by Joanna Glen
What was the point of this mother, who was only prepared to think of me but never see me?
I spent Christmas with Carrie and Gabriel.
I wrote to Jhazmin in the new year, asking her to tell me a bit more about her husband and son, who she rarely mentioned. She didn’t reply.
Guests arrived and guests departed.
And guests arrived and guests departed.
The hotel was full that spring for the festival of Cruces and Patios and the May feria where we partied day and night and never slept.
Summer was hotter and harder to fill.
In the autumn, two years after we’d opened, every room was taken, and all my lectures and tours were over-subscribed.
The success of La Convivencia was such a joy to me.
Success is almost as good as love, I find, but not quite.
The greatest joy of all was when Bridget moved to Córdoba to help me in November of 1999. I gave her Carrie’s old room in my flat and felt the ginger delirium of our childhood friendship. She was off the pills – hurray! – and feeling well and hopeful, so I felt well and hopeful too. The way we catch each other’s feelings, that’s the joy and the agony of love.
For now it was a joy.
The agony came later.
I wondered if I’d ever tell Bridget about Barnaby.
I didn’t think so – she’d be too conflicted.
‘Listen to me!’ said Bridget. ‘Me llamo Bridget y tengo veinticinco años y vivo en Córdoba.’
‘Completely fluent!’ I said. ‘I can’t believe you’re twenty-five!’
‘And I still haven’t done it!’ wailed Bridget.
‘Wait until my millennium party!’ I said.
Chapter 104
My not-father came to the millennium party.
He wasn’t Peter Pan, and he couldn’t grow old peacefully.
He’d dyed his hair tar-black and doused it in oil to hold it in place across his scalp.
Bridget looked beautiful in a silver silk dress.
Gabriel had – with some intention – invited a friend called Gerónimo, a giant of a man, loud-voiced and laughing, wearing black-rimmed glasses with a big, majestic nose and a bigger and more majestic smile. Imposing, if not exactly handsome.
Bridget and Gerónimo were standing on opposite sides of the angel when it first came to me that Gabriel was right, this really might work.
You know how some people look right physically together.
These two did.
I smiled to myself as Gabriel introduced them, as they laughed, as they sat down and talked and talked and talked. I lost sight of them, and suddenly it was the end of the 19s, and aeroplanes didn’t fall out of the sky and computers didn’t crash, and on the other side of midnight, after we’d eaten our twelve grapes the Spanish way, after we’d popped champagne, there they were, kissing, in front of my eyes.
Bridget had invited the twin brothers and the twin sisters.
Boaz still looked like a mole.
Barnaby arrived without Naomi, who was making a TV programme about her latest expedition.
I avoided him, as planned.
I walked around talking over-animatedly to everyone else, knowing exactly – exactly – where he was. Hoping he knew where I was. Hoping he was dying of desire. Hoping he’d noticed how much I didn’t need him. How happy and laughy and desirable and desired I was.
I danced with the whole world, even my not-father and Boaz, to make Barnaby jealous – I hoped he was watching.
But I didn’t dance with Barnaby.
When everyone had left, Barnaby stayed, sitting in a corner, smoking.
‘Come and sit down,’ he said.
Pathetic, but I did.
‘This is our baby,’ he said, holding out a blurry black and white photo. ‘I wanted you to know before anyone.’
I remember the knife-wound I felt in my heart.
The betrayal.
Betrayal?
That a married couple were going to have a baby.
I found it disconcerting.
‘It’s a girl,’ said Barnaby.
‘Lovely,’ I said, not getting the tone right – was there a right tone?
‘We’re going to call her Azahara,’ said Barnaby.
‘The caliph’s favourite wife,’ I said, and now I had a headache coming on in my temples. ‘You stole my name. What if I want to call my daughter Azahara?’
‘I thought you said—’ said Barnaby.
‘Nothing is certain,’ I said crossly. ‘All they have are statistics.’
I defy the statistics, I thought, don’t nick my name, and don’t show me photos of your embryo – it’s not appropriate. Who wants to see photos of anyone’s embryo? Is nothing private these days?
‘It’s a bit weird to call her the name I suggested,’ I said. ‘In the circumstances.’
‘I hadn’t really thought of it like that,’ said Barnaby, looking almost apologetic.
I got up.
Bridget came through the oak door with Gerónimo, and they went and sat in a dark corner.
I went to bed without saying goodnight to Barnaby.
I avoided him in the morning.
Or he avoided me.
It’s all a question of perception.
‘Gerónimo’s invited me to New York!’ said Bridget.
I hugged her.
‘It’s such a great name!’ I said. ‘Don’t people say it before they jump off bridges?’
‘I’m going to jump,’ said Bridget. ‘I’ve decided.’
‘You look nice together,’ I said.
‘I think he might be rich,’ said Bridget. ‘But I don’t like him for that. I like him because I like him. He’s funny. And I don’t feel big next to him.’
Carrie and I waved her off – first stop, Granada.
I whispered, ‘Jeronimo!’
She’d be doing it within hours.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh!
Exclamation marks all round for Bridget.
When I went inside, there was a letter from Jhazmin, answering the question I’d asked a year before.
‘My husband was a regular at the Spanish restaurant. That’s how I met him, we got married and moved in with my parents, and pretty quickly we had our son, Liam. He’s nineteen and a Chelsea-supporter, like his dad.’
Commas commas commas.
And still not magic at all.
In the slightest.
Bridget and Gerónimo came back.
Bridget was bursting out of herself.
‘Do you like Gerónimo?’ said Bridget.
‘He’s lovely,’ I said.
I did like him, but I found it hard to get to know him.
I often find this with jolly people, whose jolliness, though apparently welcoming, can keep you out.
‘He gets on with everyone,’ she said.
I went on bad dates with his friends.
A lot of bad dates.
Let’s not major on the bad dates.
Life stories are allowed to be selective.
Bridget whirled about the world with Gerónimo as he did important deals, something to do with cooking oil – I’ve always had a loose hold on jobs.
I called Cherie in Chelsea, but Jean said she hadn’t persuaded her to talk to me – she still felt betrayed.
I felt bad.
And sad.
But I couldn’t make myself regret taking the house.
In a burst of courage, I wrote a letter to Jhazmin asking, directly, whether she would ever let me go to Tooting and meet her in the flesh.
She didn’t mention it in her letters, all through the year, and then in the spring of 2001, out of the blue, she wrote this:
We come on holiday to Gibraltar every September, and we always cross into Spain for one day, and the men all go to the bullfight in La Línea, and I catch a bus to a village called El Manantial, which has a harbour and some restaurants, and I go to a little boutique there, and I let myself think of your father, just for o
ne day each year, I look in the mirror and ask him which dress he likes. Enough of that! I could meet you there. Café del Mar.
‘Please wear yellow!’ I replied. ‘So I recognise you.’
Chapter 105
I drove through fields of dead sunflowers towards the coast road, heading left towards Gibraltar, turning off when I saw the sign to El Manantial, which means a spring where water spouts.
There was a miserable strip of grey sand, with pedaloes on it and rows of sun umbrellas. I took my seat at a plastic table with a red plastic ketchup bottle on it and ordered a coffee.
Buses kept arriving at the far side of the promenade.
I tried to look comfortable.
I ordered a second coffee.
There was a small sticky patch of something on the table: jam, or tomato ketchup.
I scratched at it with my fingernail.
Women walked along the promenade.
A woman in a yellow scarf – I smiled.
Yellow flip-flops – I smiled again.
A pale yellow sundress.
My real actual mother?
Shaking hands.
I stood up.
Shaking legs.
The sundress had daisies on it, with heads made of tiny yellow beads.
She started crying.
She had the same eyes as me, or I had the same eyes as her, dark and shaped like almonds. I liked her eyes, which must mean I liked my own eyes – these are extraordinary revelations when you’ve never had a real mother. I looked down and saw that she had dark hairs on her big toes. I had those too. I plucked them out with tweezers in the mornings.
‘What should I call you?’ I said.
She didn’t answer.
She wiped her eyes.
‘I thought it would never happen,’ she said. ‘I never forgot you. And I can prove that.’
‘You don’t need to prove anything,’ I said.
We didn’t hug.
We stood, staring at each other, this stranger-mother and I, and I couldn’t work out what I felt.
‘Every year on the thirty-first of January I bought you a card and a present. I’ve got them in a case back in Tooting. In the attic.’
She knows the date of my birthday.
Of course she knows the date of your birthday.
She was there.
You came out of this woman’s body.
It looks too small, I thought.
‘I’ll buy you a cake,’ she said. ‘They do a lovely almond cake. And do you want tea?’
I nodded, though I’ve never liked almond cake.
We sat down, and I felt a strange darkness inside me.
There was no magic.
There was slightly greasy almond cake, which I found I couldn’t eat: it turned into little balls, like the ones they put inside bean bags, and the balls rolled around on my tongue, sticking to the inside of my cheeks and my gums. My thighs sweated against the plastic chair, and the tea wasn’t very nice, and nor was the cake.
‘Perhaps we should try a hug,’ I said, blushing furiously. ‘I mean, if that’s OK.’
‘It’s not something we really do in our family,’ she said quietly, looking away.
‘How funny!’ I said, feeling it was the least funny thing I’d ever heard. ‘Nor do we in mine!’
‘Except you are my family, I suppose,’ she said, looking down.
Look up, I thought, please look up, because we don’t feel like family.
‘Yes, I meant my other family who adopted me,’ I said. ‘We don’t really hug either.’
‘The nuns?’
‘No, the couple who got me from the nuns. Did you know about them?’
She shook her head.
‘I’ll explain,’ I said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘I had a very fragile mother and a very absent father.’
As I said it, I started feeling cross with her, which I hadn’t expected at all.
‘You didn’t live with the nuns?’ she said. ‘With Sister María Soledad?’
It wasn’t going right.
I leapt to my feet.
‘Shall we give the hug a try?’ I said. ‘It might help.’
She got up.
I’d pictured myself falling into her arms, but she fell into mine.
I’d been looking for a mother to lean on, but she was leaning on me.
And, what’s more, she was much smaller than me.
I felt big with her in my arms.
Which I didn’t like.
Maybe my father was tall.
The hug came to an end quickly, and we sat back down.
A girl with black plaits rode along the walkway on a bike.
‘I used to stare at brown girls with black hair,’ she said. ‘And now I don’t need to.’
‘Isn’t it strange how we both went to Córdoba?’ I said. ‘The way we were both drawn to the same city?’
‘But there again,’ she said, ‘you would have known you were born there, wouldn’t you?’
‘I guess so.’
‘And you like Córdoba, do you?’ she said, unmagically.
‘Oh, like isn’t the word for it.’
‘I felt the same.’
Of course you did, I thought, because you and I are mother and daughter, and we have almond eyes and hairy toes, and we could be written about in a Sunday magazine – but I’m not yet totally sure you’re my North Star.
She ordered more tea.
‘At school, I was always top of the class in Spanish,’ she said. ‘I bet you were too.’
‘Did you like being top of the class?’
‘I loved it.’
‘Me too.’
Me too me too me too!
What a relief: we were a little bit the same!
She’d taken a year abroad in Córdoba, as part of her Spanish degree, working in a school, just up from Plaza de Tendillas, in the modern part of town.
‘I know exactly where you mean,’ I beamed.
‘It took a while to get my confidence up in Córdoba,’ she said. ‘But I started to make friends, and then it was Cruces – and that’s where I met your father.’
My father?
I have a father – a real one.
‘I’ve got a photo of him.’
Yes, he was a tall man, I knew it.
He was standing in front of a cross made of red roses – I was sure it was Plaza del Potro, the Don Quijote square. He was wearing a blue polo-shirt, with the collar standing up and beige Chino trousers. I thought he’d look like a priest, rather than somebody who shopped in Gap. I squinted at this stranger with his black hair and big hands.
‘His friends were dancing in the square. And he wasn’t,’ she said.
‘And what happened?’
‘He said why wasn’t I dancing, and I said I was too shy. He said would I like to go somewhere else. I said yes. And he took my hand. I’d never held a man’s hand.’
I smiled at her.
‘Was it love at first sight?’ I said. ‘Was it like a chemical reaction?’
Like Blue Mother and Mr Blue!
Like Bridget and me!
‘Definitely.’
It was!
Oh, what a relief, it was!
A love story!
‘But he told me he was going off to be a priest. It was a family tradition. For the youngest brother. His mother expected it. He only had a month left. A month seems a long time when you’ve only known someone an hour.’
I nodded, but I couldn’t find any words to say.
‘What happened?’
‘You happened.’
‘Were you in love?’ I said.
‘Very deeply.’
Very deeply.
I was made in love.
I had a branch.
‘Did you stay in touch?’
‘The night before he left, he came with the thirty-one sunflowers, I think I told you. And we ran through the thirty-one days, one by one – I’d kept a diary of our time together, the things we’d talked abo
ut, the food I’d cooked him. He obviously never knew he had a daughter, we had a daughter.’
He brought her thirty-one sunflowers – I loved him for that. I felt hot and my mouth was dry and I was horribly thirsty for her, for him, for my story, and it really pained me that my father didn’t know I existed.
But I was a daughter.
Finally.
A real one!
With a real blood mother and father.
‘I stood on the roof terrace of my little flat in the Judería,’ she said, ‘and I watched him go down the street, except I was crying so much I couldn’t see him. He got smaller and smaller, that’s what I remember. I held up my thumb and my forefinger, and measured him as he shrunk, smaller, smaller, smaller, until he was the size of a fly.’
She stopped.
It felt too sad.
I thought, he should have stayed, and then I could have had parents – the world could have done without one more priest.
My father might have been substantial – I hoped so – but he was too rigid.
‘Then my thumb and my forefinger met,’ she said, bringing her own thumb and forefinger together. ‘He was nothing. That’s what we agreed. That when he left, we wouldn’t exist to each other. But then there was you.’
‘Why didn’t you run away together?’ I said.
‘He’d committed to being a priest,’ she said. ‘He’d promised his mother.’
‘Surely this wasn’t about his mother?’ I said, thinking for a moment of Christine Orson – what is it about mothers? ‘It was about you two, or maybe us three.’
I felt shaky as I said it.
‘He was clear from the beginning that I couldn’t have him,’ she said, perhaps a bit defensive.
‘I love someone I can’t have,’ I said.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s a terrible thing, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ I said.
And that’s when something changed, I suppose – we started to connect, a tiny bit.
‘Why can’t you have him?’ she asked.
‘He’s married.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘We haven’t had an affair or anything,’ I said. ‘But we’ve kissed. Maybe that is an affair. I’m not sure what the definition is.’
I was gabbling.
‘What’s he called?’
‘Barnaby Blue,’ I said. ‘Funny name but there’s an explanation …’
‘Like that Rabbi. Lionel Blue. You know, the one on Thought for the Day on Radio 4?’ she said, and she was gabbling too, we were both gabbling, we were a little bit the same, and I liked that.