FLAMENCO BABY

by Radford, Cherry

  Still Javi, but not Javi. I could hear crockery in the background; Violeta getting breakfast.

  ‘Yoli?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But if you decide—’

  ‘No, I have decided. I want to do this, and not just because it lead us to talk.’

  I swallowed.

  ‘Now, piano or guitar? Dime.’

  ‘Guitar. It goes without saying.’

  ‘Nothing goes without saying. Not now, for us.’

  I pulled out a tissue as quietly as I could and wiped my nose.

  ‘Yoli?’

  ‘Are you… okay?’

  ‘Yes. And you? I hear Fernando Morales is dancing for Paco Peña in London, so he is staying with Jeremy?’

  ‘Yes. They’re lovely together. But you know not to tell—’

  ‘Of course. Good for Jeremy, he deserves this.’

  Nando was knocking on my door again, with a ‘Yoli! Vámonos!’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Okay Yoli. I will call when I have tried something?’

  ‘No. Email. We can talk if we need to. Adiós.’

  ‘Ay… too many people.’

  ‘I did warn you. Jeremy usually won’t come here unless it’s actually raining. Let’s leave the reptiles for now, gross things.’

  ‘Gorilas, you like these too?’

  A grumpy macho silverback looked at me disapprovingly. ‘Not as much, no.’

  ‘Ah, here… Gibones… ay qué preciosos…’

  ‘Oh great,’ I said. In the glassed covered area a pair was swiftly copulating, the female continuing to pick up pieces of fruit from the floor. ‘Uh, it’s like the art gallery again.’

  Nando smirked and watched with interest. ‘Is big part of life Yoli, can’t escape it.’

  Oh yes you can. I took his arm and pulled him away.

  ‘And here the reason,’ he said.

  ‘Oh! Isn’t he just…’ Huge black eyes in a blonde woolly head, faltering little limbs. Then there was a screeching commotion between two males next to him and the mother swooped by and whisked the baby into her arms.

  ‘Uh, fathers in nature… This one probably doesn’t even know that’s his kid he almost flattened.’

  ‘Of course he know. He just has different part to play.’

  ‘Hm.’

  He patted my arm. ‘You and Jeremy have bad view of fathers, I know. Is very sad his papá never accepted… and he tells me of yours… You are brave to meet and try to forgive. You know, I can come with you. Would be good, because after we can talk about it.’

  But I’d have to explain who he was. It occurred to me that there wasn’t a sufficient term for our relationship. Perhaps brother-in-law, although…

  ‘Yoli? Think about it, no?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, but I’m sure I’ll be fine.’

  We bought some lollies and sat down next to a small boy and his teenage brother.

  ‘Must be hard for you to understand, coming from such a close family,’ I said.

  ‘Every family has their problems, I think. We are close, we live together, but I was having difficulties with my father also, for a long time.’

  ‘But wasn’t he a dancer? Surely—’

  ‘Yes, and with much success. He worked hard, and in a time very difficult for gitanos in Sevilla. But he is very tradicional dancer, cannot understand that I want something different. For years he not want to see me dance or talk of it, better now but…’

  I shook my head. ‘What a shame, when he should be so proud.’

  ‘Ah, but I am not the only son, remember. He never forgets José Luis.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘She tries to understand. But he is machista, does not listen to her opinion.’

  The little boy suddenly spotted the baby gibbon and pulled at his brother’s arm, sending the brother’s half-eaten Magnum splatting to the ground.

  ‘Fuckin’ idiot!’ The teenager grabbed the boy’s ninety-nine, threw it into the bush behind us and sloped off. The little chap started to sob, his nose a glutinous bubbling mess.

  I pulled a couple of tissues out of my bag and offered them to him, then tentatively sorted out his nose on his behalf. ‘Where’s your Mummy?’

  He scanned the area resentfully but eventually stuck out a pointing arm. A wobbling red-faced woman bore down on us and yanked him away.

  ‘The English - everywhere I see it, they hate children. But not you, I hear you with your students the Thursday. What are you going to do about that?’

  I’m going to have one with your boyfriend. ‘Well, I haven’t completely given up hope.’

  We went off to see the Diana monkeys and mangabeys, all with babies; it wasn’t turning out to be the best place to take my mind off reproduction. But I was enjoying the constant touching, glances at his dark-haired muscular calves and perfect denimed trasero… in a Jeremy kind of way, of course. Confident, now they were in a physical relationship, that I didn’t have to worry about him repeating his offer. It had probably just been a last attempt to deny his homosexual urges.

  ‘It’s stupid, could go to the zoo in Madrid but never have time when I’m there. You would like it, has the monkeys like on your bed, and of course the osos panda.’

  ‘Pandas? Oh—’

  ‘I think they try to have a baby, but they have to do inseminación artificial. Maybe the pandas don’t have wish follar, I don’t know…’

  ‘Maybe the boy one’s gay.’ It was a tactless thing to say, but the insemination word had set me on tilt. ‘I thought Seville had a zoo.’

  ‘No, you think of Barcelona. But don’t worry, we have everything else.’

  I was amusing myself staring out a tiger, but I looked round to see Nando looking pensive.

  ‘Why Jeremy has not taken you to Sevilla? You have gone to Jerez, Cádiz, Granada, Córdoba…’

  ‘I don’t know, it’s just the way it’s… and actually I haven’t been to Cor—’

  ‘He prefers the other cities?’

  ‘No, he loves Seville.’ He wants to come and live there, if you’d only ask him. ‘It was his idea that I went there for a long weekend with David, but we had to cancel it.’

  ‘Because he went with another girl. Like all the boyfriends. Pobrecita.’ He stroked my arm.

  ‘Not all of them, there was…’

  ‘Steve. Went back to old girlfriend when returned to the North, but have to ask if was with her the weekends before…’

  ‘That’s what Jeremy thinks?’

  He put a hand to his mouth.

  ‘I can’t believe I never thought of that.’ So I’d probably been one hundred per cent cheated on. Well sod the lot of them, hopefully I was going to have a baby with the only man I truly loved and trusted. But that was in this man’s hands; I wanted to back-track to the panda conversation and tell him about what Jeremy and I were planning to do.

  Nando was replying to a text. ‘Toni, wishing luck for the performance. But is not good, because I was trying to forget.’

  ‘You’re nervous about it?’

  ‘No. I don’t get nervous, only… excited. If I was nervous before dancing all the time I…’ He made a spinning motion with his finger by his head. ‘You will see Toni and Pilar at the villa, they will stay for a few days. Pilar speaks very little English, you must start your Spanish again, no?’

  ‘Oh - alpacas!’

  He took me over to them. ‘And you can start now!’ I laughed as Nando addressed them in soothing Spanish and a caramel one seemed to come over to us in response. ‘I know it makes you think of Javi. But with Jeremy, Spain will always be part of your life, you have to continue with it.’ He looked at me and smiled. I bit my lip and nodded.

  Offered the baby some grass. Asked a large chestnut one, in Spanish, to come over and let me kiss him.

  ‘Eso es!’ Nando said, kissing my cheek.

  Austere flamenco came through the walls; was he still irritated about me missing his first night? I hadn’t chosen to
have a migraine, any more than I’d chosen to have that fraught call from Charlotte trying to persuade me to cancel my lunch with Mitch. He softened a bit when I told him about that.

  But after the show, and his exhilarated responses as to how it went, he started up again.

  ‘How you order Chinese meal if you are ill?’ he said, pointing to a bag of containers by the kitchen bin.

  ‘I didn’t. David dropped by to pick up some music well my music, actually - and got himself some from across the road while I was printing it out.’

  He frowned. ‘But how he can visit when you are ill?’

  ‘Well, as I say, he was just passing.’

  A little jerk of the chin suggested he thought I was an idiot to believe that.

  ‘He’s got a friend at college who wants to try some of them with his pupils. He thinks I should try and get them published.’

  ‘Is Spanish music, should try Spanish publisher.’

  ‘Oh…’ I was intensely flattered; I’d feared that, despite his kind remarks when Jeremy played him the CD, he’d thought it was guiri pastiche.

  ‘What is there for David from this?’ He got out the Laughing Cavalier and Madame Pompadour while I put the milk on.

  ‘Nothing. Even if it ever got published, there’d be practically nothing for anyone.’

  ‘Is not what I mean.’

  ‘Oh… No, he’s got a lady, and anyway, I wouldn’t start up again with him if—’

  ‘If he is last man in the world, yes.’

  I poured the drinks, tried not to blush.

  ‘There is a last man? Somebody interest you?’

  ‘Give us a chance, I’ve only just broken up with Javi.’

  ‘And want to go back, no? If he change his mind, you would go to him.’

  ‘It depends how… but yes, probably.’

  He sat down on the sofa. ‘But it would be error, because, how you forget what happen? You would find a scar that changes everything… Any-way, you need a man that can give you monitos.’

  Baby monkeys. A faint return of the banging in my head; I really didn’t need this. I sat down on the other end of the sofa, now unsure about the chocolate. ‘How are you doing, Yoli?’ I said. ‘Any better? Would a Spanish inquisition help?’

  He laughed and moved over to me, pulled me to him and kissed the side of my head that I’d been pressing with my fingers.

  ‘Lo siento. Sleep now, or you miss tomorrow too.’

  ‘I’m glad the show went well, can’t wait to see it.’

  He finished his drink, pulled me up and led me to the bedroom. Which he’d done before, of course, but that felt like a long time ago.

  ‘Get into bed. I want to see you there.’ He pointed to the bedside table. ‘Ah, look at this, no water.’

  He went off to the kitchen. I took off my dressing gown and got in, pulled up the covers.

  He came back with two glasses. Two glasses? ‘Drink. One now, one when you wake.’

  ‘Oh - good idea.’

  He knelt down and kissed my head again. ‘Sleep well, Yoli.’

  I let him in. He was shifting from one leg to another, tapping his feet occasionally, twisting his wrists; perhaps he was always this twitchy before a performance. I’d been studying the programme he’d brought me the night before.

  ‘I love the idea of this flamenco-Venezuelan duel.’

  ‘Duelo? Yoli. Why you make everything a batalla? Is a diálogo, a celebration of the connection and contrast. Where…’ He picked up the ticket on the table. ‘No, too near.’

  ‘It’s okay, I’m not going to start waving at you or anything.’

  ‘Is better to see the dancing from a little more far.’

  ‘Jeremy always gets front seats.’

  ‘So when he comes on Friday…’

  ‘Yup. Centre front.’

  ‘Por Dios.’ He gave back the ticket. ‘So, after the show, you will come to the stage door and meet Paco, yes?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Yes, or no.’ ‘Yes.’

  My heart beating away, rather like when I sat - finger on the TV record button - waiting for Jeremy to come on to that book programme. But this was live - anything could happen, and if it did I’d somehow feel it was my partly my fault. We’d joked at lunchtime about Nureyev’s complaint to Margot after a meal with her mother - ‘chicken dinner, chicken performance’; sitting there in front of the semicircle of wooden chairs waiting for the performers to come on, it just didn’t feel funny anymore.

  On crept the unassuming figure of Paco Peña, sitting down in the centre chair, smiling gently at the applause then bending his silver head over his guitar. Silence. A languid solo. Oblivious of us, even when the gloom was broken by a spotlight on him. A black-suited male dancer emerged from behind his chair, as if called by the music. Pacing, his arms in tortured gestures, all tightly held passion and precision, then becoming more vehement, spinning and sending bursts of thundering heel rhythms out into the hushed audience. It was Nando.

  He didn’t need my nerves, didn’t need anyone; he was in his natural element. Just occasionally looking to Paco for the maestro’s approval.

  The sombre black-clad flamencos took their seats on one side; the sunny Venezuelan musicians, in white, on the other. Paco calmly presided between them as they alternated, the darkly contained sensuality of the Spaniards contrasting with the earthy sassiness of the Latin Americans. But both overpoweringly rhythmical and passionate, and inspiring the dancers - Nando and partners Nuñez and Escobar for the flamencos, and a bare-footed and skirt flapping Dayana for the Venezuelans to emerge alone or together, respond and disappear.

  I pondered Nuñez and Escobar over my mango sorbet in the interval; such a beautiful couple, Escobar rather older than her husband, but Nando had told me they had two little girls back home with her mamá. Virtuoso flamenco puros, continuing the family line - just as Nando’s father would probably like him to do.

  In the second half there was melding of black and white, as they danced and sang to each other’s music, performed showy competitive solos, egged each other on. And then after an exhilarating finale it was over, and the performers came forward to bow, linking arms and chatting as if they were in a bar somewhere sunny rather than a London theatre.

  Round the corner at the Stage Door area there was just a young Spanish couple and three balding Englishmen clutching Paco Peña CDs and a marker pen.

  Out came the men who’d played the Venezuelan baby guitar things. Then there was the Venezuelan dancer, looking older but no less amiable than she had on stage. The charismatic black Venezuelan singer was putting his arm round her and could have been a lovely partner for her, but they were all so tactile it was impossible to tell.

  Then there were arms round me, a chin on my shoulder. He turned me round and kissed me, and I told him how I’d loved the show.

  ‘Ah, pero qué preferiste - Córdoba o Caracas?’ he asked, the Venezuelan couple laughing and encouraging me to answer.

  ‘Both. Los dos. La combinación.’

  A quiet voice joined in. Paco Peña, smaller than he’d seemed on stage. Nando introduced me and I bent over slightly so that he could kiss me on each cheek.

  ‘You are flautist, I hear. Playing, composing and teaching - this is the best thing, to be a complete musician,’ he said, in softly accented English.

  ‘Well… I enjoy it.’

  ‘And you have been looking after Nando well too. Look, my wife and I are going to a restaurant up the road, would you two like to join us?’

  ‘Oh… well, we’ve got…’ The recorded Spain-Portugal match to watch, but that wasn’t going to strike the right romantic note. ‘Something at home I—’

  ‘She has made me something special, a surprise,’ Nando said, his arm round me.

  We made our goodbyes and walked back to the flat together. Once there, the boyfriend-arm left my shoulder; my duty was done, I needed to calm down. I busied myself with the microwave.

  ‘Moussaka again?’ he ask
ed.

  ‘I’m sorry, you’re probably sick of it by now.’

  ‘Of course not. It is perfect, I’m very hungry. But Yoli, the meat is… what?’

  ‘Ah. It’s… not. I was rather hoping you wouldn’t notice,’ I said, smiling despite the blue shawl on my shoulders.

  He shrugged. ‘No importa, I like it.’ He looked around the room. ‘Where’s the…’ He picked up the TV controller by the phone. ‘Look, you have a message.’

  I pressed the Play button.

  ‘Yolette, just to say how much we’re looking forward to seeing you and your friend here for lunch tomorrow, about one o’clock. Call me if there are any problems.’

  I breathed out heavily. ‘God, I’m going to be so glad when this is over.’

  Nando came behind me with those arms; I ached for the chin on my shoulder and it arrived. ‘I come with you.’

  ‘No. I can’t do any pretending there, I simply won’t have the energy.’

  ‘It’s okay, I can be what you like: friend, boyfriend, friend of boyfriend, boyfriend of friend, friend almost boyfriend…’

  Chapter 32

  reunirse vr to meet, reunite

  Friend almost boyfriend. Meaning pretend boyfriend, as in decoy girlfriend. But it had so unsettled me that I’d found myself agreeing to him coming with me to Mitch’s.

  Friend almost boyfriend. It kept coming back to me. Along with the ludicrous daydream that Sergei comes back and sweeps Jeremy off his feet, leaving Nando to realise that he’s… But minutes later he’d given me a sisterly kiss on each cheek and reminded me of the importance of sleep. Short sharp recap: he’s gay, he’s in love with Jeremy, end of story.

  I tightened a buckle, hoped this was a good idea. Nando said a flamenco class would give me strength, take my mind off it. Take my mind off Mitch, that was, the lunch in three hours’ time.

  Braceo and taconeo, the flamenco scales and arpeggios. Then the dance - to all that deliciously alien rhythm and discordance - the arms half-forgotten but the feet… Th-WACK! T-ta ta, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-TA. God it felt good. But Alicia had gone over to switch off the music without a single eso es of encouragement.