by Iris Danbury
There were songs first, very noisy and gay; to warm up the atmosphere. Two guitarists played accompaniments aided by a bandurria, a metal-stringed instrument, startling in its volume.
Then the dancers followed with their frenzied roll of the hips, the rattling of castanets and high heels, the sinuous bending and posturing of the body. The audience became more excited, emphasising the rhythms with hand-clapping. Caran found herself becoming absorbed into the spirit of the songs and dances. She glanced away from the improvised stage through the smoke-filled, lantern-lit scene and. for an instant, imagined that she saw Brooke on the far side of the cave. But of course it was an illusion.
Eventually the show was over and the audience, some of them still a little dazed, filed out.
Benita came over to Caran. ‘Was it good?’ she asked.
‘Marvellous. And you danced as well as any of the others.’
This was a compliment that Benita appreciated, for she had been in competition tonight with quite well-known and more experienced dancers from other districts.
Caran shepherded her party to their cars and was about to enter Paul’s when an arm thrust around her waist dragged her away,
‘I’ll bring Caran,’ a voice barked in her car.
She needed neither lantern nor torch to identify the owner.
‘Let me go!’ she muttered in a low, furious tone. ‘What do you think you’re—’
Brooke clapped a hand over her mouth and drew her farther away from the thinning crowd. His arm was like an iron clamp and her struggles ceased.
‘Now!’ he said harshly when the last stragglers were disappearing. He still held her so firmly that she would have found it difficult to free herself.
‘Perhaps you’ll explain this rough handling,’ she said.
His arms relaxed and she twisted away from his grasp, bur he held her captive by the wrist.
‘Tell me the truth, Caran. Is it worth anything to you that I’ve come back—even in this dramatic manner?’
‘Whether you come or stay away doesn’t mean anything to me,’ she snapped. Her heart cried out that the words were not true, but she refused to let him burden her yet again with that aching anguish she had suffered for so many months.
‘You mean something to me,’ he said, his voice vibrant.
For a moment she thought she detected a faint gleam of hope, but she crushed it down. ‘Yes. Just another girl in Spain, a companion for a few months. And then—goodbye.’
‘Not this time, Caran darling. I’m never going to say goodbye to you again. I’ve had to come back for you. I couldn’t stay away. You’ve ruined my life.’
‘I? Ruined your life?’ In her incredulity she was unaware of how much stress she had put on that word ‘your’.
‘Yes. And I’m glad.’ He held her in his arms and kissed her cheek. ‘All the time I’ve been in Spain I swore I’d never get too involved with any girl. My life for the next year or two isn’t the wine and roses sort that any girl could fancy. But you—you turned it inside out. You flirted with Paul. You threw Don Ramiro in my face. I was so damned jealous that I could hardly look at you without wanting to pick you up and carry you off up to the mountains.’
‘Like Angelina’s brigand?’ She had regained a little of her confidence, remembering the girl at the mountain inn.
‘Worse. Even he earned a smile from her. I received nothing from you except a stony, cold indifference.’
‘I was never cold or indifferent,’ she contradicted.
‘Then let’s put that to the test.’ With his lips on hers, demanding, yet not wounding, she knew the joy of yielding without that haunting fear that the rapturous moment was only transient.
‘Now do I mean anything to you?’ he wanted to know.
‘Perhaps. A little.’
‘I want more than that. I went away because I loved you so much that I couldn’t bear to break your heart. When I took on that job, which I’d asked for to put distance between us, I still loved you and it was breaking my own heart. Now, are you going to marry me?’
‘I expect so.’
‘Why?’ he queried, dabbing a kiss on her eyebrow.
She sighed. ‘Because I suppose I’m crazy, have no sense and—woe is me—I love you.’
After a while a voice in the darkness called, ‘Senor Brooke? Do you come?’
‘Yes, Benita. I come and Caran comes.’
Benita emerged from the shadows where she had evidently been patiently waiting for Brooke to take her home.
In the car he said, ‘Benita has been my true and trusty spy all the time.’
Caran laughed. ‘You needed a spy since you didn’t trust me with your address.’
‘I couldn’t trust myself to write to you,’ he replied.
‘I wondered sometimes it I ought to be jealous of Benita.’ Caran turned to smile at the girl in the back of the car.
Brooke grunted. ‘Benita has a handsome novio of her own. She’d never look twice at me.’ He translated for Benita’s benefit.
‘I wonder why I did,’ sighed Caran.
‘You were stopped in your tracks when you first clapped eyes on me,’ he retorted happily, and began to sing a gay Spanish song with a gypsy flavour.
Benita alighted outside her own house and shyly put her hand into Caran’s. ‘You must always be happy now. Your man has come to you.’
‘Gracias, Benita. Muchas gracias,’ replied Caran.
‘When do you have to return to Zaragoza?’ she asked Brooke outside her own villa.
‘Not for a few days. I’m staying in the town with some Spanish friends. I moved heaven and earth to get myself transferred to Zaragoza. Now I’m demanding to be allowed to come back nearer here and work on the irrigation project north of Murcia. Even that’s too far away for my liking. I shall have to invent a scheme for Albarosa itself.’
Julie took the news calmly when Caran told her next day.
‘I’ve seen it coming a mile away. If you’re ecstatic about him, then I’m glad. You could do better for yourself, of course, but at least I shan’t have to keep my weather eye open if someone I really fancy comes along.’
‘Oh, rubbish, Julie. You’re not that much of a gold-digger just for the sake of the gold.’
‘Try me!’ retorted Julie, as she kissed Caran. ‘Be happy with him, pet. He’s not too bad.’ After a few moments she added, ‘I’d have a cur at Don Ramiro if I thought it worth while, but now that we hear rumours of his impending engagement to the dark beauty Mirella, all is lost for me in that direction.’
Paul was concerned lest Caran should want to leave her work immediately. ‘I knew that man was a menace right from the start. Still, best wishes all the same,’ he added belatedly.
Caran assured him that she would remain for some long time vet, for Brooke had to wait for his transfer to Murcia.
Surprisingly, it was Don Ramiro who insisted on giving a dinner party at the Marroqui for Caran and Brooke. Paul and Julie were naturally invited and, compared with some of those other occasions, this was an amicable affair, with none of the warring undercurrents.
In a quiet moment Don Ramiro said to Caran, ‘I hope we shall always remain friends.’
‘Of course,’ agreed Caran quickly. ‘I should not like to lose your friendship.’
‘My betrothal to my cousin Mirella will soon be announced when the details have been settled, but the news is not yet public.’
‘I understand. Congratulations.’
On the other side of her Brooke was complaining that he could see only the back of her head, charming though it was.
Don Ramiro smiled and proposed a toast, ‘In Spain we have a proverb that it is better to begin a friendship with a little aversion, Perhaps that has been true in the case of our two friends here.’ The toasts were drunk, Benita gave a special performance and at the end bowed several times to Don Ramiro’s table,
Paul agreed that Caran could take all the free time she wanted while Brooke was here, and nest day Bro
oke, took her in his car along some of the less frequented roads in the hills behind Albarosa.
They had both brought ample picnic lunches. Evidently we were afraid of starving,’ commented Brooke, laughing.
‘I’m told there’s a Spanish proverb which says that love is a furnace but it will not cook the stew,’ Caran returned.
‘Oh, I can probably outdo you in Spanish proverbs any day,’ he boasted. ‘Listen to this one and take heed. They say, “If your wife tells you to throw yourself from a balcony, pray God that it’s a low one.” I shall take care when it comes to choosing an apartment in Murcia that we’re not on the top floor.
They spoke of the future, of visits to England to meet Caran’s parents and Brooke’s father and two married brothers. They sat dreaming in the shade of pine trees on a sloping hillside and when the afternoon faded into evening Brooke brought her to the rums of the old Mendosa castle, pale red-gold in the slanting sunshine.
There was not much left of the castle now except the remains of two towers and a long piece of wall enclosing what had once been a courtyard.
Caran and Brooke leaned against the crumbling stone, gazed at the purple sea glinting pink and gold where the sun caught it. ‘I’ve wanted to bring you here—so that we could both tread where once the mighty Mendosas trod.’
She turned to watch the sun drop behind the mauve hills, while still casting a dusky pink glow on the white Moorish houses of Albarosa.
‘It’s true what Don Ramiro said,’ murmured Caran softly. ‘Spain claims you. If you leave you feel drawn back again.’
‘Even in winter when the rain in Spain does not fall mainly in the plain?’
‘Even in winter. This was the summer of my discontent.’
‘And mine,’ he agreed. ‘Now made glorious by—?’
‘When summer comes to Albarosa it stays all the year round if the right person is in the right place.’
‘I said you were a philosopher.’ He hugged her to him as they walked back to the car.
The distant mountains faded to blue haze, the valleys in shadow now purple as a grape, but a final gleam of rosy pink picked out the topmost tower of Albarosa, a place of summer in the heart.