Chapter 16
Ash
‘In the nineteenth century,’ the tour guide says to the dozen or so tourists in her group, ‘Sintra became the first centre of European Romantic architecture. What we mean by Romanticism in architecture is an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century movement focusing on styles that evoke a sense of the distant past …’
Ash looks up and at the town around her, the buttercup-yellow and playful pink three-storey buildings surrounding the huge town square, lush greenery as far as the eye can see climbing the hills behind.
A fountain bubbles and babbles delightfully in the background, wide grey cobblestones and dramatic archways framing picture-perfect postcard images every-which-way.
All this country-like quiet, just a train ride away from Lisbon.
It feels Germanic, almost, like the kind of place you’d expect to find a Christmas market in winter, little huts selling salt lamps and Frankfurter sausages, tiny glasses of mulled wine at inflated prices, perhaps a skating rink nearby, too.
‘Tall windows, numerous gables, pointed domes and stained glass define the building ideal,’ the guide continues.
Ash is distracted by Mona beside her, who is shifting her weight from foot to foot, energy fidgety and unfocused.
Ash hits her arm lightly, a teasing gesture of school matron-like scolding, a way to tell her to pay attention.
Sintra has been high on Ash’s list of places to visit whilst in Portugal, and she’s done all the reading around the place.
To now have the knowledgeable presence of a guide before her is a kind of bliss: Ash likes going somewhere and doing it well, leaving with an armful of new knowledge and a bag full of knick-knacks with which to remember it all by.
She won’t be distracted by Mona. Now they’re here, though, Mona doesn’t seem very interested, and she did rather rouse Ash’s suspicions on the train ride out, whereupon she announced to Ash, ‘I’m crap at all this tick-it-off-the-list tourist stuff.
I’d never have left the city if you hadn’t asked, doll.
Who gives a shit about what some king did two thousand years ago?
He was probably an arsehole to his wife, anyway.
But ooooh, look! Lovely architecture he sorted out! ’
Ash had chosen not to respond to this, mostly because lovely architecture is exactly what all her research has said is in store.
‘I’m sure it will be lovely,’ is all she’d said, after a pause, suddenly realising that you never know what kind of adventure buddy you might have got yourself attached to, when you don’t actually know the person very well at all. Ash senses more white wine in her immediate future.
The tour guide presses on. ‘Romanticists rejected the social conventions of the time in favour of individualism, arguing that passion and intuition were crucial to understanding the world, that beauty is more than merely an affair of form – rather, beauty is something that evokes a strong emotional response.’ The woman draws a breath here, lets her comment about beauty sink in.
She scans her group, and Ash could swear her gaze lingers on her a moment longer than on anybody else, a fact lamented by Mona, who smacks Ash’s arm and wiggles her eyebrows just as soon as the guide has looked away.
The guide says, unaware of Mona’s giggling at Ash’s reddening cheeks, ‘Ferdinand the Second turned a ruined monastery into a castle where this new sensitivity was displayed in the use of Gothic, Egyptian, Moorish and Renaissance elements.’ She points up the hill.
‘You can also see the park, which blends local and exotic species of trees. This unique combination of parks and gardens influenced the development of landscape architecture throughout Europe. Now. If you’ll follow me this way … ’
‘She fancies you,’ Mona stage-whispers, as they traverse a corner to another spot the guide wishes them to see.
‘Shut up,’ says Ash, who finds herself without a leg to stand on minutes later when the guide finishes this part of her tour and invites her charges to explore by themselves for a moment so she can make a beeline for her.
‘Ash, right?’ the guide says, pointing at her. ‘The one with all the emails?’
The guide is about Ash’s age, maybe a bit younger, with great English and a brunette bob tucked behind her ears. She has tanned skin and brown eyes, and looks neat and very guide-like in her jeans and button-down khaki shirt.
‘Guilty,’ says Ash. ‘Information overload is a bad habit I’m trying to break.’ She can feel Mona looking at her. She ignores it. Mona is a law unto herself; with any sign of encouragement who knows what she might end up saying. ‘I like to be prepared,’ Ash adds, apologetically.
‘There’s prepared and then there’s prepared enough to lead the tour yourself,’ laughs the guide. ‘But, you know, it’s nice you want to know so much. Are you a history nerd, or is it the architecture that’s your thing …?’
‘Both?’ says Ash. ‘And neither. I just wanted to make the most of the day. Who knows when I’ll ever be back, you know? If ever.’
‘Oh,’ says the guide. ‘Don’t say that. You never know, you might find something worth keeping you around …’
There’s a way the guide could say this, and then there’s the way she actually says it.
She could say it upbeat, happy, a sort of who-knows-where-life-can-take-you!
slant. But the twinkle in her eye, the unrelenting way she looks at Ash, it makes it – dare Ash think it? Is she being crazy? – flirtatious.
‘Oh!’ Ash says. ‘Well, yeah.’ She gives a nervous giggle. She can practically feel Mona having to physically restrain herself from interrupting, most likely to do more of that eyebrow wiggling or similar hubba hubba-esque nonsense.
‘Aurora,’ the guide says, sticking out a hand. ‘In case you’ve forgotten.’
‘Ash,’ says Ash, reaching out to take it. Then she realises that Aurora has already used her name, already knows it. ‘Oh, right, d’uh,’ Ash says, shaking her head. ‘You already know that.’
The women stand, holding on to one another, neither letting go.
‘You’re around in Lisbon for a while, yes?’ asks Aurora. Ash nods and says she is. ‘Well then, send me an email. You have my details. We could meet for a drink. I’m in Bairro Alto but like to explore …’
Ash has never had this happen before. She has been hit on by a man before, but never by another woman.
Not in all her thirty-eight years! She’s slept with women, sure, but in sex clubs where it was all pre-written performance.
Navigating being asked out, just like that, is …
well. It’s all very awkward. She doesn’t know the etiquette for saying she’s not a lesbian – or gay?
Queer? She isn’t even sure of the language she should be using.
Of course she’s flattered anyone would suggest a date, and Aurora is very pretty – if Ash did like girls, she’s sure she’d like somebody as cute as Aurora.
But, alas, she does not, and as she considers all this, too much time has passed to explain it to Aurora, and they’re still holding bloody hands, and so instead Ash flushes once again, tongue-tied, flustered, and Aurora says, ‘Well, the tour must continue …’ and then she’s gone, and Ash stands there, and feels Mona’s gaze fixed upon her, and she knows that the second she looks at Mona much will be said.
But then, to her surprise, when she does finally look at Mona, Mona just says, ‘You should email her. You only live once.’
‘I’m not a lesbian,’ says Ash, like it’s obvious.
But Mona laughs, eyes creasing at the edges like bunched-up newspaper, and says, ‘Oh, doll. Everybody is a little bit gay. Given the chance.’
Over the rest of the day, royal palaces are seen, azulejos admired, Mudéjar techniques half understood.
The Pena Palace is viewed, the Palace of Monserrate applauded, and then, by the time they get to the Palace of Ribafria, Mona claps her hands together and says, ‘All right then, darling, that’s enough of that, don’t you think?
I’ve been a good sport. But now it’s time for something to eat and a carafe of something chilled. ’
Ash actually agrees. Her head is swimming with information, and she finds herself reciting the facts she’s learning as they go around, as if there might be a test on it all later, a test that if she fails will see her kicked out of Portugal, or laughed at by a jury of masked faces, or a very mean photo will appear on all – everyone’s!
– social media calling her stupid. As they find somewhere for a very late lunch Ash thinks, fuck, what would CJ think?
She hit the nail on the head last night, when she said Ash seems to be so filled with shame.
It’s incredible to Ash that CJ isn’t, or at least not as much as she’ll admit to.
Maybe there’s more to her, under the surface.
Surely everyone has things they’re self-conscious about.
But CJ really doesn’t seem that way at all, to be fair – what you see is what you get.
Ash wants to know so much more about her, even though it probably seems creepy to admit as much.
But the CJ she got to see at home, relaxed, open, chatty …
it was lovely. In a way, Ash felt as though they’d been friends for a long time.
She felt seen, really. Understood. And that’s not nothing.
‘Hey,’ says Ash, once she and Mona are settled, two orders of the house special on the way, a bottle of vinho verde in an ice bucket between them. ‘Can I ask you about kids? Well,’ she self-corrects. ‘About not having them?’