Chapter 23
Final Warning
Portugal celebrated the anniversary of the Revolution, 25 April, less fervently in 1977 than on earlier occasions. People’s attention now focused more on down-to-earth matters like inflation, which had reached forty per cent. In contrast, the Portuguese political tsunami was still making waves on the other side of the Atlantic, in its former colony of Brazil, where Clarice had made her home. There, to stifle the demand for freedom, the fascist generals who held power had tentatively allowed a little strictly supervised democracy. Given the chance, Brazilians had voted for more democracy and less dictatorship, and now the military régime was making a last, desperate attempt to slam shut the floodgates it had opened. That, too, was not a major topic of conversation in Lisbon. Ed was glad Clarice had failed to lure him to Brazil, where repression was again the order of the day.
Mark’s death still kept Ed awake at night, but not every night, and no longer all night. Ed now immersed himself in day-to-day concerns: conveyancing and classes among them. He continued to await his wife’s return, but began to accept that it might not happen soon. He had made up his mind not to let the anticipation paralyse him.
Ed would have loved to hold a farewell party for Simone before she left for France, but Simone told him she did not want one.
“There’s no cause for farewells. I’ll be back so often you won’t realise I’ve been away. Anyway, emotional goodbyes wouldn’t do the baby any good, not to mention the alcohol I’d be more than tempted to accompany them with.”
Once her house guest had departed, Carolina came back forcefully into Ed’s life. She found him at the University, tricked him into laughing his way out of the deepest levels of his depression and brought him home to her flat. Ed was surprised how big it was.
“Well, I need it and we can afford it. The benefits of marrying into a rich family, never despise them.”
She was categorical about where Ed and she could or could not make love.
“There’s the room I’m keeping for Simone, there’s the room with the marital bed, there’s the future nursery, there’s the room for visiting relatives. They’re all sacrosanct. You can screw me in either of the other two bedrooms, the living room, my study, kitchen, bathroom, wherever else takes your fancy. Or mine.”
Carolina took Ed’s fancy in any and all of them. She gave herself generously, and Ed was attentive to her needs. His one night there turned into a full week. Carolina’s bubbly personality and acerbic wit brought Ed ever closer to his old self. As he relaxed, his proactive nature reasserted itself. Carolina energised him, and the more energy he bestowed on her, the better she liked it. It was a virtuous circle.
Carolina surprised Ed one night by guiding him into the marital bedroom.
“What’s going on?”
“A wee bit of role-play, so you’ll maybe understand me better, if you want to.”
“I do.”
“My husband packs a good right hook.”
“What?! Are you serious?”
Carolina nodded.
“The bastard!! Look, I am not going to hit you, now or ever, not even in jest.”
“No, it’s the other way around. If I even defend myself, he gets more violent. You wouldn’t believe what a make-up artiste I’ve become, disguising all the bruises. And next time you’re on top of me, which I trust will be very soon, remember there’s a couple of cracked ribs beneath you. No, I want to hit you, the way I can never hit him. You’re a big strong lad, you can take it, right?”
“Try me.”
The rush of blows Carolina instantly unleashed upon him caught Ed by surprise and sent him sprawling.
“You all right?”
“Sure.”
“Get up.”
This time Ed was prepared. He moved out of range of some of Carolina’s punches and slaps, parried others, and let a few catch him, while Carolina let out a stream of invective in three languages. When he sensed her tiring, Ed drew Carolina into an embrace and held her as her words turned into sobs. Then he took her to the bed, undressed her, shed his own clothes and made love to her as gently as he knew how.
Carolina was up early the next morning to get away to her morning class at the University. Ed came blearily into the kitchen and found her there preparing toast and coffee for them both.
“Ready for round two, are you?”
“Not just yet, Carolina.”
“You’ve no idea how much I needed that. You’re a good man, Ed.”
“Sure. Have you put sugar in for me?”
“Just the one. You know, you could be just the one it’d be worth a Baha’i girl going through the shame of a divorce for. It’d mean waiting a year, though. Ah, I can see from your face you’d not be happy waiting that long. Anyway, don’t push your luck, sunshine. Here’s your breakfast. I’ve got to go. Let yourself out when you’re ready.”
Ed let the coffee go cold. Did she really mean it? Ed had assumed he was just a plaything to Carolina. She fascinated Ed, and in bed their harmony was unmatched in his experience. But ... he loved his wife, and his heart could have only one mistress.
Ed made himself some fresh toast and some tea, showered, dressed and gathered his stuff. He found a sheet of paper, scrawled a note and left it on the kitchen table.
See you soon. Ed xxx.
You lying bastard, he told himself with a wry grin.
Ed moved back to Cascais, where he sorted out the details and paperwork of selling the flat to Seamus. Seamus had split up with Antônia, and was eager to find a replacement. Or at least to vet likely candidates. He and Ed found plenty of those in the town’s discos, and even strolling its waterfront. As their tally of one-night stands mounted, Ed pushed back the day he hoped Ção would return. To Seamus, he paraphrased his father’s favourite saint, Augustine: Lord, make my wife virtuous, but not yet.
At the university, Ed’s efforts to raise his students’ awareness of cults continued, with greater fervour. He no longer limited those efforts to a single group of students. The students were always interested, but a few simply did not believe him about Pangaia, Omomnos and Mark. Several, though, had tales of their own to tell.
As soon as Ed received the flat-sale money from Seamus, he contacted Paulo to tell him it was ready for him. Paulo seemed barely interested.
“I’ll send my sister to collect it.”
Lourdes duly arrived, driving a new Volvo.
“Want to drive?”
Ed did. He drove the smooth Swedish vehicle along the coast north towards Azenhas do Mar, but thought better of visiting Mark’s cherished village and stopped at a resort called Praia das Maçãs – Apple Beach – where they sat in a bar overlooking the fine sand as the evening sun fought an Atlantic mist. Lourdes was tanned, fit and relaxed. Ed told her how good she looked.
“Well, things are working out for us, all of us, except sometimes for that no-good brother of mine.”
“Working out? What do you mean?”
“We’re getting everything we wanted from the Revolution. People in this country have never had so much personal freedom. We’ve brought our boys home from Africa, and left the locals to kill each other. We never educated them to the level where they could run a modern state, so in, say, ten years, they’ll be begging us to come back and run things for them. Meanwhile, a young man with entrepreneurial talent could clean up there.” She looked at him pointedly and took a sip of her chilled white wine.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m happy here. I’m staying for the long term.”
“You know, maybe you should reconsider that.”
“How else are things working out for you?”
“Well, the amount of absolute poverty in this country is falling. That means that the next generation will be better fed, better housed, taller, healthier and no doubt more self-obsessed that us. They won’t want to risk all that by snatching the wealth from its rightful owners, such as my family.”
Ed absent-mindedly took a sip from Lourdes’ glass. She called for a clean glass and poured them both more wine.
“Lourdes. Do you know who killed Mark?”
“Sure, Jorge ‘Omomnos’. But you know that, too.”
“Yes, I think so. For his money, I presume.”
“Mostly. You don’t need to know the details.”
“What I need, Lourdes, is vengeance. For Mark. I don’t want Jorge to live!”
“I can understand that. Really. But why are you telling me? What do you imagine I can do?”
“I know Paulo has contacts who are good at fulfilling contracts. I know I owe Paulo, and I’m ready to give him whatever he wants in exchange for them.”
Lourdes laughed, then abruptly stopped. She shook her head.
“Ed, really. Grow up. You’re out of your league. Sure, Paulo has contacts of the kind you’re hinting at, but these days he doesn’t have much influence over them, if any. Ed, stop playing with fire or, believe me, you’ll get roasted, and I hate funerals.”
She poured the last of the wine and drank it slowly. Ed’s stood untouched. Lourdes noticed, picked up his glass and drank its contents, gazing levelly into Ed’s eyes.
“Don’t look so sad and bewildered. Let’s find a sheltered spot among the sand dunes. It’s second-chance time.”
Gabriela often smiled at Ed in class. This time, from start to finish, her long dark hair framed a face that seemed to be making a constant unsuccessful effort to keep the world’s greatest joke to itself. When Ed wrapped up and bid the students all a good evening, she bounced to her feet and came over to him, grinning without restraint.
“Hey, Ed, I’ve got something for you, something to make you happy.”
I don’t doubt it, Ed thought.
“You’re a football fan, I know. What’s your team?”
“Stevenage Athletic.”
Gabriela’s face fell.
“I mean Stevenage Borough. Athletic didn’t follow my advice and went bust. New club. Chiltern Youth League, but we’ll be back in the Southern League in no time.”
“Don’t you follow some other team as well? Someone I might have heard of?”
“Yes, actually. Liverpool. Champions of England.”
Gabriela’s face lit up again.
“You know they’ve got a big match this month.”
“Sure. Borussia Moenchengladbach. European Cup Final. In Rome. I hope it’s on telly.”
“Forget that. Look, my paper wants a Portuguese-speaking Englishman to accompany the journalist they’re sending. To give a Liverpool supporter’s insight with comments that he can put into his articles. I suggested you. There’s no money in it, but you get a free flight, hotel, and you see the game from the press box. What do you say?”
Ed crushed Gabriela’s soft frame in a bear hug.
“I say you’re an angel, Gabriela, an absolute angel! You’re not kidding me, are you? This is a dream come true!”
The journalist, Manuel Rocha, was already in Rome, soaking up the atmosphere, when Ed took the plane. As they crossed the Mediterranean, Ed reflected on developments in his life. Lourdes had deemed his lovemaking in the sand dunes “satisfactory” and hinted he might get a further chance to demonstrate improvement. He didn’t appreciate women rating him, but his businessman’s brain could see the usefulness of performance appraisals. His mind turned to a more sombre matter: the apparent impossibility of bringing official pressure to bear on Pangaia. Well, its friends in high places would have to sing a different tune if, or perhaps when, the killer cult decided it needed to eliminate more than one member at a time. The thought of whom its next victims might include chilled Ed until the coast of Italy appeared below him and he remembered why he was travelling.
Manuel was an amiable, portly man nearing forty who shared Ed’s penchant for modest good living and was also serious about his job. So serious that as well as Ed he had brought over a Portuguese-speaking German to give the other side’s view. Ed was not best pleased to renew his acquaintance with Calvin, but, away from his normal habitat, Ção’s former Sussex School teacher proved affable and forthcoming, as well as knowledgeable about football and Rome.
Ed had swotted up on the history of Liverpool FC and the composition of its present team, so he was able to match Calvin in providing Manuel with comments that he could use. Naturally, he far outdid the German in exuberance as Liverpool took an early lead in the Olympic Stadium, withstood the pressure that followed Borussia’s equaliser, forged ahead in the second half and sealed the victory that gave them Europe’s top trophy, for the first time, with a late penalty. Together, Ed, Calvin and Manuel toured Rome’s bars afterwards, interviewing festive Scousers and distraught Rhinelanders to add depth to Manuel’s reports and their own hangovers the next morning. Their own party continued all the following day, and barely let up even on the flight back to Lisbon. Somewhere in that time, they each poured out their hearts to the other two and promptly forgot what they heard, though Manuel’s refusal to discuss Pangaia lodged in Ed’s mind, as did a comment the drunken Calvin passed down from his pulpit:
“Herr Scripps, you have made a cult of your wife.”
Ed clutched a tacky replica of the European Cup as he said goodbye to Calvin and Manuel outside Lisbon airport’s arrivals hall, convinced that he had made two new friends for life, thanks to Gabriela. He took a taxi to Largo do Andaluz, to empty the mailbox and crash there for the night. He should have done that earlier, to make sure the utility bills got paid. Indeed, when he got there, the mailbox was stuffed full and the electricity failed to come on when he pressed the switch just inside the flat door. He stood still and let his eyes get accustomed to the darkness. The moment they did, he let go of the replica cup. The sound of its fall was muffled by the papers on which it landed. His flat had been trashed again. This time, the intruders had made a thorough job of it, sparing only the fittings. Doors, left open, still stood on their hinges; light bulbs still hung from ceilings. Ed located the fuse box in the hall, opened it and pressed a couple of switches. Electric light illuminated the devastation.
Every personal item that could be broken had been smashed. Every piece of paper in the flat had been ripped to pieces and tossed on the floor. Ed looked at scraps of his student records, his wedding photos, his Lourenço Marques and Open University degrees. He picked his way among the shreds and shards to the kitchen, hoping to let the taste of beer mask the bitterness in his mouth. The wreckage of plates and glasses vied with broken empty bottles to tear at his shoes and menace his ankles. Ed opened the fridge. On the shelf above the vegetable compartment, his passport sat, intact, in a quagmire of congealed blood. The blood had dripped from the severed neck of a plumed cockerel that lay on a shelf above it. Otherwise, the fridge was empty. Ed staggered across the kitchen, opened the door onto the balcony stepped outside and drew in slow breaths of the cooling night air. He sat on the bare iron floor that was also the top of the fire escape and contemplated how best to ensure that he might still have a future to think about.
Well before sunrise, Ed got to his feet, went back into the kitchen, made his way to the main bedroom, threw himself onto the ripped mattress and plunged into sleep. When the morning heat in the enclosed room woke him, he got up, ascertained that the water, gas and telephone had not yet been cut off, then washed and called the police, not that he expected much help from them. When he returned to the bedroom to put his dirty clothes back on, he noticed the two unused bullets at the foot of the bed. Gingerly, he picked them up and slipped them into his pocket, where they felt cold through the lining.
The police, once they arrived, found some neighbours below to interview. One family had heard nothing, but an old lady living alone had been kept awake a week previously by what she believed to be loud music and things breaking, which she had assumed to mark just another bloody foreigners’ party, though she hadn’t heard the usual shouting. The police told Ed to pass by the nearest police station to file a report: the little cash in the flat had disappeared, and occasionally thieves got caught. Meanwhile, he should clear up, wearing gloves so as not to cut himself: they did not want anyone to get hurt.
Ed went out and purchased suitable gloves from a hardware store. On his way back, he bought a newspaper from a kiosk and read it in his local café, where he challenged his unsettled stomach with pastries and tea. The lead story, for once, was from abroad. In Angola, pro-Moscow stalwarts within the government had become alarmed at President Neto’s tendency to speak and act without consulting the country’s Soviet backers, and especially at his refusal to grant the Soviet Union permanent military bases within Angola. They had made a bloody attempt to overthrow him. Neto appealed for intervention by the Cuban troops stationed in the capital, who had helped Angola to contain South African invaders in the south and those from Zaire in the north. The Cubans hesitated, but then sent in tanks and crushed the attempted coup. Ed read every word of the reports, and the analyses. Then he went and bought more newspapers, and read all they had to say about the war-torn African country, while his subconscious mind worked on his own predicament.
The two bullets weighed heavily in his pocket.