“Raúl’s got a job,” Elena announced, and flushed as soon as she’d said it.
He already had a job, of course – it’s just that her mother didn’t accept it as such.
Feeling she’d let herself down, Elena turned her head in a small, defiant gesture and gazed out across her parents’ perfectly paved terrace overlooking the azure sea. Purple and orange splashes of convolvulus, spiked with lime leaves, gave a vibrant and tattered charm to the blue/beige beauty that swelled in front of the opulent cliff-top chalet.
The Villa sat unchallenged. Well cared-for, and utterly sure of its own attractions. Charming but complacent. Very like her mother, Elena realised suddenly.
“Really?” that mother was saying, in an I-suppose-he’s-skinning-babies-now tone.
“Yes, he’ll finish the training in a month’s time.”
“Training?” said her father, trying to infuse some admiration into the conversation.
“Training?” sniffed her mother. “Well, I suppose it’s high time he did some training, he is 30 after all…”
“He did train, mum, for his current work,” began Elena. “He worked damn’ hard to reach that level of…”
But her mother had got up and drifted out of the room, leaving a contemptuous little laugh hanging in the air.
“Training!” repeated her father. “Well, that’s a good first step.”
The phone rang and he went to answer it.
Elena turned her head without defiance and tried to enjoy the beauty they’d purchased.
She knew they were atypical now. During most of her childhood, they’d been the typical married couple, apparently contemptuous of each other yet fond enough to function. You didn’t feel there’d be a ripping sound if you pulled them apart, but you couldn’t imagine them being pulled apart, either.
They’d chivvied each other and their children, been proud and nosy and embarrassing, asked too many questions, revealed far too much to the neighbours, the usual stuff.
Then her dad had made so much money in construction, helping the high rise up in the sky, carving into the lush green hills behind The Villa to set down plush pastel-shaded homes, that everything had changed.
At first it was fun, having money. Elena’s two younger brothers had gone off to college in Madrid, with a flat of their own to live in. It had been fun seeing her father invite all his friends to Sunday drinks in the finest local restaurant, his coarse-ish face broadening in generous enjoyment.
But he’d got too rich, and the tide of that success somehow carried them all away from familiarity to new shores of security. Suddenly her mother – half-envied, half-admired – stopped chattering about her latest purchases over the Sunday drinks. Stopped chuckling when her husband cracked an old joke. She acquired a thin veneer, downplayed financial triumph as though it were suddenly a dirty subject. Her husband followed her lead, and Elena, puzzled, watched as his hearty, simple jokes faltered and died, turned in upon themselves.
How could they share? It was awkward. To people not used to social dilemmas, it became impossible.
Elena missed them.
Beyond college age, contented enough with life in the village that flourished into sprawling tourist town alongside her own blossoming into mediocre womanhood, Elena became a sort of beautician.
Nails, massage, beauty treatments, as the town, favoured for its inland charm and proximity to the coast, throve. She didn’t really want to do feet and gradually the locals realised that she never had the right products in stock to give them a pedicure, and they stopped asking.
She fell between the cracks in the family fortunes. Her brothers got a better education, she met Raúl.
“No,” he said. “No. I earn stacks.”
“But…”
“I said no!” he insisted, pulling her close so she gasped. “We don’t need it. I’ll pay for it.”
“But papa wants me to have it, he wants to pay for…”
She faltered, cut short by the look in his eyes.
“Papa!” he mocked. “I want you to be my wife. I’ll pay the mortgage while you get started. I know you’ll make the business work.”
Now, he really was atypical. And she was bewildered but quiescent. The only guy with balls enough to go up against her father’s wealth.
Why? What on earth was the point? His notion that she should make her business financially successful startled her.
Her father’s call ended, her mother drifted back in; they opened a bottle of wine on the terrace and almost re-enacted themselves.
“Really?” they chorused when Elena explained Raúl’s new job, and for once it was genuine awe.
That eternal nano-second held as the sun went down and the sea turned black, and for the first time in her life Elena felt… yes, superior.
* * *
The girls she’d grown up with greeted the news differently.
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH!!”
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!” they squealed.
“Ooh, what a hero!”
“Oooh, that pays really well!”
“Oooh, he’ll have a uniform!”
“Mm, yes, so he will. And after all…” Vera’s glance flicked round the group, their expectant faces already breaking into giggles at what they knew she was going to say, “…he’s used to sliding down a pole!”
Gales of girly laughter.
“I’ll turn you back into a brunette!” threatened Elena, tugging at Vera’s carefully highlighted blond hair.
Vera pushed her hand away and signalled for more drinks.
“Is he still working at the old place?”
Elena nodded.
“Well, let’s go over on Saturday night, give him a good send-off, eh, chicas?”
The others giggled and squirmed against each other in anticipation.
* * *
Elena’s brothers had both come over from Madrid for a few days, bringing some friends to stay at The Villa. Their parents were thrilled and unashamedly welcoming, proud to have educated young people in the house.
“It’ll be a big, big dinner!” exclaimed her father on the phone. “Nine p.m., but of course they’re all here already, so you just come along as soon as you close the salon and we’ll have drinks on the terrace. Wotsisname is coming – the young lawyer who thinks you’re awfully pretty.”
“I can’t Dad, I’m sorry. I’d love to, but, well, it’s Raúl’s last night at work so I’m going over to Benidorm with the girls to give him a good send-off.”
“Oh right, I see. Well never mind, maybe you and Raúl can come up on Sunday evening instead. It’ll be the same crowd here. I have to go. Bye poppet.”
One of his sons’ polite young friends had appeared on the terrace.
“It’s paradise here!” she exclaimed, and he beamed and hurried inside for drinks whilst she drank in the view.
“I’ve told Elena to come up on Sunday with Raúl,” he whispered to his wife as he hauled a bottle of cava out of the fridge.
He cast her an anxious glance, but she just smiled briefly, approving the canapés being wafted past by their excellent cook, and said,
“Good, that’ll be lovely.”
He breathed a small sigh of relief to himself, and only realised later, when talk at table turned to Elena and Raúl, why she was so complacent.
“And what does your son-in-law do?” one of the nice young people had asked.
Her husband and two sons glanced at her for guidance, and Elena’s mother said smoothly,
“He’s a fireman.”
“Really?” intoned the young men, emasculated in one swoop, and the girls just gaped, emitting button-mouthed ‘oh!’s of admiration.
“My father says that’s even more dangerous in the country than in town,” said one of the lads. “All those forest fires during the summer months, it must be terrible having to try and fight them.”
The girls nodded breathlessly, and talk ran on the bravery of firemen and well-known acts of derring-do until one of the girls said,
“But the worst thing is that most of the fires are started deliberately by crooks who want to clear the land for builders. It’s heart-breaking to see the pictures on TV and imagine all the poor little animals fleeing in terror, and the beautiful old trees up in flames just because some greedy… idiot wants to take a cut when the land is re-classified as buildable and a whole lot of chalets go up.”
She stopped, flushed and intense, slowly realising in the clarifying silence, where she was.
‘Well, that’s one who won’t be finding a husband too soon,’ thought Elena’s mother. ‘Far too opinionated.’ Then she caught her elder son gazing adoringly at the confused girl and said hastily,
“Exactly. Very sad. But we’re here to celebrate having you wonderful youngsters with us after your exams, and I think it’s time for the speciality of the house – our cremat!”
There were cries of enthusiasm all round, and her younger son Leoncio followed her into the kitchen to help bring out the special cups for the pungent brew while Elena’s father good-naturedly told one of his silly jokes to give the confused girl time to get over her faux pas.
Under cover of the ensuing laughter from the terrace, Herminio said,
“I didn’t know he was a fireman, mum. I thought he was a…”
“He starts the beginning of the month,” she cut in. “Here, use the tray for those.”
“Well, good for him.”
Herminio felt unaccountably diminished. Effete.
“Well, he’s certainly used to sliding down a pole!” he joked maliciously, and his mother chuckled, hoisting the earthenware cremat bowl in her arms.
* * *
“Blimey, these slappers who come in from the sticks on a Saturday night!” exclaimed one of the bull-necked British bouncers on duty outside Benidorm’s biggest nightclub. Ladies Night, shrieked the posters, Raúl and The Rockhards Sexy Strippers - Single Women and Couples Only. “Look at this lot. Lamb dressed as mutton or wot?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said his colleague, eyeing the display of flesh and nylon with a less critical eye. “That one in blue, I wouldn’t say no on a dark night with a bag over her head. And the one who’s…”
“Hold on! It’s Raúl’s missus and her mates!” interrupted the cynic.
He beckoned the approaching brood through over the heads of the less favoured and acknowledged Elena with a slight nod as he opened the door for them. The packs of excited girls round him yowled in protest.
“No, I know it’s not fair love, but life ain’t and we’ve all got to get used to it. Stand back over here, please. Back, I said back. What’s that in your bag, love? Right, I’m going to have to take the butter. In you go. Yes, yes, yes, carry on, yes, in you go, yes, yes. Just a sec – what’s this? Body paint?”
He glanced an inquiry at his colleague, who shrugged.
“All right then, on you go, but no hurting the performers, all right? Respect for the performers, or you will be escorted from the club immediately. Did you ladies back there hear me?”
Crowds of squealing women shoved past them, waved through, and finally the two bouncers were alone again with the raucous roadlife. They put up red rope restrainers and heaved sighs of relief.
“I don’t envy those poor blokes,” said the first one.
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“No, seriously mate – don’t you remember when that silly tart leapt up on stage and tried to trim Raúl’s pubic hair?”
His colleague blenched.
“Cripes!”
“Yeah, he didn’t realise what she was up to – well, you wouldn’t, would you? Cigarette?”
“Ta. What happened?”
“Well, when he saw the nail scissors, he caught her by the wrist and called me over, but while I was on my way, the stupid little cow got the scissors in her other hand and in the struggle, she gave him this bloody great slice across his pex!”
“No!”
“Yeah. He’d just been waxed ´n´all. Could’ve ruined his career, that could. She wasn’t vicious, just slaughtered. Stupid. I got rid of her and nipped him over to the plastic surgeon toot sweet. Fixed him up all right, no scar, but it was a close thing.”
“I’ll say! Raúl’s the blond, isn’t he?”
“That’s him. Nice looker, but getting a bit long in the tooth now. They usually jack it in at 25 and he’s pushing 30. Good routines, though, and he’s in great shape. Pushes himself. Tonight’s his last night. Come on, curtain up any minute. In you go, let’s go take care of our boys.”
* * *
“Your parents are so lovely!” the confused girl was enthusing, gazing out over the pinpricks of coastal lights below them and snuffing the fragrant night air. “So welcoming. Thank you for inviting me, it’s all lovely. Such a beautiful view, and The Villa is just unbelievable.”
Leoncio smirked.
* * *
Inside the steamy, panting club, the ladies were baying with delight at Raúl’s finale.
Against a background of the booming beat of ‘My Heart’s On Fire’, a crackling sound filled the club, and dry ice smoke oozed out across the tables of giggling, squealing, swaying girls. None of this would have been remotely acceptable in their mothers’ day, when girls had to be home by 9 p.m. or their fathers banned the boyfriend for ever.
Elena bounced in her seat – it was this number that had really got to her, the night she’d met Raúl. She was along on a friend’s hen night, and all the romance of those delicious moments when he’d first appeared was pulsing through her veins again.
A huge collective scream went up as Raúl, in full fireman’s kit – it had cost a fortune and was really what had prompted the idea of becoming a fireman all these years later – came sliding down a pole at the back of the smoke-filled, crackling set.
As he strode to the front of the stage, his face smudged and his jacket open to reveal those gorgeous, gleaming pex, Elena grinned up at him involuntarily. Only she knew how hard he’d worked – the hours of training, not just weights and endless circuits in the gym, but ballet classes four times a week and entire days spent rehearsing new numbers with his choreographer. She felt a sudden rush of anger against her parents for not appreciating his worth.
Losing pieces of clothing till he was practically down to his hose, Raúl danced and strutted through the hen-night heavy club, ‘rescuing’ the brides indicated for him by the bouncers, swinging them up over his shoulder for a few beats, intoxicated by the intense crackling and screeching overlaying the relentless beat.
Swinging his hose, he leapt triumphantly back on stage and in one glorious, victorious moment, stood fully naked as his flame-motif G-string vanished in a blinding crack. His perfectly toned and oiled muscles caught the light to reveal him as Adonis, and there was a second of awed silence before the shaft of light he stood in snapped off and the whole place erupted in whoops and cheers.
* * *
He and Elena went up to The Villa that Sunday evening after his last show in Benidorm. It was one of the few times her parents had seen Raúl in ‘society’, and Elena’s mother was shocked to realise how a happy-go-lucky hunk could endanger the romantic interests of her beloved sons. The confused idealist girl in particular took on quite a glow when he was around.
There was dancing on the terrace – Raúl had organised that somehow – and they’d all had a ball. He had them all copying his dance moves, even the serious young lawyer who clearly fancied Elena.
It simply didn’t seem to bother him that he was admired and desired, Elena’s mother noticed with disquiet. Then, pulled protesting but laughing into the line of dancers, she had a flashback of their former selves, and her disapproval, like The Villa itself, suddenly shrank, quiescent under their stamping feet, obedient to their waving arms.
* * *
Three months later
The guys at the fire station were nice enough, but he missed the adulation. He missed the real camaraderie of the earthy bouncers, he missed swapping fitness and beauty tips with the other dancers, he missed having money stuffed clumsily into his G-string or thrown at his feet, he missed the girls’ giggles and the physical demands of his previous job.
Spain’s dictator of 40 years, Francisco Franco, had died as Raúl had come of age and he, like most of his generation, plunged headlong into materialism as into an azure pool so clear you can see the bottom, yet know you won’t stub your head on it.
He remembered the clips of El Generalísimo’s latest activities that were shown at cinemas before the main feature; he realised that censorship had shaped his country’s culture, but this was all sloughed off in the rush of freedom that engulfed his early adult years, and Raúl flailed his lusty members joyfully in its warm waters.
At the fire station, his only active service in the first fortnight was being called out to talk old Moncho out of his barn, where he used to lock himself in periodically and threaten to hang himself if anyone came near.
His exasperated family wanted to break down the door, but when Raúl turned up with a tape recorder and started doing one of his routines to the blaring music, old Moncho voluntarily opened the barn door.
“You must be the stripper,” he called after a minute or two.
“That’s me!”
It wasn’t exactly adulation from a puce-faced bride-to-be and her squealing entourage, but it was an acknowledgment, and Raúl gyrated faster, glorying in his widespread fame.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” shrilled the ancient.
“No!” cried Raúl, snapping off the music. “I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. But you have!”
He got back into the truck and the amazed family were able to lead Moncho gently across to the house.
“Never would have happened in Franco’s day,” he muttered all evening, but they were too fed up with him to ask if he thought that was good or bad.
* * *
Six months later
It was hot. The searing, relentless heat of a Spanish summer. Even up in the hills behind The Villa, the air hung heavily and life had slowed.
Raúl and another, older, fireman were playing cards.
“So your wife Elena is Gonzalez’s daughter?” asked Fernando. “Wouldn’t have thought you’d have needed to become a fireman – her dad’s loaded, isn’t he? All that construction. And it’s still going on. He must be raking it in.”
“Beautiful villa they’ve got,” commented the switchboard operator, wandering by with her coffee.
“Yes,” said Raúl between shut teeth.
There was silence for a few minutes. Only the sound of the cards going down.
“Your game,” said Fernando. “Time for another. June already. We’ll be getting the forest fires soon. Well, at least it’s double pay.”
“What’s that?” asked Raúl, pausing in the dealing.
“Didn’t they tell you when they took you on?”
“Tell me what?”
“Double pay for working on the forest fires. That’s the rule. Danger money, basically.”
“Well, that’s something,” said Raúl.
Fernando glanced up sharply.
“They’re no fun, those fires,” he cautioned. “Eleven firemen died last year fighting them. I knew one of them. Four in one go over in Almeria – they got caught in a pocket – you think there’s a way out but you’re trapped all round.”
He shuddered.
“Double pay doesn’t make up for what you go through.”
“Of course not,” said Raúl.
* * *
Europe’s playground sat and stewed in its own sweat that summer. Spain’s beaches were full to capacity, and higher up inland, the rolling green hills had been scorched to a brittle beige.
As his colleagues had warned, Raúl found that fire-fighting was no joke. But for him, it was different. There was the crackling, the heat and excitement; there were shafts of light where he stood like Adonis. And yes, there was adulation. It was just on a time lag, no instant applause.
There was TV news coverage, and a less serious special on him when some bright spark of a journalist found out that he used to be a stripper with a fireman routine. Raúl was back on centre stage, for a few brief moments. And there was extra money, for a few brief moments…
“Really!” exclaimed Elena’s mother after the TV special report. “Now, when are you two going to start a family?”
It was like that all the time. Elena, her parents and all her friends, were lobbying fiercely for a baby. Sullen now about his refusal to let her parents pave the way financially, Elena went to Madrid to visit her brothers and had a fling with the lawyer.
The winter passed slowly. Elena sulked and Raúl worked out.
* * *
By the following summer, Raúl was burning up inside.
“What is wrong with you?” complained Elena, watching him pace restlessly in front of the mirror, waiting for it to be time to go to work.
“Stage fright,” he said briefly.
“Stage fright?” She curled her lip and left.
Perhaps she should’ve taken more notice of those words. Perhaps, if she’d been less obsessed with the idea of creating a new life within herself, she’d have been kinder to the existing life within him.
Perhaps.
Her parents’ newfound pride in their son-in-law had only survived that first summer. Their tumbling esteem was partly to do with the TV special – people made jokes.
“We’ll have all the girls out now when there’s a fire, hoping to get a glimpse of that young stripper!”
Things like that.
“It’s really not nice,” Elena’s mother said to her. “He’s somehow managed to make a mockery of a decent job.”
Elena settled back on one of the sun-loungers on her parents’ terrace and gazed out across sunshine heaps of gorse tumbling down the slopes, and, closer up, the delicate specks of brief-blooming bellflowers, fading now in the heat’s onslaught.
“I’m going to Madrid again next week,” she commented.
“Good,” replied her mother, casting an expert eye over her bikini-clad body.
The sooner the better.
‘Make sure the lawyer gets you pregnant,’ she felt like saying, but didn’t. The follow-on thought did slip out, though.
“Divorce is so common these days.”
“Mother!”
“And quick. Nothing to it. All you need is a good lawyer…”
* * *
“Well played!” exclaimed Fernando. “Time for another one.”
Raúl smiled and shuffled. He could impress all his friends and colleagues too easily. There was no excitement, no panache, no… adulation. They all admired his fitness, his muscles, his past. The guys could joke about it, but Raúl knew perfectly well that they were in awe of him. And that kind of awe didn’t feel quite right.
He glanced up at the clock and wondered what was gnawing at him. Suddenly, as the switchboard operator flumped by in her flat-footed way, he realised. It wasn’t just the lack of screaming girls fighting to touch him – although he missed that too.
“Ah, now you’ve given me a decent hand! Now you’re in trouble!”
Raúl smiled perfunctorily. No, it was the fact that he was used to setting his own stage, coming up with amazing new effects to startle out those gasps and squeals of adulation. And that just didn’t happen any more.
A baby! Okay, fine, but how surprising was that? Nine months and then the usual happens. Just like everyone else’s, at the end of the day. Couldn’t they work towards something a little more extraordinary before ‘settling down’?
“My game!”
“Well played!” encouraged Raúl. “Time for a last one?”
“Of course. My deal.”
Same with the house. That was Elena’s area – he couldn’t see anyone letting him have a say in any décor or improvements. House, baby, these would be her performances, she would get all the applause. And he was a man who was used to arranging spectacular effects.
Setting his own stage.
* * *
“What on earth is wrong with you?” exclaimed Elena.
Still inwardly flushed from the latest lawyer lay – and he was becoming endearingly slapdash about contraception – she was irritated to see her husband pacing the floor each night. Having not much energy herself, and a perfect willingness to let others take care of things for her, she felt no empathy for the fire that coursed his veins, endlessly seeking an outlet, driving tingles of blood towards every nerve ending, keeping his whole body in constant motion.
Even his eyes flickered continually.
‘He’s got some disease,’ thought Elena, wondering if she should get out of the marriage before people could blame her for abandoning a sick man.
In a way, she was right. His disease was a lack, and his quiet desperation grew upon him night by night as he paced the floor, his ears straining for the sound of adulation, his eyes flickering towards every reflective surface to get a glimpse of the men he lived through – the one he’d been and the one he could be.
“I’m fine,” he told Elena.
“Daddy’s company has got a new project over in that area near the reserve that burned last summer. Do you remember?”
It wasn’t a fire he’d worked on. It had cleared a huge tract of rural land that had subsequently been re-classified as buildable.
“It sounds as though the villas are going to be gorgeous,” pursued Elena.
No response. Raúl stopped pacing and puffed his pex in the mirror.
“We could have one of the three-bedroomed ones, so there’d be plenty of room for the children.”
Still no answer.
“We could get it for a special price.”
Raúl finished his self-examination and said,
“You mean he’d give it to us?”
“Well?”
“I like it here.”
“Oh Raúl! It’s too small.”
“We could build out at the back.”
“Why?”
“How’s the salon going?”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine, Elena, you’re just playing at running a business. It’s not bringing us any money, we can’t do any of the things we used to talk about. It’s like a hobby for you because you know daddy will always pay up.”
“Yes, and that’s just as well! Because I know damn’ well my husband can’t!”
“It’s fire season. Double pay, remember?” he shot back.
“Oh big deal. That’ll never be enough and you know it. I want my children to go to college. This new estate is going to be fabulous, really exclusive, close to that new school and to the natural reserve – it’s partly in the reserve since they re-classified the land after the fire. And it’s beautiful – you like it over there, don’t you?”
Raúl grunted and put on one of his old routines.
At the time of that fire, they’d all been in Madrid to celebrate Elena’s youngest brother’s graduation. There’d been drinks at the family flat before they all went out for dinner, and the confused idealist had almost wept when she’d heard about the tracts of land caught in the fire’s grip, the danger to the natural park.
“Oh that is so sad!” she’d cried, her eyes welling with tears. “It won’t be your colleagues fighting that fire, will it?” she added, turning to Raúl with concern all over her face.
“No,” he had to admit – Adonis in the wings watching others in the shafts of light on stage. “It’s close, though, and of course, all those boys out there are my colleagues.”
“Oh of course they are!” she breathed, and he grinned down at her.
He recognised the adulation in her eyes, but, not knowing her principles, totally misunderstood its cause.
* * *
Leaving the fire station next day after his shift, Raúl drove over to the area they’d been talking about. It was pretty. It was just, in his eyes, in enemy territory somehow.
He got back in his dusty car and drove towards home, stopping again at the outer edge of the natural reserve. He slugged down some water from the bottle on the passenger seat, got out and headed up into the hills.
Up at the summit, nothing stirred. Over to his left, he could just make out his parents-in law’s beautiful Villa, its tended gardens one of the very few spots of greenery between him and it.
These hills were scorched. Crouching down, he picked up a stick of dry beige bark and scratched at the hard earth with it, raising a tired little cloud of dust. The desiccated grass crackled under his touch, crisped leaves in orange, yellow and ochre rustled across the dust-earth as he moved, and all around, parchment-dry grass and weeds towered above him, chest-high even when he stood.
There was the faintest smell of green in the suffocating air, but Raúl didn’t catch it. All he smelt was desiccation, all he felt crackled. He forgot that those hills unrolled fresh greenery each year; he forgot the sea, visible from The Villa.
“Can’t remember when I last saw a lick of water,” he murmured to himself.
All he remembered was standing in shafts of light, his manhood exposed to screams of excitement, the TV reporter’s respect, the idealist’s admiring looks… And the lighter between his fingers.
* * *
It was live performance at its most electrifying. Scurrying, sweating, dodging, sweating, sweating out everyday life in the noble struggle to put out the flames. Raúl’s muscles and eyes gleamed, he leapt hither and thither, higher, harder and faster than any of his colleagues. He got back on TV.
And of course, it became addictive.
That summer passed with double pay and renewed glory for Raúl, but homelife didn’t change.
“He used to be different,” Elena said to her mother, which struck home a little too hard.
“He used to be even worse,” snorted her mother. “Too selfish for words. We’ll give that new villa to you anyway, Elena – it would be a nice second home for you once you’re based in Madrid.”
“Mother!”
“Raúl’s blocking your life, dear. And when all’s said and done, his work is dangerous. Anything could happen. You don’t want to be left alone with a couple of kiddies to bring up.”
“Mother!”
“You know Daddy would take care of you all, but we do want to see some grandchildren dear, and there is such a thing as leaving it too late. That young lawyer of yours will be meeting lots of attractive girls in Madrid; he’s been very patient but we simply must organise your life now.”
“Raúl used to be happier,” mused Elena.
“Well, he’s very selfish because he won’t give you a baby, and that leads to unhappiness. What did you expect from an egocentric stripper?”
“He’s a…”
“He’s a stripper, Elena, in soul if not in name. Divorce him and move on.”
“Is she going to divorce him?” inquired Elena’s father in bed that night.
“Oh, you know what she’s like – she never takes action, but of course she wants to be rid of him. She needs to make sure of that nice young lawyer before his mother finds him some college girl – they’ll all be circling like vultures.”
“Yes, I suppose he’d make her happy.”
“Well of course he would! He’s just started with that big firm and he’s already on triple the salary that the stripper could ever earn. We’d have a grandchild within the year.”
“Raúl used to earn quite a bit, didn’t he? In Benidorm?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Hm. Pity he was a stripper.”
“It’s a pity he’s her husband!”
Elena’s father gave it some thought while his wife applied her face cream.
“It’s a dangerous business, being a fireman,” he ventured.
“Of course it is! He’s gone from being a laughing-stock to a liability. I told Elena today there could be an accident at any moment and she could be left on her own and I don’t suppose he’ll have insurance or a pension or anything useful. She’d probably have to give up her salon to survive, and you know how much she enjoys it. Gets her out of the house, she can see her friends there and so on.”
“Oh, I take care of all that anyway. And at least she’d be free if anything happened to him.”
“Exactly, but in the meantime, this nonsense has gone on long enough. She’ll lose that wealthy young man. We need to take some action.”
She snapped off the light, plunging her husband into thought.
* * *
The thought and action led to Elena’s parents enrolling her on a six-month beauty course in Madrid. Ostensibly, she lived at the family flat there, but even Raúl knew that she spent most of her time elsewhere.
But what with his obsessive fitness routine, his work, and hanging out with the bouncers at his old club in Benidorm a couple of nights a week, he didn’t mind too much.
What he did mind was when the new estate of chic villas over by the nature reserve was finished. He knew the pilot villa was earmarked for Elena, who’d chosen all its furnishings; he knew he would not be consulted when she moved; he knew there was no longer any pretence that they would share it, or that he would ever introduce his manhood into her again.
Fine. But the new villas still got to him. And when the fire season began, he often found himself driving in that area, assessing the risks. There were no firebreaks in the surrounding trees, and because no-one had moved in yet, there was no watering going on. In another year’s time, the whole place would be complete, gardens would have sprung up and the houses would be teeming with life. For now, they sat slightly forlornly in a drying landscape, the only colours and curtains on view at the large, smug, pilot home.
“Very vulnerable,” thought Raúl, raising his lighter to the cigarette dangling from his shapely lips. “All it would take would be a strong wind from the east.”
* * *
All it takes is a tinderbox and a life going slightly wrong, tra-la.
* * *
The east wind came and the man with a mission moved stealthily, his face as tight as his determination. Setting his own stage.
* * *
“Raúl! Raúl, wake up!”
Fernando’s voice down the telephone was more frantic than he’d ever heard it. Raúl peered at his watch, snapped himself upright, said,
“I’m coming, I’ll be right there.”
* * *
Over the ominous crackling, the sirens were sounding, urgent headlights lost in the blaze stampeding across the landscape.
He could feel the burn from way out.
Most of the surrounding villages had emptied out their residents, and people stood in frightened little knots on the edges of the crisis area, petrified for their homes, poised to flee.
Strapping on his helmet, about to duck under the tapes, Raúl felt a touch on his arm and turned to find his father-in-law, flask in one hand, holding out a cup of hot coffee. It used to be Elena who gave him coffee and a kiss, but of course Elena was away and it had been some time since she’d done that anyway.
“Thanks.”
Raúl took the cup and drained it fast.
“Good luck, son,” said Raúl’s father-in-law, his eyes full of anxiety. “Take care now, you take care.”
Ducking under the tapes, Raúl glanced back, puzzled by the tone, the unaccustomed concern, the affectionate use of the word ‘son’. Then a colleague hailed him and he turned towards the battlefield.
Elena and her lawyer lover, down for a few stolen days together, planning to surprise her parents with a visit next day, ran to the bedroom window too late. Fleeing the welcoming walls of their pilot villa, they ran in what looked to be the only fire-free spot on their horizon. But, crying and confused, they were caught in the same kind of fire-ringed pocket that had killed four brave men a few summers before. There was no way out.
And Raúl, Raúl died like a hero. Adonis in a shaft of light. Nobody’s victim.
His feet and head increasingly, curiously heavy, he saw that the encroaching fires would engulf the new estate and felt a moment’s triumph, spotted with pity because of his father-in-law’s recent kindness.
How had the fire started? he wondered, his beautiful but leaden limbs buckling inexplicably beneath him.
Only in the final seconds, with that beloved crackling all around, the cling of the blaze tugging at his heaving heart and the promise of glory in his stupefied mind, did the hot piss of terror gush down his thighs as he realised he’d been murdered.
© 2005 Tree Elven
