Nyctophobia (14 page)

‘Could I have a look?’

‘I suppose so. You just need the key, but I can’t tell you where anything is. It’s the old white barn next to the ruins of the convent. It’ll take you a while to go through it all.’

‘I have nowhere else to look, Jordi. Let me at least try.’

He handed me the key and I made my way over there.

The last of the nuns had died of disappointment in 1983 and the Santa Maria convent finally fell down. The man who had robbed Celestia’s house was the town’s builder, and instead of removing the rubble he just painted it white. Poppies and lavender grew up between the rocks, and myrtle and wisteria and big green bushes with thick dark leaves that nobody knew the name of.

I managed to open the lock on the front door, but Jordi had forgotten to warn me that there were no windows or working lights inside, and I found myself unable to step into such complete darkness. After hovering at the threshold for a few minutes I was forced to give up, and relocked the door. When I returned the key, Jordi promised that he would take a look for me, if I could leave him a list of the things I was searching for.

The diurnal shadows slid over the village like ghosts fleeing the heat. I had promised to call Mateo when I needed a lift back to the house, but decided not to bother him just yet. It upset me that the mothers of Gaucia were making up stories about Hyperion House, and I wondered how I could make amends. I headed to the town square and asked Celestia what she would do. My friend was sitting in her usual place at the café table beneath a stratocumulus of smoke, silent and thoughtful. She considered the problem for a moment.

Finally, she tapped her cigarillo and said, ‘I think we need to ask Maria Gonzales what to do.’

Maria Gonzales was about a thousand years old and knew everything. She ran a strange, dusty shop that sold organic honey, dried shrimps, wind chimes, homeopathic medicines and shawls, but at the back there was an internet café of sorts comprising three ancient Dell computers and a table covered with out-of-date alternative healthcare magazines.

Apparently she and Celestia held village meetings that started with coffee and glasses of Oloroso and ended up encompassing most of the older ladies. Given that they spent the whole of the afternoon there and the Oloroso was 22% alcohol, it was a wonder they managed to walk home without falling into bushes or getting run over.

The meeting began in earnest, conducted in a strange, disjointed tangle of Spanish and English, with introductions made and glasses raised. Finally it was decided that there would be a dinner on the evening of a Saint’s day, and as there were plenty of those they would be able to pick a date that was suitable for everyone. Mateo, Bobbie and I would all be invited. It would help to put the party behind us, and replace the stupid notion of the curse with a happier memory of a fine evening. There would be drinking and dancing, and the children would throw fireworks at one another and frighten all the babies, and hopefully everyone would have a good time without getting their fingers blown off.

Feeling slightly the worse for wear I called Mateo, who drove into town and collected me. We were just driving off through the hot white streets when I glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw an extraordinary sight. Running towards us, her black skirts, raggedy yellow cardigan and necklaces flapping, was Maria Gonzales.

‘
Parada!
’ she shouted, dashing after the BMW and actually running alongside it. Maria threw me a package as if passing a rugby ball – she had a strong arm on her for an old lady – and I caught it, thanking her.

The incident stuck in my mind later because it was the most energetic thing that had happened in the village since we had arrived. Presumably Maria Gonzales returned to her shop to sit in the cool gloom among the pots of organic tomato marmalade and string sweaters, her energy spent.

I sat with the packet on my lap.

‘Well, what is it?’ asked Mateo.

‘I need scissors,’ I said. ‘It can wait until I get back.’ But there was a part of me that did not want to share whatever was inside the packet with my new husband. I didn’t want him to think that I was turning into one of those village wives.

When I arrived home, I went into the drawing room and tried to open the parcel, a thick rectangle of brown paper knotted with proper unbreakable string. And having finally got it open, I found myself in possession of something entirely unexpected.

The set of smudgily photocopied newssheets had been printed out in English for the ex-pat community in the region. Titled ‘The Anglo-Andalucian’, each one no more than four pages held together by a single staple, the first was dated May 2004, and the last dated to the August of the previous year.

It was thoughtful of Maria to give them to me, but I didn’t really want to read a newspaper where world events had secondary importance to the details of wine-tasting nights, fiesta preparations and problems with parking spaces. After idly flicking through them for a few minutes, I was about to put them in the bin when an item in the Obituaries column caught my eye.

‘Sr Amancio Lueches was taken from Hyperion House, his private residence just outside of Gaucia, to Estepona’s Santa Theresa hospital. He was suffering from dehydration and malnourishment, but the doctors were unable to save him. He is the last remaining member of the respected family who had owned the former observatory for almost a century.’

I looked to see if there was anything else, but no luck. The piece was three years old. With the freesheet in my hand, I went to find the housekeeper. ‘Rosita, did Senor Lueches become sick here in the house?’

Rosita was vacuuming the stairs, and in no mood to be interrupted. ‘Yes, as did many other members of the family. The nearest hospital is far away. People prefer to be in their own homes when they grow old.’

‘Well, I wish you’d told me. What happened to him?’

‘I don’t know. I was on my annual holiday, visiting my sister in Valencia. Senor Lueches was very elderly, but he was perfectly capable of looking after himself. He did not want to live any longer. He stopped eating and drinking. All of the food I had left for him was untouched.’

‘You must have felt terrible when you came back and found him in such a state.’

Rosita looked at me in surprise, as though the idea that I cared had never occurred to her. ‘He’d had a long and happy life. He loved this house, all of the family did. He’d hardly ever had a day’s ill-health. But he had lost his wife, and missed her terribly. Sometimes an elderly person can sense the shadows gathering. Who would not want to leave, knowing the time was right? He went to the hospital but they could not save him. It was what he chose for himself.’

‘But this was
three years
ago. What did you do?’ I asked.

‘My arrangement is with the house. Jerardo and I are paid in perpetuity by the estate.’

‘So you stayed on, even though there was no-one to look after.’

‘I look after the house, not the owners,’ said Rosita. ‘The house does that.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Nest

I
RETURNED TO
the drawing room and scanned through the rest of the newssheets. There was one other noteworthy item, a column entitled ‘Places Of Interest’, which gave a capsule description of the Hyperion Observatory, noting that it was privately owned and not open to the public.

‘The house owes its unusual symmetrical shape to the fact that it was once an observatory. Its architect, Francesco Condemaine, picked this sunny, peaceful spot with clear skies for his fragile wife, Elena, because she suffered from a fear of the dark, and in this lovely spot the moon is famous for its brightness. It was said that he so loved her that he wrote her a letter every single day of their lives together.’

‘Don’t you see?’ I told Mateo later that evening as we sat with Bobbie having our meal. ‘It explains everything. He loved her so much that he built a place where she could live in permanent light. He put in all the clocks so that the servants could make sure she never had to suffer from her phobia.’

Mateo put down his fork and smiled gently at me.

‘You knew,’ I said, thunderstruck.

‘Of course I knew. Why do you think I wanted you to see it? It was me who pointed it out to you on the website, remember? A friend of mine in Malaga heard it had come on the market.’

‘I’m very touched.’ I turned to Bobbie. ‘Your father is a very kind man.’

‘I know,’ said Bobbie. ‘He once let me have so much ice cream I was sick on the way home.’

‘If you want to get some now, it’s in the freezer,’ I told her. ‘Tomato and basil, or black cherry. But not too much.’

‘Do you know how proud you make me feel?’ said Mateo once Bobbie had run off to the kitchen. ‘I know things weren’t easy for you before we met. I wanted to give you the life you deserve, a truly happy one, just like Senor Condemaine did for his wife. Seeing you and Bobbie together just makes me feel surer than ever that I did the right thing.’

It was ridiculous, but I found myself close to tears. ‘There was a time when I thought I didn’t want to live,’ I admitted. ‘I’m so grateful you found me.’

‘You don’t have to be grateful. I’ll never let anything bad happen to you, I swear.’ He cupped my chin in his hand and kissed me tenderly. The clocks had begun to chime. The sun was setting behind the trees, and the last of the golden light was being exchanged for the soft glow of the dining room lamps. We played games late into the night, the three of us.

The next morning, Mateo went to Jerez for a meeting. He promised he would be back in time for us to spend the weekend together as a family, and I made a note of his return on my phone.

Meanwhile, I continued to be fascinated by the way the light fell throughout the observatory and its grounds, with each area perfectly divided by shadow and light. The mirrors, the windows, everything was positioned exactly so that the sun would find its way into the remotest corners. The only vaguely similar building I had ever visited was the Sir John Soane Museum in London, where mirrors and windows could be pivoted to send daylight in all directions. It seemed that the sundial statue in the centre of the lawn had been constructed on the same principle as the house, as it seemed to point into the sunlit drawing room.

Late on Friday afternoon I took a break from work and went into the garden to find a lounger and read an architectural digest for a while. Bobbie was upstairs with her tutor, taking lessons in Greek mythology and Spanish history. Rosita was tackling the laundry, a task she grimly performed using the hardest and most complicated methods imaginable, with a heavy, heatable iron and a tub of boiling starch. I assumed that Jerardo, never easily found at the best of times, had gone into the village to drink with his cronies.

I heard cicadas and drowsed in the late summer warmth, and when the architectural book slid from my knees I didn’t try to catch it. My limbs felt heavy with the heat, and time passed. The sun lowered itself to the edge of the mountains. The shadows began to creep across the lawn.

Something woke me – the crack of a twig, a sudden rustle in the bushes. I blinked and sat up, trying to focus. I’d had a little too much sun; my face felt hot and tight. It took a few moments to unblur my eyes and focus. I could hear buzzing.

I turned around in time to see a black mass of hornets swarming overhead and passing into the maze-house like an airborne ink-blot. Jerardo had failed to get rid of the great papery grey nest, and I had forgotten to chase him up.

I found the gardener in his shed, reeking of alcohol. ‘Jerardo, you have to get rid of that thing,’ I instructed. ‘Do it now, while Mr Torres is still away. I’ll go into the house and make sure all the windows are shut. I see you’re burning leaves at the end of the drive, put it on that.’

I went into the house and warned Rosita, Bobbie and Julieta to stay inside until I gave them the all-clear, then watched as Jerardo donned a beekeeper’s hat and gloves, and went off into the maze house.

He emerged carrying a nest that was almost as tall as he was, with a massive angry cloud of hornets around him. I knew that although it was huge it weighed almost nothing, and without it, the hornets would build another somewhere else.

Jerardo carried it to the fire and set it onto the burning leaves. The smoke only served to enrage the hornets more, and I realised that I should have had him spray the nest first, but I’d been so annoyed that I just wanted the job done.

The insects rose and fell back in a furious drone that was so loud I could hear it through the closed windows. Even Jerardo had beat a hasty retreat and returned to his shed, pursued by a few of them.

The great grey globe quickly caught alight, and the hornets went into a frenzy. Looking through the smoke and flames, I was horrified to see the BMW approaching. The door opened and a figure made its way up the drive. Mateo was home early. He always left his schedule in the shared diary. I realised I couldn’t have put the right return date in my phone.

He reached the top of the path and cut around the edge of the house toward me, fingers of shadow touching him from the trees. He was wearing his sharp blue business suit and blue tie, his black hair slicked back to reveal a trace of grey at the sides. He smiled. If he’d noticed the burning nest just a dozen yards away, he didn’t appeared worried. Then I realised why; he couldn’t see it from where he was, and was about to step into its path.

I ran to the window and knocked loudly on it, feeling something move, a faint and distant juddering beneath my feet, like a mild electric shock. I immediately thought;
earthquake
. I’d read up on stuff like that; there were a great number of minor earth tremors recorded in Andalucia every year. Through the glass, Mateo looked as alarmed as I did. He was almost on top of the bonfire now, which was just behind the hedge he was about to pass.

I tore open the catch on the window and yelled. ‘Mateo, go back and stay in the car – there’s –’

He heard me and looked up. I saw his head tilt – he hadn’t shaved – his caramel eyes rolling up to spot somewhere above us. I followed his gaze. An immense cloud of frenzied hornets had risen from the nest and now dropped to envelop him.