Robert Wilson - The Company of Strangers

There was no breeze in the gardens of the square. The palms hung their shredded heads in the heat. The cafés were empty. She crossed the road, the silver railway tracks, continued past the empty station and on to the beach. She woke up an attendant, who lay in the shade of one of the huts, gave him a coin and changed.

The beach looked empty at first, but as she walked down towards the sea a couple lying on the sand, arms linked, were given away by a dog digging at their feet. A woman in a white two-piece bathing costume stood up to reveal she’d been lying with someone in a dip in the sand. She wore white-framed sunglasses and was talking to a comatose man at her feet while smoking a cigarette in a short black holder. Anne sat on her towel twenty feet away from the woman, who whined loudly in an American accent.

‘Hal,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ said Hal, drowsy, a straw hat over his eyes and a cigar burning out of the back of his hand which lay on his chest.

‘I don’t see why we have to be nice to Beecham Lazard.’

No answer. She toed him in the leg.

‘Yeah, right. Beecham. Before you get going on Beecham, lemme ask you, what are we doin’ here, Mary? What are we doin’ in Lisbon?’

‘Making money,’ she said, bored to death.

‘Right.’

‘Except we ain’t made none yet.’

‘Right, too. Know why?’

‘ ‘Cos you think Beecham Lazard’s the key to success. Me…?’

‘Yeah, I know what you think…but he happens to be my only contact.’

She sat back on her heels and looked around. Anne studied the sand between her toes. Hal snored. Mary shook her head, stood and walked straight up to Anne.

‘You speak English?’

‘I am English.’

‘Oh, great,’ she said, and introduced herself as Mary Couples. ‘I knew you had to be a foreigner…sitting on your own on the beach. Not a Portuguesey kinda thing to do.’

‘No?’

‘Not yet. The girls have shaken off their chaperones but they haven’t quite got the idea of going some place on their own. You ever seen a Portuguese woman in a bar without a man?’

‘I haven’t…’

‘Exactly,’ she said, and removed the smoked cigarette from her holder.

Hal snorted, growled and continued snoring louder.

‘That’s my husband, Hal…over there…making all the noise,’ she said, and looked at him, sadly, as if he was permanently crippled. ‘He got stewed lunchtime. He got stewed last night in the casino. He was playing roulette. He won. He always gets stewed when he wins. He always gets stewed, period.’

‘I was in the casino last night,’ said Anne. ‘I didn’t see you.’

‘I stay at home when he plays roulette.’

‘Where’s that?’ Anne asked, being polite.

‘A little place in Cascais. You?’

‘I’m staying with the Wilsheres here in Estoril.’

‘Oh yeah, nice place. Hal and I are going up there tonight for the cocktail party. You gonna be there?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Anne, digging a hole in the sand with her heel. ‘Do you know many of the Americans round here? I heard you talking about Beecham Lazard.’

‘Sure…he’s not my favourite out of all of them…’

‘Did you know a woman called Judy Laverne?’

‘I heard about her. She was before my time. Hal and I have only been here a couple of months.’

‘But you know what happened to her?’

There was a fraction of silence, a half-beat, before Mary replied.

‘I think she was deported. Some confusion with her visa. She went to the PVDE, like you have to every three months, and they wouldn’t renew it. She had three days to leave. I think that was it. Judy Laverne…?’ She repeated the name to herself, shook her head.

‘You don’t know why?’

‘The PVDE don’t have to give explanations. They’re the secret police. They do what the hell they like and a lot of it’s not nice. I mean, it’s OK for foreigners, the worst that can happen is they deport you…no, that’s not true, the worst that can happen is they stick you in jail and then deport you…but they don’t do anything to you.’

‘ Do anything to you?’

‘Torture is something they do to their own people,’ she said, putting a new cigarette into the holder. ‘Like Hal says, it’s all palm trees and the casino on the surface and…You haven’t been here very long, have you?’

‘Didn’t Judy Laverne work for somebody? Wasn’t there anybody who could help her?’

Mary weighed that for a few moments.

‘You mentioned Beecham Lazard,’ she said.

‘I was introduced to him last night…in the casino,’ said Anne. ‘She used to work for him?’

Mary turned down the corners of her heavily lipsticked mouth.

‘If he couldn’t keep her in the country, nobody could.’

‘And what does Beecham Lazard do?’

‘If you want to do business in this town – with anybody, with the government, with the Allies, with the Nazis, anybody – you gotta go through Beecham Lazard…that’s what Hal says, anyway.’

‘You don’t like him…I heard you earlier.’

‘Only because he likes to touch and I consider myself a bit of a museum piece these days…you can look and that’s it,’ she said, pushing the sunglasses up over her head and squeezing the bridge of her nose.

Mary Couples was no longer stunning. She had been, but the green eyes under her dark hair didn’t shine any more. They had the matt finish of someone who saw things a little more clearly. She was in her thirties and, although intact on the outside, the mind had been working from the inside and the first signs of that weariness, from the long years of holding things together, had crept into her face and started making a bed.

‘So why couldn’t Beecham Lazard help her?’

‘What’s your interest in Judy Laverne?’ asked Mary, nailing Anne with a direct look.

‘I found myself wearing her riding clothes this morning,’ she said. ‘I was with Patrick Wilshere out on the serra. I was just wondering why.’

‘Welcome to Estoril,’ said Mary, and the sunglasses dropped over her eyes.

‘Does that mean Wilshere was having an affair with her?’

Mary nodded.

‘And somebody arranged for her to be deported?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, irritated now. ‘Ask Beecham Lazard. One of his pals is the Director of the PVDE, Captain Lourenço.’

‘Are you saying that he got rid of her?’

Mary froze and then in a nervous reaction started checking herself for a lighter which was still lying next to Hal’s heaving body.

‘Gotta get a light,’ she said, and staggered back to her husband, whose cigar was still trailing acrid smoke into the late afternoon.

A figure ran and plunged into the sea and set off in an explosive burst of crawl.

‘The PVDE,’ said Mary, handing her a cigarette, lighting it, ‘is a state within a state. Nobody tells them what to do…Did you tell me your name?’

‘No, I didn’t. It’s Anne. Anne Ashworth.’

‘You working out here?’

‘I work for Shell. I’m a secretary. My boss is a friend of Patrick Wilshere…which is why he offered me a room.’

‘Who’s your boss?’

‘Cardew. Meredith Cardew,’ said Anne, her insides congealing as Mary turned the talk around.

‘Merry,’ she said, ‘that’s what Hal calls him, which I suppose is fair. He’s always smiling. Saying nothing, but smiling.’

‘Yes, well, he’s my boss.’

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