Andalucia. Richard W Hardwick
we filled our buckets they had to be emptied into large crates which were moved by tractor to ensure they were always in front of us. The picking was hard work and by seven in the morning the sun started to burn. But it was soothing too, once you got used to the boss barking instructions, as it took so little concentration, allowed your thoughts to wander. I worked with Rob down one line of trees while Anna and Helen had the next. Amit followed, checked trees, shouted we’d missed apples. Then he went and checked crates and shouted we’d put apples in that were too small. It was not a joke he said. The future of kibbutzim depended upon agriculture. The fruit went all over Israel, some of it abroad too. It was the kibbutz’s main source of income. They couldn’t survive without it. At eight we were back in the cabin eating omelette and salad for breakfast, speaking quietly as Israelis shouted across the table in Hebrew. Then we were given water bottles and sent back to work. I wandered along with Rob, climbed trees, chatted, found comfort in the combination of activity and silence. Whenever the opportunity arose though, my gaze drifted backwards to the two English girls smiling and chatting their way through the line of trees next to us. Faster they went, driven by childish competition that didn’t want boys to finish in front of them. I smiled and pointed, told them they’d missed some, would be in trouble. We stopped for cigarette breaks when the boss wasn’t around, sat crossed legged on the earth. That’s when I first became aware of Anna and myself staring into each other’s eyes, losing ourselves in a whirl of iris, in wonder and admiration. But there were times when we couldn’t look each other in the eye, when we had to look away, had to look anywhere but the eyes. I knew during those early days which way my hopes were turning. But there was one significant stumbling block. Anna was returning to England in December to study to be a nurse. Helen, like me, had no timescales to adhere to.
•
We’re on a wild manure hunt armed with wellies, spades and empty bags. After an hour we find some by the side of the road, a large pungent heap beautifully ready. We decide we should ask at the farm but the gate’s padlocked so we just help ourselves instead, all of us getting stuck in. As I dig out the better manure from the bottom of the pile, the top caves in and a little field mouse jumps comically for its life and scampers away. We fill eight bags and put them in the boot, then go home for dinner. Then we go to the school field for bike practice, assault course and family football. Nobody talks about cancer, about life or death. We simply live for the moment. And it’s a beautiful day, a perfect Sunday.
It’s last thing at night before bedtime. She’s in the shower when she notices this one as well. She doesn’t shout me upstairs, just waits until I walk into the bathroom, says it matter of fact. Points to her other breast.
“I’ve got another lump”
I move forwards, press my finger into her breast and squash it, just above the nipple. It’s there alright. It doesn’t feel much, just a tiny firm lump the size of a pea, a little smaller than the one on the other breast but similar in all other ways. It moves when I press it, like it’s trying to evade me singling it out, slip back to being unnoticed until it can spread its vile malignance further. Anna stands there in some kind of daze, water dripping from her naked body.
“It might not be cancer,” I say. “You’ll probably think it is just because of the last one, but it might not be”
She doesn’t look at me.
“It feels like the last one,” she says.
“Yeah I know, but the last one felt like a cyst according to the doctor so that’s no definite sign”
She smiles. One of those flat ones
“And even if it is, then it’s probably better to find it now anyway. Better that than wait two years down the line and think you’re in the clear”
Her face does nothing so I continue mumbling whatever comes into my head.
“They can probably just deal with everything in one go as well”
And then she looks up at me, scared puppy dog eyes.
“But can they operate on both at the same time?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I don’t know”
And I reach out to her naked body and pull her in close.
I’m going for lunch with Kathleen, a colleague and friend who’s been through it all herself fourteen years ago. She takes my hand, tells me everything will be alright, looks at me with eyes that understand. I telephone Anna who starts crying on the phone. The hospital doesn’t have any appointments until Thursday and that’s with a nurse, not a doctor, so she can’t be examined. She’s waiting for our GP to phone back, needs to speak to someone today. Needs someone to tell her that there really is a lump in her other breast. That she’s not imagining it.
“There is,” I say. “I felt it”
“I know,” she says. “But I need to see someone today. I need to speak to someone”
“I’ll cancel my class this afternoon, come back home”
“No, don’t worry”
“It’s not a problem. Everyone’s really understanding here”
“Honestly. It’s okay. Helen’s coming round in her lunch break. I’ll be fine, really I will”
So I put the phone down because she’s waiting for the doctor to ring. And Kathleen smiles gently, tells me everything will be alright.
We go for a walk across the cliffs, just the two of us and Caffrey. We walk right along the edge, look down at waves and rocks, curlews and gulls. Remember the time we saw what looked like the body of a shark washed up. When we first moved here I used to cycle along these cliffs to sign on in Whitley Bay, then sit down on an overhanging rock and write, wait for Anna coming back from work. It’s the first time she’s been here for years. It’s not the place to take young children, right on the edge, and it’s me who does the early morning and late night dog walking. We hold hands all the way, reminisce further; how we used to clamber over rocks together, take hours because we had no responsibilities, no time constraints. We look for the giant hole where we joked King Rabbit must have lived. Remember how we used to see men with guns and dogs out hunting. Hawks perched on shoulders. You don’t see hunters out here anymore. Disease has wiped most of the rabbits out.
•
The Golani came round most nights after a week or two; names like Hagai, Itsic, Moses, Uzi, Yossi and Hanan. It was a mutual fascination between us and them, outsiders together but a world apart in every other sense. Hesitant at first, they dropped by in groups of two or three. They asked about England, about London, hoped they would be able to travel themselves when they left the army. The older Golani said little about their military experience, found mutual interests and pressed these instead. Did we like The Doors? Velvet Underground? The Beatles and the Stones? Simon and Garfunkel? We made a fire, played chess, drank cheap Russian vodka from Tiberius. I played my tapes: Primal Scream, Van Morrison, KLF, Neil Young. A passing German called Holgar told of a place on the edge of the Egyptian Sinai Desert called Dahab. Said people of all nationalities went there to smoke cannabis, take opium, listen to Hendrix and Marley, scuba dive and chill by the sea. I added it to my agenda, straight in at the top of the list. He told us about Jerusalem, said we had to visit, but that two German girls were murdered there a few days before for being western. It happened in the Arab quarter where he told us to go to a cafe and ask for water pipe and hash. In the meantime, I climbed down rocks from Piq, found a fresh spring, picked fruit from the pomegranate tree, brought them back for Anna who was feeling off colour. Then one night, fed up with not being able to buy beer and sometimes cigarettes at the shop because kibbutz residents and soldiers were allowed in before volunteers, we set off at half past ten to walk to Bnei Yehuda, a settlement with a shop and pub more than a mile away. Three English and one Scot, walking through the Golan Heights in the pitch black, shuddering at the howling of wolves. Motivated by alcohol rather than adventure. On the way back, we laid down flat on the road. Looked up at a sky full to bursting with stars, pin pricks in heaven. Watched meteors enter the earth’s atmosphere, streak above us, leave behind shining trails of gas. Then,