Alice Adams - Invincible Summer

Sylvie, the only one who spoke any Spanish, went in to check while the others sat on a wall to relieve their aching feet. She came out smiling a few minutes later.

‘Good news?’

‘Good news and bad news. Which do you want first?’

‘The good news,’ the others yelled in unison.

‘The good news is that we are not going to be sleeping in a ditch tonight. We have beds.’

‘As long as we’ve got beds, I don’t even care what the bad news is,’ said Eva.

‘That’s lucky,’ said Sylvie. ‘Because the kitchen’s closed and there are only two rooms left. I’m in the single and you three are sharing the double.’

Even before she had finished the end of the sentence she had flung a room key at them and started to run towards the converted stable block nearby. By the time the others had picked up their rucksacks and chased after her she had already slammed and locked the door to her room, leaving them banging on the door and protesting feebly, which only seemed to increase the volume of her laughter emanating from within. Eventually they gave up and trudged off to find the other room.

‘Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse,’ groaned Eva as the three of them stood looking down at their bed for the night, a standard-size double. ‘I barely slept in that dorm last night. My bunk was above that Franz guy we keep running into. He snored like a tractor and smelled like something had crawled up his bum to die.’

Exhausted and out of options, they silently munched their way through the sandwiches left over from lunchtime before stripping down to T-shirts and pants and collapsing onto the bed, with Eva in the middle and Benedict and Lucien either side of her. Benedict rolled over to face the door and started snoring almost immediately. Eva turned face down and stuck a pillow over her head, but after a few minutes she became aware of Lucien wriggling closer.

‘Well, hello-o there,’ he whispered, sticking his head under her pillow and flinging an arm across her body. ‘Fancy a quickie?’

‘Stop grossing me out, Marchant,’ she hissed. ‘I’m wise to your slutty hit-and-run ways, remember. Now go to sleep, we’ve got an early start tomorrow.’

Undeterred, he poked a lively erection into her thigh.

Eva shoved him away. ‘Really, Lucien? In the same bed as Benedict?’

‘Oh, don’t be such a prude, I’ve done this sort of thing loads of times. He’s fast asleep, won’t even notice, and anyway, it’ll be a treat for him if he wakes up.’

‘No it bloody won’t,’ said Benedict grouchily, rousing himself from sleep and clambering over the top of Eva to the middle of the bed so that he was between them. ‘Keep your pervy paws off her.’ Then a few moments later: ‘And no wanking, you fucking reprobate. I can feel the bed moving, you know.’

*

Eva was woken by her alarm at 6 a.m. She switched it off quickly and lay back against Benedict’s warm bulk beside her. He smelled good. Really good, actually. She’d been seeing a management consultant called Jeremy in London for the last few months, but all he talked about was spreadsheets and he definitely didn’t smell as good as this. She closed her eyes and found her mind drifting towards a scenario in which it was just her and Benedict in the bed together. As if sensing it, he shifted closer to her in his sleep, exhaling softly onto her neck. For a moment, in the darkness, none of the multitude of reasons not to — Jeremy, their friendship, living in different cities, Eva not wanting to be tied down — seemed to matter. If Lucien hadn’t been in the bed with them. .

What the hell was wrong with her? She shut down her wandering mind and slid out of the bed to retrieve her washbag from her rucksack and head for the shower, which for once she wouldn’t mind being cold.

After predictably bracing ablutions, Eva returned to the room to kick the others out of bed and make a start on the day. She opened the door to their room and burst into laughter as she took in the scene illuminated by the light from the hallway. This woke Benedict, who opened his eyes and, seeing Eva, broke into a sleepy smile that rapidly gave way to an expression of dawning horror.

‘Hang on. If you’re over there. . who’s spooning me?’

Lucien groggily raised himself up onto the elbow of the arm that was trapped under Benedict, looked down at him and grinned. ‘I’ve woken up with some uggers in my time, mate, but this really takes the biscuit.’

Grimacing, Benedict rolled out of the bed, leaving Lucien to slump back onto the pillows. ‘God, I’m tired. Do we really have to get up at sparrowfart today? Let’s just get a bit more sleep, eh? It’s unnatural, getting up at this hour.’

‘No chance.’ Benedict tugged the sheet off him. ‘The pilgrim mass at the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela is at twelve thirty, so we need to set off early to make it. That’s the whole point of the walk.’

‘Not for me it’s not, what with my not being a religious nutjob,’ grumbled Lucien. ‘And it’s Catholic, right? Are they going to want me to confess my sins? Because that may take some time.’ He winked at Eva, who turned away in mock disgust.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ insisted Benedict. ‘Half the people walking the Camino aren’t religious. But to have a journey you’ve got to have a destination and this is ours. Now come on.’ He lifted the edge of the mattress and rolled Lucien off onto the floor. ‘We’ve come this far, only fifteen more miles to go.’

*

It was an unseasonably chilly morning and even as the day grew lighter, the air remained clouded with mist. The group trudged quietly along a pathway through a eucalyptus forest, each of them subdued by the knowledge that they’d be back in England and back to real life tomorrow. Benedict was trying to untangle a problem with energy ranges for his thesis but found his mind kept straying to thoughts of how good it had felt to spend the night with Eva in bed beside him, and then reminding himself tetchily that she had a boyfriend. Eva found herself resolving to end things with Jeremy when she got back; he just didn’t smell right, and no amount of working at things could fix that. Sylvie was deciding to visit every art gallery within a twenty-mile radius and beg for a job when she got back — it was time to carve out a proper life for herself. Even Lucien seemed lost in thought, limping along without the usual complaints.

Eventually the scent-filled woodland thinned and gave way to fields and then roads, until finally they reached the bridge to Santiago de Compostela. They joined the steady trickle of walkers following the brass shells inlaid in paving stones into the narrow streets of the old town, and eventually right up to the looming Baroque facade of the cathedral itself.

Lucien made a few token protests about preferring to go to a bar but Benedict rounded everyone up and in they all went, inching into a pew at the back just as the service started. A hush descended on the cathedral packed with pilgrims with dirty clothes and dishevelled hair, people from every corner of the globe and yet nevertheless all giving themselves up to a service in Spanish and Latin which somehow communicated everything it needed to through its sonorous rhythm. Once it was over, Lucien got chatting to a man sitting next to him who had made the journey on crutches and Sylvie wandered off to sketch some of the icons and altarpieces. Eva ambled through the side chapels and surprised herself by slipping a couple of euros on impulse into a bank of electric candles and thinking of her mother. Benedict strolled away casually, then, after checking that none of the others were in sight, furtively slipped into a pew on the other side of the building and bowed his head in prayer.