AFFINITY
Take a pony of French vermouth, a pony of Italian vermouth and a pony of good Scotch. Stir into this two dashes of Angostura Aromatic Bitters. Strain into a chilled glass with some lemon peel. A drink of brine and smoke.
I ran until I reached the darkness of the beach, the stolen clothes clasped in my arms. They were grimy and badly needed washing, but I didn’t care.
My whole body was fizzing with a cocktail of fear and elation about what I’d done.
Another crime, to add to the one I didn’t commit. A murderess, now a thief.
No use thinking about it, I told myself, as I crouched in the shadows to search the pockets of the jacket.
Three battered cigarettes, a box of matches, a length of string and nothing else.
I spat out the saliva that clogged my throat.
So that was why the man had been roaming the alleyways; no doubt the other whores, who could tell a good mark from a bad, had already rejected him.
He wouldn’t have been able to pay me at all.
Still, the clothes were more valuable to me.
They offered the safety I had once found in Ifrahim’s old trousers and the apron that shielded my body.
Hopefully, they would make men’s eyes slide across me without seeing, tell them I was just another grubby lad, and not a young woman with a body that could be bought.
Not a young woman who was wanted for murder.
There, hidden amongst the boats on the dark beach, with the sea as my only witness, I began to shed who I had been.
I used the knife to hack the stained kitchen apron into strips, and then pulled the blouse and chemise over my head to bare my chest. I could barely see myself as I wrapped the fabric tight over my breasts, cinching it, knotting it firm.
The blouse had a scrap of lace at the collar.
I hacked it off. Without that, it looked enough like a man’s shirt.
The old work trousers would serve as drawers, and to bulk out the stolen pair.
Next the jacket, too big, but all the better to hide in.
Finally, in the darkness, I dragged the scarf from my head and shook out my tangled mass of hair. At the edge of the shore I knelt, and sawed through handfuls of it, letting it fall like black weed into the surf. Take her away, I told the waves, the woman they’re looking for, take her away.
My head felt light, my neck naked and prickling in the sea breeze.
I ran a hand across the uneven tufts, then knotted the scarf around my neck, for comfort, as much as anything.
Last came the man’s cap. It was just as well it was dark, or I might have lost courage and wept to see those scraps of myself, hair and lace, being washed out to sea.
The beach was silent, but from what I’d seen that evening, there was no guarantee it would stay that way. I didn’t want to be caught up in the darkness by a gang of smugglers, wanted nothing more than shelter.
At the border end of the beach, a campfire trembled in the night.
With one hand on the knife in my pocket, I walked towards it.
The light from the flames illuminated the edge of an empty warehouse where shadows moved and people muttered and coughed.
No one said a word as I crouched down before the fire, though some looked.
Mostly men, one woman, her face lined too young.
She began to speak to me but when I glanced at her from beneath the hat’s brim, her gaze was vague, her speech a meandering string of English and Spanish that made no sense at all.
Some boys, perhaps only ten or eleven, laughed at her and eyed me appraisingly before going back to scraping at crab shells with their teeth when they saw I had nothing to steal.
Inside, the warehouse smelled of unwashed flesh and old urine, the stench of stale alcohol seeping from pores, and a sweetness that I recognized as cheap opium. Crumpled shapes lay here and there in the darkness. I found a corner that didn’t smell too bad, where the earth seemed dry, and lay down.
I don’t believe I slept, at least not for more than a few moments, waking again with a lurch of fear every time I drifted off.
I thought about the kitchen at the inn, the food I had once made, rich with oil and wine and spices, the smell of Ifrahim’s pipe and the cats that would purr against my belly, and I had to stifle my face in the rank collar of the jacket, so that the sound of tears did not give me away.
At one point, startled by footsteps, I opened my eyes to find a figure leaning over me. Without a word, I drew the knife. The figure stopped then, and moved away. I passed the rest of the night with the knife in my hand, glinting in response to the eyes I was certain were watching.
By the time dawn came I felt even weaker than the day before.
Hunger and weariness made my ears ring, my eyes glaze, turned my thoughts into a mass of tangled threads.
I knew I had to do something, but I couldn’t fathom what.
If I could only get a meal, if I could only fill my belly, I might be able to think.
When I stepped out of the warehouse, the rising sun nearly felled me.
It was so bright, so generous, spilling radiance over the sea.
I wanted to drink that light. It would taste of pomegranates and cold butter, strawberries wet with dew and honey dripping from a comb.
I followed the light down to the water’s edge, dipped my hands into the surf, deliciously cool, and drank.
Of course, it made me sick, and the dream faded, leaving me shivering and wretched. I suppose it must have cleared my head a bit though, for when a shadow fell across me, I was able to look up.
An old man – or a man who had been made old – was side-eyeing me as he rinsed a shirt in the water. His ribs stuck clear of his chest like a dog’s, and there were scars across his abdomen. He might have been the one who had come near me in the night. I didn’t know.
‘Tap’s behind the boats,’ he said, jerking his head.
I muttered thanks to him, before remembering the crumpled cigarettes in my jacket. When I took one out the man’s face turned almost as bright as the sun. I held it out to him and we smoked it together, crouched at the shore.
‘Border’s good picking, around breakfast time,’ he said, after a while. ‘Show you if you want.’
With that, he pulled the wet shirt over his head, and set off up the beach.
The rock towered above us as we walked, white gulls circling the crags. In the clear morning light, I could see buildings; stark military defences and white villas, steep rows of houses and before it all, a dusty strip of no-man’s-land.
When we reached the border I understood what the man meant about pickings, for there was a queue of motor vans, rumbling and spluttering, waiting to cross into Gibraltar.
They were being held, I saw, while British soldiers checked papers.
I shrank back at the sight of those uniforms, but the old man quickened his pace, joining the half-dozen beggars already there.
By the time the next vehicle pulled up, they were at its side, jostling to reach the windows.
I watched, unable to take in more than one thing at a time.
It seemed an unlikely way to get anything, especially beneath the glare of the soldiers, who occasionally shouted and kicked stones at the beggars’ ankles.
I kept my head low, afraid to be seen, until I realized I was making myself more conspicuous by standing on my own.
I stepped into the shelter of the group.
Before long, I was jostled forwards amongst them. I copied them, holding out my hands and saying por el amor de Dios, por favor senor, my children are starving, please senora, please help us, my mother cannot feed my brothers and sisters, I lost my job, Dios te bendecirá.
From the first few vehicles I got nothing except elbows and shoves from the other beggars.
I flinched and clasped at my cap, afraid that it would be knocked off, that I would be discovered.
Perhaps it was that cringing posture which made a deliveryman throw a céntimo and his half-smoked cigarette towards me.
I snatched up both like a wolf, and smoked the cigarette in quick, hungry drags.
It was cheap and acrid but the nicotine filled me with a fizzing sort of spice, pushed the haziness at the edge of my vision back a few inches.
I gave the end of it to the old man who had told me about the tap, and then passed my second crumpled cigarette around the group, which earned me a little more currency with them, and fewer elbows.
It was endless, thirsty work, but it held the possibility of money, and anyway, I did not know what else to do.
As the sun began to dazzle overhead, my voice grew hoarse and cracked from pleading.
The cars grew less frequent, for no one, not even the British, were fools enough to venture out on the roads at noon.
Eventually, the other beggars began to wander off, to pass the rest of the day asleep in the shade.
I would have done the same, had I known where to go.
Walking away would mean abandoning myself to the streets of La Atunara once again, where someone might recognize my stolen clothes.
One more car, I told myself, as the sweat trickled from beneath my cap, one more.
I was the only beggar left, apart from a pair of boys who were more interested in taunting the soldiers.
Every time I blinked the stinging brightness of the road from my eyes, it became harder to open them.
When I fought my eyelids up for what must have been the tenth time, I thought that I must have been dreaming.
An automobile was roaring towards me, flashing silver in the sun, like nothing I had ever seen.
Through the dust and the dazzle of the windscreen I saw a face; white teeth shining, a slick of dark hair, a bright eye, peering over smoked lenses.
It was the face of an altar saint, surrounded by brilliant gold.
To this day, I can’t say what made me do it. Was it the glamour of that car, the heat and my hunger? Was it desperation? Or was it the pull of the future, a bolt of electricity lighting up all that was to come?
I don’t know. All I know is that when the beautiful, shining car came within ten feet of me, I met the eyes of the driver, and stepped into its path.