by Joanna Glen
Jean winked at me.
Chapter 66
How can I describe arriving in Córdoba for the first time?
I left my backpack in my room in Hostal Jardín – a little hotel with tiled floors and walls, and an inner courtyard over-run with ferns – which was occupied for the term by King’s students.
My room-mate, Carrie Felps, hadn’t yet arrived. I was pretty sure she was the Carrie with the feather in her ear.
As I walked out into the late spring afternoon, I took a deep breath – I was coming home. I hoped I was coming home. To the place where I’d find my birth and my mother, and work out who I was. To the place where certainty and happiness lay waiting for me. Of course they did.
Córdoba was hot, its churches were cool, its palm trees sprouted fronds like fountains. I sat on a bench and watched a felt-hatted rider sitting, straight-backed, astride the dappled back of a horse, which, every few minutes, reared up on its hind legs. My skin tingled with the joy of being here.
I walked through the maze of flower-hung streets which I’d studied a thousand times, folding over the map in my Chelsea bedroom, and I circled back on myself, cool in the shadow, emerging into intense sunlight, and back into alleys of stone.
The city was sweet with the intoxication of orange blossom, as I’d read it would be, and I breathed it in like an addict. My father lurked around every corner, dark-skinned, black-bearded, such that I nearly touched strange men on the arm.
Turning into squares, I glimpsed huge crosses made of roses or carnations in top-to-toe red, or petalled white and blue for the festival of Cruces, which I’d read about (obviously).
Around a towering red-rose cross, in a small square, an old man drank fino sherry, and a granny danced flamenco with her grown-up son. A group of teenage girls twirled and stamped. A young woman arrived with a baby in a fabric sling.
She stopped in front of me so that I could see the baby’s minuscule fingers holding her thumb.
And that’s when it hit me.
As she started to dance, I felt the tiny hand that I would never hold, the perfect little fingers that would never curl around my thumb, the joy from which I’d be forever barred, and I was buried by the rubble of my loss, and for a moment, I was St John in his prison cell, climbing the strut of the cross towards the light, and the cross was made of roses, and the people danced, and it was no good thinking of the surgeon’s bald head because I was, finally, crucified by the surgeon’s curse.
Being barren was nothing like being bald.
I would never dance with my child.
I walked, no, I stomped, desolate, along the banks of the River Guadalquivir, fighting back the tears, and bright flows the river of God, I remembered from St John, and the river was a strange comfort, and at least I’m feeling pain, I said to myself, when I’d become so good at feeling nothing much at all.
Guadalquivir, I repeated, Guadalquivir, Guadalquivir, until I could hear the Arabic al-wadi al-kabir – great river – running through its current, running through time, and joggers ran where Romans once marched, and Jews once prayed, and Christians praised, and Arabs walked, robed and turbaned in the hot afternoons, perhaps Abd al-Rahman himself, newly arrived in the spring of 756.
And then.
There it was!
The Mezquita.
Nothing – nothing – could have prepared me for the size and scale of the old mosque, set high up, so that you couldn’t avert your eyes, no, however long you lived here, you cricked your neck upwards when passing its ancient walls, glorious stone collages in ochre and gold and rust.
Chapter 67
Our course began with an evening lecture.
I got back to my room, and Carrie still hadn’t arrived.
I felt a little spiral of hope.
That we might become friends.
Bridget had never replied to say whether or not she liked Naomi.
I felt frightened that my flat, inadequate letters had killed our relationship.
I desperately wanted to talk to her – but was that selfish too?
Was it always about me and my needs?
Is that the danger of love, that it faces in, not out?
I knew that if I could talk to her, I’d tell her everything, about my endometriosis, and the tiny shadow-hand I’d never hold, and the Roman bridge over the ancient river, and the colossal mosque, and I’d also ask about the kibbutz and I’d also listen properly and mind about the things she minded about, but she didn’t have a phone.
I sat and wrote her a string of similes about Córdoba, which I invited her to mark out of ten, like we did when we were young. I signed off Forever Eva, but the minute I posted the letter, I knew it was too flippant and all wrong.
I should have apologised, not written stupid similes, but sadly one thing nobody can do (and many must have wanted to) is get letters out of postboxes.
I thought of Michael.
I had absolutely no desire to phone him.
Could I only be close to one person at a time, I wondered – was that the problem?
It was Bridget and then Billy and then Michael – and one I’d lost, and one was dead, and one I didn’t feel like phoning.
I was crap at love.
But I will change, I thought, Córdoba will change me, I know it will.
(And of course it did.)
The next day began with a guided tour of the city, starting at the old fortress, the Alcázar, its gardens ablaze with flowers and shimmering with arched fountains, which set me tingling again, like the river.
Our guide was wearing a black pencil skirt and enormous white trainers, and she spoke in machine-gun Spanish, barely comprehensible, pausing every few minutes to repeat the information in machine-gun English, barely comprehensible. Everything she said, I already knew.
We followed flocks of hot tourists with matching hats towards the orange-tree courtyard of the Mezquita – a broad cobbled terrace, whose walled interior was criss-crossed by orange trees and open to the sky.
There were six men, and a woman with no teeth, sitting along the back wall of the courtyard, begging.
Our guide machine-gunned: ‘Abd al-Rahman built the first mosque in the eighth century.’
She pointed out the three extensions to the mosque, added in the ninth and tenth centuries, as if they were fire exits – with no wonder at all in her voice.
‘When we go into the Mezquita,’ she rattled in Spanish, ‘you will see the ornate Catholic chancel, built by King Carlos of Castile …’
She raised her clipboard in the air, and the others followed her towards the mosque, or the mosque-cathedral as it is supposed to be called.
I skipped away.
She wasn’t the person I wanted to be with when I went inside.
Also, it was too crowded.
I wanted it beautiful.
And quiet.
And mine.
I leant against the wall of the orange-tree courtyard and watched: a skinny boy ran through the courtyard with a tennis racquet and bowed legs – it was Billy, here and then gone, and I was sitting in a pool of sunlight, and God was hovering inside a thousand thousand murmured prayers, layered by different eras and religious ideas, fuelled by the same human hopes and fears.
The saudade longing came like an earthquake as a woman passed by, with long black hair like mine. I stared at her – she was probably in her early forties. The right age perhaps to be my mother?
It was possible.
In Córdoba, everything was possible.
An elderly nun came through the gate, walking with a stick, a tubular bag over her shoulder, out of which she took a grey chair, unfolding it and sitting down next to one of the beggars, handing him a huge bocadillo, crusty bread full of tortilla.
As I passed, she smiled.
Such a beautiful, arresting, honest smile that it made a lump in my throat.
‘Tan bonita,’ I said, so beautiful, nodding at the Mezquita.
‘Una vez subí en helicóptero,’
she said, I once went up in a helicopter. ‘And from the sky, it looks like someone dropped a cathedral in the middle of the mosque, you know, by mistake.’
She threw back her head and laughed like a donkey.
‘It’s so busy,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll wait and go in another time.’
‘Come back early in the morning,’ she said.
I noticed her grey dress.
‘Encantada,’ she said, nice to meet you.
The honest smile again.
‘Encantada,’ I said back.
When I got back to Hostal Jardín, I took out my photo and stared for a long time at the grey dress.
It was possible.
Chapter 68
I set my alarm and went back to the Mezquita early the next morning.
I was holding my breath as I went in.
Hundreds of pillars fell away from me, one after another after another, into the distance. Solitary people walked in silence, in and out, in and out, as if we were all lost in a forest. And that’s when the tears came. Tears for the Bridget I’d lost, and the Billy I’d lost, and the bits of me I’d lost with them, the future babies I’d lost without having them, and the mother I’d lost without knowing her.
The Mezquita is now walled in and full of shadows, but I tried to imagine it as it would have been when the sides were open to the air, and when butterflies and birds would have flown between the pillars and the pray-ers. That was before a Catholic chancel was slammed rudely in the middle, with gloomy side chapels, where the poor Virgin weeps behind bars.
When the Moors had gone, said a sign, the mosque’s sacred beauty was so revered that the structure wasn’t touched for three centuries, and when King Carlos V gave his permission to rip out its heart, the Christians who worshipped there opposed him.
As I came out, blinking, I saw the laughing nun again, and next to her a woman in a hijab handing out bottles of water to the homeless, both with covered heads and beautiful faces.
I caught the hijab-woman’s eye.
She had dark eyes and smooth skin.
We smiled at each other, and it lifted me, the way a tiny human encounter can.
When I got back to the hostal, Carrie Felps had arrived.
She was wrapped in an orange towel, and multicoloured feathers were blowing about the room.
‘The bag exploded,’ she said. ‘You’re not allergic, are you?’
I shook my head and started picking up feathers.
‘I think we met at that play in Southwark,’ she said.
I smiled at her.
‘Sorry I’m late arriving,’ she said. ‘I’m always late. How’s it been?’
‘I’ve just been to see the Mezquita,’ I said.
‘Is it as good as everyone says?’
‘Except the Catholic bits,’ I said. ‘Which feel all wrong in there.’
‘My mother’s a Catholic,’ she said.
She unknotted her towel and pulled on a crumpled red dress and a multicoloured silk kimono. Her long wet hair fell down her back.
‘Anyhow,’ she said. ‘What are your first impressions of Córdoba?’
‘It’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘But I could never have imagined the Mezquita was so huge. The old part of the city is really very small. You can get to know it in a couple of hours. And also, there are nuns all over the place. You never see a nun in London.’
‘Will you take me on a tour?’ said Carrie.
When we passed the horse-drawn carriages, a man shouted: ‘Half-price city tour!’
I ignored him.
‘It’s very touristy,’ I said.
‘Oh why not?’ said Carrie.
Why not?
Wonderful Blumey why not!
Before I could argue, Carrie hopped in.
‘Luis,’ said the man, shaking her hand.
I climbed in too, and we set off over the cobbles, her hair drying to straw-blond in the sun.
Chapter 69
We ended our third day, drinking too many plastic cups of fino sherry by the red-rose cross in Plaza del Potro, which is mentioned in Don Quijote, and we danced to tinny music under the stars on the cobbles of the ancient mule market.
Carrie was a little hummingbird, dancing about the square, feathers flying from her ears, spilling sherry on her toes. She had gold anklets layered around her ankles, with tiny dolphin and elephant charms.
She took my hand and whirled me around.
My skin prickled with Córdoba, and the more I drank, the more I danced, and the more I danced, the more it prickled.
Back at Hostal Jardín, Carrie collapsed onto the bed next to me.
‘Have you read Don Quijote?’ she said in a slightly slurred voice. ‘It’s supposed to be the first modern novel, but as far as I can work out, it’s a pile of shit.’
She couldn’t stop laughing.
She clutched her sides and laughed.
He laughter was contagious, or perhaps it was the cheap sherry.
‘It’s something to do with perception,’ she said.
And when she said perception, we both collapsed again, for no reason – except sherry.
‘He thought they were giants, but actually they were windmills,’ said Carrie, gulping for air. ‘What kind of idiot thinks a windmill’s a giant? Tell me what is good about that book?’
We let our laughter run out, and we were lying in silence.
‘Maybe everyone makes a false narrative out of their life to some extent,’ I said. ‘Maybe that’s what it’s about.’
We were both drunk and it was our first evening together and I hated the way I was sounding so serious.
But sometimes I couldn’t help it.
Being serious.
‘Wow!’ said Carrie.
Then, ‘Wow!’ again.
‘Wow what?’ I said.
‘I think you’re right. I think that’s it. You’re so clever, Eva Martínez-Green. I never thought of that! None of us tell it exactly how it is …’
‘We make it how we wish it was,’ I said. ‘It’s not just a Don Quijote thing.’
I thought of Christine Orson and her friends, curating their lives, shining up their children’s achievements and their husbands and their marriages, narrating the lives they wished they were living.
I’d probably always shined up my relationship with Michael, even to myself.
Carrie sat up and gave me an emerald-green feather earring, which I put in my ear.
‘Beautiful,’ she said.
Then she paused.
‘I had a close friend at school who used to read me her diary,’ she said. ‘And it never sounded anything like what had actually happened, but it was like she didn’t realise. Or surely she wouldn’t have read it to me? Because I knew it wasn’t true.’
‘Sometimes people think that if you say something enough times, it turns it true. My parents have this weird story that thieves stole my baby photos from our beach house. They’ve said it so often that perhaps they believe it. I mean – can you imagine thieves stealing anyone’s baby photos?’
Carrie said, ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
She rushed to the bathroom.
It wasn’t that nice, hearing someone being sick.
I heard the shower going on.
‘I feel much better,’ said Carrie. ‘You were saying something weird – about thieves stealing your baby photos …’
‘Basically,’ I said, ‘I have this theory that my mother isn’t my mother.’
‘Wow!’ she said.
I thought of taking out the photo – I had the photocopies in an envelope under my bed. My head was throbbing, and I could feel all the sherry I’d drunk in the pit of my stomach. And maybe a lot of sherry was what I needed in order to show someone finally.
Carrie lay down on her bed and fell asleep.
Like Bridget had when I tried to tell her.
Why was it that I could never show anyone this photo?
When the phone rang on our bedside table, I knew it was
Michael, and I knew that I didn’t want to answer.
He kept phoning.
I kept not answering.
I watched Carrie sleeping.
She looked so pretty.
In the morning, I called Michael.
‘I was so worried,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘We were out late.’
‘I needed to talk to you,’ he said. ‘I had a bad moment about Billy.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.
‘I’m finding it really hard, you being so far away,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.
‘Can you stop saying I’m sorry?’ he said.
I nearly said, I’m sorry.
‘So what were you up to yesterday?’
‘I went to see the Mezquita.’
No answer.
‘It’s incredibly beautiful, but they should never have put—’
He interrupted: ‘Well, you can show me it all when I come out.’
I felt like saying, I don’t want you to come.
I locked this thought in the UNWANTED THOUGHTS safe, which was getting rather full again.
‘Two weeks to go,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Are you OK?’ he said.
‘Yes, thank you,’ I said.
Yes, thank you?
Always be suspicious if you say yes thank you to your boyfriend.
Chapter 70
The flower crosses were disassembled and it was the festival of Patios.
Carrie and I trooped about the city with our Patios map, oohing and aahing at the flower-filled courtyards, the pots of geraniums, the tinkling fountains, the tiled walls and stone statues, the jasmine stars in cracked urns, and we stopped for wine and tapas, and wine and tapas, and on we went, and Carrie took my arm.
‘I love those pink geraniums!’ she said.
‘I can’t stand pink,’ I said.
I found that I was telling her, in some detail, about The Rainbow Rained Us.
It just came out.
This was the effect Carrie had on me, the effect of making me talk, just as Bridget had. I couldn’t stop: Pink Mother, Blue Mother, Bridget – I was gabbling.