“Friend of mine met up with one of the things in the shower.” It was one of Elsa’s dinner-party anecdotes. Last night, as she’d cracked open mussel shells and decapitated prawns, she’d told them of the malevolent habits of the centipede.
“Had to prise it off her arm with the shower head.” Elsa sucked at the squid until the black ink oozed at the corners of her mouth. “They won’t let go once they get a grip on you. They stick like leeches, hang on for grim death.”
Elsa would probably never have mentioned the creature. But earlier that week, just before Mark and Annie arrived in Anda-lucia, a neighbouring campesino had disturbed one while digging a hole for a water pipe.
“Chopped it into three separate pieces, every piece still squirming all by itself.” She waggled inky fingers at them. “Poor thing. I was quite pissed off about it. What are you frowning at, Annie?”
“I was just thinking…” Annie hesitated, knowing that contradicting Elsa was a reckless act. “I read somewhere that over thirty thousand bulls are tormented to death in this country, every year. Surely that’s something to get upset about?”
Elsa shrugged. Bulls? What of it? Dull, lumbering great creatures bred for entertainment. But the centipede was beautiful. “The way I see it,” Elsa said, “anything beautiful has the right to life.”
Annie continued down the track. She could hear Elsa’s voice now, echoing in the emptiness of Pepe’s cottage. The cottage was for sale. Elsa’s idea was that Mark and Annie should buy it and move to Spain for good.
Inside, the three rooms smelled of rats and mouldy garlic and damp. Mark reached out and pulled Annie close, as if they were newly-weds inspecting their new home, as if the decision were already made.
“What d’you think, love? It’s a snip, Elsa says. Did you see the olive trees, and the almonds?”
In Elsa’s presence Mark seemed to shrink. Annie felt a pang of sympathy and irritation. This air of bravado was thrown on for Elsa’s benefit, like the linen jacket and Panama hat. They could not disguise what he really was: timid, unfit, an ineffectual schoolteacher.
Elsa was striding about, wrenching the shutters open as if she owned the place herself.
“It takes imagination, that’s all. A good airing; it needs living in again.” Elsa’s bare feet in their flip-flops shuffled carelessly through the rat droppings and dead leaves which had blown in under the door.
“You don’t think they might be nesting here?” Annie glanced nervously about.
“What? The rats? Oh, more than likely.”
Elsa feared nothing, it seemed. Not rats, nor spiders, nor snakes, nor poisonous centipedes. Nothing. Look at her now, peering into cupboards, into cavernous fireplaces, dodging a shower of debris with a kind of elegant flamenco move. The Carmen-style blouse revealed an opera singer’s cleavage, the same weathered texture as those pots on the terrace: her legs were ropy with veins. And yet Elsa carried herself, straight-backed Spanish style, bosom thrust forwards, head thrown back, so that she seemed to be looking down upon everything.
It was strange. Annie was the younger of the two women, yet, in her sister-in-law’s presence, she felt faded and frail. She knew that in the southern sun she would not flesh out like Elsa into a tawny handsome woman; she would simply frizzle up like an empty seed-pod and grow old.
“The garden needs work, naturally.” Elsa pushed past them to the terrace. “But you can take cuttings from my place.”
Annie said mildly that she hadn’t got as far as thinking about gardens just yet.
“Why not?” Elsa swung around to face her, small amber eyes piercing, demanding explanations.
Annie raised her head and blinked. It was always like this. Confronted by Elsa she felt as if she were gazing into the sun. Black spots danced before her eyes. She felt suddenly drowsy.
“Well, there are things to be considered…” She glanced toward Mark for support, but he stood smiling vacantly out at the view, content to allow his big sister to make the decisions.
“Like what?”
“Oh… money for one thing…”
“Sod the money!” Elsa spat the words as if she had something between her teeth. “I have money. I want to help.”
“Oh well, that’s very kind… but the children…”
“What children? You’re not pregnant again, are you?”
“Of course not. I mean Bethan and Simon, well, I know Simon’s in his last year at college, and Bethan lives with her boyfriend, but they still need…”
“They’re all grown up!” Elsa roared, not letting her finish even. Dismissing Annie’s children, Elsa strode to the lower terrace to inspect the olives. “You can’t mollycoddle them for ever, Annie.”
“That’s what I keep telling her.” Surfacing from his trance, Mark sounded petulant. “We should put ourselves first for once.”
Annoyed, Annie started back up the track. What did Elsa know about families? She had married a Galician poet who gave her no children, who was her child himself. The poet had died four years ago. Elsa, who had guarded him like a lioness from journalists, fans and interruptions of any sort, saw him off with an elaborate funeral.
Did Elsa now have lovers? Pondering this a little jealously, Annie forgot to look where she was walking. Halfway up the track, she screamed: “I’ve been bitten, I’ve been bitten by something!” She shrieked shamelessly, hopping on one foot. Her fault. Thinking of Elsa’s lovers, she’d forgotten about the danger lurking in the grass… the centipede. “I didn’t see what it was. I didn’t see it!”
In an instant Elsa was beside her. For such a large woman she moved rapidly, darting to Annie’s side, grasping her shin, “Let’s have a look, then… ah, that’s all it is, horse fly. My God, what a bloody fuss!”
Feebly, Annie explained, “I thought it might be that thing you told us about, you know, the centipede…” She trembled upon one leg, frail as a stork.
Elsa laughed, “Listen, my darling girl, if it had been the centipede, you’d be writhing on the ground in bloody agony, I assure you. And anyway, the last person to be killed by the bite in this country was four years ago. Did you know that?”
“No. No, I didn’t.” Once again, Annie squinted as if to protect her eyes from the sun.
“Well, there you are then!”
The poet had left Elsa in some style. Inside, the hacienda was all polished Gothic gloom, great thronelike chairs and chests with rusting iron locks; chests that might have been brimming with Conquistador gold rather than spare bedding. The dining table was sombre, immense; its glassy surface relieved by a gaunt candelabra and a shallow dish of medlars.
Through these rooms, Elsa blazed in her gaudy kaftans, a fire catching. She suffered, it seemed, no ill effects from her bare feet on cold marble floors. Annie watched enviously. She herself would surely have developed a kidney infection at once. She was careful always to wear her sandals or canvas shoes inside the house.
“You used to hate her once.” Annie had tracked Mark down in the study. “You told me. Even your mother told me… she once tried to smother you in your pram by getting the cat to sit on your face.”
“Did she? I don’t remember that.”
“She smeared fish paste on your chin.”
“Hmmmm…?” Mark watched the TV screen doggedly. He had the look of a man in denial while ships sank, while houses burned around him.
“She must’ve been about seven, love. I don’t think she’d want the cat to sit on my face now, do you?”
“But why, why is she so keen for us to take Pepe’s cottage?”
“Is it the rats you’re scared of? It’s all right, Elsa left Paco instructions to put poison down — he’s cleared them out, apparently.”