Something Sweet

“You’re the ones in Hortensia’s house.”

They’d been in the village twenty-two hours.

“Yes.”

“I know.”

This was down below, next to the fountain, in a place that was shop, bar, tobacconist and where parcels got left. The sign said ALIMENTACIÓN TRINI. Trini was about sixty, with her glasses hanging on a chain and a way of looking at you that made you feel she already knew what you’d come in for.

She put two coffees in front of them without them asking. And as they picked things up, she told them what they needed before they’d thought of it.

“Not candles, you’re sleeping on dry bracken up there and you’ll burn yourselves alive. Take head torches, I’ve got two.”

“Okay.”

“And a broom. You won’t get anywhere without a broom.”

“Okay.”

“And gloves, love, the brambles up there are bloody vicious.”

Eva took gloves.

“And I already know about the order on the door, so don’t go telling me.” She put some tomatoes in a bag without looking at them. “The whole village knows. And the boarded-up lot knew first.”

“Who are the boarded-up lot?”

“Some people from outside. They’ve spent two years buying dead folks’ houses off the nephews. They pay little and smile a lot.” She did a sum on a bit of brown paper. “The one they haven’t got is Hortensia’s, the one with the bread oven. And the water.”

“What water?”

“From the spring up top, it comes down through her vegetable patch. Without that they’ve got no spa, son. They’ve got a bathtub.” She folded the paper. “Every now and then one of them comes up with a folder to measure it.”

“Measure it for what?”

“So they know what’ll fit.”

While she was ringing it up, tapping away at the till, Axel came out with the other thing. He’d been rehearsing it since the fountain and it came out terribly.

“Excuse me. One thing. In the house… we get the feeling there’s something.”

Trini didn’t even stop at the till.

“Rats?”

“No.”

“Pine marten?”

“Pine marten as well, I think. But no.”

And he stopped, because he didn’t know how to carry on without it sounding like what it sounded like.

Trini waited two seconds. Then she looked back down at the receipt.

“Well, put out something sweet for them and that’s that.”

Axel was left with his wallet open in his hand.

“Sorry?”

“Put something sweet out for them. A bit of sugar on a plate, or honey.” She tore off the receipt. “And don’t sweep towards the bottom of the stairs, they don’t like that.”

“Sorry, don’t sweep towards where?”

“Towards the stairs.” She looked at him like he was a foreigner. “Sweep the other way.”

“And what if I sweep that way?”

Trini, for the first and only time in the whole conversation, lifted her head and looked him in the eye.

“Well, don’t sweep that way.”

And went back to the till.

“Twelve forty.”

They went out. Axel sat down on the edge of the fountain. Eva sat down next to him.

“You all right?”

“That gave me the willies, that did.” He looked at the ground. “I’ve had this my whole life. And that woman tells me to sweep the other way like she’s telling me where the bins are.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And she didn’t even look up, Eva. Didn’t even look up.”

“Once she did,” said Eva. “To tell you not to sweep that way.”

And she got up to fill the bottles.

Over the next four days it happened to him three more times.

A man loading firewood told him, when Axel asked him about a wall in the hayloft, not to touch that bit, “one of them sleeps in there”.

A woman saw him going up with the wheelbarrow and told him that if he was going to move the rubble heap, he should say so out loud first.

“Say so to who?”

“You just say so, love. Costs nothing.”

And in the shop, a lad of about thirty having a coffee told Trini, out of nowhere, that a frying pan had fallen off its hook again and that made three.

“Well, hang something else on it,” said Trini.

“Yeah.”

They talked about them the way you talk about damp.

On the fourth day Axel went back down to the shop and asked Trini a different way.

“Trini. People round here, when a house has been shut up a long time, what do they say’s inside?”

Trini was stacking tins and didn’t stop.

“Damp.”

“Apart from damp.”

“Rats.”

“Apart from rats.”

That’s when she turned round, with a tin of tomatoes in each hand, and looked at him over her glasses.

“Son. Did you come here to do up a house or to ask questions?”

“To do up a house.”

“Then do it up.”

And she carried on with the tins.

That night, in the byre, lying on the bracken with the head torch hanging on a nail, Axel was completely thrown.

“It’s worse,” he said.

“What is?”

“This. In the city I used to see things and nobody else saw them, and it was me. Bad, but clear.” He propped himself up on one elbow. “Here everybody talks about them and nobody sees them. They say it the way my gran used to kiss the bread when she dropped it, before she threw it away.”

He dropped back down.

“So what, then? What I’m seeing here is a saying?”

Eva took a while to answer.

“And which would you rather?”

“Sorry?”

“That it’s true or that it’s a saying.”

Axel opened his mouth and nothing came out.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, there you go.”

“And which would you rather?”

Eva lay looking at the ceiling.

“I’d put the sugar out either way.”

“That’s not an answer, girl.”

“Then I’m not answering.”

And she fell asleep. Sometimes Axel loved it when she did that and sometimes he wanted to throw a boot at her.

The next day, when Eva went down for water, Axel put a plate on the hearth ledge with two spoonfuls of sugar on it.

He felt absolutely ridiculous.

When he turned round, Fay was sitting in the doorway watching him, with the calm of a civil servant who’s seen the same form come through a thousand times.

“Don’t you say anything.”

Fay yawned.

In the afternoon the sugar was still there. At night too.

The next morning the plate was empty and clean. And there was a line of ants going up the wall from a crack.

Axel stood looking at the ants.

Then he put out more sugar.