The Residents (part 2 of 2)

Part 1: https://www.abctales.com/story/maddan/residents-part-1-2

On the Friday Uncle Harry arrived. This was long expected and my father had spent the day cooking a joint of beef he had, with the help of a phrase-book, acquired from a butcher in the nearby town. Uncle Harry drove up sometime in the early evening, in suit and tie as always despite the heat. I remember very well that he brought us one of those Frisbees shaped like a ring that were very new at the time. I believe he also brought a full case of wine and a necklace for Katie but it was only the Frisbee which excited me.

After everyone had been kissed or had their hands shaken, and he had satisfied himself that we were all having a good holiday and were making full use of the quinta's facilities, and he had remarked how much we had all grown, especially Katie who really had that year, and we had tried out the Frisbee to the wonderment of all, uncle Harry said he'd better have a quick talk with the de Queirozes before he started drinking.

It was still light and they were on their sun loungers, impassive as ever to our commotion. Uncle Harry was later than expected and we had been bathed and dressed, and everything that could be done to prepare the dinner had been, and I have a clear memory of watching him march off across the enormous patio to the corner where the de Queirozes sunbathed while we five stood silently in our corner and waited. He squatted down between them and there was much nodding of his head and talking while they barely seemed to move at all. Eventually he stood stiffly up again and headed back to us.

'He's gone white,' my father said, and was quickly shushed by my mother but there was no mistaking that the spring had left his step.

'Stiff drink I think,' he said once in earshot, and a look of understanding passed between him and my parents.

All this I did pick up on, and not being a child who picked up on a great deal, and being proud of it when I did, I asked uncle Harry why talking to the de Queirozes meant he needed a drink.

'They speak in a very thick accent,' he said, 'and in a very old form of Portuguese, and it's hard work understanding them.'

'Anything we need to know?' my father asked, handing him a gin and tonic, easy on the tonic.

'Oh not at all, no complaints or anything like that, just catching them up about the state of the sale.'

The rest of the evening was a great success, so much so that after Mark and I were finally put to bed, my mother lavishing us with drunkenly sloppy affection as she did so, I quietly got out again and stood by the window to listen the conversation. They were talking, I remember, about the quinta, how much uncle Harry hoped to sell it for, and that it was apparently so old that there had been Roman ruins found when the swimming pool was dug. Romans were a particular interest of mine and my father told uncle Harry he must tell me all about it the following day, which made me swell with a secret pride. I remember too seeing the de Queirozes flit back and forth behind the blinds of their rooms.

The following day uncle Harry took my parents with him while he was showing some homes in the area. I do not know if this was purely for interest's sake or whether he was trying to part them from their money, but I do know it meant Katie looking after Mark and I for most of the day. I doubt our parents could have persuaded her to do this, but for uncle Harry she would agree to most anything. For our part we were ecstatic; we adored Katie with a fiercely possessive passion, and found her significantly more lenient on matters such as how many hours we might play in the pool, and at what volume that play should take place.

After lunch the three of us played a catching game with the new Frisbee, which could be launched downward at speed, causing water to splash up in the catcher's face, or deftly floated above their head so that they had to leap up for it. The disadvantage was that the thing flew so well a misjudged throw would send it far beyond the pool, but Mark or were always be willing to run after it in order to get the next throw. At some point I put too much power into a spin and sent it all the way to the walls of the quinta, beyond where the de Queirozes lay, and Mark, giggling and heedless, dripping water, ran right between them.

There was I think no shouting or cursing or anything like that, but 'Mr de Queiroz,' as we thought of him, shot his arm out and grabbed Mark by the wrist. Mark howled in pain. Katie was nearest and, with a sudden panic that made no sense to me, leapt from the pool and tried to drag Mark away. 

What I saw next I cannot swear to. At the far side of the pool I was probably most of an hundred feet away, and I had that year been prescribed glasses for short sightedness and, of course, was not wearing them, but what I think I saw was this. Katie tried to pull Mark away but Mr de Queiroz held on tight. He sat up and opened his mouth wide, wider than he had any right opening it, slowly and noiselessly his jaw stretched like a snake until his whole head disappeared behind it and there was just a mouth, gaping and black.

Katie screamed and pulled Mr de Queiroz's fingers from Mark's arm one at a time. I was so fixated on that mouth that it was not until she shouted my name that I realised she had run over to me with Mark in her arms. She hoisted me out of the pool and, dragging us both with her, fled into our wing of the quinta and up into her room where she locked the door and we huddled together on the four poster bed, sobbing and gibbering with fright, dripping on the sheets.

I do not think it was actually very long until the adults returned. There was a great commotion when they found us of course. Katie by then had become grimly hysterical and would only say that the we all had to leave and started packing her things. I knew what I thought I had seen was impossible and could not face having my parents disbelieve me so said nothing. They had only Mark's garbled and distraught account to go on.

The de Queirozes, it seemed, had gone from their sun loungers and Mark and I were taken downstairs to the hallway where uncle Harry knocked on the door to the east wing. Katie refused to leave her room.

'If they need to apologise they will,' our father said sternly. 'I'll make them learn the words.'

We clung to our mother, who I think had already understood from Katie's distress that this must have been more than just us being naughty, and we hid behind her as we all waited for the door to be answered.

There was a chittering noise and the door opened. The de Queirozes were even shorter than I had imagined them, their shorts and t-shirts huge on their tiny, leathery brown bodies. Mr de Queiroz's mouth was the size it should have been. For a second, the only second I ever did, I saw them properly before pressing my face into my mother's skirt. I had expected anger, but what I saw was hunger, the most incredible hunger.

Uncle Harry followed them in and we waited, silently watching the door, what seemed like an age for him to return. When he did he was quite pale and all his usual bonhomie had left him.

'You should go,' he said quietly, 'tonight.'

'What did they do?' our father asked.

'The children did not do anything,' he said. 'They're quite blameless, but you should go. Go and start packing and I'll find you a hotel.'

I gather he paid for the hotel rooms, and I gather too he managed to finds us a spot in a resort near the sea for the rest of the week but Katie refused to stay in the country another night and the following day we started the long drive north, my parents driving in shifts so that, if I remember right, we only stopped twice before Calais.

We never really talked about what happened. Katie has always refused to even mention it, and I suspect our parents thought it would be better if Mark and I did not dwell on it, they did not know what I saw because I never told them. We never went back to Portugal, the following summer, as a special treat, they took us to Disney World in Florida. Around that time uncle Harry had a trouble with his leg which prevented him from travelling and so none of us ever saw him again.

At the funeral I met a man who had worked with him and asked about the Quinta Parreira. It took some trouble because I have no Portuguese and his English was suffering the effects of several gin and tonics mixed to uncle Harry's preferred ratio, but eventually he remembered the place.

'No,' he said. 'It is gone. A golf course now.'

'And the old owners,' I asked. 'Do you know who the old owners were?'

Again, it took a couple of goes to make him understand, but when he did his it seemed to sober him up. 'Old family,' he said sternly. 'Very old. Also gone now. Gone from this world. Died out.'