The Company of Strangers. Robert Thomas Wilson
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disappear. Andrea’s dark face in the white sunglasses stood out and the customs officer selected her with two beckoning fingers and a cigarette trailing smoke.
He watched her with dark, long-lashed eyes as she opened her case, his lips invisible under a heavy moustache. Other passengers passed through with cursory glances over their luggage. The customs officer dismantled her packing, shook out her underwear, leafed through her books. He lit another cigarette, felt around the lining of the case, glancing up at her so that she stared off around the empty hall, bored. His eyes were rarely on the job but more frequently on her hips, or drilling into her bust. She twitched a nervous smile at him. His smile back showed black and brown rotten teeth, lichen-fringed. She flinched. His sad eyes hardened and he left the counter. She repacked the case.
The one man in the arrivals hall left no doubt as to his nationality. Blond hair combed back in straight rails, faint pencil moustache crayoned in, tweed jacket even in this heat, school tie. All that was missing was a lanyard with a pea whistle attached for bringing boys up short of the line.
‘Wallis,’ he said. ‘Jim.’
‘Ashworth,’ she replied. ‘Anne.’
‘Good show,’ he said, taking her case. ‘You were a long time in there.’
‘I was being shown some local colour.’
‘I see,’ he said, not sure what she meant, but still keen whatever. ‘I’m running you out to Cardew’s house in Carcavelos. They did tell you, didn’t they?’
‘You sound as if they might not have done.’
‘Communication’s abysmal in this outfit,’ he said.
He threw her case into the boot of a black Citroën and got in behind the wheel. He offered her a cigarette.
‘Três Vintes, they’re called. Not bad. Not a patch on Woodies though.’
They lit up and Wallis drove at high speed straight into the heart of Lisbon, which at this hour and in the heat was silent. He hung an elbow out of the window, sneaked a look at her legs.
‘First time abroad?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘What do you think?’
‘I thought it would be…older.’
‘This is all the new building here. Salazar, he’s the chap in charge, he made so much money out of us…and Jerry – you know, what with the wolfram, sardines and the like – he’s building a new city, new motorways, a stadium, all this residential stuff – bairros, they call them here – all brand new. There’s even talk of stringing a bridge across the Tagus. You’ll see, though…when we get into the centre. You’ll see.’
The Citroën’s tyres squealed around a mule-drawn cart with eight people in it. The wooden wheels rattled over the cobbles. Dogs attached to the axle with string trotted in the shade, tongues lolling in the heat. The broad, dark faces of the women stared down without seeing.
‘We’ll take the scenic route,’ said Wallis. ‘The hills of Lisbon.’
Anne, as she now thought of herself permanently, leaned into him as they rounded the Praça de Saldanha, their faces suddenly close together, his with more than professional interest in them, giving her some girlish satisfaction. They shot down the hill into Estefânia, rounded the fountain and crossed high above another street on to Avenida Almirante Reis. Wallis built up speed down the long straight avenue. Overhead cables appeared, the tyres stuttered over the tramlines embedded in the cobbles. The ramparts of the Castelo São Jorge high above them were vague in the heat haze, the dark stone pines crowding a shoulder. They came into an area which looked as if it had suffered recent bomb damage and even the buildings still standing looked decrepit and crumbling, with grasses growing out of the walls and roofs, and the plaster façades scabbed and blistered.
‘This is the Mouraria, which they’re demolishing, cleaning the area up a bit. On the other side of the hill is the Alfama, best place to live in Lisbon when the Moors were here but they moved out in the Middle Ages. Scared of earthquakes. And, you know, that quarter was one of the few places that survived the big one in 1755. I tell you, it’s like a medina in there, not too sanitary – and I should know, I was in Casablanca until last year.’
‘What were you doing there?’
‘Cooking things up in the kasbah.’
They came into a square whose centre was dominated by a massive wrought-iron covered market. Police, mounted and on foot, patrolled the area. The road was scattered with cobblestones torn up and thrown from the now pockmarked pavements. A Manteigaria on the corner had been half destroyed, no glass left in any of the doors and windows, and two women inside, sweeping up debris. The shop’s awning was ripped but still showed the words carnes fumadas.
‘Praça da Figueira. There was a riot here this morning. The Manteigaria was selling chouriços filled with sawdust. The rationing’s bad enough without that, what with Salazar selling everything to Jerry. The locals got angry. The communists sent in a few provocateurs, the Guarda showed up on horseback. Heads got broken. There’s two wars going on here in Lisbon. Us versus Jerry and the Estado Novo versus the Communists.’
‘Estado Novo?’
‘Salazar’s New State. The régime. Not much different to the bastards we’re fighting. Secret police – Gestapo trained – called the PVDE. The city’s infested with bufos – informers. The prisons…well, you don’t want to go to a Portuguese prison. They even used to have a concentration camp out on the Cape Verde Islands. Tarrefal. The frigideira, they called it…the frying pan. This is the Baixa, the business end of town. Completely rebuilt by the Marquês de Pombal after the earthquake. He was another hard man. The Portuguese seem to need them every few hundred years.’
‘Need what?’
‘Bastards.’
They rounded a square with a high column in the centre and went up a slip road off the corner. Wallis accelerated up the steep hill. A metal walkway crossed the street high above the buildings, connected to a lift.
‘Elevador do Carmo, built by Raoul Mesnier. Gets you from the Baixa to the Chiado without breaking a sweat.’
They turned right, first gear up the hill. The difference of it all pouring into Anne. More policemen in khaki, guns in leather holsters. Peaked box caps. Shops with black glass and gold lettering. Jerónimo Martims’ Chá e café. Chocolates. Broad pavements with black and white geometric patterns. Another turn. Another steep hill. Past a tram, groaning and screeching downhill. Dark impassive faces at the windows. Wallis pointed across her. The Baixa opened out below in squares of red-tiled roof. The castle still hazy, but now at the same level as them across the valley.
‘Best view in Lisbon,’ said Wallis. ‘I’ll show you the embassy then I’ll take you out to the seaside.’
They drove around Largo do Rato and the Jardim da Estrela and turned left in front of a massive twin-towered, domed cathedral.
‘Basílica da Estrela,’ said Wallis. ‘Built by Maria I at the end of the eighteenth century. She said she’d build a cathedral if she gave birth to a son, which she did. They started building it and the boy died two years before it was completed. Smallpox. Poor lad. But that’s Lisbon for you.’
‘That’s Lisbon?’
‘A sad place…suits those of melancholic disposition. Are you?’
‘Melancholic? No. And you…Mr Wallis?’
‘Jim. Call me Jim.’
‘You don’t seem to be that way inclined, Jim.’
‘Me? No. No time for it. What’s there to be sad about? It’s only war. Let’s go and see the enemy.’
He cut round the back of the basilica, up a short incline