The Drago Tree

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Book excerpt

Jameos del Agua

Not until the lizard flashed its cerulean tongue did she see it camouflaged on the sleeper.

Her words etched into the paper in bold cursive. She heard an affirmative whisper somewhere inside. It was a colossal accomplishment, from blank page to first sentence. She couldn’t imagine coming up with anything better.

She read over her words, rolled her pen between her fingertips, confidence slipping, determination still within her grasp, until that too fell away. When the first sentence flowed she’d had it in mind to write a paragraph, but no phrase that came to mind could compete with the words on her page. Still, her sentence represented an achievement of another sort, without question a turning from the harried life Ann Salter had left behind in Willinton.

With reptilian speed she’d escaped the plumes of his wrath. She’d fled and fled, leaving home, her job, him, the bruises where he hurled his fist at the wall and whacked her arm instead. One understanding and well-connected travel agent, a taxi and a plane, and here she was on the twenty-ninth parallel, recoiling on this island of young volcanoes: Lanzarote, a break-away chip off Morocco straining towards the Mediterranean Sea—a desert of basaltic ash and lava solidified mid-flow, the horizon, whatever the purview, pimpled with volcanoes.

Now she was here, her blood warmed to the thought that she might write a story, tuning in to that most glorious, if at times prosaic, dream. She knew of four colleagues at the Willinton Hydrology Centre at work on their memoirs; most of the women in her mother’s Scrabble club had at one time or another signed up to the writing workshops held each term in the community hall; the lanky boy in the Willinton North corner shop spent all of his spare time crafting little bits of poetry; next-door-but-one the haberdasher’s son was halfway through a creative writing course at the local further education college; and just last week in the same parade of shops the organic greengrocer, an erudite back-to-earther, announced proudly as she weighed a pound of sprouts that her daughter was set to have her first novel published before she’d completed her creative writing degree. Half the world’s population was at it, or so it seemed, baring themselves for therapy, for posterity, for fun. Ann had no idea what was propelling her to join their ranks, other than that her life had suddenly cleaved. She’d dabbled on and off since Grade Three, scraps of ideas, half written vignettes, a single short chapter of what might have been a novel. She had no grand ambition, although she couldn’t deny the thrill that comes with reading one’s work in print.

She clasped her hands together in her lap and read over her sentence. Lizard: she wondered where the word originated. Liz-ard. Out of the depths of the unconscious, in freeform or guided by fate, her imagination, that extraordinary sifter, trawled through how many thousands of nouns and extracted an animal, a reptile, old even when young, low in the evolutionary scheme, simple in design and desire, going about its business—eating insects, laying eggs—a terrific survivor, descendent of the Mesozoic Epoch of the Reptile, Jurassic, Triassic. Noble little lizard sitting on a rock basking in the sun. Humankind came along and, as humans are so wont to do, we imbued the chap with mythic traits and a shovel full of symbolic significance. The literal, Ann mused, corresponding to some quality in us. Every single thing in the universe must somehow pertain to us. Humans are, without equivocation, that self-centred. Even as she dismissed the tendency, she couldn’t resist the comparison. Once the lizard has outgrown her own skin, she sheds it. And in a moment of extreme threat the lizard can divest herself of her tail, leaving it flailing about while the lizard escapes. Had Ann done that too? Left a vestige of herself thrashing back in Willinton? Could she, could anyone, change that much?

She sipped her espresso, barely noticing the cold and bitter liquid passing her lips. She was seated in a subterranean café beside a lake of crystalline water, vast chunks of basalt surrounding her, brown-black when her eye first met the walls, hues of russet and tinges of pink emerging in her gaze. Cool, hard rock now, eerie echoes of elemental forces ever-present as if that moment of cataclysmic creation were forever imprinted in the energy, the very air down here.

Five thousand years had passed since La Corona exploded in a violent gush, all that lava roiling, torrent upon torrent surging forth in a tumbling frenzy. It must have been a ferocious outpouring to create this depth of lava. Like hot toffee cooling, the lava had crusted on the surface, the flow oozing forth beneath. The liquid rock outgassing elongated bubbles in the flow, forming lava tubes—these very caves. Nature is not an engineer; the dramatic dance of air and molten earth carried on without design, and in places like this, where the flow of lava was near the surface and the mass of gas wide, the crust collapsed. Ann wondered how many centuries passed before some rock-scrambling explorer had found this jameo, the entrance to a tangled network of caves. She’d have preferred to see this place before, clambered down the rock face with nothing but a torch and a good sense of direction.

You can’t discover a place that has been tamed to entertain.

Every last detail of these caves not already carved out by the elements had been designed by César Manrique who, the holiday brochures stressed at every turn, had preserved the integrity of all the island’s attractions, luring sightseers with his eye for enhancing the distinct. Lanzarote was a sparsely laid out exhibition of sculpture and sculpted building design. What better place to see what the artist achieved than here in these caves? Ann was not a tourist. Neither was she a volcanologist, bent on witnessing the horror of eruption with a lunatic attachment to near-death experience. Yet she couldn’t help sinking into that sense of awe, sharing with the uniform crowd a deep admiration for the meeting of the natural and the human architect.

She felt pleased she’d made use of the hire car to visit the caves, wrested herself from the solemn reverie that had shuttered her the moment she’d entered her holiday villa.

Coffee in a cave? An odd place to start her composition. Do writers really hone their skills in cafes? The environment wasn’t suiting Ann. The tourists were distracting, like an invasion of irreverent baboons. The couple seated nearby, garbed in white, the kind who led insipid lives on satisfying salaries, sipped orange juice and gave each other lickerish smiles. The regiment of children scampering down the zigzag of stone stairs were all giggles and shouts. Parents ambled behind, pausing every now and then to admire a plant in the garden of cacti, succulents and ferns, with an ‘Oh look, John! Wow! Not like ours at home!’ in pure Essex brass. Southerners, Ann suspected, the lot of them—favouring the island’s stumpy end where the beaches of blond sand were pristine, and the ocean currents less fierce in the lee of that charging bull of a wind. Only those with enough spirit to venture beyond the narrow pleasures of beach, pool and disco came this far north.

Extraordinary, then, that this place should attract so many of them, a mundane fact that Ann felt sure had rendered mute her literary sensibilities. She shouldn’t risk a creative withering at this early stage of genesis. She set down her pen and closed her notebook with its royal blue cover, cringing inwardly at the word ‘notebook’ printed across the midriff.

The tourists filed through the café, on past the lake and up the stone steps to Jameo Grande to admire Manrique’s spectacular swimming pool, and no doubt on again to the concert hall fashioned out of another volcanic tube. Teenagers with iPods and expressions of disdain hovered listlessly. Parents peered into the water like she had the moment she came here, keen to see for themselves the cave-dwelling albino crabs, spotting one every so often with a resounding ‘There’s one!’ Then, with arms outstretched, holding their mobile phones with both hands to line up a shot: Click. Flash. Gotcha! The crabs were blind little creatures but Ann didn’t doubt they knew they were being gawked at.

Despite the clamour, she was in no hurry to leave. It was cooler down here among the ferns and glossy-leafed philodendrons. She felt alone but not lonely, the plants good companions, inhaling the confusion and breathing out peace. She could recognise most of them, save for the tree beside her, a dracaena of some sort, palm-like with a tufty mop of long spiky leaves.

The insipid couple left and no one sat down in their place. A waiter, young and lean, cleared their table with the abstracted air of a worker wishing he were elsewhere. She caught his eye and ordered another espresso.

Sunlight shafted through a hole in the crust above the lake, a sudden brilliance that just as suddenly disappeared. Her sister, Penny, would have read something into that. Ann was not superstitious. She did not believe in portents, the significance of coincidence or the metaphysics of synchronicity. Serendipity is a condition superimposed on chance by the human mind’s absurd craving for meaning and an addiction to mystery. Serendipity, synchronicity, omens, portents—they all put us back to the centre of things. She left the scrying to Penny, a twentieth-century seer since she turned sixteen, her way of coming of age. Their parents still hadn’t decided whether she was clairvoyant or batty. Penny was the reason Ann had any knowledge of mythology. When Ann, who was five years Penny’s junior, had reached eighteen, she carried in some chamber of her psyche the nebulous belief that her power animal was a squirrel. She’d thought she might have an owl, but Penny was adamant she had a squirrel. Born in the Chinese Year of the Rat, another rodent, she knew the location of the planets in her horoscope and her numerological life path number. By that time Penny was heading off to Poona seeking enlightenment under Bhagwan Rajneesh. The family hadn’t seen her since.

Ann reached out and ran her hand down the puckered cork-skin trunk of the curious tree by her table when a man’s voice behind her said in English: ‘It’s a drago tree. Fine specimen too.’

‘So that’s a drago tree,’ she said to herself. She turned and, as if thrust by some invisible hand into the genre of romantic fiction, took in the tall and attractive man standing nearby. She took him in like osmosis, the thick wave of salt-and-pepper hair swept back from the face, the bright and keen eyes, the comely fullness of the lips. Dressed in a black polo shirt tucked into tailored pants, a newspaper in the crook of an arm, he was distinct from all the others tramping through here. Some maverick nerve near her heart fluttered a little pulse, while her mind grappled for supremacy, remonstrating her with the tone of the schoolmistress the imprudence of her reaction. She cautioned herself against involvement with a man, any man, but especially a man surely twenty years her senior, and no doubt married with six kids and a mistress. She was fragile. She’d just walked out on one man. She didn’t need the complications of another. And with an executive swipe of the ruler she managed to restrain the reckless adolescent within, eager to break out after too many years thwarted in the face of him.

A crowd of sightseers, sure to have alighted from a tour bus, filtered into the café, shuffling about in twos and threes, sitting themselves down and occupying all the available tables. ‘Are you …?’ Ann said, looking from the man to the others.

‘Goodness, no!’ He rested his hands on the back of the second chair. ‘May I?’

He didn’t wait for an answer. Obviously he wasn’t the sort of man who felt he needed an answer. Desperate to appear indifferent and undermining that wish, she stood as he sat.

‘You can have the table.’

‘Oh, but you’ll miss the music.’ He looked crestfallen. ‘Please stay. I don’t bite—hard.’ He laughed. It was a self-deprecating laugh, at once off-putting and harmless.

She yielded, this time sitting upright, one leg crossed over the other, hands folded in her lap. ‘Music?’ she said doubtfully, already wishing she’d followed her impulse to leave.

‘A local folk trio. Members of Los Campesinos.’ He pulled a leaflet from his trouser pocket and handed it to her. ‘The Fiesta de San Juan.’

She scanned through the program of events, listed in Spanish and English. There seemed to be something festive happening every day for the next fortnight. Ann was not in the festive mood. ‘I came here for peace and quiet,’ she said, handing back the leaflet with a dry smile.

‘Here?’ he said, looking around.

‘I meant the island.’

‘Oh.’

The waiter came with Ann’s espresso. Her companion ordered the same, his Spanish well-practiced and confident, unlike the stilted mispronunciations of the tourists. He was well spoken in his native tongue too. The English, so easily placed by their accent; she felt a sort of guilty relief that he was at least in enunciation her equal.

He set down his copy of today’s El Pais, nudging the newspaper in line with the edge of the table. She leaned forward, affecting casual interest, tilting her head to one side to read the headlines: ‘Rajoy Secures Eurozone Bailout’; ‘Climate-change Rate Faster than Thought: Rio Summit Expectations Low’; ‘Oro Negro Granted Drilling Go-ahead in Canary Islands Despite Mass Protests’. It was the same news every day, permutations of the various strands of post GFC austerity and climate change. She could see straight away the desperation of the Rajoy government, the hunger for any sort of wealth to fix the economy, no matter where it came from or how environmentally destructive it might be. Yet the irony contained within the three headlines did not escape her notice; responses to the global financial crisis serving to worsen the far larger crisis of climate change, pitting the economy against nature in a potentially catastrophic spiral.

She took a sip of her espresso. Her companion had turned in his seat to watch the folk trio setting up on the other side of a parquetry of dance floor, who were busying about with mike stands, speakers, guitars and a web of leads. The performers, male, were all middle-aged, stocky and uniformly dressed in plain pants, loose shirts and bowler hats. A couple seated out of her companion’s line of sight exchanged furtive whispers before stealing glances in his direction. The trio left the stage area for a drink at the bar. As he turned he noticed the couple and with a look of discomfort, quickly pulled his chair in tight. He glanced at her notebook, which she’d failed to tuck into her shoulder bag, and asked her what she was writing. She received his inquiry like an intrusion and was immediately shy.

‘Nothing.’ Even as she spoke she knew she sounded childish.

‘Nothing? You must be writing something.’ He put his elbows on the table, hands clasped together, holding her gaze with a broad smile. ‘Musings of an intrepid traveller? A confession? A soupçon of poetry perhaps?’

She was in no mood to be teased. It occurred to her she might lie and tell him she was composing a shopping list but she’s an honest sort. ‘A sentence,’ she said flatly.

‘One solitary sentence? Oh dear. Not writer’s block!’

She blushed and looked down at the notebook, suddenly repelled by it, the stupid way it announced itself so blatantly, evidence that its owner was in the habit of writing something, anything. Should have gone with the shopping list.

‘I’m not a writer. I’m a geologist.’

‘A geologist?!’

‘Well, a hydrologist.’

‘Blimey!’ He paused, a pained expression flashing across in his face. ‘Forgive me. I’ve succumbed to a stereotype. You seem —shall I say?—Delicate.’

She bristled. The qualification he felt compelled to provide only served to worsen his initial remark. She’d suffered the reaction many times, and was surprised to hear it from a man as apparently sophisticated as him, although no one before had considered her delicate. She was of average build, a little on the thin side, though strong to her core. She suffered no ailment of any sort; her pallor, after a week of browning, was tanned; and at forty she had yet to succumb to the frailties of age. Her face had barely a wrinkle until she smiled.

Despite her misgivings she felt a frisson of girlish delight at being regarded in this fashion. Until the schoolmistress rapped her ruler once more and she brought herself to attention.

He leaned back in his seat and went on. ‘Odd place for a hydrologist to visit. The island is practically a desert.’ His gaze slid away in the direction of the lake. ‘No rivers. The barrancos are almost always dry. The island drinks the ocean via the Desal plant. But of course …’ he said, returning his gaze to her face. ‘You wanted to get away from all that wet. Yes, yes. That makes sense.’

She struggled to make sense of this man, who seemed to her a touch bizarre. She really ought to have done as she’d said and left, yet in spite of her reservations he was enormously attractive, rendering his pretensions oddly engaging.

‘Frankly, I’ve dried up,’ she said with a sigh.

‘Dried up?’ He emitted a short laugh before noticing she hadn’t followed suit. ‘Oh, you were being serious. It was very witty in the context.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I am a writer. Richard Parry’s the name.’

‘Ann Salter.’ She proffered her hand.

Richard Parry. Should she have heard of him? The curious stares of the couple nearby implied that she might have come across his name. Ignoring a flicker of excitement, she didn’t inquire. She had no idea what sort of writer he was, but already she knew his was a character that could only be played by Dean Martin.

The waiter plonked down Richard’s coffee and hurried away, spurred into a frenzy of activity by a rush of orders. Richard shot a disapproving look in the waiter’s direction, then drew his cup and saucer to the edge of the table. He raised the cup to his lips, giving the contents a quick sniff before taking a sip and replacing the cup in its saucer with a grimace.

‘Are you holidaying with friends?’ he said.

‘I’m renting a villa.’

‘Not a time-share?’

‘No, not a time-share. I doubt they have time shares in Haría.’

‘Haría?’

‘Yes. And you?’

‘I’m in Haría too.’

‘On holiday?’

‘I own a house on the edge of the village.’

His eagerness to converse was puzzling, as if she afforded the promise of much needed company. Tiring of the banter, she drained her cup, put her shoulder bag on the table and slipped the notebook inside. ‘It’s very nice to meet you, Richard Parry.’ She gave him a half-hearted smile and stood.

‘You’re not staying for the music?’

‘It isn’t my scene.’

‘You haven’t heard them yet.’

‘I don’t need to.’

‘I’m not doing very well here.’ He sounded despondent.

‘You’re fine,’ she said, which was all the encouragement he seemed to need.

‘I haven’t seen you in the village.’

‘I haven’t been out much.’

‘No? That’s a shame.’ He was thoughtful for a moment. She was about to walk away when he said, ‘Wait.’ She paused. ‘It’s not often I meet a hydrologist, especially one with a mysterious sentence. There’s a restaurant in the plaza. Care to join me for dinner?’

‘When?’

‘Tonight.’

‘I’ll have to check my diary.’ She hadn’t meant to sound offhand.

‘You’re as prickly as … as that drago tree.’

‘It isn’t all that prickly.’

‘Better than prickly as a cactus.’

‘Avoid clichés like the plague.’

‘Ah, at last, now you’re smiling. See you at seven?’

‘Sure.’