The train traversed a plain of red-earthed field clouded with almond and carob trees. After half an hour a rocky terrain of olives lifted them into long tunnels, in which everyone stopped talking to wait for the sun to re-flood the wooden-benched carriages. The earthquake rifting across Myra’s life left her incapable of focusing herself on the matter within and the world in front of her eyes. Under the sudden warmth her senses rebelled, became sharp. The last months of upheaval couldn’t be put down to nothing. Things happened for a purpose. Frank’s eyes were fixed more often out of the window than on her, which she didn’t mind, but which told her there was no certainty of her continuing to live with him. She had felt at peace with George, but some turbulence in Frank was buried too deep to put her at ease. Maybe to have his baby was the best and most logical solution, enough proof of love for him ever to want. Romance, as Frank had said, is finished. And maybe he was right. Life is difficult enough without that agony piled on top as well. Love is cosmic, real love coming when you spurn the need for it. Love then released goes out to everyone else. But not on its own. One must see that it did.
She shivered. Fresh air had the scent of lemons and oranges, and a subtle odour of snow from the high face of a far-off mountain. It was the sort of air that made Frank feel hungry and ready for love, both at the same time. Myra no longer wondered why her friend had stayed so long out of England. The sea lay in a corner of the horizon, pale blue and calm, slightly darker than the descending light-grey of the mountainsides.
Frank sat in shirt sleeves to feel the new air closer to him. The train swayed downhill with such speed that at one point Myra felt afraid it would shoot over some stony bank and kill them all. Then she smiled at the fact that fear and life were reappearing. ‘Are you glad we came?’ he asked, thinking the landscape impressed her. The train slowed along the contour line, turned into the bowl of the valley through lush plants, trees and high cane, over the narrow bridge of a stream.
‘I am,’ she answered with a smile.
Joanna was on the platform, a tall woman wearing fashionable expatriate clothes. Myra had told him that she and her husband lived abroad because they were poor, and Frank now saw that there must be more than one sort of poverty. Her welcome was genuine, in that few people passed by or called on them in the winter months. Long hair swung down her back, and she had a tanned, almost swarthy face, a prominent nose, wide lips and almond eyes. Frank was introduced. She kissed Myra: ‘I was sorry to hear it all,’ she said. ‘Not that I ever liked George. But I know you’ll soon forget’ — a look at her stomach and another smile.
Frank carried the cases down the steps and into the little plaza, where a taxi was waiting. ‘Larry thought he’d put in an hour’s work, so he couldn’t run me down in the car.’ They went two miles along the valley, and away from the sea, through farms, gardens and orange groves. Joanna’s husband was an American writer, a short thin auburn man with grey darting eyes, and features as sharp as his wife’s were generous. From six every morning till one he shut himself in a whitewashed room at the back of the house, bars at the window because a donkey had stabled there before they bought the property.
Frank and Myra had a room under gnarled wooden beams. The bed was mahogany and Spanish, a matrimonial bed hugely placed on the uneven floor. There was a wardrobe, a chair, chest of drawers and a straw mat of island make. Window and wooden shutters opened down the valley, over the smoky autumnal air of citrus trees, a trundling stream with deep banks winding between gardens and tile-roofed houses. Across the valley were the precipitous olive green slopes of the mountain range down which their train had roamed.
Myra sat on the bed: ‘We made it.’
‘Didn’t you think we would?’ He was unpacking the case.
‘I was too absorbed in travelling. I’m relieved we’re here, though. Maybe I can find myself again.’
‘You mean it’s an anti-climax? I never want to be myself again. I’m hoping that’s impossible.’
‘Perhaps you came out of England to avoid it?’
‘This place is exactly how I imagined it,’ he said, ‘with such weather. It’s not warm, but it’s sunny. This room is fine. This bed, the window, the beams, the crooked floor. There’s something heavy and good about it, a sort of dignity, untouched by machines or traffic. It’ll be O.K. for a while, but only for a rest. It’s not real life — for me.’
She took the dark ribbon from her hair, ran it through her fingers. If she and George had had similar tastes, she and Frank certainly didn’t meet in their opinions. It took time to discover such things, but how much less than it had about George! Did that mean she was wiser now, or was Frank a far simpler man? Joanna called out that coffee was ready, and they walked down without speaking.
They sat on the terrace to a breakfast of fresh rolls and cuts from a solid block of jam that Joanna had stopped the taxi to buy, coming back from town. Larry was reticent in his enquiries about their journey. Frank asked how long they’d lived there. ‘Eight years,’ Larry said, ‘and it’s not a day too long, for me. I never speak for Joanna, but I know she feels the same.’ He was puzzled when Frank didn’t readily agree that exile and solitude were wonderful. But Frank felt an uncertainty about everything while travelling, in which opinions could only be reactions — yet true enough when they managed to escape him.
Joanna smiled, touched her husband’s arm. ‘It’s wonderful living here. I couldn’t go back to London or America, ever. I’m uneasy when I move off the island, as if I might die before I see it again.’ She laughed, to prove her sentiments deep and genuine. Larry thought this unnecessary, too revealing perhaps, and grimaced — but so that she couldn’t see it. Frank guessed they must have a rather submerged sort of relationship, a passionate couple fighting each other with torpedoes and submarines, deepsea mines and harbour netting, rather than with tanks and dive-bombers, clubs and boiling oil. They’ll take a lifetime to kill each other, and call it love — which was one way of doing it. Such people were cheerful in front of others, and it was a happy breakfast out in the Majorcan sun, with hot rolls and coffee to push the dawn brandy into second place.
‘The main reason for my being on this island,’ Larry said, ‘isn’t only that I feel I’ve still got possession of my soul, but that it helps it to stay healthy as well. I can watch the seasons come and go. I can smell and see the real earth. I can see things growing on the trees. It’s quiet enough for me to think. This is life to me.’
Myra was inside talking with Joanna, both recouping the gall and breadcrumbs of two married lives. ‘I don’t need to pamper my soul,’ Frank said. ‘If it doesn’t like the life I lead it can lump it. This place would be death to me.’
‘You’re a different sort of person,’ Larry said. ‘I need a god to believe in, even if it’s only a composite of these hills, trees, Joanna, this house. I write my stories and live my life in that, framework. It’s narrowing at times, but enriching as well. I envy the way you feel. You’re the Uncomplicated Person.’