The Lemon Grove (10 page)

The café’s terrace, perched above the main road, is still grubby from a busy Saturday night: plastic chairs blown over, tables sticky with spilled drinks, the terrace strewn with cigarette butts, and the smell of stale fried garlic wafting out from the dark cavern of a bar. Jenn takes a seat as far away from the door as possible, but close enough to the steps to make a hasty getaway should the traffic warden arrive.

The crone who serves her is laughably surly; viewing the early morning trade more as a nuisance than a fillip. There’s no ‘
Buenas dias
’ or ‘
Hola, señora
’, just a curt ‘
Si?
’ But the experience is mitigated by the orange juice she’s served, so fresh and thick it feels as though it’s been pumped straight from the citrus grove behind. The coffee is also good; potent enough to zap away the dregs of her hangover – full of bite, but by no means bitter. Why can she never get coffee like this in England? Even the pioneering little independents in West Didsbury don’t come close to this. She sits back, sips slowly at the orange juice, luxuriating in the tang of each slurp. Such simple pleasures, she muses – so profound in their impact. The
sun pokes through the cloud cover and Jenn tilts her face towards it. She stretches her arms out, elbows down, and holds her fingers in a loose yoga pose. She imagines a different life, of mornings that begin with a swim in the sea, a coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice on the terrace instead of traffic jams and juice from a carton. It’s a nice fantasy while it lasts; the sun ducks back behind the clouds. Footsteps below, the irregular slap of flip-flops. Jenn is surprised to see the hippy girl – the diver-chick from the market – emerging from the olive grove. She is wearing a paint-stained man’s vest, cinched at the waist with a belt made from rope, but, even in rags, there’s no disguising her beauty; the barely discernible bobbing of her breasts – no bra – and the tautness of her arms. Is this who they rowed about last night? Jenn tries not to think about it, and instead focuses on the crone who is leaning over the balustrade to gawp at her as she passes below the terrace. The crone mutters to no one in particular and shakes her head – whether in admiration or approbation, Jenn can’t be sure.

Sensing she’s being watched, the girl looks up, makes the briefest eye contact with Jenn, and smiles smugly. She drives extra swagger into her walk, her young bum flipping beneath the flimsy fabric of the vest. Jenn watches her go. She drains the last dregs of orange juice and as she sets down the glass, she appraises her own
breasts. She has a deep cleavage; too big, she feels, but, nevertheless, her breasts are still firm and shapely for her age. Even the younger care workers are forever complimenting her on her figure – her tits; tits spared the ravages of suckling babies. The older girls never fail to get that one in, whenever the young ones are complimenting her:

‘Course, you haven’t had kids, have you?’

If only they knew how that killed her.

Across the road, a van pulls up behind her car. A slender man in chef’s fatigues hops out and slides two huge trays from the back of the van, still hot, she judges, from his ginger grip, insulated by chunky towels. Jenn pays up, giggling out loud at the crone’s disdain for the tip she leaves. She follows the man inside the shop.

The smell hits her in one delirious flush as she crosses the threshold into the little shop: burnt caramel and spice, then a salty, fish-infused aroma. If she could begin each morning with
that
rather than the choke of half-burnt toast wafting out from the kitchen, then she could withstand whatever trials the day might throw at her.

The young boy is hefting the pastries off the trays with a plastic spatula and carefully arranging them in the glass cabinet in front of the till. He indicates with a
short, sharp glare that the
diez minutos
has not yet elapsed. Jenn shrugs; prises a copy of the
Sunday Times
out of the display and bustles to the back of the tiny shop. Absentmindedly, she fills a basket with things they might need for the walk: crisps and nuts and water. She picks up a small bottle of olive oil and snorts at the price. This is the only grocery store in Deià and she wonders how the locals feel about the prices. Maybe they operate a two-tier system, with one price for residents and one for green, middle-class tourists like herself, ineffably beguiled by labels announcing their goods’ ‘artisan provenance’, all proudly – and expensively – ‘
cultivada en Mallorca
’. She retraces her steps along the aisles, matching the prices on the shelves with the things in her basket. Confounded at each turn, she returns each item until all that remains is the newspaper. She stows her red plastic basket, tucks the paper under her arm and makes her way to the till. A small crowd has now gathered by the glass cabinet, ogling the tartlets and pastries. She chides herself for letting her mind wander. Nathan will be dry and dressed now, no doubt waking Emma with orange juice and coffee, sweet-talking her round from whatever quarrel they had last night.

Outside, the village has shifted up a gear. Through the open door, Jenn can see the noses of two huge tourist coaches, sizing each other up from opposite ends of the village. Each steadily crawls towards the other. An impasse is inevitable – the buses are already creating a major backlog either way – but neither driver will back down. A man is hanging down from the café terrace where Jenn sat only minutes ago, capturing the face-off on his phone. Shit! Her car is stuck right in the middle of this fiasco. Her plans of zipping up to the village and returning with breakfast are already in tatters – now she’ll be lucky to get back before lunch. She’s about to drop the paper and run when, finally, the kid favours her with the slightest nod of his head. She orders in Spanish – he replies in English. His blank face gives off an aloof insouciance: please don’t bother trying to interact, lady tourist. This is business. Give me money, then go. She’s pleasantly surprised that it all comes to so little, and steps out with a paper bag laden with pastries and breads and tarts, their greasy warmth already soaking the paper with an oily sheen. She scurries back to the car; feels a momentary stab of relief that there’s no parking ticket. The coaches have sorted out their differences and gone their separate ways. The village is busy but calm. She sets the pastry bag down firmly in the footwell of the car and places the newspaper on the passenger seat. Only now
does she realise she hasn’t paid for it. It stayed tucked under her arm throughout the transaction and the uppity young lad didn’t deign to enquire; and only now does she acknowledge that she knew exactly what she was doing. If he challenged her, she’d pay; if not – serve them right, the surly bastards! She starts the car, puts it in gear, heads off down the hill before indicating left and doubling back on herself; her heart is still thumping as she passes the little shop again. It’s only as she turns off the main road and dips back down the beach track, back towards the villa, that the pounding gives way to the gentle thrill of having got away with it. There’s a deeper excitement, too. Within the hour, she will be serving Nathan – serving all of them – hot, sticky pastries up on the cliff. She passes the traffic warden, scootering back up the hill after nabbing some early birds at the beach. Jenn throws her a big cheery wave.

10

The landscape has shifted. It’s only a year since they last trekked the pine route to Sóller, but the familiar cliff path has been holed by a savage winter. It’s completely blocked in places by fallen trees, some snapped at the waist, others uprooted entirely. Further along, the cliff face has eroded so far into the headland as to take the path with it. The welcome piles of stones that have, for years, mapped out the way for walkers have been scattered, abandoned to the elements. Newly daubed bright red splodges on boulders and tree trunks direct them along a new route, away from the cliff face and high up into the hills through the darkest reaches of the forest. They push on, the mulch of decaying pine needles springy underfoot.

When they first started coming here, Jenn was able to convince Emma that the Path Pixies had laid down the stones especially for her and that, if followed diligently, they would lead her to treasure. They would hold hands, chattering all the way, Emma’s excited eyes scoping the forest for a pair of oval eyes or pointed ears peeping out from behind a trunk. Jenn smiles at the recollection of her diminutive, gap-toothed girl, grinning as she reaches into a hollow to retrieve another treat, wrapped in coloured foil; a coin, a sweetie, sometimes a little book. Even when she was nine or ten, old enough to know otherwise, Emma still serviced the make-believe, affecting the same doe-eyed excitement each time they set off along the cliff path. And Jenn continued to set her alarm for the crack of dawn so that she could sneak down to the woods in advance and lay out the trail of goodies. Now they hardly speak; now Emma walks on ahead with her arms folded tightly. The sight of it brings a sting to Jenn’s eyes. Not quite nostalgia, nor even regret in this instance, but sadness at the passing of time. How wonderful those moments were. How quickly they moved on. Just like the weather; the cliff path.

Whatever the teenagers argued over last night still lingers in the air. Jenn thinks she’s worked it out, and it’s nothing more serious than opposed positions. The boy wants what the girl won’t give; the girl won’t give
until the boy threatens to find it elsewhere – that’s what yesterday’s charade with the hippy girl was about. He was letting Emma know: if she won’t, there’s plenty that will. All the other girls do it, he’ll be telling her. Jenn should tell her, too. Tell her how she was once that girl, holding out, holding it all in, hanging on to her virtue. How clever she’d thought herself, back then. While her mates were upstairs chasing cheap thrills and cashing in their assets, she was downstairs, saving for the future. When the time was right, she’d have her pick of the crop – and she’d have that option because she’d boxed clever. What she may have lacked in nubility she could more than make up for in nobility.
Her
boy would be able to hold his head high. No flies on Jenny O’Brien; she wasn’t
one of those girls
. If only someone older and wiser had told her. Told her that, after a certain point in a woman’s life, her past becomes open to re-evaluation. Once her flesh grows soft; once she gets married and has kids; once her allure dims; once that woman ceases to be a proposition, nobody cares
what you were
, anyway. Nobody remembers. You exist to others only in relation to
what you became –
your husband, your kids, your job. All those missed opportunities. All those electrifying teenage encounters she’d denied herself, when her body was still young and firm. If she could have her time again, she wouldn’t be so cautious; so damn clever. If she had her
time again, Jenn O’Brien would bound up those stairs and unquestionably be
one of those girls
.

Nathan walks ahead with Gregory. They’ve bonded over football, it seems, discussing the pros and cons of Moyes as Manchester United’s new manager. It still takes her by surprise to hear her husband pontificate on such laddish matters but even there, he can’t quite shake off his cap and gown. His didactic approach to what should be an easy, enjoyable conversation gives every impression that football – like modern art or Japanese film – is an educational topic rather than a life’s passion.