by Joanna Glen
‘Everyone?’
‘Well, obviously not everyone.’
Pedantic.
Controlling.
I shall wear harem pants tomorrow and for the rest of my life.
We stopped at Heladería Torre.
‘Nothing for me,’ said Michael.
‘Well then I won’t have anything,’ I said, getting up, seething.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Michael. ‘Is it a crime not to want ice cream?’
I kept seething.
‘Why aren’t you talking?’ said Michael as we walked.
‘Look at that gorgeous campervan,’ I said, pointing at two bearded guys getting out a set of drums.
‘They’re totally unreliable, those VW things,’ said Michael. ‘And a nightmare to drive.’
‘What would you have then?’ I said, with a little spurt of revulsion. ‘A BMW?’
I wished, with a terrible ferocity, that he was a bearded man with drums and a campervan. There was no way I’d be driving around in the passenger seat of his BMW.
What if I didn’t want our future? What if I wanted my own?
We walked on in silence.
By the Mezquita, a coffin was being taken out of a hearse.
‘It’s nearly two years since Billy died,’ said Michael.
I didn’t want to remember.
‘You won’t ever leave me, will you?’ Michael said that night in bed.
I looked for words that wouldn’t come.
‘We’re both tired,’ I said. ‘Let’s get some sleep.’
I wanted to say that I’d let him turn me into someone else.
That it happened gradually.
That it was my fault not to stop it.
I wanted to say that without him, in Córdoba, I’d become myself again.
There was also the matter of Barnaby.
But he had a girlfriend.
And I couldn’t sleep.
And nor could Michael.
‘I’ve booked tickets for the Moorish Baths tomorrow,’ he said, reaching for my hand.
‘Great,’ I said, my hand feeling like a dead fish.
‘Good night then,’ he said, letting go of my hand.
The next day, we sat in a tub of hot bubbling water, trying to think of things to say to each other.
Michael said, ‘My parents have delayed their thirtieth anniversary party to the end of July so that you can come.’
‘But I’m coming back in August,’ I said.
‘It’s July the thirtieth – that’s two days before.’
He rubbed the sole of his foot against my calf.
‘I never said I was coming back on the first of August.’
Was I being unreasonable, or was he?
Sometimes you need an umpire in a relationship.
He had hard skin on the sole of his foot.
I moved my leg.
‘Sometimes I think I never want to leave,’ I said.
Michael emitted a long sigh.
‘These jets are making me itchy,’ I said, and I climbed out.
Chapter 74
When Michael caught the train to Seville Airport, Carrie moved back into our room.
‘How was it?’ she said.
‘OK,’ I said.
‘He’s very handsome,’ she said.
Being handsome is not enough, I thought.
I didn’t manage to apply this excellent lesson to Barnaby.
Carrie and I went to see a horse show at the Royal Stables, and I thought how nice it was to have a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend. When we passed Bar Acebuche near the Alcázar, Jane and Dee, our closest room-neighbours, asked if we wanted to join them for tapas. I had lots of friends now Carrie was my friend. Soon all of Córdoba would be wearing feathers – she sold her earrings from a little board, and in some moods, she gave them away for free.
‘Please stay, Evs,’ said Carrie. ‘It’s not the same when you’re not here.’
I felt the Bridget-glow: I was still surprised when people liked me.
‘I’m tired,’ I said. ‘I didn’t sleep well when Michael was here. I’ll see you later.’
She squeezed my hand, and she flew onto the terrace.
I walked away.
And it was then that I saw my father.
He was holding the hands of two small girls with brown hair and red ribbons.
I was sure it was him.
My heart was racing.
I couldn’t decide whether to run towards him or away from him.
Towards him, towards him, I couldn’t stop myself.
I followed him along the street, staring at the shape of his back and trying to catch the citrus smell of him.
I’d forgotten the way he splayed his feet slightly outwards, like a penguin.
The little girls’ hands were clutching his hands.
I knew the feel of those hands.
The warmth and safety of them.
The treachery of them.
I darted down a side street to get ahead of him.
There he was, his beard now grey.
‘Papá,’ I said, and it felt so odd to say it.
He stopped dead.
‘Papá,’ said the two little girls, turning their heads towards him.
For a split second, his expression became dislodged.
Then he rearranged his face into a confident smile, reminding himself he’d done nothing wrong, what could he do, Cherie was crazy, and at the same time, he was trying to make the little girl I’d been become a woman.
‘Qué maravilloso!’ he said, exuberantly, falsely. How marvellous.
I thought, you used to hang me upside down by my feet, don’t you remember?
We used to see Peter Pan jumping onto the hands of Big Ben, don’t you remember?
‘Valentina, Camila,’ he said, and then, in English, ‘meet the Marvellous Eva.’
‘So marvellous,’ I said, ‘that you’ve chosen not to see me in twelve and a half years.’
He made no response.
Then he stepped forward and kissed me – but, as you know, the Spanish kiss everyone.
The little girls stared up at me.
Then they started playing hopscotch.
Kiss, kiss, the Spanish way.
‘You sent me orange trees,’ I said, and I could feel my mouth trembling. ‘It was the same date you left us, did you realise?’
(And only days after I lost my virginity in the back of Michael’s Mini, I didn’t say.)
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Of course I realised.’
Pull yourself together, I said to myself, because I could feel my face starting to collapse.
‘What date was it then?’ I said, allowing myself to sound angry because angry would be much better than face-collapse.
‘I’m not going to be interrogated,’ he said.
‘Because you don’t know the date you left,’ I said. ‘You can’t remember.’
‘You’re very harsh,’ he said, reaching out his hand to me.
‘I’m very angry,’ I said, not taking it.
‘You were such a tender child.’
‘Tender children are easily hurt.’
‘What else could I do?’
‘There were a million things you could have done. I’m your daughter.’
The slight flicker underneath his skin – what was it?
We squared up to each other, talking fast.
‘Fathers look after daughters,’ I said.
Again, the flicker.
He talked over me: ‘Did you like the orange trees?’
‘Where did they come from?’
‘I thought you’d like them.’
‘Be honest – it was very random.’
‘A friend ordered too many for his house in London. So I …’
‘How touching!’ I said.
He stared around him.
‘I need to be making a move,’ he said.
‘You bump into me after twelve and a half years, and all you want to do
is get away?’
‘I’m due somewhere, Eva.’
‘Do you have no interest at all in me?’ I said, my voice raised now. ‘No curiosity about why I’m here? How I am? Who I am? No desire to catch up? I can’t believe you—’
‘Please,’ said my father, nodding at Valentina and Camila. ‘They’re too young …’
He wanted me to calm down to protect them.
I felt guilty, inappropriate, stupid, which were all the things he should have felt – how could I be in the wrong here?
He was stroking his beard with his right hand, and I had no idea what he was feeling.
‘I was a little girl once,’ I said. ‘Like they are. And you left me.’
‘I’m trying to think what’s best,’ he said, and his tone was softer.
‘Do you live here?’ I asked, swallowing back tears.
‘Some of the time,’ he said.
‘These are your daughters?’
He nodded, smiling.
‘Do you have any other children?’ I said, doing my best to smile back.
My smile was struggling to stay in shape.
I blinked my eyes and clenched my jaw.
‘Only from my first marriage, but you know about them.’
‘I don’t know about them, and I don’t know about any first marriage,’ I said – there he went, forgetting his stories – and I felt a horrible emptiness inside me. ‘Am I the only child you don’t see? Out of the many you’ve spread around Europe?’
‘Well …’
‘I take that as a yes,’ I said, thinking: am I that unlikeable?
‘How’s your mother?’ he said.
We were both quieter now and I’d taken command of my mouth, pushed the tears back down, where I could feel them like water boiling in my belly.
‘I think you probably ruined her life,’ I said, again, trying to make myself acceptably calm, ‘although I don’t suppose she was easy.’
‘She’s not a well lady,’ he said, and I felt the anger coming back.
‘And knowing that she wasn’t well, you didn’t think to check up on me – or her – from time to time?’
He stuttered, and this gave me some small measure of pleasure, which turned quickly into the awful thought that he’d hardly thought about me all these years, he really didn’t mind how I was, he had no particular desire to meet again.
‘Did Cherie tell you?’ he said.
‘Tell me what?’
His face coloured.
‘¿Nos vamos?’ said the older girl. Can we go?
‘Un minuto,’ he said, looking at his watch.
A loud ringtone from his pocket made me jump.
He looked smug as he took out his large mobile phone – hardly anyone had them back then.
‘Eva, I have to go,’ he said, trying to force it back inside his pocket. ‘Are you here for a while?’
‘You just asked me if Cherie told me. Told me what?’
‘Oh nothing,’ he said. ‘You know …’
‘We clearly need to talk,’ I said, as he took the two little girls’ hands. ‘I’m studying here. I leave at the end of July. Do you have a card you can give me? Or a number?’
‘Or you could give me yours?’ he said.
‘I’m staying at Hostal Jardín,’ I said.
‘I know exactly where that is,’ he said as he turned.
‘You will come, won’t you?’ I called as the three of them headed off.
He turned around and put his thumb up.
But I wasn’t at all sure that he would.
Chapter 75
My father didn’t come.
My mind raged with hypotheses, and I went on long walks trying to bump into him.
‘At least you’ve got Michael,’ said Carrie, watching me carefully as we sat drinking wine in Plaza de Tendillas. ‘And he treats you well.’
‘Michael treats me beautifully,’ I said flatly, hoping it was true (and I wasn’t spouting false narratives like Don Quijote and Christine Orson).
‘Is that what attracted you to him?’ she said, sitting forwards. ‘Although you wouldn’t have known that I suppose, before …’
I’d never thought about what attracted me to Michael.
‘I guess I thought he was handsome,’ I said to her. ‘And he asked me out. That’s basically the story.’
‘But you’ve been together for years,’ said Carrie. ‘I never manage more than a few weeks. How do you do it?’
‘I suppose I just hung on to him,’ I said, thinking that sounded all wrong.
‘Are you pleased you hung onto him?’ said Carrie, looking doubtful.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t want to be hung on to accidentally,’ said Carrie. ‘If I were him.’
‘He’s the only security I have, I guess,’ I said quietly.
I paused.
‘I want to show you something,’ I said, taking the photo out of my bag. ‘It fell out of a book in my father’s study years ago.’
My hands were shaking as I handed the photo to Carrie.
‘I’m absolutely sure that’s me,’ I said, pointing at the baby.
‘The eyes are just like yours,’ she said, looking at the photo and back at me.
‘That has to be a patio in Córdoba, doesn’t it?’ I said.
‘It’s very faded, but it could be,’ said Carrie, holding the photo very close to her eyes. ‘And someone’s cut off her head, the woman who’s holding you. Deliberately. You can tell. They didn’t get it straight.’
‘I know. And also, Carrie, I think she might be my mother. You know, the real one.’
Carrie gasped: ‘Really?’
Then she said again: ‘Really?’
Then she said: ‘Wow!’
Then she said, ‘That grey dress looks a bit like a nun’s dress.’
‘Or could it just be any grey dress?’ I said.
Carrie stared at the dress.
‘I guess so,’ she said.
I took the photo.
We paid the bill, and started walking back into the old town.
She put her arm around my shoulders, like Bridget used to when we walked home from school.
Bridget never did reply to the similes.
I tried not to think about it because, if I did, it felt like I had a slab of concrete on my chest.
I’d finally, and successfully, shown someone the photo.
Hurray!
It went well.
‘Hold on!’ said Carrie. ‘Can I look at it again?’
She sat down on a bench.
I sat next to her, and took out the photo.
‘What’s that in the baby’s mouth?’
‘My mouth?’
‘Your mouth.’
‘Isn’t it one of those teething things?’ I said, peering at it.
‘It almost looks like a cross,’ said Carrie.
I grabbed the photo back.
‘A grey dress and a cross?’ I said.
She hugged me.
‘Oh my word!’ she yelped. ‘Are we getting somewhere? Is she a nun?’
‘It would feel a bit weird to have a nun as a mother,’ I said.
‘Or,’ said Carrie, ‘your mother could still be your mother and she had a nun who was a friend, and she’s holding you …’
I felt my stomach contract.
‘But everyone else has a photo of their mother holding them as a baby,’ I said. ‘Don’t they, Carrie? Everyone. And also someone cut off her head for a reason.’
She nodded.
We got up.
‘So why don’t I?’ I said. ‘Why do I only appear when I’m three and a half?’
‘We’re going to solve this mystery,’ she said. ‘I’m going to help you.’
A group of young guys walked past in blue uniform.
‘The Mili boys,’ I said. ‘They’re doing their year of conscription here, apparently.’
Carrie stopped and offered the tallest one a feather.
He looked, unsurprisingly, surprised.
And, in front of my eyes, in thirty seconds flat, he was asking her out.
And she was saying yes.
Chapter 76
When Michael opened his arms to me at the station, I wondered if he did feel a bit more like a bear than he had last time. Quite a thinnish bear.
I told him about my father, and he said, ‘How many families does the man need?’
‘It’s weird,’ I said, ‘looking at those two little girls and thinking they must be my sisters.’
‘I’m lucky to have a father who’s a good man,’ said Michael.
I cocked my head, wondering if Mr Orson was a good man.
‘I’m sure he’s ruthless in business,’ he said, smiling. ‘But he’s good to my mother.’
‘She told me he didn’t want her to have a job,’ I said, not smiling. ‘I hope you know that I would want a job.’
‘We don’t need to talk about this now,’ said Michael. ‘I’ve come here to enjoy myself.’
He slapped my right buttock.
I jumped.
I didn’t think he’d done that before.
We joined the streams of people heading off to the fair, women and girls, canary-coloured in frilled flamenco dresses and matching dotty shoes, and men in tight trousers and flat felt hats.
We saw Carrie arm in arm with the tall Mili guy with a red carnation behind her ear.
There were rows of striped caseta tents, and fairground rides, and there was dancing and music, and paella being cooked in great vats – and, everywhere, the buzz of celebration.
Michael wasn’t an awful dancer.
In fact, for an English guy, he was quite good.
But Spanish men get born with different hips.
Michael’s face was smiling at me, and I wasn’t able to smile back.
I could still feel the shock of his hand on my buttock.
We drank cup after cup of Rebujito, a fizzy mix of sherry and Sprite.
‘You can’t imagine something like this in England,’ Michael shouted across at me, above the music, attempting a flamenco move, which didn’t come off.
More Rebujito, one cup after another, I couldn’t stop – it was the only way.
We moved on to another caseta, and we were both drunk now, and, as we danced, people crashed into us, and we were dancing, and we were dancing, and then I found that I was looking into.
No, it couldn’t be.