Nichols - The rocks

H er guests had always marveled at how young she looked.

Lulu, dont be ridiculous, darlingyou cant be eighty?

In her ninth decade, Lulu Davenport still had the slim, supple body of a much younger woman. Her thick, straight hair, which she still kept long, usually braided or coiled into a loose bun with fetching whorls escaping at the nape of her neck, had gone completely white in her thirties and had always seemed part of her abundant natural gifts. Lulu had never been concerned with health or beauty. These were accidents of nature and one had simply been lucky. She walked everywhere, she gardened, and she ran Villa Los Roquesthe Rocks, as everyone called her little seaside hotel at the eastern end of the island of Mallorcaand charmed her guests as she had for more than fifty years. That had kept her vigorous and happy, until one December afternoon when she was found sprawled in the Mediterranean sun among her yellow rosebushes by Vicente the handyman.

She looked no different after her stroke. She soon recovered her marvelous strength. In almost all respects, she appeared unchanged. But with the sudden tiny dam-burst of blood a tumbler had turned in Lulus brain, and she began to swear. Her new vocabulary was Lawrentian: fuck, cunt, shit, piss. She talked of the same things as always, with appropriate logic and context, but with her arresting new expressions filling and punctuating her speech. At first, her friends were hugely amused to sit and chat with someone they knew so well who spoke in a new, rather cinematic language. Yet after a while it was strangely alienatingit was, after all, a neurological disorder. Was this still really Lulu?

The other change was to her schedule. Its former rigidity easednothing extreme, no getting up in the middle of the night to trim the roses or take a walkbut after her stroke it was erratic. She set off to the market with her straw bag over her shoulder as ever, but at random hours. In this way she encountered her first husband, Gerald Rutledge, one afternoon late in March. They had both remained in the small town of Cala Marsopa after their divorce in 1949, yet by evolving antipodal routines they had managed to avoid each other almost entirely for half a century.

Though they were the same age, Gerald had not been as blessed by nature. Hed been a smoker all his life and now had emphysema. Hed suffered from arthritis for years. His hips needed replacing but he had a horror of hospitals and had resisted such a dramatic procedure. He walked slowly with a stick.

He was stooped, puffing a Ducados, gripping a small four-pack of yogurt in a tremulous hand when they ran into each other at the local comestibles. His brown legs and arms were wrinkled and emaciated in his baggy khaki shorts and short-sleeved pale blue shirt, cheap polyester garments bought at the HiperSol in Manacor. There were scabs of sun cancer on his scalp beneath the thin, lank gray hair.

God, Gerald, you look fucking grim, said Lulu. Why are you here anyway, you cunt?

Geralds mouth opened to form an answer, but his mind skittered off into confusion. Its tracking mechanism, unsteady these days anyway, was thrown further off balance by the coarseness of Lulus greeting. His memories of heralmost all of them stemming from the few happy weeks of their marriage almost sixty years beforecould not reconcile such stark filth and venom. As his jaw moved, trying to form words, his eyes sought and found the small white scar, still visible, on her chin.

Lulus eye was caught by a heap of splendid blue-black aubergines. She began to move away and Geralds hand shot out and grasped her upper arm.

She turned toward him again. Piss off, you wretched shit. Lulu pulled her arm free. She walked away, toward the aubergines, pleased at the opportunity to cut Gerald, and at how decrepit he looked. Shed been mortified by her stroke; it wasnt like her. And while adjusting to the unsettling intimations of mortality, it had occurred to her that Gerald might outlast her. She wanted him to die first, with urgency now.

She picked up an aubergine, rubbing her thumb across its firm squeaky skin. She finished her shopping with brisk efficiency and was soon outside.

Gerald stared after her. Some moments later, he became aware of a sensation in his hand. He looked down and saw that he had squeezed the yogurt containers too hard. Creamy curds of frutas del bosque were dripping from his trembling fingers.