BLOODHOUND
Take three quarters of a pony of French vermouth and the same of Italian vermouth. Add a jigger of dry English gin. Crush two or three ripe strawberries in your hand, and shake until truly muddled.
It was the silence that woke me, abrupt and strange. Groggily, I moved my hand, expecting to find one of the inn’s cats whirring and kneading my legs. Instead, I found metal and wood resting in my lap. The knife.
I opened my eyes. Before me was a grime-encrusted windscreen and through it I saw the sky pink with dawn, like blood beneath the skin.
Day would be breaking in Córdoba too, illuminating the mess of the night I had left behind; the stains on Elena’s rug, the Senor’s eyes, weighted down by coins.
In a rush, it all came back: my flight into the feria, the darkness and the knife in my hand, my escape from Córdoba in this van, driven by an old man heading south, with his cargo of empty wine casks.
I had told him that I lived near Ronda – a name I pulled from my memory – and that my purse had been stolen during the feria and with it my bus fare home.
He knew I was lying. He knew it from my bruised nose and shaking hands, from my strange, jumbled attire.
But he had eyed my chest and laughed and said he would be happy to help a nice girl like me.
As soon as I had shut the door, he’d tried to take his payment, his hands pushing at my legs, groping my chest. But I had been ready and shoved him back, saying I was a good Catholic girl.
He’d laughed again, as if at some great joke, and might have continued had I not taken the knife from my waistband and showed it to him.
He left off then, and was sour as he started the engine and drove into the night.
Still, from the glances he cast my way, I knew he had not given up on the idea.
I blinked hard, trying to see where and why we had stopped.
My mouth felt dry and sour, limbs stiff and aching from the long drive.
As I sat up, I caught movement in the van’s mirror: my own reflection.
A girl was staring back at me, her hair a tangled mess, a bruise seeping across her cheeks from a swollen nose. I touched it, and she winced.
I was about to lean forwards, rub at my eyes and push at my hair when I saw something else in the mirror behind me.
A man was emerging from a shed. I slumped down, pretending to sleep, and watched through lowered eyes as he stared at the van, scratching at his crotch through a pair of overalls.
Only when he moved away, when a door squealed open, did I open my eyes again and look around.
We were parked outside a shack, wooden-walled and tin-roofed and covered in advertisements for oil and shellac and cigarettes. The driver of the van was inside the shack, then, with the man in overalls. Cold fear and nausea washed through me. One old man I could handle, but two …
Stowing the knife in my belt, I opened the door as quietly as I could. Beyond the gasoline pumps I could see no other buildings; there would be no one to hear if I screamed. Instead, the land rolled away into greyness. In the distance were the smudges of mountains. I had no idea where I was.
I slipped to the ground. Out here, I could hear the murmur of the men’s voices, could smell gasoline and cigarette smoke and road dust on the dawn air. I crawled around the back of the van, and peered out.
On the other side of the road was a slope. If I could make it that far, I might be able to get out of sight. But the distance between the shack and the road’s edge seemed impossible. Everything else was still and silent; even if I crept, they would surely hear my footsteps …
A bark of laughter, a cough and the shifting of furniture made my decision.
I took off. Four paces, five, and the door clattered open behind me.
At any moment, I thought I’d hear someone pursuing, feel someone grab at my shoulder, but there was the edge of the road, and the slope beyond.
Throwing myself over it, I lost my footing and fell, tumbling over and over down a steep slope, until my shoulder collided with something hard and I slid to a stop, the knife clattering from my grip.
For long moments I didn’t move, the wind knocked out of me, dust filling my mouth. Grey shapes loomed all around, pale and twisted. Olive trees.
There was a yell from the top of the slope.
The driver – shouting that I was a puta and that they’d find me.
A handful of stones came raining down amongst the trees.
I didn’t make a sound, not even when one of them caught me on the leg.
Finally, he swore to himself and hurried back towards the shack.
I didn’t wait around to see whether he’d return.
It makes no difference what I did or said to get myself away from that place.
Just as it matters not at all whether the men I eventually persuaded to pick me up by the roadside were carrying tomatoes or grapes or eggs on the back of their van.
What matters is that it happened, that they took me as far as their destination.
Gibraltar.
I had heard of the place from Ifrahim’s tales; a rock in the ocean, a great lion rearing and turned to stone. The first time I saw it, I thought it was a trick of the afternoon heat. But we drew closer and I knew that it was real: a mountain at the edge of the sea.
And the sea … I had never seen it before.
Can you imagine that? The only water I knew was that of the Guadalquivir river, sluggish and brown and clogged with reeds and run-off from the city.
I had seen pictures of the sea, on postcards painted in garish blues, but I didn’t think they were real, just as lips are never truly carmine.
I was wrong. As we emerged from the foothills, I heard a cry above the truck and looked up.
A great white bird had built her nest at the top of a pole.
Elegantly, she stepped from the edge and opened her wings.
I followed the path of her flight, her legs trailing, and suddenly my eyes were flooded with blue.
It hit me like flash powder: vast blue, potent blue. Even now, I find the sensation hard to describe. If colour were a taste, the sky would be powdered sugar, but the sea – that would be molasses.
I never believed in love at first sight. Fascination, yes, lust, certainly. I saw those things many times at the inn. But the moment I saw the sea, I was lost. It was love, and I never wanted to stop looking. Even today, I gaze upon it every morning like a new lover.
But of course, on that day it soon dropped from my view, replaced by a rail track and shabby houses and the start of a town. I fidgeted, wanting to keep it in my sight.
‘What’s the matter, sister?’ I remember one of the men taunting. ‘Lice biting?’
I didn’t care. I didn’t want to think about anything except the sea. Finally, the van began to slow, Gibraltar looming monstrous beyond a sandy wasteland and a fence, guarded by …
Sentry huts, men in uniform, guns at their hips. They were stopping every person who tried to cross, men with mules and wagons, women on foot, even children.
‘What’s this?’ I croaked, my throat thick with road dust.
‘Border,’ one of the sunburned men in the back yawned. ‘They’re checking papers.’
Papers. I had none. But worse than that: what if the news from Córdoba had arrived ahead of me? What if the soldiers had been ordered to keep watch for a young woman of my description? The driver released the brake on the van, and it began to roll forwards.
‘Gracias,’ I gabbled, and the next thing I knew I was jumping from the back of the van. I landed badly, half-sprawling in the grit on my knee. I got up immediately and began to walk without looking back, though the men behind me called out, ‘Sister!’
I didn’t know where I was going. I just wanted to be away from the soldiers and the uniforms, and their sharp eyes. And so, I made for the sea, for my new love, washing at the edge of the beach like the brightest silk coverlet ever sewn.
The sand beneath my boots made me start but it did not slow me down.
When I reached the shallows, I dipped my hands and brought them to my face.
The water was fierce, it stung my sunburned skin and bruised nose and it burned my tongue.
It made my eyes stream, as if the salt in my body wanted to greet its long-lost cousin.
When I straightened, I found that I could barely stand, could barely keep my eyes open in the heat. It was exhaustion that made me lie down in a strip of shade, concealed between two fishing boats. There, surrounded by the strange mineral reek of drying seaweed and crusted barnacles, I slept.