Питер Мэй - A Silent Death

Cristina threw him a look. ‘I thought you were hungry.’

‘Starving.’

When they had moved off through the crowd, a figure emerged from the shadows of a doorway further along the street and sauntered, hands in pockets, into the square. He was tall, with sandy hair flopping across a tanned brow. But his linen suit looked more than a little crumpled, and his white shirt less than pristine. His blue eyes followed the heads of Cristina and Mackenzie until they disappeared among all the others. The football being kicked around the plaza came rolling in his direction and he stooped to pick it up. The little girl who’d had the exchange with Cristina came running up to retrieve it. He held it out, but stopped short of handing it over.

‘Who is it who lives in that house there?’ he said, nodding towards the door from which Cristina and Mackenzie had emerged only minutes before.

The girl reached for the ball, but still he held it beyond her grasp.

‘That’s weird Ana’s house,’ she said.

‘Weird Ana?’

‘The old blind lady.’

‘What would the police want with an old blind lady?’ he asked.

‘Oh, that’s not the police,’ the little girl said. ‘Not really. That’s Cristina. Weird Ana’s her auntie. Can I have our ball please?’

Cleland smiled. ‘Of course.’ And he let her take it from his hands, before turning to gaze thoughtfully up at the little black-painted wrought-iron Juliet balcony on the first floor.

Ana feels the buzzer vibrate twice against her chest. Excitement, fear, apprehension. All very nearly stop her from breathing.

Sergio.

She tries to calm herself, and with a trembling hand depresses the rocker switch that opens the door below. Now she places her hands flat on the table in front of her, forcing herself to take long slow breaths.

Immediately she feels better and closes her eyes, waiting for the most distant of vibrations to tell her that he is on his way up the stairs. The change of temperature tells her that he has opened the door and is standing gazing at her.

Only now does she think about how she must look. No make-up, hair unfashionably short. Overweight, frumpy in an old blouse and jog pants. And more than twenty years older than when he last set eyes on her. She finds it hard to picture herself, but is aware with a sudden stab of apprehension that there can be nothing attractive about what he sees in front of him.

There is no clue in all this silence and darkness as to his reaction. She breathes in his scent, but there is nothing familiar in it. Male hormones, hair oil or perhaps aftershave.

‘Hello Sergio,’ she says, knowing that he will read her lips. Her voice is the merest tickle in her throat and she knows that she has all but whispered his name. In her mind it thunders in the darkness.

Still nothing. And then a movement of air. The warmth of another body in the cool of the room, shutters drawn against the afternoon sun. She feels the scrape of a chair on the floor. But not at the computer opposite. Much closer. She can feel his breath on her face. Soft, like the gentlest whispering touch of gossamer.

And then his hands, gentle and warm, taking hers in his. A tracing of fingers on her palm, the tactile signing that they had learned together all those years before, and she can feel her breath trembling in her chest.

‘ Hello, Ana .’

It is extraordinary just how familiar his touch still is, even after all this time, as if it were only yesterday that they had last touch-signed. Only, then she could have opened her eyes to see him, heard his voice. It’s you I love . She wondered how he would look to her now, if she could only see him.

‘ I’ve missed you, ’ he says.

And a tiny current of anger spikes through her. ‘It is you who went away.’ And immediately she regrets it.

But she senses the contrition in his words. ‘ I know, I know. And, God knows, I have spent every minute of every day of every year regretting it. You are right to be angry, and I have nothing but shame for my lack of courage. ’

‘I am not angry, Sergio. Not really. Just hurting. Still. You coming here like this today feels a little like having something sharp stabbed into an old wound.’

His hands grip hers, then squeeze them almost too tightly. She can feel his anguish transmitted through every fibre of his body. ‘ Your father contacted my parents. I don’t even know how he knew where to find us. And I have no idea what passed between them. But after he had gone my father forbade me ever to see you again. ’

She can feel his tension in the trembling of his hands. ‘I always suspected,’ she says, ‘that my father had something to do with it.’

‘ You have to understand, Ana, that I was dependent on my parents for everything. For money, the roof over my head, the car that I drove. I could not have continued my studies without their support, and without a job I could not support myself. ’ His deep, tremulous breath transmits itself to her through the divining rod of his whole body. ‘ At first I refused. I told them there was nothing they could do to me that would make me give you up. But then my father told me that if I chose you over them I would no longer be welcome in their house, and that he would withdraw his financial support. I knew my father, Ana. He was not a man to make threats lightly. I realized that he meant what he said, and I simply didn’t have the strength, or the courage, to defy him .’ He pauses for a long time, and she feels him shake with emotion. ‘ I was miserable for weeks, and I’ve regretted it every day of my life since .’

Ana imagines then the silence that falls between them, hanging heavy in the room. Hands and lips and voices still. Motes of dust suspended in the sunlight that slants in through a gap in the shutters. She has no idea what to say herself, and senses that there is more to come. And she is right. She feels him draw breath.

‘ One day about two months later, I was still inconsolable and my mother sat me down and told me the story of her first love. A young man she met at university in Madrid. A boy from a poor working-class family in Valencia who had only got to university on some kind of scholarship. Her family was appalled. He was not of the same... class. They made her give him up by threatening to take her away from university, withdrawing their financial support. And she always suspected that her family had paid off his family, because the boy himself did not fight it. She was heartbroken at first, she said. But then in time she met my father and never looked back. She said there was no future for me with a girl who was deaf and blind. That I would spend the rest of my life as a carer. ’ She feels ironic laughter in the movement of his hands. ‘ The moral of the story, I suppose, was that I would get over you. That I, too, would meet someone else and put you behind me .’ He pauses. ‘ I never did. And there never has been anyone else .’ Another pause. ‘ Never will be. ’

His hands raise themselves to her cheeks, long fingers gently brushing away her tears. She lifts her hands to cup his face and feels his tears, too. His pain, and hers, in the hot copious unrestrained flow of them. Two people wilfully kept apart by parents who thought that they knew best.

Gently he takes her hands in his again, and resumes signing. ‘ My father died five years ago, Ana, but it wasn’t until my mother passed away in March that I finally plucked up the courage to try and track you down. It was easier than I thought, though I could never have guessed that all this time we were quite so close. In all my wildest dreams I never actually thought I would find you. But now that I have... ’ his fingers go still, resting against her palm ‘ ... I never want to let you go again. ’ Another pause. ‘ If you’ll have me? ’