https://www.badosa.com
Published at Badosa.com
Cover Library Novels Global Fiction
11/79
PreviousTable of contentsNext

The Iberian Horseshoe — A Journey

Part I. North West

On Spanish Radio

Steve Porter
Smaller text sizeDefault text sizeBigger text size Add to my bookshelf epub mobi Permalink Ebook MapOporto, Ponte Dom Luis
Gov­erned by the bells on Vía Norte
heavy with the sick­ness of a mild win­ter
I walk to­wards the silent nights of Christ­mas
where the air rings with child­hood mur­murs
and the thief of Christ­mas past
leaves an­oth­er trail of or­anges in the High­land snow.
Warm your hands by the baby flame
you can re­move this sting of ab­sence
can you hear me now on Span­ish radio
talk­ing Gali­cian in the rain?

Lisa came through to the kitchen, and fed on a hand­ful of dry corn­flakes. She sighed a lot. Big heavy sighs. “How many days left in this hole?” She checked the cal­en­dar. We were mark­ing off the days to Christ­mas. Six work­ing days to go. She lit a cig­a­rette and opened the win­dow, blow­ing smoke into the morn­ing gloom. The beer ad­vert had been re­placed by a su­per­mar­ket ad show­ing roast­ed poul­try and fresh fruit. Below the pic­ture it said Feliz Navi­dad — Happy Christ­mas. Lisa sighed again.

“Spain. I can’t be­lieve I left Mont­pe­lier for this. Look at it.”

De­cem­ber clouds hov­ered above her mind. She took a few more dry corn­flakes and washed them down with a glass of red wine.

“I can’t take much more of this,” she said.

When Lisa came in the next af­ter­noon her hair was di­shev­elled, her eyes were black with smudged make up and she stank of al­co­hol. She had been to see Kane after a night out. She told him about her ill moth­er, and said that she would need to see how things were at home over the hol­i­days.

“I can’t leave with­out a good ref­er­ence,” she said. “I re­al­ly need that for my next job.”

“I wouldn’t both­er hold­ing on for that. He’s not trust­wor­thy. I’ve al­ready told him I won’t be back after Christ­mas. He em­ploys in­ex­pe­ri­enced work­ers and ex­pects them to per­form like sea­soned pro­fes­sion­als right away. If he wants qual­i­fied and ex­pe­ri­enced teach­ers he should pay the going rate. Any­way, I’m not going get into that just now. I have to get off to work.”

“Let me get my books, I’m com­ing with you.”

“Are you sure about that? Maybe you should call in sick, take the night off?”

“No, please wait for me.”

The church bell on Vía Norte struck four fif­teen. We were late. We hur­ried past signs in­di­cat­ing the kilo­me­tres to Madrid and Por­tu­gal. The school stair­way al­ways had enough dis­in­fec­tant to kill a plague of lo­custs. A card­board cutout of a Scots Guard with a rifle kept watch. Lisa salut­ed to him on the way in.

11/79
PreviousTable of contentsNext
Table of related information
Copyright ©Steve Porter, 2004
By the same author RSSThere are no more works at Badosa.com
Date of publicationMay 2006
Collection RSSGlobal Fiction
Permalinkhttps://badosa.com/n250-11
Readers' Opinions RSS
Your opinion
How to add an image to this work

Besides sending your opinion about this work, you can add a photo (or more than one) to this page in three simple steps:

  1. Find a photo related with this text at Flickr and, there, add the following tag: (machine tag)

    To tag photos you must be a member of Flickr (don’t worry, the basic service is free).

    Choose photos taken by yourself or from The Commons. You may need special privileges to tag photos if they are not your own. If the photo wasn’t taken by you and it is not from The Commons, please ask permission to the author or check that the license authorizes this use.

  2. Once tagged, check that the new tag is publicly available (it may take some minutes) clicking the following link till your photo is shown: show photos ...

  3. Once your photo is shown, you can add it to this page:

Even though Badosa.com does not display the identity of the person who added a photo, this action is not anonymous (tags are linked to the user who added them at Flickr). Badosa.com reserves the right to remove inappropriate photos. If you find a photo that does not really illustrate the work or whose license does not allow its use, let us know.

If you added a photo (for example, testing this service) that is not really related with this work, you can remove it deleting the machine tag at Flickr (step 1). Verify that the removal is already public (step 2) and then press the button at step 3 to update this page.

Badosa.com shows 10 photos per work maximum.

Badosa.com Idea, design & development: Xavier Badosa (1995–2018)