Rose tapped the indicator and turned right on the motorway towards the sea. ‘You seem to have made some new friends here in Almería?’
I ignored her.
‘There is something I should tell you about your father. Compared to my own father, he is a very gentle man.’
I could do with whatever pill she takes for dizziness but it has been deleted from the menu of her medication. My father is obviously so gentle he has not had the strength to contact me for eleven years.
Perhaps the case histories with Julieta Gómez were offering Rose another view of her former husband. She had some views of her own about Nurse Sunshine. As she sped down the motorway, she told me it was clear to her that Julieta was a drunk. Her breath often smelt of alcohol during their physiotherapy sessions. Frankly, it was a matter of ethical concern.
She was driving too fast. I was holding my breath and biting my cracked lips at the same time. ‘Julieta is astute. Very clever. She is never judgemental of me, Sofia, and so I am reluctant to judge her. But it is perplexing and I will have to consider my options.’
Rose had now archived three case histories with Julieta Gómez. She had become more reflective, secretive, maybe even kinder, although she still hated the white cat, Jodo, whom she had come reluctantly to regard as a member of staff at the clinic. She wouldn’t be surprised if Jodo started to administer her vitamin injections. Gómez had told her that she should draw a picture of the cat on the soles of her feet. That way she could stamp on Jodo all day long.
I thought his comment was a clever way of getting her to walk.
We parked in the driveway of an empty house on the edge of the motorway. A pile of abandoned, torn clothes was strewn across the porch. As I lifted the wheelchair out of the boot I could see the sprawl of the market across the road. An aeroplane flew low in the sky, preparing to land at the nearby airport. It is such hard work carrying my mother. In she goes. I am pushing her across the hot tarmac towards a stall that has a few tables and chairs laid out in the shade. Rose demanded I queue up for a portion of churros, which she would enjoy with a small glass of anise liqueur. She even finished her request with ‘Thank you, Fia.’
We are in a lunar landscape. That’s what all the guides say about Almería. Wind-beaten and sun-baked. The riverbeds are cracked and dry. A blue petrol haze floats above the tattered stalls selling handbags and purple grapes and onions. I wheel Rose to some shade under the plastic awning held up by rusty poles. Already she is talking to an elderly man who is sitting with a bandage around his right knee. They seem to be having a conversation about walking sticks.
The churros come in two shapes, long sausages to dip into chocolate and then a shorter kind. I buy us the longer ones and carry Rose her anise liqueur in a paper cup.
The old man is waving his walking stick in the air and showing my mother the rubber tip on the end of it. I sit down next to them and pretend to be fascinated by the rubber tip.
I am in a reckless mood after my bold night of lovemaking under the real night stars. I want to sit here with a lover, close, closer, touching. Instead I am here with my mother, who is a sort of career invalid. I am young and might even be the subject of erotic dreams newly minted by Juan, who had said, ‘The dream is over,’ when we first met. And I might be beloved to Ingrid, who is tormenting me.
Rose taps my hand. ‘Fia, I would like to buy a watch.’
I shoved a churro in my mouth. It was crisp and oily and sprinkled with sugar. No wonder my body was shape-shifting towards the east and west while I lived in Spain.
Rose’s breath was hot from the anise. She seemed to be able to swallow fiery licorice liqueur more easily than she could swallow water. ‘By the way, if you can work those complicated coffee machines, believe me, you can drive a car. It’s really very easy to drive.’ When she tipped her head back and slurped the anise in one go, I thought she was going to gargle with it.
At that moment, my real mother and my ghostly mother — the woman who is glorious, victorious, well and vital — morphed together. That was another good subject for an original field study — the way imagination and reality tumble together and mess things up — but I was too distracted by the woman wearing one of the more flamboyant straw hats displayed on her stall to think about it. The price label was still attached to the hat with a string, so it kept swinging across her eyes. It was as if she had put something in the way of being looked at. Every now and again she jerked her head to make the label swing chaotically across her face.
I stood up and took my place behind the wheelchair, lifted up the brake, which was difficult because my espadrilles were flopping off my feet, and began to push my mother down the dust road, dodging the potholes and dog shit, past the handbags and purses, the sweating cheeses and gnarled salamis, the jamón ibérico from Salamanca, the strings of chorizo, plastic tablecloths and mobile-phone covers, the chickens turning on a stainless-steel spit, the cherries, bruised apples, oranges and peppers, the couscous and turmeric heaped in baskets, the jars of harissa and preserved lemons, the torches, spanners, hammers, while Rose swatted the flies landing on her feet with a rolled-up copy of the London Review of Books.
I paused on the dust road.
My mother can feel a fly landing on her feet.
A fly. She can feel a fly.
She is not numb. She is acutely sensitive.
As I resumed pushing her along, I could still hear the swish of her literary fly-swat as I gazed out at the unhomely grey-concrete apartment blocks that were now abandoned in the recession.
‘Stop Stop Stop.’
Rose was pointing at a stall of cheap watches. A tall African man in an elegant white robe waved to her with his left hand. Draped across his right arm which he had curved into the shape of a C was an array of headphones: blue, red and white headphones. Rose shouted to me to move her chair closer and immediately grabbed a bright gold metal watch with a thick wristband, its face studded with a circle of fake diamonds.
‘I have always wanted a gangster watch. This is the bling to see me out.’
‘To see you out of what?’
‘I am slowly being murdered at the Gómez Clinic, Sofia. My medication is dwindling and the staff at the clinic have no diagnostic skills whatsoever. They tell me everything is in order. Do I look like I am thriving?’ She slammed her feet on the wheelchair. ‘So far, what with the foot ulcers, it looks like diabetes. It’s the only thing that quack and his cat are taking seriously.’
The African man gently freed the watch from my mother’s fingers and started to fiddle with the winder. He held the diamond-studded face against his ear and shook it. Obviously, he didn’t like what he heard. He dipped his hand into the pocket of his white robe and took out a small screwdriver. By the time he was taking it apart I knew Rose was going to have to buy it.
I stepped in front of her. ‘How much is that watch?’ I had placed my hands on my hips as if I was indignant, which I was not. That was odd. I was imitating indignation, but my heart wasn’t in it. Where did I learn to express indignation I did not feel, my voice veering up the scales to land on a note which could be described as accusing? Where did I learn to adopt an attitude that I do not believe in? And what about the word Beloved? Perhaps Ingrid was imitating something she did not feel when she embroidered that word in blue thread and gave it to me as if it were of no importance.
He told me the watch was only fifty euro.
I started to laugh, but sarcasm is not the same as laughing and he knew it.
Now he was delicately holding a tiny round disc of steel between his long fingers. Rose explained to me that it was a battery, as if this were an entirely new invention.