Alentejo Blue by Monica Ali Page B

about World War II and this pilot who’d been shot down over Germany and taken prisoner. He escaped and got back to England but he kept staggering around the streets thinking everyone was an enemy and talking in this crazy way. It was because he never told any secrets, no matter what they did to him. In the end it was all right because they took him to a hospital where the nurses had squeaky shoes and stiff dresses and he looked a bit dazed but his hair was tidy and he smiled at a nurse and then the music swelled up and you could see he was going to get better. Jay started thinking of China like that. He never decided to but it happened anyway.
    He was going to try this thing. It was like a science experiment. He picked up an old newspaper on the back terrace and poked around the garden until he found a piece of glass. Back by the pool he scrunched a few pages and laid two matches on top, head to head. Then he held the glass over the matches, making sure he got a good angle on the sun. The glass heated up all right. Jay switched hands. He moved the glass closer to the match-heads. After a while he moved it further away and over a bit to the right.
    Jay put the glass down. Dud matches. He struck one on the tiles and it flared straight off. He tossed it on the paper and stepped back. The paper decided to fly. It took off on flaming wings and began to drift over the edge of the pool towards the garden. Jay knew he should run after it but the message didn’t get through to his legs. Oh, he thought. And then again, oh.
    The paper went nearly the length of the pool then did a kind of backward somersault and chose the water for a soft landing. Two black strings of soot hung in the air like exclamation marks. It was time, Jay decided, to leave.
    He wasn’t going to look for Ruby though. In fact he wasn’t going to speak to Ruby any more, not until she started being nicer to him. And he wasn’t going to tell her that either. She’d have to work it out for herself.
    He needed something to drink. ‘I’ve got a thirst on,’ Dad would say. That meant he was going to drink a lot of beer.
    It was supposed to be different here. That was why they had come. ‘You can play outside, can’t you,’ Chrissie kept saying. ‘All that space. Go on.’
    ‘Am I Portuguese now?’ Jay asked once.
    Chrissie didn’t look sure. ‘Suppose so.’
    ‘Don’t be bleeding soft,’ said China. ‘Course you’re bleeding not.’
    A car passed, hooting and swerving, though there was no need. A moped came from the other direction and the man nodded to Jay, who tried to get the bike on its back wheel as a kind of salute. He managed it in the end but the man and moped were gone by then.
    Jay decided to go to Senhora Pinheiro’s. Senhora Pinheiro’s garden came down to the street with a wall only thirty centimetres high to mark it off. She had the best fruit trees in Mamarrosa, especially the peaches. Most of the peach trees in Mamarrosa were sick. If you bit into the fruit it was always rotten in the middle. But Senhora Pinheiro’s peaches were like Our Lady: beautiful on the outside, sweet perfection inside.
    Pedro said that if Senhora Pinheiro caught a child stealing her peaches she beat it with a brass poker and threw it in the nettles. He said that once, a long time ago, she beat a boy so hard his brains got shaken up and after that he couldn’t speak Portuguese, only Spanish because that’s how dumb he was. Jay knew this was a joke but the first time Senhora Pinheiro caught him stealing he was so scared he peed – just a bit – in his pants. ‘I don’t like dirty little boys in my garden,’ she said. ‘Come with me.’ Jay wouldn’t so she dragged him along by the arm and left him outside her front door. She came back with a damp rag and attacked his face and neck and made him wipe his hands. ‘Now sit there.’ She pointed to a stool. Jay thought she was going to fetch the poker but he did what he was told. She was a very