FLAMENCO BABY

by Radford, Cherry

  My phone rang: perfect timing, thank you Jeremy. ‘Hello you,’ I said, turning to the side and putting a finger in my ear as the Spanish continued at full volume.

  ‘Thought I’d give you a wake-up call so you don’t miss the… Where are you?’

  ‘Stage door cafe.’

  ‘With Nando?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh good. Bet you’re exhausted - you need looking after.’

  ‘Mm. He told you I flipped.’

  ‘Yes. But that it all ended well, tears all round. Wonderful. You’ll have to give me the full story. Will I meet them soon?’

  ‘Of course. How about you, was it okay today?’

  ‘Mm… apparently.’

  ‘You don’t sound too sure. I’ll ring you when I get back.’

  ‘No, no. You concentrate on having a lovely evening. I’ll call you when we’re on our way home tomorrow, okay?’

  ‘Yes. But on my mob, I might still be at school.’

  ‘Oh yes, hope the girls do you proud in the concert. And Yol… Nando. It’s all going to be fine. Sometimes you have to trust your instincts.’

  But Nando seemed to be showing some very untrustworthy instincts, the hand back on my thigh even as he grabbed the phone and talked softly to Jeremy.

  Then he closed it and turned to me. ‘He is hard on himself, but the feedback was very good and is miracle he is there. Any-way, he’s happy is nearly time to come home, no?’

  ‘But I don’t think he’d be too happy about this,’ I said, gently pushing his hand away.

  Wouldn’t be too happy about this: how pathetically prim. A hand on my leg: he must have seen Jeremy’s hand there loads of times. What’s wrong with me? But to be fair, I’d really had quite a day, drunk on fermented resentment and forgotten affection so unexpectedly turning into the start of something special with Papa. And over-sensitized to this beautiful friend who’d supported me through it all…

  I fixed on Paco’s spot-lit silver head and watched for Nando’s appearance behind him. He’d be there, waiting in the dark; it reminded me of how he’d disappeared into the night that first evening long ago. But he was no longer leaving me; he was arriving further and further into my life - for as long as his relationship with Jeremy lasted, which, according to each of them, would be forever.

  He materialised. To that slow, contemplative music which could have been a farruca, but I couldn’t have sworn to it. Flamenco, the Spanish language: always just out of my reach. As Nando had been. I watched him click his fingers, arms raised, deep in concentration; dancing to himself, for himself, as he must. But he also took in the feelings of those around him, he’d said, to inform his dance. A tempestuous burst of rhythmic stamping: my outburst at Papa’s, perhaps, was in there somewhere.

  The show went on: the contrasts between tightly held passion and warm, easy expression, the spiritual and the sensual, the black and the white. But the boundaries finally blurring, the exchanges celebrating similarities rather than differences. It made me smile, this ecstatic ending that suggested that there was no such thing as attraction of opposites, just unexpected links and connections.

  I let people squeeze past me as I tapped out a text for Jeremy.

  ‘Are you going to love this show! And N - it’s the pure flamenco stuff, but he’s sublime. Also great at Papa’s, a word here, an arm there, really helped. Stop worrying about N and me, it’s been good, I love him. CU tom. LU xxxxxxx’

  Fifteen minutes; he might have showered by now. Back came the buzzily sick feeling, although I couldn’t think why. I went outside, folding my arms despite the warmth of the evening. Then searched for my vibrating phone: Jeremy, probably still at dinner with author friends.

  But it was Nando. ‘I think the text is for Jeremy? I love you too. N’

  How did I do that? This tiredness was hazardous. ‘Sorry. See you back home.’

  ‘No, come here.’

  He was outside the stage door, chatting to the dancers with the daughters back home. He introduced me but told them I’d had a big day and he needed to take me home.

  We linked arms and walked round the corner. ‘Is how you walk with Jeremy,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how I would walk with Jeremy, but I can’t do this. Nobody will understand. I am completely in love with him, I make love with him, but I am not gay man. Maybe you don’t understand this either.’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘I don’t want you to feel that I… use you.’

  ‘I don’t.’ Well, I do, but hopefully you’ll make it up to me.

  We were through the door. Then he unlocked mine; I hadn’t noticed that Jeremy had given him my key as well as his.

  ‘I will make the chocolate. Today you have done bigger show than me.’

  I sat on the sofa. ‘Well, it’s not that difficult, their dodgy English helps.’

  ‘No, no,’ he said, turning round. ‘I mean at the house of your Papá. You had to present the truth.’ He turned back, took the spotty mugs out of the cupboard. ‘At the cafe - this was not show at all.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  No answer.

  ‘Was there a… problem?’

  He came over with the mugs and sat down next to me. ‘No, Yoli. Why always you think there is problem?’

  Maybe he thought they’d seen me pushing his hand away. ‘Was there something wrong with the way I…?’

  He sighed heavily.

  ‘No! I just say was not show.’

  Oh God. He thinks it’s not a show because I want to be his girlfriend. ‘Look, this is silly, and I’m really—’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  I sipped my drink, burnt my tongue. Why is he spoiling this? If he knows I’m in love with him - if that’s what I am - he could at least have the grace to pretend he hasn’t noticed. But he’s sitting here looking humiliatingly bothered about it.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said, clacking my mug back down on the table.

  Then he took my hand; an irritatingly brotherly gesture. Bit his lip as if thinking of how to console me.

  ‘Look, if you don’t mind, I’m really tired, I think I’ll—’

  ‘What I’m trying to say, is not show because… Yoli, you know, we are novios.’

  My heart stopped. ‘You’re novios with Jeremy.’

  ‘Yes. But from the beginning we have talked of how… also I need a woman.’

  ‘What d’you mean, need a woman.’

  ‘Pues…’ He chuckled. ‘For all the usual reasons.’

  Randy little cake-and-eat-it sod. ‘But it would hurt him, don’t you care about that?’

  ‘I have to be true to Jeremy and myself. He respect this, understand. And now, he wants it, for you and for me, you have not seen this?’

  ‘He wants us to be close.’

  ‘No Yoli, think of what he has said. He will not tell us direct, wants that we decide, but he does everything he can. Even tonight, I know there is time for him to come back and return for late class tomorrow, but he wanted that we have another evening together.’

  I tried my drink again, but could hardly swallow. I’ve never known such happiness Yol, and I want to share it with you… It’s all going to be fine, sometimes you have to trust your instincts… You’re so stubborn Yol, a right donkey…

  He put his arm round me but I continued to stare into my mug. ‘He needs you. And wants this for you because he knows I am only man who will accept you two are… married. He wants us to be together.’

  Toge’her, he’d said in hospital, pulling my hand towards the one holding Nando’s. Another sip of my drink, trying to think straight, my heart racing, a ringing in my ears…

  ‘I know I leave you before, a part of you hates me for that. But is different now, you know this.’

  You have to stop hating him for not falling in love with you. Get over your wanting him for yourself, and give in. Jemery: twisted and cruel but incapable of lies.

  ‘Por
qué no puedes mirarme?’

  Because the moment I look at you I’ll give in. As Jeremy is hoping I will. Because he would prefer the novia to be me, rather than some demanding Violeta-type bailaora, and would prefer my boyfriend to be Nando, rather than yet another man who can’t understand our relationship and might want to take me away. But what about…

  Nando was turning my face towards him.

  ‘But there’s something else,’ I blurted out.

  He moved his hand to my tummy… ‘Ah yes. But you have to wait Yoli, because maybe, after a time, we will have this.’

  ‘Un niño?’ I asked quietly, in case I’d misunderstood.

  ‘Si, un niño. Or even niños. But mujer! Poco a poco, no?’ He untied my blouse and laid me back against the arm of the sofa. Our lips touched gently, then he kissed my neck and slowly moved down to where his hand still lay on my tummy. ‘Ven,’ he said, standing me up and taking my arm.

  I was uneasy on my feet. And uneasy about the lack of poco a poco with which he seemed to want this bizarre semi-relationship consummated.

  ‘Just big abrazo on the bed, don’t worry.’

  ‘Yes, because we need to talk to—’

  ‘No Yoli, I will tell him, alone. Don’t worry about this - is the last evening for us, we are not alone again until Conil.’

  ‘And how will that—?’

  ‘Jeremy will give us some time, you will see.’

  Somehow we’d reached the bedroom and he was taking off his shirt, soft black hair landing on his shoulders. Then he was pulling off his jeans and I looked away.

  ‘I thought we were just having a big abrazo,’ I said, folding my arms.

  The lopsided smile. ‘I said like a big abrazo.’

  ‘No you didn’t, you said—’

  But he was in front of me, his lips silencing mine, his hands under my blouse and taking it off. Then he bent his head and muttered as he dealt with the hook and button of my skirt, his hair tickling my arm.

  ‘Look I can’t…’

  He settled me on the bed and wrapped himself around me. I wanted to stay like that, but he lifted me up and undid the catch on my bra.

  ‘D’you remember… before?’ I asked, my heart tapping away.

  ‘Very well. Muy timida. Little dot under arm.’ He moved his hand down my body. ‘Small—’

  ‘Okay, that’s—’

  ‘Three times, fly easily, but not the last time… too sad.’

  ‘I don’t want to be sad again.’

  He took my face in his hands. ‘Listen to me Yoli, is different now, I was looking for something, hurting to find it… not ready to look after anyone.’

  ‘Or any two.’

  He grinned. ‘Claro, any two,’ he agreed, and seemed to take this as my acceptance, kissing me more passionately, pushing hard against me. This intoxicating creature, back here again in my bed, as if visiting from another planet.

  ‘I don’t even know where you live.’

  He shook his head and laughed, then lay back down next to me and opened my bedside table drawer. I heard him clicking a temperamental biro into obedience. I propped myself up onto my elbow, trying to recall what else he was going to find in there. Then saw him pick up the strip of pills and study it.

  ‘You take these?’

  ‘Mostly.’ A few of the days hadn’t been popped out; I considered telling him that I had the beginnings of period pains.

  ‘Ah yes, I remember. Jeremy say he told you to take it or you become witch with the hormonas. But he had a plan. You see it? He think of this, the clínicas for us, everything.’

  He flicked through an old Sadler’s Wells brochure but there was no space; picked up a monkey birthday card, but confirming it was from Jeremy, deemed it sacrosanct; reached in further and found Javi’s folded letter, holding it in his hand as if divining the content and then pushing it to the back of the drawer. Where he found another, much smaller piece of paper.

  ‘No…’

  He turned it over. Our eyes met. ‘Es mío.’

  ‘No, it’s mine,’ I said, putting my hand out for it.

  He swept it out of my reach with a grin. ‘No, you gave it to me.’

  ‘Well… finders keepers.’

  ‘Qué?’

  ‘If you find something, you keep it. You’ll just lose it again.’

  ‘No, no.’

  I put my hand in the drawer. ‘What about…’ I was holding the translated lyrics of Pilar’s song.

  ‘Perfecto.’ He covered the back of it with his Seville, Madrid and Conil addresses, followed by some numbers, in his large loopy handwriting. ‘Vale,’ he said, with a final flourish of the biro that conjured a portrait of him looking beaky and intense.

  I chuckled.

  Then he picked up the credit card slip again and lay back down next to me so that we could both look at it. The shaky labelling of the roads, the steaming mug showing the flat. And Pilar’s ‘Aquí vive tu esposa’. I took it from him and put it on the bedside table. Lay down facing him and found him looking at me intently. His eyes for once not commanding but searching for a response. Almost vulnerable. That word in the air between us.

  I put my hand to his face and kissed him, pushing myself against his body. There was suddenly that urgency that I remembered from before, a brief struggle to overpower my awkward limbs… and then that primitive act, aggressive if not for the sweet Spanish whisperings in my ear, pleasure becoming almost painful, a final stinging ecstasy making me cry out, then his held breath, a shudder of his shoulders, my name. It was done.

  Chapter 33

  mujer f woman, wife

  Just the once. Because sleep is important, he’d said, especially for new shows and new starts. A bit later there was Yoli, I want to sleep here, but you have to be still, entiendes? I understood. But I had to keep having a look at him miraculously lying there on my pillow. Then his eyes opened and met mine. Yoli, duérmete ahora. Sleep now. He rolled me over and stuck the lemurs under my arm.

  Just the one night. Waking early and turning over to check he hadn’t gone. The long black lashes, the pirate-worthy stubble, the little scar on his chin that I hadn’t got round to asking him about. A peek under the sheet at his taut olive-skinned body. Then, heavy with reluctance, carefully sliding out of bed and getting ready for the school, knowing that when I came back he’d be Jeremy’s boyfriend, not mine. For a while. But that was okay, because Jeremy was half-mine too.

  The concert: Emma surprised to find me happily mentioning that Javi and I were working on something new. The afternoon’s end of year Staff Party: knowing it was my last. Then quietly getting into my flat, intending to leave Jeremy and Nando alone until it was time to go to the theatre cafe, but finding they’d been watching out for me. Nando tells me how well you’ve looked after him. Sinking into Jeremy’s arms, already weary with the burden of secrecy and guilt. Opening Nando’s present: a crimson Kipling bag, with the usual zipped and poppered compartments and fluffy monkey keyring. I know you have small one already, but this is good size for aeroplanes, I was thinking.

  And it was. I slotted my water bottle into the side pocket, my iPod back into the inner pouch. Twiddled the monkey in my fingers, looking out of the window at the parched landscape below. Thirty minutes to Jerez. We were descending, bouncing along on milky-soft clouds. I was excited, but also feeling yawny and weak rather than strong like I needed to be; Jeremy would now know, Nando was going to tell him while they were alone together. Okay, he hadn’t yet done so when I’d spoken to him that morning, but he promised he would. Without saying how or when, and cross that I was suggesting that he was behaving anything less than honourably. I relented, because in every other respect as a boyfriend - albeit a shared, absent and secret one - he couldn’t be faulted: reliable and responsive with texts and calls, not afraid to say he loved me, happy to talk about our future in Seville and even, on one occasion, how musical and atractivo our child would be. He wouldn’t let me down.

  Twenty minutes until landing.
Another wave of buzzy nervousness. The plane had started to lurch and buffet against the innocuous blobs of haze; I wished it would stop. I really wished it would stop. I sipped from my water bottle. Reminded myself that I’d grown out of airsickness, it was all in my head. Then the Spanish businessman next to me opened a pungent ham sandwich.

  I was in the Señoras, brushing my teeth, washing my face, pinching my face - but still looking like a ghost. How was I going to cope with my Seville-London-Jersey lifestyle? I’d have to start taking those dopey pills again. I brushed my hair and kept it loose, as he liked it - as they both liked it.

  And there was Nando. Only Nando, as Jeremy had said it would be.

  ‘Yoli, pobrecita! You not take your pills for aeroplane? Come here.’ The abrazo I’d been longing for.

  We walked out into the crushing heat of the car park, Nando apparently immune and swiftly pulling me and my case towards a dusty Jeep. We got in and started kissing again, our hands underneath each other’s t-shirts.

  ‘And how’s Jeremy?’ I asked into his neck.

  'Fine, fine.’

  I waited.

  He started talking in Spanish, something about how much he’d missed me.

  So he still hadn’t said anything. A hot wave of worry and irritation. I let go of him and did up my seatbelt. He started up the engine. There was some swerving on and off dual carriageways, but he drove less hispanically than I’d imagined. I was told how we were having a barbecue when Toni and Pilar arrived that evening; not to worry, Maria the cook had made one of her perfect tortillas for me; I should have a siesta; I was in the little room, but would be the first person to use the newly built bathroom attached to it.

  The roads became quieter and narrower, passing through gentle hills, fields of black bulls. He opened the sunroof. Played Jeremy’s Chambao CD, his fingers tapping along to the rhythm on the steering wheel. Put a hand on my thigh, under my skirt. I put the hand in mine. He pulled it over and onto his thigh, then onto the hard crotch of his shorts. I pulled it away.