Like a Whistle

Eva laid the last slate on a Thursday at twenty past seven in the evening. She’d been back nine days, and they’d spent all nine at the bucket, Axel above and her pulling the rope, while Úrsula checked the rows and seemed to find fault with every one. The light came in sideways and the village smelt of rain that wouldn’t quite fall.

On Monday, Úrsula looked towards the sea and announced that Thursday night would bring a proper downpour. The next day the lad with the frying pans appeared with two cousins and another rope, without anyone having called them. On Wednesday all they heard her say was “one row”, and she didn’t waste her breath on anything else.

By late Thursday afternoon, there was only one piece left. The big bit with the chipped corner, the first one Axel had picked up off the ground the day they arrived. Úrsula had set it aside in July: that one, for the end of the last row, where it gets cut.

Axel stopped on the ridge, took the hammer out of his belt and came down two rungs.

“You go up.”

Eva stood there with the bucket in her hand.

“Me?”

“Go on up, girl, the last one isn’t laid by the one doing the counting.”

Eva went up without saying anything else. She sat astride the ridge, put the last slate in place, gave it two taps with the hammer and then a third that wasn’t needed at all.

Down in the street half the village was looking up. Trini with her glasses hanging on their chain. Sabino on his wall. The tripe woman with her shopping bag.

At the third tap Sabino raised his stick. Nothing else. The tripe woman had to sit down on the stone bench.

From the roof, without a single hole left in it, they looked out at the houses, the fountain, the two cars parked outside the hotel and the road disappearing round the bend.

“That’s it,” said Axel.

“That’s it.”

Eva stretched her legs out down the slope, barefoot on the slate, which was still warm from the sun, and lay back with her hands behind her head.

Axel thought of lying down beside her and found himself measuring the space, which wasn’t much.

“You’re counting something,” said Eva, without opening her eyes.

“Slates.”

“Yeah, right.”

And nobody moved.

“In the studio there was a little red light,” she said after a while. “Above the glass. When it came on, you sang. When it went off, you didn’t.”

Axel didn’t open his mouth, in case she stopped.

“I sang the bench one four times. Here, like this.” She held up a finger for each time. “On the fourth the bloke at the desk said ‘perfect’. The fourth was the same as the third, Axel.”

“And the tractor?”

“On the tractor I sang for two hours. The man didn’t say a word.” She gave a snort of laughter. “And when I got off he gave me a tomato.”

“How long’s left?” she said then.

“Till what?”

“Till the order.”

Axel didn’t have to work it out. He’d been counting since July.

“Twenty-two days.”

“Well, they can come up whenever they like.” She shut her eyes again. “They’ve got twenty-one to spare.”

When they came down it was dark. There was only Úrsula left in the street, hands in her overall pockets, looking up.

“Right,” she said.

And after a while, without turning round:

“Now you need the council surveyor to come up and look at it. He covers four districts and he comes up when he comes up. And till he signs, the order says what it says.”

That night, before hanging up the head torch, Axel got up on the stool and stuck his head up the chimney, like every night.

The ledge was empty. In one corner lay the scrap of checked blanket, folded in four.

He came down with a tight chest and went up to the back bedroom. Wamba was on his beam, above the elder tree.

“The one in the chimney’s gone.”

Wamba didn’t turn round.

“He’s downstairs.”

“Downstairs where?”

“In the byre. Next to the door, where the morning sun comes in.”

“And is that good?”

This time he did turn round.

“Come on,” he said, fed up. “What’s he going to sleep in a chimney for, when the house isn’t shut up any more?”

And went back to looking at his tree.

He went down to the stable with his head torch on. He didn’t find the creature, but beside the door stood a rush-seated chair he didn’t remember putting there. He took out the mother-of-pearl button he’d carried in his pocket since the birthday and set it right in the middle of the seat.

At two in the morning the first drops began to strike the slate, fat and far apart. Then the whole lot came down at once. Axel lay awake in the hammock, listening to rain on the roof they’d made, and not a single drop came through.

“Can you hear it?” said Eva, in the dark, from the other hammock.

“I can hear it.”

“Well, go to sleep. There’s no slate tomorrow.”

The next morning the button was gone.

They got up late and spent the morning clearing soot out of the chimney. Axel moved the square of blanket aside and put it back, folded, on the ledge when they had finished. Eva ended up black to the ears. Wiping the sweat off with her sleeve made it considerably worse.

That afternoon, Eva lit a fire in the open hearth for the first time in forty-one years. Before bringing her the wood, Axel shone his light at the ledge again, though he’d already checked three times. The piece of blanket was still folded in its corner. The smoke rose without meeting anyone on the way.

On Saturday at quarter to eight, they heard Paco’s white car coming from three bends down. It grumbled up the hill and stopped outside the house. All five of them sat still inside for a moment, then the four doors opened almost at once.

Hortensia had organised it over the phone: the parents by train and the sister in her own car as far as the bakery, and from there the five of them in one, because you go to a thing like this in one car, not two. Twelve hours and twenty minutes. Paco never went over eighty.

Paco driving, Axel’s dad in the passenger seat, and in the back his mum, Hortensia and a woman Axel had never seen before.

“Bloody hell!” said his dad, stretching. “My back!”

“Twelve hours,” said Hortensia, holding onto the door. “Twelve hours with this man putting the radio on.”

“The radio’s there to be put on!”

“To be put on, not to be sung along to!”

His mum looked at the house and put a hand on her chest.

“Oh.”

The house was smoking. A grey thread, straight up, on an evening with no wind. And out of the back roof, through a skylight Úrsula had put in saying it was a silly idea, poked the top of the elder tree.

On the door was still the council order. Nobody was touching that till somebody came up to take it down.

“Good God, son,” said his dad, walking up to the front of the house with his head tilted back.

He gave the wall two hard slaps, the kind you give someone on the back.

The stranger stayed beside the car, pale, her hair tied back, wearing a jacket far too good for that street. She was about thirty, and her shoes wouldn’t last two days if she kept walking round there.

Eva came down the three steps and stopped four metres away.

“Hi,” said Irene.

“Hi.”

Silence.

Irene opened her mouth, and Axel, from the balcony, watched her go straight for the first thing you shouldn’t say.

“You’re very thin.”

Eva stood still. Axel shut his eyes.

“And your shoes are hopeless for this street.”

Irene looked at her feet.

And burst out laughing, with a hand over her mouth, half crying.

“I know. I know. The lady told me at kilometre forty.”

“And she didn’t listen,” said Hortensia.

They didn’t hug. They stood four metres apart laughing about the shoes, and then Eva said “come in, go on”, and they went in.

Not Hortensia.

Axel cooked for eleven, because at eight Úrsula came up with a bottle and behind her Sabino, and behind Sabino the lad with the frying pans and his mum.

Ten of them ate at a table for six, the lad sitting on a fruit crate. Queta looked at Irene’s feet before her face, told her her size out loud and got it right.

Hortensia had her dinner downstairs, on the front step, with her plate on her knees, arguing at the top of her voice with Sabino, who was leaning out of the window, about a donkey from fifty-odd years ago.

“That donkey was lame, Sabino!”

“Not lame, woman! Bad in one leg, which is hardly lame at all!”

Eva and her sister spent two and a half hours at one corner of the table, talking quietly.

Axel couldn’t hear what they were saying. Irene cried twice without Eva trying to comfort her. Later, Eva went into the back room and returned five minutes afterwards with her face washed. In the small hours, Irene took something from her handbag.

Axel had just come over with the dessert dish and couldn’t disappear now without being noticed. Irene put a little parcel wrapped in a tissue in front of Eva and drew her hand away.

Eva didn’t touch it.

“You open it.”

“It’s yours.”

“You open it.”

Irene unwrapped it carefully, smoothing the tissue with her fingertips. Inside were the two halves of a bamboo cane, with its six holes burnt through.

Eva sat looking at it on the table. She didn’t pick it up.

“You threw it away.”

“No.”

“I saw you throw it in the bin.”

“And I saw you looking at the bin,” said Irene.

The two of them went quiet. Axel, standing there with the empty dish, didn’t even dare put it down on the table.

“I got it out that night, after you went to sleep. Eight years in a drawer. And I never told you.”

“Why?”

“Because if I told you, you’d have to say thank you again.”

Eva let the air out through her nose.

She reached out. She picked up the two halves, one in each hand, put them together where they’d broken and sat looking at how they fitted.

“It sounded awful, didn’t it?” she said.

“It made a sound?”

“It sounded like a whistle.”

Irene’s whole face crumpled. She burst out laughing with her mouth shut. And Eva didn’t comfort her that time either.

But she stayed.