FLAMENCO BABY

by Radford, Cherry

  ‘Um… this is very… sudden,’ I said, gently pulling back.

  ‘I’m sorry, of course,’ he said letting go. ‘Don’t worry, we will… practise.’

  What? He took me through to the living room. Friends. But friends who… No, this couldn’t happen.

  ‘You are not walking well?’ he asked.

  ‘I keep getting cramp in my leg.’

  ‘Cramp?’

  ‘Pain.’

  ‘Ah. I can help with this.’

  We sat back down on the sofa.

  ‘Put your legs here,’ he said, patting his lap.

  I was trying to work out how to do that without my skirt riding up. But he bent down and grabbed both legs, took off my boots. He dug his thumbs into my calf muscles.

  ‘Ow!’ But he carried on working his way down my leg, and then started squeezing and rubbing my feet. Like he must have done for his bailaora wife.

  ‘You should do this every day.’

  ‘Right. Oh…’

  ‘Good, no?’

  Then he pulled me further onto his lap and I was in his arms, a warmth spreading through my body. He started kissing me again, tentatively, his hand coming up under my top and stroking my back, and I realised I was going to be lulled in to believing this was all okay. Until I was back in England, crying and alone after giving yet more of myself away.

  ‘I should really go now, I need my sleep for all this dancing…’

  A weary smile, perhaps a little sigh. ‘I’ll walk with you.’ I put on my boots, he found my cardigan. ‘Ah. I have an idea.’ He went off to the little bedroom and came back with a small fan heater. ‘I should lend you this before.’

  We walked down the alley arm in arm. Somewhere below us one of the flamenco clubs opened its doors for a moment and released guitar and clattering footwork into the cool night air. We reached my gate and stood there looking at it.

  ‘I come in and do this for you?’

  I was quite capable of plugging in a fan heater but nodded anyway. I started fussing with the key.

  ‘Let me, or we will be here all the night.’

  ‘I was fine when you were—’

  ‘I know.’

  We got inside and he went through to the bedroom with the heater. After a few minutes I heard its gentle whir.

  He came back. ‘Tonight you don’t have to sleep in your trousers.’

  ‘Thanks, that’s great. A peach juice before you go?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  He pointed to my filo. ‘Do you want to look? We see when you can come.’

  We sat down on the sofa and put it on my knee for us to look at together.

  ‘What means ‘TR’… oh, this is the trio?’

  ‘Yes.’ Gigs spattered over Easter and the odd Saturday afterwards. ‘But with notice someone can cover for me… take my place.’

  ‘But you lose money. Listen… let me buy your ticket for the plane.’

  ‘What? No! You can’t—’

  ‘I insist. It’s okay, I still have some money from my grandmother. She would like it, always saying forget the bailaoras, take a musician for girlfriend.’

  Girlfriend.

  ‘Tomorrow I will go to the Plaza and get the ticket, and you can book the classes with the office. This week here with only one TR and one rehearsal. Yes?’

  ‘Yes…’ I said, my mind whirling. ‘And then it won’t be so hard to leave…’

  We smiled at each other. He put his arms round me and started kissing me again.

  I pulled back. ‘Why did you say we were just having dinner as friends?’

  ‘I wanted to see the reacción.’

  ‘And what was it? I can’t remember.’

  He pulled a sulky face.

  ‘No! I didn’t do that.’

  He pulled me back over to him, but I needed some daylight on this, I couldn’t just… Somehow we needed to end up in our own apartments. But all I’d managed so far was to get from his sofa to mine, and I was hardly giving out the right message by letting him lay me back and kiss my tummy on it.

  Then he said he wanted to sleep on my bed again.

  Well I think it was on, but it could have been in. Anyway, it didn’t feel like there was much chance that one wouldn’t lead to the other. What? It usually took months to get to this with a guy - but somehow it had only taken two evenings. My heart pounded. Say something. But I’d gone into a stupor, my brain taken over by a primal need to be as entwined with him as possible on a large soft surface; it was just a question of how to get there.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You get ready for bed and I will make tidy here, okay?’

  I went off to the bathroom and had a nervous pee, did my teeth. Took off my boots and padded through to the kitchen, put my arms round him as he washed up our glasses, then went off to the bedroom and started taking off my clothes. I considered the Tesco’s pink pyjamas with a large flower-holding bear, for women who’d never grown up or weren’t expecting company. I settled for the teddy top and my knickers and got under the covers.

  He’d done much the same, coming into the bedroom in his t-shirt and boxers, revealing surprisingly footballery legs. He got in beside me and cuddled up.

  ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are. What is it?’

  I’m not good at this, too inhibited; I’ve been told enough times. And sex has become synonymous with betrayal and rejection. ‘Um…’

  ‘Is not an espectáculo, Yoli. Come here, just leave it to me, I don’t mind…’

  I started to believe him. How could I not, with his body so tangled up with mine, his hands seeming to know me better than I did myself.

  ‘I think now we are warm enough to take away the bear,’ he said pulling off my top and then his own.

  And then off came our underwear too, but I was past caring, calmed by those hands and starting to run mine over him. Then he reached for something on the dressing table.

  ‘I hate those things,’ I said, wanting him back.

  He looked over at me. ‘Well… we don’t have to, I mean…’ He shrugged.

  ‘I’m… not taking anything.’

  ‘It’s okay, nothing will happen,’ he said, a sadness in his smile that made me pull him into my arms.

  Then his kisses were straying over my body, on and on… so that when he was inside me it was almost instantly over. But he wasn’t letting that happen, not that soon… An image of him teasing me with crescendos in that first Compás class came to me…

  ‘Rem-at-e, now,’ I finally begged and he grinned and obliged, arriving at the last beat in perfect unison.

  He was still here, I hadn’t dreamt it. I pushed back into him like I had before, but this time into his warm bare body. I reached behind me, but he was silent, perhaps still half asleep. So I turned over and started to run my hand down him.

  But he took it and put it to his mouth. ‘Wait,’ he said, opening his eyes.

  With a cold thud in my chest I turned and lay on my back. No. Please. Just go, I don’t want to hear it.

  He turned me towards him. ‘Listen… you have to listen Yoli, because maybe you want to go to the farmacía and get that new pill this morning… I was wrong to say nothing can happen. It is not probable, but it can - my wife was pregnant for two months. I’m sorry, I have lie to you.’

  I put my hand to his face and smiled. In fact, tried not to laugh; I’d been beaten at my own game. Egg-bandited.

  ‘What would you like me to do?’

  ‘Do you understand what I am telling you?’

  ‘Yes. If you want me to take it I will. But… if it’s very unlikely—’

  ‘It has to be nearly a milagro…’

  ‘Well… if there is going to be a miracle, I wouldn’t want to stop it.’

  His face broke into a smile. He kissed me firmly, then more gently, moving on top of me.

  ‘We can’t be long, I’ve got—’

  ‘I know, it’s okay, just a
quick tango this time.’

  Chapter 11

  escoger vt to choose

  ‘Yes… yes definitely in time for Frankfurt… Mm… Thursday? Yes that looks…’

  I plonked down the iron and hung up the new orange shirt. God, he’d been getting through a few - must have been out a hell of a lot. Somehow all his other clothes were here too; you’d think I’d been away a month.

  Now he was writing in his filo, grinning and talking softly so I couldn’t hear. As he’d been doing earlier with poor old Vicente. If he didn’t spend so much time on the bloody phone maybe he’d have time to do a bit of his own ironing.

  Another one done, the standard already declining. I slammed down the iron - fucking heavy annoying thing.

  He put down the phone and looked over. ‘Okay. I’m sorry. If you think this married, spermless, penniless tocaor is the answer to—’

  ‘There you go again! So why say you’re sorry?’

  ‘Oh Yol, come on—’

  ‘And by the way, he’s not penniless.’

  ‘Euroless then.’

  ‘Uh. He’s a music teacher and in a group - just like me. Sometimes…’ Earning extra on the side with mundane chores, also like me, but he didn’t need to know that.

  ‘Sometimes helping himself to one of the flushed flamencas clapping along to his beat.’

  ‘Just shut up.’

  ‘Look, it’s great you’re going out for another week, but just try to keep some perspective.’

  ‘Oh right. And is that what you tell Andrew, Vicente and everyone else clapping along to your beat?’ His face puckered with gratifying confusion. ‘Yeah, how d’you like them apples?’

  His mouth opened to protest but closed again, the corners twitching. ‘Them apples are different.’

  ‘No they’re not. They’re all hoping that one day you’ll… pick them.’

  Ginny: not specifically mentioned but certainly sitting there in the basket. A can of worms that I’d decided to leave unopened for now. Or perhaps I’d just make a small hole and pull a few through. Which reminded me. I held up some thick brown tights between my thumb and forefinger.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Ginny’s tights. Washed and dried. What shall I do with them?’

  ‘I suppose we could post them. But then Oxford’s only a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Oh yes. That’ll be nice for you, meeting up in your old stomping ground.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where you were at uni together.’

  He shrugged. If he was worried about my discovery of his lie-by-omission, he was hiding it very well. ‘Hardly a reunion, I’ll be working my arse off.’

  Another shirt done. Come to think of it, couldn’t she have mucked in and got out the ironing board while she was here? He’d turned back to his emails. The writing might no longer be on a roll, but by God his social life was. Housekeeper to an author is one thing, to a playboy is another; I’ve better things to do, I thought, looking at the back of his self-satisfied head. Misjudging the board and clonking the iron down on the metal edge.

  ‘Can you stop banging that thing around?’

  ‘Sí señor. I come back later. You tell me when, Mr Jeremy.’

  He spun his chair round and studied my face.

  ‘Okay. Ginny - is that what all this is really about?’

  ‘No! And Christ, when did you get so bloody full of yourself?’

  ‘Your fault,’ he said with a smile. ‘All your loving care of me. Come here,’ he said, patting his lap.

  ‘No, get on with your work.’

  ‘Oh dear, don’t tell me our little granadino has banned cuddling.’

  ‘Course not. Although he asked if we did.’

  ‘Shit, he really is bad news.’

  ‘No he’s not. He’s the best news I’ve had in a long, long while.’

  He watched me hang up another shirt. Folded his arms. The sentence hung in the air, undisputed.

  ‘Feed me,’ he said quietly, the Audrey Two plant from Little Shop of Horrors.

  ‘No, you’ve had enough of my blood already, you monster,’ I said in my Rick Moranis voice.

  ‘Feed me!’ he said, a bit louder.

  I went over and we mimed the pricking of my finger, his gulping of my blood. And then he grabbed me and pulled me onto his lap.

  ‘I am sorry Yol. Really. I’m just worried about you. And… for me too, I have to admit, even though it’s monstrously selfish of me.’

  ‘But we’d spend some time here as well.’

  ‘No way, there’s nothing for him here. Anyway, it wouldn’t work once you had a kid… He could probably get treatment, you know.’

  ‘Yes…’ I sighed, sinking into him. Then I tapped his chest. ‘Hey… maybe… you wondered about getting a tiny apartment in Granada once…’

  He smiled, nodded. ‘D’you know, I think I might be able to push on now. Why don’t you leave all this and go and push on with that new piece before your pupils come.’

  ‘Yes, I think I will. Come to me at half eight for some pasta?’

  ‘Perfecto.’

  ‘And no more…’

  ‘I promise. Perhaps it would help if I met him.’

  ‘No, he’s busy with this new singer - I can’t expect him to come over here.’

  ‘Surely at some point…?’

  ‘Well… I don’t know.’

  You see, I could tell he was thinking as he smiled and shrugged, this is what I mean.

  Chapter 12

  música f music

  ‘So how goes your composición?’

  ‘Well actually…’ I moved the phone to the other hand and clicked on the file. ‘It’s sort of finished.’

  ‘Vale. I want to hear it.’

  ‘It’ll sound much better live… being played.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And remember I’m writing it for students, so it’s very simple—’

  ‘Yes I know this. Like when I make falsetas for mine. Come on, put it on.’

  ‘And it’s just the flavour of flamenco… you know, as experienced by a guiri. You’re going to find it really—’

  ‘Ay por Dios! Start now or I don’t tell you the surprise.’

  ‘Surprise? Oh… Well here goes.’

  I pressed Enter, watched the cursor bounce over the beats, heard the flawless flutes pipe up; I was still both amazed and horrified at the technology. But how wonderful to hear flutes play my piece rather than try to imagine them as I plodded about on the piano, to press Print for the music rather than pore over a smudged and Tippexed manuscript. And the piece: it seemed such appalling vanity, but I just couldn’t stop wanting to hear it. Granada, it was called, although I hadn’t told him that. It’s constant switching between major and minor - rather like flamenco - seemed to capture the cold and the warmth, the happiness and the pain of having to leave.

  Silence.

  ‘That was… beautiful. Yoli, why you don’t do more of these? It is not important that the trio don’t want them… Your students, they will love this. Make two more and try for publicación. And… maybe you can try with guitar too, very easy of course. The guitar could be played or left.’

  ‘I don’t know how to write for guitar.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘But you could…’

  ‘And this is what I want to tell you… Semana Santa the school is closed and Emilio is away… I was going to Almería all week but my family will understand…’

  ‘You’re… coming here?’

  ‘Yes, maybe the Sunday to the Wednesday, when anyway you have rehearsal—’

  ‘Oh yes, yes!’

  ‘But look, it is Wednesday today, you need to go to rehearsal now, no? Hurry, you will be late. And I have rehearsal too. Vámonos. Besos, Yoli.’

  ‘Muchos besos.’

  I put down the phone. Just eighteen days and he’d be here. In my English life. Walking by the canal, in my flat, in my bed. I felt both elated and a little nervous. I rushed to t
he bus stop; being late would put me on the back foot before I even started bringing up the things I intended to say to Helen.

  ‘Got your filo, I hope - you wouldn’t believe how many bookings I’ve taken,’ Helen said. I followed her into the kitchen. ‘Great you’re early for once, we can catch up a bit.’

  Early? I looked at my watch. Javi must have thought the rehearsal started at seven and I’d just done as I was told and dashed here. ‘Well yes, that’s what I thought.’

  ‘Kirsty’s going to be late - something about waiting for Rob.’

  ‘He’s getting back later, with his new job. Perhaps sometimes we could rehearse at Kirsty’s… or my place.’

  Her face hardened. ‘Seems a shame when there’s so much more room here, and the acoustics… but maybe.’

  I grinned to myself, pleased to be ticking off point number one so soon. Pudgy little arms came round my waist.

  ‘Hi Sophes.’ But she was looking at the floor, eyelids pink. ‘Hey, what’s up?’

  ‘She’s given up Multisports. Or rather they gave her up.’

  ‘Oh. Well what else is on offer… swimming?’

  Sophie shook her head vehemently and hugged her ample self.

  ‘Dance?’

  ‘Ballet, yes.’ Sophie pulled a face and Helen mouthed can you imagine.

  ‘Well what about… You know that dance show on telly with those sparkly dresses you liked? You could do Strictly Come Dancing type dancing.’

  ‘They don’t do that,’ said Helen.

  ‘Somewhere will.’

  ‘Yes, like the American Smooth,’ asked Sophie, trying to waltz round the kitchen.

  ‘Not very aerobic,’ said Helen.

  ‘You kidding? All the celebs are dying to go on it to lose… er… to get themselves feeling good.’

  Helen said she’d look for a class and we left Sophie getting her colours out to design a dress.

  ‘So how was the flamenco?’

  ‘Really hard at first, but incredible. And…’

  ‘You found someone?’ As if I’d been flicking through people like a pack of cards.