“Don’t move,” I said. “There’s heaps of room for two.”
I lit a cigar and offered one to him. In Spain the Havana from Gib is never unwelcome.
“I don’t mind if I do,” he said, stretching out his hand.
I recognised the singing speech of Glasgow. But the stranger was not talkative, and my efforts at conversation broke down before his monosyllables. We smoked in silence. He was even bigger than I had thought, with great broad shoulders and ungainly limbs; his face was sunburned, his hair short and grizzled. His features were hard; mouth, ears and nose were large and heavy and his skin much wrinkled. His blue eyes were pale. He was constantly pulling his ragged, grey moustache. It was a nervous gesture that I found faintly irritating. Presently I felt that he was looking at me, and the intensity of his stare grew so irksome that I glanced up expecting him, as before, to drop his eyes. He did, indeed, for a moment, but then raised them again. He inspected me from under his long, bushy eyebrows.
“Just come from Gib?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes.”
“I’m going back tomorrow – on my way home. Thank God.”
He said the last two words so fiercely that I smiled.
“Don’t you like Spain?”
“Oh, Spain’s all right.”
“Have you been here long?”
“Too long. Too long.”
He spoke with a kind of gasp. I was surprised at the emotion my casual inquiry seemed to excite in him. He sprang to his feet and walked backwards and forwards. He stamped to and fro like a caged beast, pushing aside a chair that stood in his way, and now and again repeated the words in a groan. “Too long. Too long.” I sat still. I was embarrassed. To give myself countenance I stirred the brasero to bring the hotter ashes to the top, and he stood suddenly still, towering over me, as though my movement had brought back my existence to his notice. Then he sat down heavily in his chair.
“Do you think I’m queer?” he asked.
“Not more than most people,” I smiled.
“You don’t see anything strange in me?”
He leant forward as he spoke so that I might see him well.
“No.”
“You’d say so if you did, wouldn’t you?”
“I would.”
I couldn’t quite understand what all this meant. I wondered if he was drunk. For two or three minutes he didn’t say anything and I had no wish to interrupt the silence.
“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly. I told him.
“Mine’s Robert Morrison.”
“Scotch?”
“Glasgow. I’ve been in this blasted country for years. Got any baccy?”
I gave him my pouch and he filled his pipe. He lit it from a piece of burning charcoal.
“I can’t stay any longer. I’ve stayed too long. Too long.”
He had an impulse to jump up again and walk up and down, but he resisted it, clinging to his chair. I saw on his face the effort he was making. I judged that his restlessness was due to chronic alcoholism. I find drunks very boring, and I made up my mind to take an early opportunity of slipping off to bed.
“I’ve been managing some olive groves,” he went on. “I’m here working for the Glasgow and South of Spain Olive Oil Company Limited.”
“Oh, yes.”
“We’ve got a new process for refining oil, you know. Properly treated, Spanish oil is every bit as good as Lucca. And we can sell it cheaper.”
He spoke in a dry, matter-of-fact, business-like way. He chose his words with Scotch precision. He seemed perfectly sober.
“You know, Ecija is more or less the centre of the olive trade, and we had a Spaniard there to look after the business. But I found he was robbing us right and left, so I had to turn him out. I used to live in Seville; it was more convenient for shipping the oil. However, I found I couldn’t get a trustworthy man to be at Ecija, so last year I went there myself. D’you know it?”
“No.”
“The firm has got a big estate two miles from the town, just outside the village of San Lorenzo, and it’s got a fine house on it. It’s on the crest of a hill, rather pretty to look at, all white, you know, and straggling, with a couple of storks perched on the roof. No one lived there, and I thought it would save the rent of a place in town if I did.”
“It must have been a bit lonely,” I remarked.
“It was.”
Robert Morrison smoked on for a minute or two in silence. I wondered whether there was any point in what he was telling me.
I looked at my watch.
“In a hurry?” he asked sharply.
“Not particularly. It’s getting late.”
“Well, what of it?”
“I suppose you didn’t see many people?” I said, going back.
“Not many. I lived there with an old man and his wife who looked after me, and sometimes I used to go down to the village and play tresillo with Fernandez, the chemist, and one or two men who met at his shop. I used to shoot a bit and ride.”
“It doesn’t sound such a bad life to me.”
“I’d been there two years last spring. By God, I’ve never known such heat as we had in May. No one could do a thing. The labourers just lay about in the shade and slept. Sheep died and some of the animals went mad. Even the oxen couldn’t work. They stood around with their backs all humped up and gasped for breath. That blasted sun beat down and the glare was so awful, you felt your eyes would shoot out of your head. The earth cracked and crumbled, and the crops frizzled. The olives went to rack and ruin. It was simply hell. One couldn’t get a wink of sleep. I went from room to room, trying to get a breath of air. Of course I kept the windows shut and had the floors watered, but that didn’t do any good. The nights were just as hot as the days. It was like living in an oven.
“At last I thought I’d have a bed made up for me downstairs on the north side of the house in a room that was never used because in ordinary weather it was damp. I had an idea that I might get a few hours’ sleep there at all events. Anyhow it was worth trying. But it was no damned good; it was a washout. I turned and tossed and my bed was so hot that I couldn’t stand it. I got up and opened the doors that led to the veranda and walked out. It was a glorious night. The moon was so bright that I swear you could read a book by it. Did I tell you the house was on the crest of a hill? I leant against the parapet and looked at the olive-trees. It was like the sea. I suppose that’s what made me think of home. I thought of the cool breeze in the fir-trees and the racket of the streets in Glasgow. Believe it or not, I could smell them, and I could smell the sea. By God, I’d have given every bob I had in the world for an hour of that air. They say it’s a foul climate in Glasgow. Don’t you believe it. I like the rain and the grey sky and that yellow sea and the waves. I forgot that I was in Spain, in the middle of the olive country, and I opened my mouth and took a long breath as though I were breathing in the sea-fog.
“And then all of a sudden I heard a sound. It was a man’s voice. Not loud, you know, low. It seemed to creep through the silence like – well, I don’t know what it was like. It surprised me. I couldn’t think who could be down there in the olives at that hour. It was past midnight. It was a chap laughing. A funny sort of laugh. I suppose you’d call it a chuckle. It seemed to crawl up the hill – disjointedly.”
Morrison looked at me to see how I took the odd word he used to express a sensation that he didn’t know how to describe.
“I mean, it seemed to shoot up in little jerks, something like shooting stones out of a pail. I leant forward and stared. With the full moon it was almost as light as day, but I’m dashed if I could see a thing. The sound stopped, but I kept on looking at where it had come from in case somebody moved. And in a minute it started off again, but louder. You couldn’t have called it a chuckle any more, it was a real belly laugh. It just rang through the night. I wondered it didn’t wake my servants. It sounded like someone who was roaring drunk.