what he is doing and he says he is starting a fire. There are two small children with him, playing together. "Who are you?" I ask him but he doesn't know. He knows that the children are his and he looks distressed. I see sorrow and despair in his eyes and it frightens me. I say to him "There's not really any way to put this nicely" and I tell him "Fuck off", and to leave the garden. As he leaves I tell him his children are beautiful.

The children are smiling to me as they leave with him but I don't feel at all good about it. I had asked him to leave because I was afraid of him and what he might do because I didn't know him. Later I relate the episode to my brother and he suggests that someone might have advised the bald headed man to come and talk to me about something that had been troubling him, and seek my advice. Again, I feel bad about my having been so rude to him.

New Boy Meets New Girl

I am starting a new job and it is my first day. I survey my workplace. There is a stand-up desk, a large lectern with clipboard sheets upon it. One of these is the daily log sheet of duties but it has been torn in half and the lower part is missing. There is a brown skinned woman in the room, her eyes hazel green, her hair tied back, wearing light make up a white pressed blouse, and a dark blue suit with a pencil skirt, no stockings or tights and plain, flat black slip on shoes. She looks slightly nervous, elegant and attractive. Her apprehension generates a sexual tenion that fills the room, bristling everything with a static electric patina.

She is seated at the left side of the room under a window, the sun lighting her from behind and making a halo of the wisps of crinkled hair that have escaped the clasp that holds the rest drawn back tight, shining auburn in the light. She smiles and says hello. I ask does she work here and she says yes, it's her first day. She's the replacement for the secretary who has just left on extended leave, maybe a promotion or a maternity year, but she will be coming back and her job is only temporary. I motion and suggest she takes a seat at the other desk. She moves across the room with the quick and direct gait of a young antelope or deer, clutching her black leather handbag to her tummy. I ask her to take a note and when she is sitting ready with a pencil and notepad, I say "My first day." with a mock severity and which she writes and laughs with a splutter, spraying an aerosol of nervous perspiration from her upper lip, then visibly relaxing and warming to me and to her new job.

Soon there are children running around and there is pandemonium. I grab one of them whom I have identified as being particularly troublesome and tell him to leave, that he is banned. This has a calming effect on the others but I have some sympathy for him, particularly when discussing the matter with the new girl later and realising that the kid was probably unaware of his actions, that he was in someway damaged and that his actions were a misguided form of self-expression.

There are baths, tiled in a turquoise and purple mosaic. Some are very shallow with running water, some deep enough to swim and dive and I take a swim in a heated pool, naked. I swim through the middle of some water sport activity, maybe polo or some other game and later, naked again but near the office there is some amusement when someone else says that my naked bathing caused some of them to stop playing after they became aroused. I look behind me because the girl is smiling, laughing and blushing. She is looking at something behind me, then unable to look any more, she says she has to go to the toilet and scurries away giggling and flustered. I look behind me to see what cas amused her so. It is a large clock with a swinging pendulum. The clock face has a rising full moon, painted with a face that leers lasciviously and the clock itself is laughing. It is nearly twenty to five and the hands look like a moustache, the moon its toothless smile.

There is more activity at the centre as more young people arrive. I wonder how long I am expected to be here, from around seven in the morning until near eleven at night. Eventually it is empty and I go around switching off the lights and closing doors. I hear a splashing sound and soft singing coming from the pool.

The wet room is very steamy as the air has chilled and the pool is at its hottest. The girl is sitting in the water, bathing and moving her arms and legs, looking directly at me. Smiling broadly, she blows a kiss and breaks into a laugh. "Come on" she says with playful impatience. I laugh too and as I plunge into the pool I wake up with a start, the train is moving.

The Dairy Queen

I was lying low in Torremolinos, blending with the thousands of holidaymakers as best I could. Sometime in the next few days I would fly to a provincial English airport on the return half of a charter flight, the original flier someone who wanted to spend the entire summer here and for whom a cheap return was the best one-way option. There are thousands of flights like this.

I was dozing in the early morning, this cheap chalet room a favour from an old friend, now a bar owner here and at the centre of most of the contraband business that passed through under cover of package holidays. What the hell was I doing here? Where exactly was I going next? And how then back to Manaus?

Murphy was likely to put a stop on the AMEX card now that I'd gone underground, and to use it risked alerting any number of dangers. Best to call in a couple of favours, get some hash laid on and front it out in a drop into Manchester or Nottingham, where I knew I could turn a couple of nine bars into a ticket back to Manaus without any trouble, without any questions. It's hot and heavy and I cannot clear my head.

I'm sitting at the counter of an ice cream parlour, outside under the shade of a canopy at the window although it's much cooler and air conditioned inside. I like the feel of the wind at my back, and the slow baking heat of the sun as it plays on my bare legs and feet as I sit here, lounging in a loose shirt, shorts and sandals. It will be overhead soon and this patch of shade will be complete, just as well, it's a scorcher, the hottest day of the year so far.

I'm enjoying an ice cream, a double scoop of home made Italian gelato, the house speciality, made the same way for generations to a secret recipe never written down but passed by word of mouth and practical example from the family elders, generation to generation and brought from here from Napoli over a hundred years ago.

Inside the parlour there is the low hubub of families at lunch, punctuated with laughter and the occasional interjection of parental reproach or childish protestation. Good table manners are taught and learned here, and the joy of good food and service is the lingua franca.

A big fat balding guy, ruddy, ginger and freckled waddles up and takes the next stool along. This is one of those chrome, glass and leatherette places, the stool seats get sweaty and you have to keep swiveling to stop yourself from sticking to them but that's not so easy for someone his size, there isn't that much legroom between the stools and the counter, not unless you sit sideways or legs akimbo, cowpoke style.

The big guy eases himself down and surveys the menu painted on a blackboard at the back of the servery, not too well lit in the deep shade inside. It's ice cream with everything, plus the option of sandwiches and coffee. He looks at my half devoured cone as I lick the drips from around the edge and asks for a Whippy. "Gimme one of those, a Whippy" he says, eying my ice cream hungrily.

He looks ready for something cold, the perspiration running in rivulets down his cheeks. He produces a handkerchief from an inside jacket pocket and daubs at his face, neck and head. It's hot, too hot for the business suit he's wearing and he eases himself pit of the jacket and places it carefully over the stool between us, its pockets heavy with stuff, notebooks, pens and keys or change, something jangly.

So the ice cream girl starts to make an enormous cone of the soft, creamy syrup that oozes from the star sectioned nozzle, twisting the cone with a deft wrist movement and producing a spectacular pyramid of goo that, delicious though it may be, is nothing like home made almost buttery vanilla real ice cream that most people here order. Why else come to a place like this? "No, no, no!" he protests, changing his order though it's obvious to everyone around that she has only made him what he asked for. "I want the real thing, something like this guy's got."

"She stops the dispenser, pauses, looks at the Whippy, looks at the guy, them smiles. "Yes sir" and she expressionlessly discards the Whippy into a stainless steel bin, lined with black plastic where it slowly loses its form, collapsing into a shapeless mess befitting its synthetic ingredients of powdered milk, powdered egg, sugar and starch, a ready made mixture, a dollar fifty a pound. The lid closes slowly, finally entombing the discarded cone with an emphatic clunk, some sort of dampened pneumatic mechanism charged by her heavy foot on the pedal that opens it.

She is dressed all in white like a nurse in a button up the front ice cream girl dress with one of those ice cream girl nursey little white hats and a matronly white apron. She's unperturbed, eager to please.

'Vanilla, or one of the flavours?' she asks, smiling and he asks her to wait another moment whilst he checks the display board again. He wants to get this right. "It's the, er, 'Double Cornish' I want, the one with the picture right next to where it says 'Whippy' on the board."

"Gotcha" she smiles again sympathetically, though she's thinking he should have said so in the first place, what kind of schmuck could confuse a Double Cornish with a 'Whippy' and she takes a double cup cone from a different box, its cups remarkably angular like flanges on a section of pipeline, a cantilevered brassiere for the two demiglobes of rich, yellowy home made ice cream that she has to reach deep into the steaming freezer to serve.

She is a large woman, late twenties, early thirties, well proportioned with a pretty child-like face and the milky complexion of a farm girl, a Dairy Queen. The cold air rising from the depths, stirred by her arm movements start to make the nipples on her ample bosom protrude unexpectedly. She blushes briefly. 'A chest freezer' he says and I splutter an involuntarily little laugh. 'They don't make them like that anymore.'

She blushes a little deeper, rolling her shoulders to loosen up her dress and auto massage some circulation back into her tits, big and animated enough to be on the payroll.

I look at the ice cream cone in her hand as she pushes the two glistening domes together, putting the finishing touches onto their glaze with the back of the scoop. She's still rolling her shoulders a little as her rippling bosom recovers its composure, Romulus and Remus settling back into their double D crib for an afternoon nap.

She holds out the finished cone, the ice cream beginning to melt immediately in the hot sun here at the front of the stall, a trickle running down across her dainty pink fingers, small hands for such a big woman. 'Is that it?' she asks as the guy takes the cone, wiping the drips from her hand demurely with the napkin she kept tucked at her side on her apron string.

She doesn't like such suggestive talk, not at work, not from a stranger and certainly not from this sweaty letch. 'I'd like a Tibetan sandwich too please' he then says, keeping up the comedy routine but toning down the smut. She looks at him quizzically, not saying a word but turning her head slightly, cocking an ear.

'That's as in 'Make me one with everything'" and he looks at me and laughs at his own joke. I take a lick at my ice cream, running my tongue between what's left of the two globes as the cream starts to run down onto the napkin I'm holding it in. 'And she sure got a lot' I murmur.

'You OK mister?' she asks, looking at me as she makes out the bill, looking just a little impatient, maybe contemplating calling the boss, or maybe a cop.

'Better now thanks' I answer. 'I love this place.'

Do nothing and wait for something

Things are taking much longer than I would like. The Spanish television news has been showing a short piece about the body on the plane, including a shadowy clip of me from the airport cctv. I have ditched the suit I travelled in by now though and my hat covers most of my face in the cctv pictures. A pair of dark shades and a few days growth of beard has me looking a different man.

This is Torremolinos. If you want to look like a tourist, you do what the tourists do. Sleep in the sun by day, drink in dark corners by night. It is a hot afternoon, and after a couple of beers and a couple of joints, sleeping in the afternoon is not such a bad idea. Sleep comes easy when you have nothing to do but wait for something. I lie in the shade of the apartment living room, Columbo playing on the muted TV, the sounds of the seaside in the distance.

Outside, the dogs and pigs are sniffing at me, then the passing piglets do the same, all of them licking at my face as I lie on the ground. I must taste good to them. Fat and round, they look like walking bacon rashers, bred for the slicer. I remark as such and I laughs, unexpectedly, but it's not really funny at all. Such sad short lives, they ought at least to be allowed cigarettes and wine, maybe an occasional reefer. It could only improve the flavour and bring some pleasure into their damned short existence.

"Damned right" says a passing pig, trotting by in a hurry, late, late for a very important date at the slaughterhouse, fast food. He's reaching his kill by date and carrying a bit too much weight, running it off, waddling less and getting leaner by the minute. "eat me!" he adds, laughing. Actually, no thanks.

Then I'm at a beach BBQ toasting crumpets on a gas heater and the dough is sticking to the grill, turning black and smouldering into ash with a flurry of flame. I'm not going to get fat on this suit. So I make my way into the Thai restaurant across the street.

The place is filling up fast. The first guy I see has some sort of shrimp paste and minced pork filled deep fried cracker wraps, the same Bahian acarajé type filling goes into other dishes too.

It's very freshly made, spicy and good and I wonder if the big pig made it on time. Then there are steaming noodles, lashes of them served from a huge bowl and sizzling chicken in spices, baked and served with salad and rice. The rice is in small, neat portions, but you wouldn't want more, there's so much of everything else. I catch a busy waiter and order. "What he had, no, not that dish he's eating now, what he had before", indicating the first guy who came in, who I'd watched and listened to as he ordered and who was busily engrossed in his meal to the total exclusion of the chaos around him. No wonder he sat in the furthest corner from the door. "And what that guy's eating now, the chicken".

I make a squawking chicken sound and flap my folded arms, like I'm doing the funky chicken and suddenly I've won everyone's attention, there is a momentary lull in the conversation like I've made an awful faux pas. Chicken noises are bad luck, it seems, or maybe it's an anthropomorphic taboo, bad luck to imitate or mock the creatures that go into the food.

"He wants to eat a live chicken? The sick fucker!" Thankfully the waiter understands and laughs and shows me a place at a central table. The table's a big one and other people start to arrive and take the other places. There is a bit of to and fro with the table, a little tug of war dance as we settle into our places, but good-naturedly so, with smiling.

There's a clear plastic cover over the bright tablecloth and it has a soft cushioned feel to it, it's probably more comfortable to sleep on than some of the mattresses in the cheaper local hotels.

I notice the menu with its photographs and mangled translations into three or four European languages and different eastern pictograms, a point and click affair but the dishes look unappetizing in the pictures, I don't want anything that looks like that, green chicken, yellowing lettuce or rice salad with a greasy thumbprint in the middle.

The hubbub grows as the place fills up and the air fills with an intoxicating mix of smells and voices. The new guy's date arrives, smoothing her bright silk dress. I hope she washed her hands. It's his wife, I realise by the way she looks across at me and smiles nervously, altering her expression slightly quizzically as she looks back to her beau, with a questioning, rising squeak that translates universally as "Who's your nutty white friend in the dirty cheap suit?"

The rising squeak falls again and ripples into polite, nervous laughter as she looks and smiles again, and I hear his softly intoned reply like the chime of a cheap digital clock translate as "Sit down, it's the last table, he's on his own and he was sitting here first." I smile back and nod politely, making a little motion as to rise slightly from my seat, until she sits, like she was royalty. But she is, at least as I understand things here.

The husband doesn't like my attention though and he gets up, shouting. He calls the waiter over and he starts pointing at me in a state of indignation and soon everyone is looking my way. He keeps pointing and jabs his finger at my chest. His wife is screaming at him to sit down and the waiters are glaring at me, at her and him too. I don't know what his problem is but soon I feel other hands on me from behind and I get scared.

I wake up with a start, cold and wet. There is a commotion outside, kids are shouting and laughing and dogs are barking. From the sqealing it sounds as though a pig is loose in the street, God knows where from, perhaps escaped from the town market.

I shut the window and then I realise that the phone is ringing.

Call of the wind

The ringing had stopped before I was fully awake and so I drifted off again, trying to catch the remnants of a dream, wanting to know what had been troubling the Chinese guy and to get another look at his beautiful wife. Maybe she wasn't his wife, maybe she wasn't even his girl.

Her features came into focus, smooth, porcelain like skin, eyes like splashes of coaldust in snow.

We are swimming in the warm green water and when I touch her she turns and we embrace, momentarily intimate. There is a sense of imminent danger and I see that we are gently drifting towards a precipice, the soft roar of crashing water far below. There is no strong current as we swim away from the edge although the fall extends as far as I can see in either direction. We are soon in safer shallows and we emerge to the forest where we walk with the others and the children back to the town. There is a tan coloured, smooth skinned cayman walking alongside us. Though potentially dangerous looking, it is benign and its mouth never breaks from a contented smile into anything gaping or threatening. We stop and rest and again I fall asleep in the shade of tree.

I am in a car being driven east across the river. This stretch is tidal and you can see it flow in either direction and at varying heights but this looks different, the water is high on the levee and there are waves, as high as the tidal bore runs but being whipped up by the wind across the river. After we cross we run into deep pools, waves running towards us rising to a couple of feet deep before falling, brown water the colour of the river itself. It's still raining and although we are in high spirits and cheer as we passed through the water like we were on a fairground ride, we all know that this is serious.

Soon afterwards I make my way up the side of the motorway and on nearing the crest of the hill, I take a metal rod and poke around inside a blocked drain. Deep inside the water gurgles and rushes free, creating a powerful sounding roar as it sweeps the accumulated leaves and litter away deep down the pipeline.

I look up to see a group of hikers approaching from the other side of the carriageway so I abandon an idea of returning downhill to the next drain down the hill and instead I stashed the length of steel reinforcing rod over the fence at the side of the path. Looking over the barrier I see that there are a number of sofas at the base of the embankment the other side, maybe a meeting place and hang out for the itinerants, or maybe this was where the group of approaching walkers were heading. I hurriedly hide the iron bar and leave.

We're at a railway station. I was complaining about the fact that the paper had lots of reports about the wrong story so we buy more papers to compare their coverage. He asks me to calm down about it, I'm pretty riled. Outside the storm has subsided a little as we approach the promenade where people are huddled in shelters against the wind. The tide is rising and waves now reach the edge of the walkway right up onto the beach promenade. We round a corner and I see that the sky is an ominous colour in the near distance, maybe approaching. I sit on the steps to read and he sits alongside but then he lays down and falls asleep. I find this a good idea and stretch back to enjoy the drama of the coming storm.

It was strange to see the guy from the gig on the train. His band had played to a hall without an audience and I had suggested they should burn their contract on the stage as a finale, but here he was, alone, overcoat over buttoned and dripping with rain on the train. And then he was gone.

This is the last train and I know that his stuff might be lost if left so I decide to take it home. There is a blue umbrella, a blue video projector, a rolled up screen and another box of cables and bits of assorted kit. I already have a lot of my own stuff to carry, cases and a transparent pink plastic folded case containing brochures, notebooks and other stationery. If it were still raining I would just take the projector the first time around and return to the station on my bike for the rest.

It stops though and are were large pools of water lying around on the road and at its sides. I decided to cross the dual carriageway rather than use the subway to save time and effort as there was hardly any traffic but I had to crawl the last few yards and I'm in some fear of being hit by a fast moving car.

I dive out of the path of a vehicle I can hear moving fast towards me, bearing down and almost on top of me. I wake suddenly, feeling the movement of the train, then I wake again and I am on the bedroom floor in Jorge's apartment.

Someone outside is calling my name.

This chapter closes

There was more news about Edwards on television this evening. Apparently his real identity is that of a Swiss pharmacologist who went missing in Colombia whilst on a UN mission six months ago. Worse news is that four people from the flight have been hospitalised with "severe flu-like symptoms" and that two of them are unconscious and comatose.

My blurred image has been plastered all over the tabloids and TV stations these past two days but as I have hardly been out of the apartment, it hardly seems to matter. I'm spending most of the days sleeping and most of the nights in a fug of brandy, trying to snap out of a persistent headache and fever. I fear a relapse into fever from the recurring malerial infection I contacted last year. I can't remember having a clear head since I left Brazil but even without thinking clearly, my instincts tell me that I should be moving soon, but where to and by what mode is something I need to consider carefully.

Jorge is looking increasingly worried, he suggests I stay in the apartment instead of going down to the bar at night. He says I am looking ill although I feel fine, I'm just tired. I light another Lucky Strike and drink more brandy, topped up with a couple of the chloraquine anti-malarials, and I see my face looking at me from the TV screen. And then I remember.

There had been firefight in the hold and there were casualties everywhere. I could see the escape ladder in the corner, half hidden by a tarpaulin flapping in the wind blowing in from the open hatch and I make a move towards it but in breaking cover I come under fire from two of the other side. I made it to the ladder though and as the tarp billows out I scurry up the short steel ladder up to relative safety.

In the factory there are plenty of hiding paces but little hope of escape. I make my way around the various bays, using tunnels and spaces between machinery for cover as the police and security guards move in.

I'm wearing a security guard's uniform and ID tag and I am able to move freely to the railhead where I hide myself under a flatbed railcar and soon we are speeding along, out of the complex and many miles away.

I am travelling around the coast. Back at the hotel, I step outside to return to my room when a door opens and a familiar figure confronts me, someone from the past, the opening scene. He asks me the names of his children. I remember and as I say their names he shoots me in each ankle, using a small bore automatic pistol fitted with a silencer. I am on the ground and waiting for a deathblow when two youths come rushing around the corner, masked and carrying guns. In the stand off, one of them demands money and my attacker shoots him point blank and as he falls the other turns to flee but he too takes a shot and falls, and I know the next shot will be for me.

Tempestuosity

I wake suddenly as the apartment door bangs against the dresser, the wind raging through the room as all of the windows are open and rain is lashing onto the bed. My feet are cold and the sheet covering my legs and lower half is soaked. I get up and close the windows, finishing with the largest one overlooking the town. There are no lights outside, the power is down and the town only flickers into view with the occasional lightning flash, shaking in the shadows of the thunders' simultaneous roar.

I light the fire around ten, after first unpicking the pile of branches and twigs that comprised it after a week of almost incessant rain. The wood itself seems dry but there is a sodden core at the base that might quench any accumulation of hot ash and prevent the fire from lasting beyond the tinder wood. I fix the base and start it with a crumpled newspaper, arranging the driest twigs and branches according to their size and shape and light the paper. It soon catches alight but there are signs that it may need some encouragement and plenty of tending for it to last the night.

There is an alternative, that of adding an accelerant and I have the very thing to hand, a foil pie dish with the accumulated draining of a dozen fried breakfasts. This fire will at least smell tasty, a mixture of hawthorn, roses, blackthorn and bacon, black pudding, garlic and tomatoes. By eleven all but the thickest branches are gone and a deep bed of hot ash sees to it that the addition of a few still slightly unseasoned logs will see it burn slowly until daybreak. She arrives without a word and we watch the flames in slience over a couple of glasses and a smoke but then she is gone and I sit with the fire and the rest of the bottle until around a quarter to two.

I leave it still flickering and head for my bed after a cursory wash to take some of the smoke and ash from my hands, hair and face. I've forgotten to make up the bed after stripping the sheets earlier but the pillow and duvet feels good even on a bare mattress. As I slip under the veils of slightly intoxicated and heady sleep, a cry comes from outside, that of a bird in some distress. There is sanctuary near here and flocks of terns stream over here every morning and evening.

There are always stragglers, calling for their family after getting lost or waylaid in their day's foraging. This bird sounds desperate, its cry plaintive and pitiful as it circles the neighbourhood, its call growing faint and then immediate as it echoes around the houses. It is gone when I awaken.

I'm on the familiar path, and when I approaching a crossroads I see a locked gate on my left with a prohibitive notice. Beyond the gate is a field, which becomes gradually wooded with tall conifers, the grass between them short and manicured. I bound over the gate and steal up the hill and into the shade beneath the trees, where I feel safer.

I am listening and still looking for this elusive bird when I come upon a clearing in which there is a semi subterranean circular steel pillbox at the crest of the hill. I creep towards it flat on my belly, taking care not to be seen through its narrow windows. Inside there is a figure looking out away from me towards the buildings hidden from the road on the other side of the hill. I realise I can be seen through a mirror inside the pillbox, I steal a look into it and see a dark haired woman looking back at me.

There is the sound of running water and I scurry backwards into the cover of the woods as a female figure emerges, holding her skirt up in her right hand and wiping her loins with a towel in her left. She turns to look at me as she drops her skirts and holds the towel forward towards me and I am transfixed.

I am in the back of Pelé's car as it is driven dangerously fast in some daring escape. I slip a seat belt on and fasten it, lying across the seat, waiting for the inevitable impact.

I am on the ground outside and Pelé is moving along a line of stationary cars with a notebook and talking to the drivers. He is writing in the book as he moves from car to car and I get the impression that he is extracting penalties from them for some trumped up charge, though we are not the police. We are on the other side. There is a girl sitting at the wheel of a Morris Minor and I hand her a blue school cap that is fallen on the road. She smiles and drives away but Pelé is not happy.

There is a knock and as soon as I open the door I am pressed with a page to sign. The pen doesn't work too well but the woman seems satisfied and turns the pages, pointing out several places where I must also sign. There are several men with her, who stand around menacingly.

They leave, I shut and lock the door and I open the box.

Event horizon (eventually horizontal)

Inside is completely lined in black, a seamless fabric soft to touch, like warm velvet or perhaps more organic, maybe moleskin or some strange mould. I peer down into the box; it smells old, musty, and slightly burned like an old and disused cellar or an abandoned, bombed out church. Adjusting to the light, I notice a small black envelope lying at the bottom. It is sealed. I reach inside; I can just touch it by leaning in. I flick it nearer with my fingertips, pick it up and slip it into my trouser pocket.

I look inside again, it looks bigger now that I gave grown accustomed to the light and now that it is empty - if, that is, it is empty. I lean further inside and, seeing something sparkle in the furthest corner, I overreach myself and tumble head first inside. Expecting to hit my face I draw my arms up to protect my head but I tumble right over and hit hard on my backside, coming to rest in a seated position. I look up and see the lid close after me and I am in complete darkness.

I feel for the envelope and find it. Without thinking, I take it from my pocket and see that it has writing in some luminous, silvery ink. Though I cannot see my hands or the envelope clearly I can read my name, written in a graceful flowing hand. I feel around the envelope and slip my thumb under the corner of the flap. It springs opens without tearing.

Inside is a single sheet of stiff cartridge paper, folded. I suppose that it too must be black, as I cannot see it although there is more writing. I cannot read the words, the writing is in a language I find difficult to begin to understand and the lettering is too intensely bright to easily focus upon. Some imagined or projected meaning permeates my consciousness though, filling my head with understanding like a deafening voice in this deathly, cold silence.

This blackness is at the core of my heart, crushing my spirit from within like a vacuum or astronomical black hole. The more and harder I try to concentrate and decipher the message, the faster the words appear to move upon, or just above the surface of the page, describing a spiral, and then another, in its opposite descension, drawing me into their centre as their combined ethereal glow spreads outward to envelop me and fill this space, whilst growing ever brighter at the centre and as I try in vain to avert my riveted gaze from this intense speck of pure energy in the palm of my hand I feel my body dissolving from within, slowly and unstoppably collapsing into nothing, crushed into non-existence by the weight of its own emptiness.

"You'll get sick sleeping in the sun," says a familiar sounding voice. I look up from my reclining chair on the balcony to see a figure silhouetted against the sky, calm now after the storm, and melting seamlessly into the blue of the rippling sea, the last cloud remnants now cleared by the rising sun, bathing Jorge in an aura intensified by the reflected glare from the vast mirror that stretched below.

"Here" he says, "there's a letter for you." I take it and thank him, scanning the envelope for a postmark or any indication of its origin, but there is none. "Boa sorte" calls Jorge from inside the apartment. That was the last time I saw him alive.

Most of what I need but nothing I really want

I have everything I need now, the papers, the clothes, some extra cash and the map, where X marks the spot, the meeting place. Things move quickly once the wheels are in motion and by this time tomorrow I should be on my way home, well away from here.

I change into the pale blue polo shirt and dirty green overalls that I've been sent and after trying unsuccessfully to tie the bootlaces, rotten and mis-threaded, I leave them undone and loose fitting. I would not be walking far in any case, just down the calle to the pick-up when it arrived for the six hour drive to Faro, an inconspicuous part of a three man tree gang, a specialised trade working the more ostentatious villas of the new European criminal bourgeoisie across Andalucia, Huelva and the Algarve with an assortment of specialised tools, chain saws, machetes, rakes and forks, quite an armoury if it so needed to serve.

The vehicle arrives, a familiar looking pick-up similar to the caminhonettes much favoured by the fazendeiros and garimpeiros back home. All it lacked was the sweet smelling exhaust from the sugar-derived alcool , redolent of samba, lambada and caipirinha. The foul, black diesel fumes befit this place just as well though and I breathe deeper and more freely when the Costa del Sol is far behind. The driver is Dutch, a big guy at least 200 pounds and judging by his posture in the driving seat maybe six foot three or more, blonde and bristling with facial hair and metalwork. An elaborate neo-gothic design disappeared down the back of his shirt, tattooed from somewhere behind his right ear, across his scalp and ending God knows where. It's a good half hour before anyone speaks at any length, when the girl turns to me to offer a cigarette. I take one, "Fortuna" I say, taking the pack for a closer look. "Three weeks in Spain and the first Spanish cigarette I get is on the way out." She flicks me a light from the disposable lighter tucked in her palm.

I'd been smoking the Lucky Strikes I'd brought with me until now, the last cartons burned along with any other trace of my short stay at the Calle Ronda apartment. The sharp, dark rasp of the Spanish blended tobacco makes me cough a little at the first draw, this in turn makes the girl laugh and break into a wide smile that makes me start. She has the typical Iberian dark complexion but when her blue eyes widen their unexpected radiance and depth of colour strikes like lightning. She is much more attractive than I had at first realised. Reading this thought, she flashes me another glance and the smile flickers off then back on, her chest fills with a quickening and she turns with a little shrug or shiver to face back forward, still smiling to herself.

Her hair is sleek, black and shining, tied in a knot behind and revealing a slender deep brown nape, her right ear studded with a small gold pin that glints in the sun when she turns. I look at her differently now, caught in a momentary response to an unasked question. I sense her waiting for me to speak, but it is unwise to ask the wrong questions under these circumstances. I know nothing of these people and I don't know what they know of me. The nature of their work means they are connected, and if their connections are connected to mine, either to or through Murphy, then that is all I need to know. We are all working for the man.

The strong taste of the Spanish tobacco makes me feel a little nauseous; I open the window and discard the cigarette and slump back into my seat, into the darkness of the rear of the cab and I close my eyes. The window has not fully closed and a draught plays around my face pleasantly as the reverberation from the gap blows a low note, a blue note that takes me back to Salvador and my cousin Marcio's jazz collection. Music starts from the radio or cd player, a lilting chorus, a rhythmic samba refrain that elevates my spirit and I feel the fresh air of the countryside permeate my being for the first time since I arrived in this luck forsaken land. I breathe in deeply. "Ah, a musica de axé" I murmur, the rhythm unwinding the tension from between my shoulders as I roll my head all the way back over the restraint, creaking from side to side slowly and stretching the tense muscles in my neck. For all the sleep I'd had this past few days I felt in need of a long rest, an urgent need for some deep, prolonged relaxation.

"Tens som?" she asks softly, "podes de dormir ali", pointing out the bunk behind my seat but I am already gone.

Hiraeth, the curse of the unbeloved

I remember how it was when things ran much more smoothly, before the flight to Brazil. Hiraeth.

The motorway crept closer all the time. With every rumble of the slow thunder of the machinery and the incessant blasting away at the rock, the mountain slowly succumbed to the will of concrete, steel and asphalt. Soon it would break through the bluff and the excavators and levellers would move in, taking the Trans European Expressway through the orchard, slicing through the apples and damsons like a knife through a piecrust and away across the valley to the ferry port and the sea. There was much resistance to this last wave of continental invasion but to me it meant work, and work meant money.

The construction consumed thousands, millions of tonnes of concrete and steel and that was the stuff of my business, monitoring the costs of construction supplies, resolving local issues and advising the project director of any potential risks and pitfalls before they arose. Machinery standing idle cost the project dearly and there were hefty penalties for running over agreed deadlines. But this was my best job ever, based right on my doorstep instead of halfway around the world and after learning the skills, dark arts and tricks of my trade a long way from here I had no skeletons in my closet; no hidden secrets or weaknesses the project's opponents could spring in compromise.

All the same, there was an odd pluralism about this job, not least in the tension it was creating between Linda and me over the damage being wreaked daily at her mother's cottage on the mountain. It was a place that had been in her family for generations, once lost but now at the epicentre of her life in this place, its significance extending far beyond a shabby pile of lime and granite on a bleak and desolate hillside and come to represent her very meaning in this place, at this time.

Out behind the old house, a crack in the wall widened further each day. There was water now where there had been none before, a pond had appeared in the dry meadow and waterfowl gathered there, a pair of coots and several geese already vied for the new real estate and other visitors circled curiously overhead. At night time, when the machines were still, the sound of winds blowing through long abandoned workings deep beneath made ghostly sounds, a low moan and deep resonance that moved the village from its core and stirred atavistic memories, waking the dead language of the land and its forgotten truths and lies.

Today the crack has deepened considerably and run right into the foundations. The original cottage was at least two hundred years old; this had been a farmstead for as long as there had been people living on the mountain, probably since the time of its earliest inhabitants. I traced the rupture to its conclusion, or origin, from a hairline that ran from the front door, around the walls and into the side of the mountain itself, until now the shelter and guardian of this dwelling, and where the crack ran deeper and wider. Perhaps now, with this unsought incision cutting deep into the landscape's loins, the mountain would end this symbiosis, and sever the link between the land and the people that this hovel had come to represent for generations past.

Linda's great grandmother, Dorothy, had been its last full time occupant, left here alone, her husband slain in some far away land in some now meaningless conflict with only a single letter from him, and one from the king to remember his name. Less than a year of marriage, twins he never saw, a life of promise that became a penance and a lifetime of suspicion, fear and ridicule. A life alone, dedicated to a few precious memories, preserved in a bubble that might just prick and disappear with any new experience or enjoyment. And so she chose solitude, and the security of her memories and dreams. Hers an imaginary life, and one in which any contact with the living became an invasion, a threat to the reality in her own mind, and by people who called her mad, a witch and worse.

"What have you done to your husband? Where's your kids?" someone once called out at her, someone no more than a child. The words cut her deep as any knife, or bayonet. Within a few weeks of the king's letter, the church arranged for the girls' informal adoption by a childless couple on a nearby smallholding. It was clear she couldn't cope, their cries were rending the night, to the point of upsetting the neighbouring farm's livestock. The Miltons were kindly, middle aged people and between them they and the girls cared for the ever older lady as best they could, taking and leaving food and clothing for her, visiting the cottage when she was out on the mountain, cleaning and tidying only to be scolded and driven out should she return unexpectedly early.

But no-one ever entered her bedroom, a tiny section of the cottage where she kept all of Edward's belongings, his boots, tools and lamp, polished and ready for his return and resumption of his work at the lead mine, long since closed and capped, its last seams worked until the water made it too inaccessible and dangerous in the early 1920s. This was where they found her, waiting in vain at the pithead, cold and withered at 34, a pitiful end to a broken existence. The cottage remained empty for sixty years after that, until Linda read about it in the paper. The boots were long gone too, but the lamp still hangs in the Miner's Arms in the old village, engraved with Eddie's name, and his rusted pick-head now held the door to the tiny coal cellar firmly locked.

When Linda rediscovered and reclaimed this place, long abandoned and the land grazed by sheep that care not who calls himself owner or landlord, the farmers were shocked that after decades of free grazing it had taken an application by one of them to assume ownership of the field and then submit a planning application to develop the land for new houses to alert a County Council official to seek out the original inhabitant's next of kin.

The Milton's old place was already a small housing estate and the new road meant people wanting to live in this rural idyll and commute daily to the urban sprawl of Manchester could be attracted, doubling the local population overnight and overturning the social hierarchy with an influx of vulgar new money. There was plenty of incentive to avert such development, especially when the prospect of a retirement to the country shivered in the shadow of the spectre of youth and urban overspill.

It might have been easier for that unknown official to simply rubber stamp the application, but a small article in the local weekly newspaper, almost an appeal, led Linda to trace though the church records and discover that her grandmother, Emily, was the Milton's surviving twin. Sadly, her sister had succumbed to tuberculosis in her teens during a particularly cold damp winter but Emily had thrived. She married locally and leased the land to the Milton's for a peppercorn rent for their sheep to graze. Emily moved to set up home with her husband, an hotelier, in a nearby town, where my mother in law was born and settled before chance bought us full circle with my job at the concrete plant. The cottage fell into disrepair as the sheep used it to shelter. We hardly saw her mother now, she lived alone in another kind of shelter, her sheltered accommodation in the town and she shunned visitors much in the manner her grandmother had done so long ago.

But it was this original document, Emily's letter to the Milton's that proved our entitlement to the property. Since then we had restored much of the old place to how we thought it might have been lived in and though we often heard kind words for our efforts, it was Emily that really deserved the thanks.

That never bothered the sheep though; they still came and went much as they pleased, as their forebears had probably done even before the first shelter had been built here, not much more than as an entrance to a cave. The rear wall of the cottage was still the rock face though there was no sign of any cave or entrance any deeper into the rock. That is until now, as the creeping fissure revealed a wider opening within, and beyond. I took the penlight from my key ring and shone it into the crack, wide enough to push the little torch right inside. There was a space here, running downwards and from deep within, the unmistakeable sound or running water. I turn the torch to point downward but its beam disappears into the blackness, running down and back towards the house.

Step inside love

Stepping inside for the first time, I am immediately aware of the heat. It is unexpected, the rock is cold and damp to the touch on the outside but once I have squeezed through the crack, less than a foot at its widest point but wide enough to get my head through and with a twist of my hips I am inside, where it bellows out into a chamber a metre or so across and several metres deep, tapering to a narrow slit that could be much deeper. There must have been a slide that has opened this out, for only a couple of feet before me the ground falls away suddenly and dangerously, almost vertical but only for about thirty feet before it levels out and disappears into a further cavern beneath and behind me. The walls have a greenish tinge that catches my flashlight and sparkles like stars in a winter night. It looks crystalline and rough but it is perfectly smooth to the touch, enamelled, but soft, and organic, almost living. As the penlight beam passes over the surface, it leaves a trail, glowing green but fading through red to black.

From deep below there comes the sound of water, trickling, running fast and light. There is a rising air current, musty, tinged with the smell of a dying charcoal fire and slightly sulphurous. The wind outside and below calls with a low drone, echoing into the space above and beyond the darkness. I look up; the ceiling is low but rises away to the wall before me, as a chimney might, tapering into the rock and the fissure.

Gradually, my heart rate slows from its near palpitation on my passage into the mountain to a slow and steady rhythm. I feel close to a meditative state, relaxed and well at ease. This stone has a calming effect on me deep within, I am in my element. The sound of water has increased; there is a gradual rushing and an occasional gurgling, like some natural cistern at work. A freezing droplet explodes against my ear and I awake with a jerk, bolt upright in my seat.

It is lashing rain outside, all but obscuring the windscreen as the wipers toil against the downpour, smearing the dust and filth evenly in their wake. The girl leans forwards, peering through the film of grease and splattered insects at the road ahead as a truck thunders by in the opposite direction only a couple of feet away. It is darker now, late afternoon and the weather has closed in unexpectedly, or else we have caught up with the same storm that hit the coast last night.

"Where's the Dutchman?" I ask. "Gone" she says, "He got his money now" and she makes a take-off gesture with her right hand, indicating that he had better things to do than drive around the interior in this jalopy when his pockets were filled with gold. She must have paid him off after getting me out of Torremolinos, where a woman alone might have attracted unwanted attention.

I shut the rear window, my shirt now partly soaked by the sudden downpour. "You sleep well," she says. I'm not sure if she's asking me or telling me, my head feels thick and heavy and I realise that my shirt is soaked not by the rain but from behind, with sweat. I am feverish and I remember Edwards' medication, which was still in my rucksack along with my papers and a few effects. I reach across the rear seat and into the bag; I feel around inside and find the bottle of chloroquine with my fingers. I open the bottle blindly, without taking it from the bag and I pop two of the pills, swigging from an opened can of Coke sitting in the holder between the front seats. The malaria I contracted last year still flares up once in a while, when my resistance is low, like now. Not enough proper sleep, too much drink and dope. I am going to have to clean up my act to get over this, I don't want a full blown relapse, not at this time, not ever.

"You don't look too good" she says, eyeing me in the mirror. "I'll be OK" I say, "I just need a proper night's sleep, in my own bed." She spins the wheel sharply, taking us off the road onto a track to the right, up a hill and then down again, to the left now and we pull up outside a small villa, overlooking a stretch of water. We are in the mountains, well inland, probably somewhere in Extremadura, beyond Zafra, near Zehinos, the last road sign I remembered. "This your place?" I ask, not really believing it to be but as an alternative to something more forthright. "I have the keys," she answers.

"We rest here, eat, make crossing tonight, early morning." She turns to me and smiles suggestively "Then we go my place, is near Pedrogão, make calls." She pauses, watching me for a reaction, maybe to see whether or not these place names register before she turns to open the door. "Then we wait until Murphy says is OK to go home" This sounds good, doubly so now that I know she is on the same firm as me. With some relief I grab my bag and we make a dash through the rain, coming down now in drops the size of cherry stones. She unlocks the heavy deadlock and we are in, opening windows and letting the wind blow through, clearing the dust and stuffiness that has accumulated since the place was last used, quite some time ago from appearances. Looking around, I find the main bedroom, overlooking the lake.

She is standing at the door watching me, holding a pile of sheets and towels as I gaze out over the water, watching the patterns as the wind and rain sweeps and swathes across its peppered surface. Turning as she speaks, I hear her saying "I think you need to sleep now" though the words sound closer, softer and I watch her lips move out of synch with the sound. She smiles, knowing that I know that she is right.

I cannot clear this pounding from my head and I am shivering now, standing in my wet clothes, pools of water at my feet. She has let her hair down, its natural curls reformed, rekindled by the rain like the petals of a desert rose. She's out of her overalls and wearing a voluminous black skirt, patterned and embroidered in reds, oranges and gold, and a white blouse, loose and gathered at the neck and waist, her skin glistening golden brown as she throws a sheet onto the mattress and then another and then a thin duvet on the top, her swift and certain movements leaving trails of colour and perfume in the air. I am intoxicated by her very being.

I take a towel and dry my hair, and then she is pulling my shirt off, and running her hands around my back as she circles me with another dry white towel. "You are very beautiful" I say, stroking her neck lightly and touching the sparkling diamond in her ear, flashing bright and pure, too tired and weak to think of anything more urbane or flattering to say. "Muit obrigada" she smiles in return, "in that case you can call me Linda," and she kisses me lightly, brushing my lips with hers and lightly pressing her breasts against my chest as she pushes me onto the bed. "You rest, I make food" and she disappears in a flurry of her skirts, out of the room, and I collapse into a snowdrift of linen.

Sleepwalk

I wake to the forlorn sound of a bell ringing some way below. I walk to the open window and gaze out over the water. There is some splashing and I hear a voice cry out. There is nothing I can do and I turn away.

She is sleeping, facing away from the window. She stirs, reaching out to the space I have left and turns. I go back there and I cradle her in my arms, nuzzling against her neck and kiss behind her ear. She wakes and turns to face me. We sleep entwined, like it was ever meant to be this way.

I tell her that she is beautiful, the most beautiful woman I have ever known. Her hair hangs dark and long, her eyes a deep, dark blue bordering on the edge of impenetrable darkness. Her wide red lips part slightly as if she might reply disarmingly but no words come out, only the soft exhalation of longing.

In this dreamplace she and I are out shopping for food. We have some things in a trolley, moving along the road of a trading estate between stores when we passed a stack of fruit left standing in the middle of a car park and we seized upon them and put them in the trolley. Then a huge bramley apple the size of a pumpkin appears and that goes in too, then more articles of fruit and vegetables.

We enter a greengrocery store, mostly pained in whitewash but dilapidated and work worn. There are others in there and it looks as though most of the day's trading might have been done, what is on sale has the look of the last of the lot. The vegetables and fruit are tired and then the greengrocer emerges and asks would we like a bag of grapefruits, free. We smile and accept, they are chopped and have some maraschino cherries mixed in, as if perhaps they have been prepared for grapefruit cocktails but not served. It is a large polythene bagful, sealed at the top with an adhesive band.

We select some exotic mushrooms; there are all sorts of many shapes and colours. I ask which of them would be the most expensive and he says "The blue spongy ones", so I choose the best looking but smallest of them. I notice a big blue mushroom move and as I watch it writhes in a garden of blue granules. I taste a piece and it is foul. I look beyond the mushrooms around the shelves and see that there are mouse droppings around the place, but no mice.

Some red mushrooms, dried out and wrinkly, are in another drawer and then some brown and creamy ceps and morels. I choose some of each and make up a collection in a white paper bag. There are other people choosing too, one of whom I come into brief contact with as we each reach for the same mushroom. I cry out as one catches my finger with a fingernail and draws blood. I look again I see that that the nails are chewed short and wet with saliva. I realise that some of the ceps are no longer there. It's not a problem though as I know we had enough. I move to pay but there is no charge.

Reflections in a crippled surface

It has rained all night and has continued all this morning, the only thing we have done is to cover the truck with a tarpaulin, just as well perhaps as a helicopter flew overhead this morning, maybe the police, maybe military. We are still waiting for a call to her cellphone before we can safely leave. It may not yet be time to move and there is activity down on the lake, a rubber dinghy and a diver. Something is not quite right, and all we can do is wait this out, but I have been in far worse places than resting up, lying in wait, and with her. We use the time well.

But then I was already there, at this large county estate, with horses, a spa with a pool outside and another within. I had been invited as a current cause celebre. I knew that there was a snag, some ulterior motive for my being there. These were the kind of people who found those like me, ordinary people with an element of the extraordinary something to covet and imitate or subsume. Any amity or intimacy would be calculated to distil to an essence, a flavour of what it was to have this new thing. Something to probe and analyse before deduction, reduction and ultimate extraction and rejection.

I walk on the lawns, absorbing the sun's early morning rays. Warm against the crisp air of Maytime, its warmth coaxes the scent from the flowering hedgerows and vines, calling to arms the legion of small flying insects that dance there above. Courting, feeding and breeding, celebrating their vibrant season in a symphony of movement on air. I watch as other larger bugs, bees and wasps move between them in their own busy way. There were never collisions in their chaotic florianopolis. Time moves far slower for them. To the mayfly the honeybee moves like a lumbering giant, its wingbeats slow and clumsy, easy to avoid, effortless.

Her voice comes as a surprise, yet her timing is good, attuned to the rhythm of the chorus of birdcalls in the nearby woodland. "Tea" she announces, with an open handed gesture like a conjourer's glamourous assistant. I turn towards the voice to see an woman standing behind me almost at my right shoulder. She wears embroidered black satin slippers and a black tunic, similarly embroidered with an elegant floral motif, probably Japanese, and as indeed she might be herself.

She stands around five feet four, but her posture makes her look taller. Her silver grey hair is tied elegantly into a knot with a chopstick arrangement holding it in place high at the back of her head. There is a scalloped silver tray on one of the white painted cast iron picnic tables nearby with a classic white scalloped china tea set, two cups upturned on saucers and all this set upon a white lace doily. I hadn't heard her arrive nor set down the tray and I can't be certain that it wasn't done by some sort of magic, some invisible hand.

But there is no sign of anyone else around and I smile in appreciation of the hospitality. "I was lucky" I said "There was a bus waiting at the station when my train arrived, it was a few minutes early." It never occurred to me then that this might have been pre-arranged and I had walked up to the house from directly outside the gates, where a friendly driver had paused between stops to ease my transit. There was no number nor destination on the bus, something I thought commonplace in these times of deregulation, when routes as rural and outlying as this are covered by local private hire companies.

She turns one cup over and pours, offering me the beverage without any addition, allowing me to savour the aromatic brew in all its scented glory. It was a strongy breakfast tea and with a slightly fruity, smoky flavour in its first sip. I really preferred Ty Phoo or PG Tips 'first thing', and with a lashing of milk and sugar but it might have seemed unappreciative to ask. I half expect her to offer me honey, and straight from the bee. "Nice" I say, sipping again before setting the cup and saucer back in its place, briefly restoring some symmetry to the setting. She smiles and nods but makes no movement towards pouring a cup for herself. "I'll leave you to look around, do come in when you're ready" she says, turning to make her way back up the gentle incline to the house. "You must be hungry, I'll get something on."

There is little out of place here. The gardens are carefully manicured; a small unremarkable fountain sits discreetly in a corner with a single, simple bench nearby. The gentle laughter of the water plays a calming counterpoint to the frantic chorus of a small chattering of sparrows and finches in the hawthorn as they divide and share their territory. The daffodils have given way to bluebells and someone, probably a full time gardener, has carefully tied each of the withering stems into a little knot as one might an onion, setting it right for a gradual withdrawal of effort into the bulb and a reawakening after every winter. The few weeks in flower come only after months of hard work inside the drab and dying foliage, drawing down the sunlight into the depths of its layered heart, and after several months' recovery in sleep.

I turn to survey the rectangular Georgian building, its haughty windows gazing eastwards in columns of three, diminishing from the tall and stately portraiture of those on ground floor, some of which open onto the garden, to the smaller, square sash frames on the first floor and to the 'landscape' proportioned windows of the uppermost floor. There appears to be room for another level at the top of the flat roofed house and although there were no windows in the façade there was probably a skylight.

A Virginia creeper extends from the southern corner three quarters of the way across the house on this side, its red and ochre foliage only now beginning to revert to green, its verdance renewed as all things by the drawing near of Summer. A flash of colour draws my eye to the right. It is another woman, long dark hair flashing in a gentle gust of wind that has stuck up from around the northern end of the house, and from where she is walling towards me.

She stops about six feet in front of me and smiles. "Hello. I'm Alison, we spoke on the phone." I smile in return. We had indeed spoken on the phone, and several times before she had offered me her name. For all of her aloofness in our near daily conversations since last December, her immediate warmth and welcome is as if from a longlost dear friend or lover. Her eyes fix on mine in a soft embrace of knowingness, a 'How does he do that?' look, the like of which is usually reserved for lovers whose affections have moved onto a higher plane of understanding.

I feel uneasy. For some reason I had imagined that Alison was someone who simply answered the phone and kept a diary for some faceless and more powerful (though benign) figure. She would never be drawn into making any immediate decision or agreement, she would always call back after confirming any details. Even my visit here today has taken a sequence of anything up to half a dozen calls back and forth. She holds out a hand in formal greeting and nods gently, taking a step towards me.

I squeeze her hand in similarly gentle greeting and gesture towards the tea tray, inviting her as the older woman had me, "Tea?" I offer, though I then realise why there were two cups in the first place. She walks ahead, taking the initiative and pouring herself a cup. "Looks like you are going to be Mum then" I said, holding my now cool cup forward for a top up.

She doesn't laugh. She leans forward and picks up a small, shiny silver bell, and hearing its ring changes everything.