I leaned over and gave her a brief kiss; brief because she always seemed to move away before I felt I had finished it. Had we been teenagers, it might have been interpreted as a tease. In the twilight of middle-age it was a remnant of faded affections, the closest we ever came to physical intimacy.
“Good night,” she said as I filled the room with darkness.
I didn’t bother to reply.
The next hour passed slowly as sleep kept its distance. I ended up thinking of our activities since arriving in Lanzarote four days earlier. The memories aggravated me.
Lanzarote, or Puerto del Carmen to be more precise, had been Marjory’s idea. Our three children had more adventurous things planned for the Christmas break than staying with us in cold wet Orpington. As for myself, I did a lot of foreign travel in my job as an Export Manager, so staying at home and pottering about would have been, in its own quiet way, most appealing.
However, Marjory had decided that she couldn’t be bothered cooking for just the two of us (but would have been only too happy to have done so for the whole family) and that a holiday “away from it all” was just what she needed. After a brief perusal of a few brochures, and without consulting me, she made her choice: one of the Canary Islands. It only remained for me to go and book it and pay for it.
Due to work, it was a few days before I got round to it; during that time I tried to coax her into trying somewhere really different, like the Dominican Republic—“Too far away, wherever it is”—or Gambia—“Africa! You must be joking!”—or Thailand—“You know I hate Indian food.” And so, running late with only a week to Christmas, I had wandered into the local travel agent, seen a “cheapie” advertised for half the price of the one Marjory had picked, and had booked it there and then: same dates, same island, same resort, apartment unknown but promised to be up to the company’s usual high standard.
“The money I’ve saved will enable us to spend even more when we’re there,” I said triumphantly on my return.
Marjory was unimpressed. “I’m surprised you haven’t joined the local synagogue,” she replied sourly.
Our apartment in the Villas Verdes was more than adequate. It was modern, bright and comfortably furnished in that typically simple aesthetic style the Spanish are so good at, a style that makes the British seem a cluttered lot. It had a south-facing balcony with a sea view and was positioned above Tinosa, the old part of Puerto del Carmen, just a ten minute stroll from the sea front with its little harbour, double that to the main Playa Blanca beach with its promenade of bars, discos and European restaurants. It was just right, or so I thought.
“It’s too small,” she croaked as soon as she had stepped inside. (It wasn’t).
“It smells.” (Sea air with a trace of fish from the harbour).
“The bed’s hard.” (As soft as her own back home).
“The beach is miles away.” (Marjory hates beaches because of the sand or pebbles or people).
And then, after her initial shock: “Damn it! Our neighbours are fat Germans.” (Very pleasant couple).
“Everything’s so expensive.” (Except what she buys).
“Too many foreigners here.” (She, of course, wasn’t one of them).
“The pool’s too small.” (Marjory can’t swim).
Can’t swim. A horrible idea had rushed through my mind then. Silly idea, really; I had no need to dispose of Marjory to make my life happy. A perk of my job was the discreet young ladies provided by my foreign hosts: an enjoyable dalliance on a quiet evening away from it all. Another perk was visiting interesting countries. In comparison, Lanzarote was sterile without any discernible character. Still, it didn’t matter. I suppose in a way I was living a double life and Marjory was not only the reason why I was living it, but also the price I had to pay for it. I could handle it. But then again, why should I?
It was a thought I had had many times, but it had never lingered long enough to make an impression. Until Lanzarote. In four days it had come and gone so many times on a daily basis that it seemed almost a preoccupation.
Marjory can’t swim.
I looked across to her bed, her narrow shoulders in my direction. Her emerging suntan made her skin look less pale in the dark. Usually it was visible even when the bedroom light was out. Now it looked almost foreign. Pity it wasn’t.
We did our sunbathing on the balcony, Marjory smothered in creams and lotions. It was a sun trap, and a trap of another kind, a place where Marjory honed her impeccable skills of ill-timing or chattering irrelevancies.
She would talk nonsense just as I got to an engrossing part of a paperback, or deposit a cold unwanted beer on my chest just as I was dozing off in the sun. Or she would fill my ears with valuable comments:
“I can see a cloud,” or,
“It’s hot today,” or her favorite,
“Are you asleep?” (If so, then I shall bloody well wake you up, because that’s what I’m like).
With increasing frequency, I would stand on the balcony and gaze across the old town—which wasn’t particularly old—and sense the attraction of the dazzling white-walled buildings with their blue and green doors and frames. Yet something was missing. The resort was vacuous and clinically clean. Perhaps this was a result of it being originally discovered as a tourist spot by Germans and Scandinavians twenty years ago. I wondered if anything truly old and Canarian remained, apart from an old wrinkled woman in black sitting on a doorstep that I had seen one morning when I was going to the supermarket. She had the strangest eyes I’d ever seen, like those of a dead fish.
Marjory was temporarily off fish. On our second night we had strolled around the old town and ended up by the harbor, appropriately called Fish Harbor. It was a landfill, a large rectangle bordered on the west by a stone quay and small fishing boats, on its seaward side by a wall of volcanic rocks, and on its east side by a restaurant. Near the quayside stood a stone table. On it had been a small pool of blood, fresh, dark, unmistakable in the light of a large moon. A strange odor had filled the immediate area, neither sea, fish or sewage, but rather a combination of all three.
Marjory came over for a look, her eyes narrowing at the sight, her large nose twitching with the smell. “Yuk,” was all she said.
As she walked back to the road I inspected the fishing boats; they bobbed, empty, none showing signs of recent use. No one else was at Fish Harbor then, which I suppose was understandable, it being after midnight and on the road to nowhere. With a cool breeze blowing in from the sea, I had hastened after Marjory and caught her up.
“Probably blood from fish being gutted, the evening catch of a boat long gone.”
“What?”
“The blood on the stone.”
She had looked at me as if I was stupid. “Well, of course it’s fish; it’s Fish Harbor, isn’t it? What did you expect it to be? Some sacrificial altar like those Inca Aztecs you were once so infatuated with?”
I wondered what I would have done had it been Marjory’s blood on that stone table.
Two days later and I was still wondering. Wondering, wondering, wondering… She can’t swim.
I illuminated my watch. One-thirty. Wide awake. Lying in bed was becoming unbearable. I decided to get up and go for a walk, do some serious thinking. I fumbled quietly for some clothes, bundled them together and crept carefully to the door. Unfortunately I was not careful enough and bashed my toes against one of Marjory’s bed legs. With muttered curses I limped on, reached the door and—