The Spanish Gardener

by A. J. Cronin

  It amused him mildly to observe how she responded to this attention, filling and passing the teacups with awkward shyness. And again, in the desire to demonstrate his own powers, he began to talk in his most captivating manner. He was, when he chose, an interesting conversationalist, and now he exerted himself, drawing freely upon the lighter side of his experience, exhibiting himself in the role of learned gentleman and benevolent counsellor, relating little anecdotes, painting a picture of his life in Europe which was perhaps more glamorous than accurate.

  “Oh, how wonderful!” Alvin sighed as the Consul concluded an account of the coronation of King Albert which he had witnessed in the Cathedral at Brussels during his sojourn in Belgium. “We’d have given anything to be present at such a colourful ceremony. Wouldn’t we, Carol?”

  “Yes,” she agreed warmly, with downcast eyes.

  “Your chance will come,” Brande suggested helpfully.

  “Oh, we hope so! Don’t we, honey?”

  She did not answer, but directed towards her husband a glance of such intimate tenderness that the Consul, who could never see a happy marriage without thinking of the failure of his own, felt a sudden stab of pain. They had only been married eighteen months, of course, yet they were obviously deeply attached to one another. Why was it that this nervous nonentity, who stammered when anyone spoke sharply to him and was often ridiculously adolescent in his behaviour, could command such wifely affection while he, superior in every way, had failed so utterly to hold the one woman he had ever loved?

  With a cynicism he scarcely would have suspected in himself, he turned to Mrs. Burton.

  “It hadn’t struck me before,” he said, in his blandest voice, “ but San Jorge must be rather a dull place for a woman.”

  A swift surprise showed in her grey, shortsighted eyes.

  “Oh no … not at all, sir.”

  That she should call him ‘ sir’ made him feel old, caused him another pang.

  “She has the apartment to look after,” Burton said fondly. “And I must say she’s made it real homey.”

  “Homey,” the Consul echoed in an indescribable tone.

  “Yes, sir. As I told you, it’s small, but it’s very snug.”

  “Still, I should imagine a young couple wouldn’t find much social life here,” persisted the Consul, “cramped in the back street of a dingy little Spanish town.”

  For the first time Carol Burton looked at him directly. Was it possible, he asked himself, that despite the amiable blankness of his expression she surmised the deeper intention of his remark? She answered quickly:

  “We have lots of friends, sir, I assure you. They aren’t very grand, but they’re nice.… the baker and the grocer, the old priest, Father Limaza, the cigarette-maker downstairs. We go sailing often in the bay with Miguel, the Alcade’s son. In the evenings we sometimes drop in at the Teatro—these old Spanish movies are tremendous fun—and afterwards we have supper at the Chantaco. You ought to taste the iced beer there; it’s first-rate. Then we’ve started a little club for the local boys and girls. We have ping-pong and ninepins. I give them ice-cream and Alvin even tries to teach them baseball.” Her colour had risen. She went on earnestly, a little unguardedly; “We’d be so glad to see Nicholas there. He’d enjoy the other, children … especially if he feels lonely out here.”

  After that there was a pause. The Consul’s expression had turned stiff. Send Nicholas amongst these common brats, indeed! Only the sacred obligations of hospitality held back a sharp expression of his indignation. Yet everything, thought Alvin ingenuously, had passed off extremely well. For a little while he devoted himself, with Carol, to Nicholas, then, with a deferential air, he glanced at his watch.

  “We must not keep you too long, sir. It’s really time we were going.”

  They were about to rise when steps sounded on the cobbled yard and Nicholas, who had for some time been searching the garden with expectant glances, suddenly lost that air of preoccupation which he had worn for most of the afternoon.

  “Look!” he exclaimed, eagerly. “There he is! I believe he’s got some after all.” And before his father could prevent him, he beckoned excitedly and called out in a shrill voice: “José! José! Come over here.”

  There was an amazed silence. The Consul drew himself up with a heavy frown.

  “What do you mean, Nicholas? Be quiet at once,” he commanded harshly. But he was too late.

  From the shelter of the stableyard where he was hovering, in a state of indecision, José started forward, modestly, yet with a smile of triumph, towards the group. He wore his Sunday clothes, his Catalan hat flat upon his ears, and he carried in his hand a bundle wrapped in green osiers.

  Unbelievingly, his eyes fixed, lips tightly compressed, Brande stared at the advancing youth who had materialised, so unexpectedly, at the summons of his son. Why was he here, on Sunday, at this hour? A strange chill fell upon him. And as if that were not enough, there was Nicholas, jumping in his seat and shouting rudely before their guests:

  “Hurrah! Well done, José.”

  “Will you be quiet?” Brande said again in a low, intense tone.

  José had now reached the arbour and with a little bow, like some rustic matador, he removed his absurd hat and thrust it beneath his left arm. He had smiled first to Nicholas, but now his eyes, intent and serious, were bent propitiatingly upon the Consul.

  “Señor,” he began, “ please to pardon me for disturbing you. I bring you a small gift. The flowers were not mine, and I did wrong to pick them, for which I am sorry. But these are mine, señor, and I beg you to accept them.”

  Opening the bundle of osiers, he displayed, not without pride, two fine trout, plump and pinkly speckled, lying side by side on some sprigs of wild mint.

  Rigid and motionless, the Consul made no response, but Nicholas, leaning forward in ardent interest, broke out with increased animation.

  “What beauties, José. And such big ones. Did you get them in the mill-pool or in the fast water above? Tell me, quick.”

  As though conscious, for the first time, of all their eyes upon him, José coloured slightly and moved his heavy boots, which were bronzed with yellow dust, creased by darker lines of sweat.

  “In the fast water,” he answered, smiling again at Nicholas, then went on, as though explaining, to the others. “It is a stream I go to, the Arengo, far back in the mountains. High up and crystal clear—oh, most beautiful, I assure you. But the trout are difficult. All morning I thought I should catch nothing. Then just before leaving I got these, each one more than a kilo.” His warm gaze came to rest upon the Consul, he wiped the perspiration from his upper lip. “ They are completely fresh, señor. I trust you will enjoy them.”

  Harrington Brande, sat with his hands resting on the table, perfectly still, like a statue, perhaps the statue of a great man, upon a pediment in the public square. His face wore a marbled hardness too, but beneath, his pulse was pounding in his temples and all his blood seemed turned into gall.

  “I am sorry,” he said, at last, in a forced voice. “ I never eat trout. And they are too rich for my son.”

  “But these are white trout, señor … the real mountain trucha …” José faltered. “ Very fine and delicate …”

  “Thank you, no,” said the Consul, and directed his gaze with icy courtesy towards his guests. “It might be that you would care to have them?”

  “Oh, not at all,” Alvin Burton responded, hurriedly, in an uncomfortable voice.

  “Then take them to the kitchen.” The Consul returned his frozen eyes to José’s dusky face. In spite of himself, he could not keep a sneer from his lips nor a faint tremor from his voice. “ The servants may be able to use them.”

  “Oh, no, Father,” Nicholas cried, in deep dismay. “ José wants us to have them.”

  “You are on a diet. You cannot have them.”

  Tears started at the back of the little boy’s eyes.

  “But, Father …”

  “Enou
gh.” The Consul’s tone bit like acid. “You may leave us now, my man.”

  There was a short pause. José drew himself up as though fighting a sudden fatigue. His breast heaved painfully as he made the effort to speak, yet his words, though they came haltingly, had a strange and simple dignity:

  “I am sorry to have displeased you, señor. I rose this morning while it was still dark and walked twelve kilometres to catch these fish for you.” His orange complexion had taken on a mottled pallor and in his dark eyes there burned a sultry spark. “I should have known that they were not fine enough for you. Perhaps, therefore, you will permit me to take them home. We are very poor, señor, with many mouths to feed, and these fish would make a good meal for us.”

  He closed the green bundle and with a stiff little bow turned away. Nicholas, with a hot pain in his side, clenched his fists tightly.

  “Never mind, José,” he called out, loud and uncaring. “ Eat them for your supper. And see that old Pedro has a bit.”

  Then, as José’s figure disappeared, he rose to his feet, begged in a half-articulated voice to be excused, and dashed off to his room.

  Only the Consul’s pride helped him to command the situation. Despite the welter of emotion in his breast he turned calmly, with a humorous shrug, to his guests.

  “Children, nowadays, are unpredictable.” He smiled amusedly.

  “With Nicholas, the more stupid a servant, the more he offers him his sympathy.”

  Continuing, with well-chosen phrases, he soon had them laughing at a story of another blundering servant he had once endured, an excitable Neapolitan who had been a ship’s cook and whose foible it had been to keep a parrot in the pantry. His manner, as he rose to see them to the car, showed nothing of the chaos of sensations which whirled and writhed within him.

  When they had driven off he stood, with compressed brows, staring unseeingly at the blue mountains, watered by the crystal Arengo, soaring to the vault of heaven, wrapped in their eternal haze.

  Chapter Seven

  Next morning brande came down early to breakfast. He had feared that he might have a bad night, but, strangely, had slept heavily. Garcia brought coffee and fruit appetisingly arranged in a round silver dish, then stood to serve him, silent and impassive, in the background. And now, considering the man’s reserve, his dark and distant manner, reflecting indeed upon the whole pattern of his service with ‘superior’ families, wherein no doubt many secrets had come his way, only to be sealed behind these impenetrable lips, the Consul decided to confide in him.

  “Garcia,” he said, “I wish to ask you something.”

  The butler stepped forward without speaking, impersonal and inscrutable.

  “It concerns José, the new gardener.” Brande made pretence of stirring his coffee. “ Have you seen him conversing, at any time, with my son?”

  There was a pause. No shadow of a smile appeared on Garcia’s unruffled features, not a muscle of his pale face moved.

  “At any time, Señor Brande? At all times would be the proper answer. They are continually together … talking, laughing, even working together.”

  “Working!” Despite Brande’s effort to be casual, he choked a little on the word.

  “Why, yes. And hard work too.” The butler spoke in a toneless voice but all the time he watched the Consul intently, his eyes narrowed, like a cat. “Last week the little boy had his shirt off. I saw him from my window, bare to the waist, swinging a machete in the hot sun.”

  “Why did you not tell me?” asked the Consul, with knitted forehead.

  “I am no tale-bearer.” Garcia shrugged indifferently. “All the same, I do not like it. I know your son is delicate … sensitive … impressionable. And this José … I ask you, señor, what is he?”

  A silence fell while the Consul restlessly revolved his spoon between his fingers. He dared not question the butler further.

  “Thank you, Garcia,” he said at last. “You have helped me considerably. I rely upon your discretion.”

  In reply, the man bowed with his usual deference, but as he turned away a gleam shone in his slanting eyes and that silent laugh creased his smooth face, making it a mask of mockery.

  Left alone, Harrington Brande had no stomach for his customary after-breakfast cigar but sat drumming the table with taut fingers. His first impulse was to dismiss José at once, to be rid of him for ever. Yet, on reflection, he saw that such a simple step would not resolve his difficulty. Madness though it might seem, a struggle had developed between this low fellow and himself, latent perhaps, yet none the less real, for the affection and regard of Nicholas. Should he prejudice his position, stigmatise himself as an unjust master, and make a martyr of the youth by sending him away without proper pretext? A thousand times, no. Sooner or later this situation might arise again. He would have to fight, somewhere, to retain his son’s love, and perhaps against a more formidable opponent. Therefore, he preferred to face the issue now, under conditions which suited him. As he reached this decision his heart beat faster and heavier with the swelling, secret desire to punish his enemy, to beat him down and break his spirit.

  When he went off in the car, out of the corner of his eye he perceived the gardener watering the petunia beds, but he gave no sign of having seen him. That afternoon, however, after much restless meditation in the office, he returned a full hour before his usual time, hoping to surprise José and his son together. But Nicholas was upstairs, at his lessons, and the gardener stood alone, in the long grass beside the wall, sharpening his short scythe with absent, almost indolent strokes. Harrington Brande strode directly towards him.

  “I wish to talk to you.”

  “Yes, señor.” The tone was quietly respectful, the hot glint which had flashed in those dark pupils the day before was gone, yet there could be sensed a new firmness in the youth’s expression, an independence, a kind of wary doggedness which whetted the edge of the Consul’s anger. He said, deliberately:

  “I forbid you to speak to Nicholas.”

  José studied his honing stone for a moment.

  “God gave me a tongue, señor. Do you prohibit me from using it?”

  “Yes,” said the Consul, violently. “So far as my son is concerned. And on no account must you set him to work. You have been making him dig and hoe and hack down bushes.”

  “I have only been trying to make him strong,” José answered. “So that he should not be all the time on his back like a sick girl.”

  “How dare you!”

  “And he is better, much better already,” José stubbornly persisted. “You can see for yourself … how brown and well he looks. And he loves to cut the bracken with the light sickle I made him … and to be about with me, using his muscles, in the good fresh air.”

  A burst of fury turned Brande livid, but by a tremendous effort he suppressed it. He said rigidly:

  “Either you give me your promise or you leave my service immediately.”

  There was a long pause. José glanced at the Consul, glanced away, then, with a blank and expressionless face, he muttered:

  “I promise.”

  A surge of power went through the Consul, intensifying his desire to wound, to press home his advantage and teach this young upstart a lesson he would not readily forget. As José prepared, somewhat sullenly, to resume his scything, he exclaimed, so abruptly that the youth winced:

  “Wait! There is another matter. The garden is not looking so well as I expected. I am disappointed. Here, for instance.” He pointed to an area of rough ground, not yet reclaimed, beyond the catalpa tree. “ It is extremely bare. I have decided to make a rockery.”

  “A rockery, señor?” José echoed queerly.

  “Yes. If you move those stones from the field, beyond the bluff there, you’d have all the material you need.”

  José turned his eyes in the direction indicated by the Consul.

  “These stones are extremely heavy, señor.”

  “Are you afraid of hard work?” Brande sneered.r />
  “I hope I have proved to you that I am not, señor.” José spoke in a controlled voice, as though explaining something patiently to a child. “ But for such an operation one would require several men, iron chains, and a crane.”

  “Nonsense! One good man could do it.”

  “You are a good man, señor,” José returned, in that same mild tone. “ Could you move these rocks?”

  “Don’t be insolent.”

  José caught his full lip between his white teeth and gazed across the bluff towards the rocks strewn upon its heathy surface. They were large, sharp and rough, veined with jagged quartz; some were actually boulders, deeply bedded in that sinewy and flinty soil which, to make matters worse, contained the spreading roots of some old, cut-down eucalyptus trees. To upheave and move such monsters would spoil even the springiest muscles for the finer things in life, especially for pelota. Merely to consider it made the youth feel beaten and sad. And yet, when he thought of his position at home, of his mother, on her knees all day at the public wash-station, of his five little sisters, whose mouths were always open, like young sparrows, to say nothing of old Pedro, who would never earn another penny in his life, he knew he must, at all costs, keep his position. Besides, there was Nicholas, whom he liked so much.… He raised his head … gravely … with a slow nobility.

  “Very well, señor. I will do it.”

  “I thought you would,” said Brande with a bitter, jeering smile. “See you make a good job of it. Or I’ll know the reason why.”

  He turned and walked away, nodding agreeably to Garcia, who stood at the door waiting to take his hat and stick as he went in. To-night, after prayers, he would talk with Nicholas.

  On the following morning José began to make the rockery. He had only the most rudimentary tools—a mattock, two light crowbars, and a wheelbarrow with a damaged axle. In most instances it was necessary to dig round the embedded boulder, to lever it up with the two iron bars, to lift or drag it on to the tilted wheelbarrow and then to trundle this unwieldy and precarious burden over fifty yards of rough ground to the selected site. Often, when a rock had been prised painfully from its bed it slipped at the last moment from the crowbars and sank more deeply into the earth. Or in transit it would topple, drunkenly, from the creaky wheelbarrow on to the hard drive so that it must be lifted back, strainingly, without any leverage to ease its insensate weight.