Chapter 21
Interrupted Dreams
Ed never fully decided what transformed Mark: whether it was the new outlook that the Revolution had brought to the country, the change that Mark had wrought inside his brain with his own Revolution Number One, or his experience of being imprisoned by Pangaia and sprung by his wife and friends. Mark was certainly a new man. No longer did he look down on people who did not come from a moneyed background like his own. He renounced the art of the back-handed compliment. Instead, his pleasure with life infused his relationships, which he was quick to show that he valued.
On a practical level, Mark went back to doing a few hours a week at the English Council, where he discovered that it could be interesting to listen to his students as well as talk to them. They started to make real progress, and Mark began to get respect as a teacher, not just as a former TV celebrity. Simone continued to teach French at the Sussex School, but, with Keith’s ready consent, reduced her hours and brought her timetable more into line with Mark’s. They did not need the money it brought, but Mark was coming to share Simone’s view of work as a value, and to enjoy the social aspect of teaching. They often invited the rescue group to their place after work or at weekends, and invited Ed more than most. Their flat began to seem like his second home in the city.
Ed noticed that they never invited him alone. There would always be at least one personable young woman, apparently unattached and eager to make him smile. His friends’ match-making efforts, however, failed to overcome the barrier of Ed’s preoccupation with Ção. Indeed, their favourite topic of conversation – plans for the coming baby – served to remind Ed that he and his wife had plans of their own, plans that he needed to rekindle her awareness of.
Ção did not contact him. Either Ed’s love-bombs were not reaching their target or else they carried the wrong payload. Ed was disturbed by the contrast between his success in getting Mark back to Simone and his failure to bring his own wife home. One night, after seven bottles of Sagres had clinked on top of each other in his waste-paper basket, Ed decided the reason was that he was trying to get Ção back by himself, whereas the rescue of Mark had been a team effort that had benefited from brainstorming.
Ed chose to approach Mark and Simone for help first. He insisted on meeting them alone, without any candidates to ease his Ção-deprivation blues. Mark was still convinced of the priority of Revolution Number One.
“You’ve got to sort yourself out before you can sort out Ção, or anyone else.”
Simone was more pragmatic.
“Try and put yourself in her shoes. How does she see the situation? Let her know that you can see and understand her point of view as well as your own. In the end, you may have to let her go so that she can choose freely to come back to you.”
“I can see the logic, Simone, but you never thought for an instant of letting Mark go, did you?”
“Not for one second! But, you know, thinking is one thing and doing is another. And Mark came back when he decided to. If I’d had my way, he would never have set foot inside Vila Abade in the first place.”
Ed was not convinced, but he did not intend to allow his pride to prevent him from getting his wife back. He went home and let hot coffee – a thimbleful of black slime, as Carolina called it – inspire him, or at least keep him thinking, throughout the night. By the time dawn reddened the awakening city’s cloud cover, Ed had identified the main stumbling block: João; more precisely, his own attitude towards João. He could not see anything wrong with that attitude, for it seemed logical to hate a favoured rival, but he understood why Ção might think differently and despise him for it.
Ed located his writing pad and wrote the hardest word: sorry. He apologised for not being the husband Ção had expected, for failing to respect her parents, for not being a Maoist, for being a male chauvinist pig, for not listening to her, for being hostile to the woman she loved. He could have continued, but he reasoned that overkill was the enemy of sincerity. To begin with, he did not mean much of what he wrote, but the more he tried to think about his behaviour from Ção’s point of view, the more his heart crept into his apologies. He tore the letter up and started again, willing himself to feel what he wrote. He ended by writing that he understood why Ção did not want to see him, but that he thought it was time for all of them to meet and talk things over calmly.
He expected a reply. When it did not come, Ed sought further advice from Simone.
“I think you should give her an extra reason to meet you, one that will benefit just her. For instance, have you got still something of hers that she might like to have back?”
“I haven’t come across anything. She cleared all of her stuff out of the flat. But I haven’t been looking for it. I will now.”
Ed looked, but Ção’s self-removal had been unusually painstaking. He found nothing of hers. He went to Cascais to collect his rent from Seamus, and searched his own room there, but found no trace of Ção.
As he handed over the rent, Seamus proposed a deal.
“If you want to sell this place, Ed, I can give you a decent price.”
“That’s interesting, but I don’t at the moment. Let’s talk about that some other time. Look, Seamus, have you come across anything in the house that belongs to my wife?”
“No, mate, I don’t think so. Unless that old headband is hers.”
“Headband? Let’s take a look.”
Seamus led Ed to the kitchen, where he opened a store cupboard. On top of a pile of dusty newspapers lay a black velvet headband. Ed recognised it at once.
“Is there a –?”
He picked it up tenderly. Underneath was a choker in the same material. Ção had loved them. Ed remembered her once wearing them and nothing else. The dust in the store cupboard affected his eyes.
“These are hers, Seamus. These are perfect.”
“Take ’em.”
Ed wrote to Ção that he had found her black velvet headband and choker and thought she should have them. He asked if he might bring them to her. As soon as she got the letter, Ção phoned. She said Ed would be welcome at the farmhouse the following Saturday. Her voice was warm.
Ed hired a car for the drive up to Conimbriga. The air was cold and damp but the rain held off. The farmhouse looked run-down and even less welcoming than the dogs. João came out and shut them up. Ção followed her out and greeted Ed with a peck on the cheek. The touch of her lips was a joy, a harbinger of pleasure to come, even though it evoked a pang at the temporary loss.
They went inside. The two women were dressed identically, as though for farm work. There was no sign of a daughter. Ed tried to see João through Ção’s eyes, but gave up. Nevertheless, she was the one he concentrated on, once he had given Ção her headband and choker, together with a cassette by The Dubliners that included a traditional Irish folk song called Black Velvet Band. Ed had presents for João, too: an orchid and a set of paintbrushes.
“Last time I was here, I saw you’d started painting the window frames. I noticed your brushes were not the best. Thought you might like these.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you. I like orchids, too.”
“If you still need to finish that job, I can give you a hand right now.”
“Sure. Why not? We can have a chat while we’re at it. If we’re lucky, Ção will make us some lunch, won’t you, sweetheart?”
Ção agreed, though no pleasure shone in her eyes.
Ed and João worked steadily as the sun warmed up the day. They spoke little. When they did, neither interrupted the other, like two people engaged in a tussle to show who was the better listener. Ed tried but failed to find João attractive, even though he imagined how she might, if she ever wanted to, exacerbate rather than mask the feminine nature of her features. He could not work out how Ção might find her appealing. Even as a man, all his male friends were, in his opinion, better looking than João, and so was he. Nor did he find her especially interesting to talk to. He realised she was kindly leaving aside her feminist diatribes, for his sake, but the opinions she did give voice to were as banal as any he heard in bars or on buses. He turned when he heard Ção’s voice call them in to lunch. When he saw the beatific way his wife gazed at João, it hit him that the love between Ção and João might be myopic but it was not necessarily shallow.
Over lunch, Ed told them about rescuing Mark from the clutches of Omomnos. He hoped Ção would see it as a parable that could apply to her own behaviour. To keep things smooth, he did not emphasise the point. João surprised him by wanting to know the details of the sect. She was as scathing about the cult as he was.
“Money for nothing, and virgins to screw. That’s all Omomnos or any of them want. You notice one thing about cult leaders? They’re all men. When a woman starts a religion, then it’ll be time to listen. They should cut that Jorge’s balls off and use them to choke him. Though that won’t happen in this country. Your friend was right, Ed, when she warned you to be very careful. You’ve upset some powerful people. You’d best watch your back. Whatever you might think, I don’t want my darling Ção to become a widow.”
Something nagged at the back of Ed’s mind, alongside the thought that he might also profit from trying to see his wife as João saw her. After lunch, he helped João wash up, then announced that he had to get back to Lisbon. João smiled; Ção looked disappointed. They both came out of the house to see him off. Ção kissed him with affection, João formally. As he got into the car, Ção dived back into the house, then re-emerged wearing the velvet headband and choker, laughing and waving gaily as he drove away down the track. Contact, he thought. Even with João Ladrão, The Big Thief.
On the outskirts of Lisbon, he had to brake sharply when the driver in front of him made a last-minute decision to obey a changing traffic light. The thought at the back of his mind jolted into the front.
I didn’t mention Lourdes’ advice. I’d never say the bitch’s name in front of Ção, or João.
Ção phoned that evening. She thanked Ed for the gifts, for being friendly to João and helping them with the painting. “João says you’re welcome any time you want to give us a hand. With due notice.”
Ed identified the warm note in her voice as uxorious love preparing to get its act back together.
On the Monday, at the University, he ran into Ashley. Ed told his colleague about his trip to Conimbriga.
“Good man. Strike while the iron is hot. Time to go for broke. By the way, your other iron in the fire is back in the forge.”
“What are you talking about? Your mixed metaphors are frying my brain!”
“Carolina. She’s back, a while now.”
“That’s good news. Wonder why I haven’t seen her. She hasn’t been in touch.”
“Well, I guess she’s busy. And she’s teaching mornings now. Get after her, you lucky boy! Spoilt for choice, eh?”
“For me there is no choice. I’m a married man, in love with my wife.”
Ed’s cheeks burned as the scepticism in Ashley’s eyes made him acknowledge in his own mind how much he wanted to see Carolina again.
Ed wrote once more to Ção, in the same vein as before. He apologised for any pain he may have caused. He told her how he had never stopped loving her even for one moment. He dwelt on how he really would like their marriage to work and how he dreamed of having her in his arms again, but because he respected her wishes and did not want to cause her any more pain, he was going to give her the space to work out what was right for her.
As though I don’t know!
As icing on the cake, Ed offered the couple the use of his room in the Cascais flat if they wanted a place to stay near the city.
As he licked the envelope, Ed imagined tasting again the underside of Ção’s tongue. He kissed her name above the address just before he slipped the letter into the post box.
Ed was marking students’ essays when Ção phoned. Her voice was warm but sad.
“Ed, for once I don’t know quite what to say.”
“Say you’re coming home.”
“Ed, I can’t, I simply can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I got your letter, of course. You’re so sweet. It’s just – I’ve had all the time and space I need. I’ve made up my mind. I’m with João now. She is my future and that is my decision.”
“Ção, my darling, you don’t know, you can’t know! Can João give you children?”
“She already has. Goodbye, Ed.”
The line went dead. Ed gently put the phone down, closed the shutters with difficulty against the strong afternoon sunlight and put half his mind back to his marking, while the other half searched for the next strategy to try.
Ed still had no satisfactory answer, though he gave it all his thought that evening, when he came out of the room that his Business English class had now been officially allocated at the University. The cool, clean air that washed over him as he passed through the entrance doorway brought no clear counsel. The moisture on the grass outside told him it had been raining, so he took care not to slip on the steps leading down to it, hunching into his leather jacket as he descended. He moved to avoid a female figure standing at the bottom of the steps, then realised she was talking to him.
“Are you going to offer a welcome drink to a lass just back from Persia, then?”
“Carolina?”
“Because if you are, I have a personal taxi waiting to take you to a den of iniquity of your choice.”
Ed pulled Carolina towards him and held her slight body hard against his. Her hair was damp. In the car, they kissed, and the warmth that rose from Carolina’s body made Ed realise that winter was passing.
They caught up with each other’s news in a bar in the Bairro Alto called Poppy’s. It was kitsch but comfortable and quiet. The trip to Iran had given Carolina and her husband hope that the Shah’s régime was on its last legs, as Caetano’s had been in Portugal when Ed first arrived. Like in Portugal, the régime’s demise would be followed by an era of human rights, democracy and religious freedom; their Baha’i faith would flourish as never before. The question was whether or not to go back before that happened, or to wait until it really had come to pass but miss the fun of the revolution itself.
“At the moment, it’s truly not a great place for a Portuguese Scot with a gabby mouth, but Firouz wants to be part of the change. And in our religion, we don’t do divorce.”
“You know, if you do go, I’ll really miss you.” Ed surprised himself by the intensity with which he uttered the words.
“You will, will you? Well, then, take me to your dark little flat and show me how much, since I’m still here.”
Inside the flat, Ed threw open the windows of the bedroom to let in as much moonlight as he could. Carolina closed them again.
“I like the dark. I love the feel of you, you know, and I’ll feel you more strongly if I don’t see you as well. And if you don’t see me, you can imagine I’m your little Sow.”
“Ção.”
“Ção, Sow, Cow, the little monster who’s still leading you a merry dance.”
“Forget her. I love to see your face and your beautiful body, but even in the dark my mind will see them. Yours, and nobody else’s.”
“My, you’ve been practising your chat-up lines.”
“No, I’m out of practice, actually.”
Carolina unbuttoned her blouse and let it slip to the floor. Ed stared at her small taut breasts. The palms of his hands tingled. Carolina stared back at him.
“Let me help you get those trousers off before you burst them.”
She did. She even forgot to turn the light out before she had sucked Ed dry and then had him bring her to a slow orgasm that seemed to send her on a journey inside herself from which Ed wondered if she would return. She did, and lay there under him, kissing him gently until Ed fell asleep and she drifted after him.
Ed had a nightmare: he was enclosed in a black van taking him from a prison in Teheran to the execution ground. Although naked, he was neither handcuffed nor tied. The siren screeched. Then he was awake, Carolina’s soft red hair in his mouth, in his own bedroom, with the telephone ringing in the room next door.
Ed kissed Carolina on her throat, eased himself off her, got to his feet and went next door to see who was calling in the middle of the night.
It was Simone. She sounded very far away.
“Ed? Can you come over here please. It’s Mark. He’s –, he’s dead. Suicide.”