The Island Villa_The perfect feel good summer read

by Lily Graham

  ‘Small wins,’ she said, handing me the bottle as I made my way to my bicycle. ‘That’s what you’ve got to go for now – that’s what adds up.’

  It was a few days later when I got a call from Allan, as I was watching Emmanuel get to work on repairing the drainpipes.

  ‘So are you up for some company?’ my brother asked.

  I stopped pacing the garden and sat down. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Yeah, well, I miss you, Twig, and God knows I could do with a break from the office…’

  ‘You mean you’re going to come and visit?’

  ‘Yeah, if you’re up for it?’

  ‘Course I am! I’d love that. When were you thinking of coming?’

  ‘In about a week, if that’s all right?’

  ‘That’s perfect! Oh, Maria will be so happy!’

  ‘Good, can’t wait to meet her. Anyway, I just wanted to check before I booked my ticket.’

  ‘Like I’d say no?’

  ‘Well, you never know, I mean from what I hear you’re leading this very exotic life…’

  ‘Oh, and who are you hearing this from?’

  ‘Mum,’ he admitted. ‘She keeps asking me how come you keep extending your holiday. Haven’t you told her, Twig? About Marisal?’

  I grimaced. ‘Argh, no, not yet. I suppose I should.’

  ‘Yeah. Probably. There’s some things I want to ask her about it.’

  ‘Yeah, like how come she never told us that Gran had a sister.’

  ‘Yeah, like that.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Formentera, 1718

  Don Santiago Martínez de Sánchez missed Barcelona. He missed the luxuries of home. The servants, his townhouse, the wide streets, the hustle and bustle of people and the urbane sense of living in a century that was going through an age of enlightenment. An age of discovery, of science and answers. And incredible advancements. It was exciting.

  But he was first a businessman, and a researcher. He wasn’t all that happy with his current role as the latter. A role he had found himself in against his will. There had been some trouble with the daughter of one of his colleagues and the administration had decided that it would be prudent for him to come and make a report on one of the crown’s least profitable ventures – the salt flats in the Pitiusas – for the next few months. Officially he was told that the post was an important undertaking, one that required someone of his sensitivity, intelligence and knowledge. He would be going to ascertain how they could improve the production technologies of the salt flats to improve the profitability of the Spanish salt trade. He was told that it was vital, in fact, noble work, now that the establishment had been placed into the hands of the Crown where it belonged. As such, they would like it to be introduced to the latest technology and his instructions were to oversee the implementation of this technology, to make the venture the Crown had inherited a success.

  But Don Santiago wasn’t fooled. He knew what the move was really about – a ploy to get him out of the way. Don Hernando de Allandez’s daughter had wanted him for a husband, and he hadn’t been interested. So, this was his punishment – banishment to the least important island of the Crown.

  Don Hernando de Allandez had powerful friends, and a long memory.

  Don Santiago, however, was nothing if not a professional. And when the governors told him to start with Formentera, the tiniest slip of an island with perhaps the least productive of the salt flats, he agreed so that he could write his report and be done with it.

  He hadn’t needed to come to know that the process of extracting the salt was the same as it had been for the last four hundred years. They still used lead pans and wood, and most of the production was done by hand, as it always had been. He didn’t need to be here to see that the work was back-breaking – literally: people carried the salt to the ships on their backs. But there was one positive of seeing the system with his own eyes. It was without question a system that could do with some innovation, some thought and guidance, and, despite his reservations in coming to visit these small, backward islands, a part of him was satisfied that at least by the end of his – hopefully brief – stay here he might leave some lasting legacy behind and be known as the person who helped transform its production.

  Of course, he couldn’t tell the islanders that. Officially he was introduced as a botanist. He was making a study of the minerals in the salt flats, the natural wildlife and its importance to the geography of the area.

  He’d been warned that announcing what he was really doing on the island at first might just ensure that the islanders would be unhelpful in providing him with the information that he would need now that the salt flats were under the leadership of the Crown. He would need to gather information before he could start transforming the production. They were a taciturn community, he’d been told – one that had resisted the new regime. But seeing was something else. These islanders were so cautious in their conversations that they were bordering on being secretive.

  He’d been staying at one of the official houses, not far from the salt pans, for over a week now, and he’d barely had more than a casual conversation with any of the locals. Even the servants were reluctant to say more than they had to; they were polite, but more wary than friendly. The female servants were attractive, as were many of the other island women, but none looked him in the eye, and a few times he found them whispering – but this wasn’t the girlish chatter he was used to, followed by a blush; this was different, almost as if they had something to hide.

  Don Santiago was walking to his pension after a hard day’s work in the gruelling sun. The only way to truly understand the production of salt was to get stuck in, to talk to the men who spent the summer months working it. He was an office man, well used to sitting in a cool, ventilated room for the morning, followed by long siestas in the afternoon and lazy lunches that went well into the night as he discussed business and the finer things in life with his colleagues and friends. Just being out in the hot sun every day was proving enough to make him long to return home to the comforts of his normal life, where conversations were about other things: science, art, literature, music. Here they only ever spoke about salt, farming or fishing, and he was sick of hearing about all three.

  For a poor community, though, they were interesting to observe, he had to concede. In some ways, a conundrum. Many of the women wore a lot of gold jewellery, sometimes up to a dozen ropes of gold chains across their shoulders. They wore gold earrings too. They were attractive but unusual, he couldn’t help thinking as he passed them every day. Many of them had reddish hair and green eyes. An island trait, he presumed.

  But it was a girl with long dark hair that fell down her back in a waterfall of deepest midnight who caught his attention.

  Unlike most of the other women, who seemed to always walk in pairs, their hands full of fruit or loaves of bread, she walked empty-handed, and alone but for the small wiry dog that followed faithfully at her dusty heels.

  He wasn’t quite sure what possessed him to follow her when he saw her next. Perhaps it was the way she looked over her shoulder when she sensed that he was staring. The way that she didn’t avert her dark eyes, or blush like any other young woman might. She didn’t fuss her hair or straighten her dress; she simply gazed back at him with something almost like a challenge in her eyes, and didn’t look away, not until he did.

  As she turned to walk on, he thought it couldn’t hurt to ask for her name. At least then he might have something to divert him from his present task, and the endless, mindless, talk of salt.

  Lazy. Head-in-the-clouds. Spoilt. That’s what the women in her family called her.

  Maybe, thought Esperanza. But on a fine day, the last place she wanted to be was stuck inside the kitchen making more food. Why was it that Ibicenco women spent their lives cooking, cooking, cooking, she wondered with a sigh.

  She liked eating just as much as anybody, but she didn’t see the need to spend all your days locked up inside making
food.

  Besides, it was all very well for Cesca. Everything she made seemed to come easy to her. The bread she made always rose. Her paellas were always rich and tasty just the way their father had liked it. Her fish was never rubbery.

  Even Grunon, the demon goat, thought better of stepping her hoof in Cesca’s pail.

  Aside from Esperanza’s watercolours, which were excellent – but useless for life on a finca in the middle of nowhere – she wasn’t particularly talented at anything useful. Not like her sister, anyway. When she’d wanted to learn how to be a nurse like her, her father had put his foot down. He hadn’t seen the sense of having two of his daughters running around the island away from the house. Someone needed to stay and help their mother, and look after the household, he insisted. Of course, that wasn’t the world’s most well-thought-out plan – Esperanza simply wasn’t that good at domestic chores. Things seemed to slip out of her hands and land on her feet, or scorch her wrists. The bread she tried to make was likely to burn or flop and everything she cooked always seemed to taste just a little burnt, because she got distracted too easily, often by the little dog she’d adopted, who wasn’t allowed in the house.

  Cesca would often get impatient with her. ‘Just watch the food, Esperanza, when you cook it, don’t do anything else. Don’t worry about anything else. Why is that so hard?’

  She couldn’t explain. It just was. What she wanted deep in her heart was a life away from the chores of the farm, a life like the one her friend Riba described, with large airy homes, servants and time for art, for reading, dancing and music. Was she so very bad for wanting that? For wanting more?

  She was silly, that she knew. Dreaming of the things her friend told her about, a life she could never have, only made things harder. But now that things had changed, with the man she was meant to marry – her betrothed, Rafael – dead, suddenly it felt as if the future was less decided than she’d first imagined. While she was sad that her cousin had passed away, albeit a cousin she’d only met a few times before, she couldn’t help but feel something inside her come alive at the change, as if perhaps there was a chance for some of her dreams after all.

  But now, as she hung the salted fish on their hooks outside to dry, a trickle of sweat ran down her spine and she puffed out her red cheeks, her mood growing darker, as she thought of the life that awaited. ‘It’ll hardly be a change,’ she muttered as she faced the fact, which was that she was no doubt going to be married off to one of the boys she’d grown up with in the village, which meant just more of this.

  It was hot, the wind had died down and she was feeling miserable. Cesca had left her the fish to do, after she’d run off with Señor Garcia on some or other medical emergency, and had given her strict instructions to finish it all this afternoon, but Esperanza was sure that the fish would dry whether she hung it on the wooden slats outside or not.

  And a little swim would cool her down, restore her mood and let her work more easily, she told herself.

  She slipped away while her mother was having a siesta, and whistled for Flea to join in her escape.

  As they raced down to the cove, she sensed someone looking at her and turned to see, in the distance, a tall man staring at her. She blinked. He had light brown hair and he wasn’t dressed like any of the men she knew. He was dressed like a gentleman, in a suit. It was that stranger, the one everyone had been talking about. She frowned in surprise. The one from Barcelona. No one had mentioned that he was handsome, though.

  He kept staring at her, so she raised her chin and used the trick Rafael had taught her for Grunon. She was surprised and pleased to see that it worked on men just as much as on demon goats. Then she walked on with Flea until they reached her favourite, hidden cove.

  She slipped off her dress and waded into the cool still water, sighing in pleasure. Flea raced and dived, following her, and she laughed at the little brown dog. Lying on her back in the cool sea, she looked up at the clear, azure-blue sky, her fingers tracing the water, Flea doing a paddle around her.

  ‘So, this is where you ran off to? I did wonder,’ said a refined, cultured Spanish voice, like fine brandy.

  Esperanza choked on the water, and spun round to search for the source of the voice. On the rocks close by was the man she’d seen on the old salt road. The stranger.

  She sat up in the water, coughing and spluttering. When she recovered, she remembered her modesty and threw an arm across her chest.

  ‘It’s a fine day for a swim,’ was all he said, his voice mild. She stared at him, wishing he would go away. Searching for the courage to tell him to.

  ‘I am Don Santiago Martínez de Sánchez. I don’t believe we’ve met yet,’ he said introducing himself as if they were not in a deeply compromising situation. He spoke in Eivissenc for her benefit.

  She blinked at him, because of course they hadn’t met yet. ‘Buno tarda,’ she answered, to be polite. She didn’t want to give her own name; swimming in her undergarments was not something she would like the entire island to know about, particularly in the presence of a strange, Spanish gentleman. One all the islanders were worried about.

  He stared at her a moment longer, perhaps waiting for her to say who she was.

  To stop him from asking, she said, inanely, ‘I was hot’, explaining the obvious. ‘But I must get out now, my sister will be waiting for me.’

  He smiled, showing white, even teeth. ‘A swim seems lovely on a day like this. Stay a while. Perhaps I could join you?’

  Her eyes widened as he made to take off his shirt. To her shock he actually did shrug it off and placed it on the rocks next to her own discarded dress. He stood half naked, revealing lightly tanned skin and golden body hair.

  She felt herself blush. Her mother would be furious if she knew the situation she’d found herself in. Why was it that she somehow always managed to get herself in these predicaments?

  ‘Señor – I think it best that I get out and leave you to swim, if you wouldn’t mind turning round so I can get out?’

  ‘Oh? Yes.’ He sounded disappointed, but he remembered his manners. ‘I suppose if that’s what you’d prefer.’ He turned round, then bent down to hold up her dress – which was when Cesca appeared in the cove, ready to berate her sister, her gaze fixed on Esperanza and the dog, who started to bark excitedly.

  Incredibly, Cesca didn’t see the man crouched on the rock, holding up her sister’s dress, which he dropped quickly back onto the rocks.

  ‘So, this is where you run off to? Do you even know the mess you left behind – there are hundreds of seagulls feasting on the bounty you left outside for them! They even went flying into the house. Mare had to scare them off with a broom! And you know she isn’t feeling well. I can’t believe you! I give you one simple instru—’ She stopped abruptly, seeing movement out of the corner of her eye, and turned to finally see the half-naked man on the rocks. Her mouth fell open in utter shock. She blinked at him, at last speechless.

  Esperanza wanted to sink below the water in mortification.

  Don Santiago had the grace to look embarrassed, and quickly put on his shirt. ‘Buno tarda. I am Don Santiago Martínez de Sánchez,’ he said, introducing himself politely and clearing his throat nervously. ‘I’m afraid that I stumbled upon your sister and decided to have a swim myself. She was just about to get out, I assure you. I was turning round to protect her modesty.’

  Cesca raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m sure you were. Thank you, Señor, I believe that my sister getting out now is best,’ she said, crossing her arms and staring at her sister meaningfully.

  ‘Good – yes,’ he said, awkwardly. Cesca could have that effect.

  Esperanza waded out of the water while Flea padded to the shore and started barking at her to follow. Even he knew who was really in charge in their house, she thought, her shoulders slumped as she grabbed the dress from the rock and slipped it back over her wet skin, missing the admiring glance Don Santiago gave her.

  ‘Good luck with your fish proble
m,’ he called to her retreating back. He sounded amused.

  Esperanza shot him a silencing look. Gentleman or not, because of him the fish were now the least of her worries.

  As she followed after her sister’s fast-disappearing, anger-stiffened back, she sighed. If she had imagined the moment she would meet someone like Don Santiago, this was not it: as a scolded child, running after her older sister.

  Cesca was furious.

  Why couldn’t her sister just act like a sister for once? Why couldn’t she think of them, ever?

  She’d come home to find that most of the fish had to be thrown away, as the flies had made a meal over them, no doubt laying eggs. Esperanza hadn’t salted them properly, as usual. She never did. And the birds had come for the rest. Cesca sighed, then took the remaining fish to a bucket and began scrubbing the flesh to see if it could be salvaged. Esperanza stayed away to let her vent for a few minutes, then came to help her. Flea lay asleep at her feet.

  ‘That dog has to go.’

  It caused Cesca no joy to see the pain in her sister’s eyes. She didn’t mean it, of course. Though she didn’t see his charms the way her sister did.

  The trouble was that it wasn’t just the waste of the fish; it was the fact that she had drawn attention to the household at a time when they didn’t need it. Esperanza had left Benito lying alone in the cellar and anyone could have found him there. He was still recovering, and he still had his habit of mumbling in his sleep, calling out his brother’s name. If someone had come past and heard, what would have happened then? What if this new, strange visitor, Don Santiago Martinez de Sanchez, had followed Esperanza here? What if he started asking questions about their cousin? The news of the Moorish ship that had been captured and the Jewish prisoners taken had been spread far and wide, along with the names of the prisoners, the Nuñez brothers. One look at a man hidden in a cellar calling out for his brother Paulo could be enough to put them all in danger.