The Summer of the Spanish Woman

by Catherine Gaskin

  I heard myself murmur stiff words to Elena. I even tried to thank her, for what I didn’t know. A great coldness had come on me; I could say nothing to try to soothe the tears of my mother or Nanny; it did not seem possible that either of them could be experiencing anything half so savage as my own pain ‒ but I suppose they were. I was not only leaving Clonmara, but there was not even a word of farewell from Richard to ease the going. Just as well … just as well, I thought. Let it hurt badly now, perhaps it will hurt less later on. If he was now riding on the shore, then leave him be, and leave me be also ‒ leave me to try to regain my hold on pride. Peace was gone. It rode with Richard Blodmore wherever he was. The carriage started; the oaks and beeches planted almost two centuries ago to line the avenue of Clonmara slid by. Forever in my memory I would name and count every one of them; in that sense this short ride from the house to the gate lodge was never to end.

  He was waiting by the gate lodge. He was astride the great white stallion, Balthasar, on which he had first appeared in what now seemed an unerasable dream to me. And on a leading rein was Half Moon. He murmured some words to Andy, and slid from the stallion’s back. Andy took his place in the saddle and took Half Moon’s rein. The three of us in the carriage were dumb as he thrust his head in the open window.

  ‘I have telegraphed ahead for the mail boat and the steamer to accommodate the horses,’ he said. ‘You will need good horses.’ Then he went to where he had left them by the lodge wall and he brought to us the canvas bags that held my grandfather’s best guns, and the ones made especially for my mother. ‘The Westly-Richards, and the Winchester 1897,’ he said. ‘They all say you’re a great shot, Lady Pat, and you’ll surely be invited to Doñana for the hunting.’

  Then he half-bowed over my mother’s hand, and raised it near to his lips without actually allowing them to touch it, in a gesture I came to know as typically Spanish. He barely glanced at me, but his words were for me.

  ‘If you need me, send word. I’ll come.’

  Dimly, as the high green hedges of Ireland slid by, as my mother leaned further and further out of the window to catch the last glimpse of him standing there in the road with his hat off, I heard her say in a choked tone, ‘The horses, Charlie ‒ the horses. Only a gentleman would have given us the horses …’

  Chapter Two

  I

  It was almost three o’clock in the morning, and still a fierce heat lay on the land. Only the heavy dew brought relief, a sense of freshness. I would have liked to hang my head from the carriage window and let it fall on the caked dust on my face, but I was too tired even for that effort. From the few dim lights we had seen clustered as we had topped the last rise after leaving Puerto de Santa Maria, we knew we must be very close to Jerez, but not even that knowledge could cause any of us in the stuffy carriage to straighten our backs, or attempt to brush the white dust from our clothes.

  ‘Mother of God, do you think there’d ever be a cup of tea at the end of it?’ Nanny demanded. No one answered her. My mother and I had given up trying to answer the same querulous demand ever since we had left Gibraltar. ‘And isn’t it famished I am.’

  Andy silenced her for us, as he had tried to do through the past two days. Riding Balthasar abreast of the carriage, and leading Half Moon, his words cracked from the height above us. ‘For the love of God will you hold your tongue, woman! Haven’t I a mind to put you off here and let your own legs carry you. And good luck to you!’

  Nanny heaved herself around in the corner of the carriage, and the old springs protested. ‘The devil take you!’ she muttered and was mercifully silent for a while.

  Since we had left the steamer two days ago in Gibraltar ‒ that brief voyage now seemed a sort of sparkling dream of teas and waltz music and attentive men that had faded as the liner steamed out of Gibraltar and was lost in the fierce dazzle of the Mediterranean in the summer sun ‒ we had been following first the coast road that skirted the formidable mountains, the Sierra Blanquilla, and then had taken the road that plunged through the two mountain ranges, with now the Sierra de la Plata on our left, by-passed Cadiz, and took the road inland to Jerez. The carriage and the driver the shipping agent had hired were both old, and the man had not a word of English. The bright talk between me and my mother which we tried to keep up in the first hours of the journey had died away, withered in the heat and dust, dried on our drier lips. We had spent one miserable, sleepless night in an inn along the road, an inn whose food we found difficult to eat, where we were afraid to drink the water, and the wine was rough and did nothing to ease our thirst. We had taken fleas away with us from the inn, and a dread of what lay ahead. We had hoped to make Jerez by the second evening, but at the height of the afternoon heat, when every soul on the landscape seemed to disappear, one of the bony, sway-backed carriage horses had cast a shoe. It had taken five hours to get it to the farrier and back; it was after dark when one of the harness traces had broken. Andy had helped the driver mend it from the assortment of worn bits of leather the man carried. Andy then had called a halt at a cantina and bought bread, a strong-tasting hard sausage, cheese and the rough local wine. We had all eaten ravenously, even Nanny, though with the usual protests. The driver had grinned at us as he ate; the events of the day seemed to be entirely normal to him, I thought. He was being paid for the journey to Jerez and back, and it didn’t seem to matter to him when we arrived. He remained persistently good-humoured, and I found myself grinning back at him. If we had been in Ireland, by now I and the driver would have been good friends, and if one substituted the heat for the usual Irish rain, the two journeys might have had a similar pattern. I laughed aloud at the thought, and Nanny glared at me. ‘The sun’s got her,’ she pronounced.

  The laughter had died in the long hours still to be travelled on that rutted road, in that poor, bone-shaking carriage. The very countryside, I thought, had a formidable presence ‒ the high bare crags of the sierra, the glimpses of the pounding Atlantic as we had turned the corner northwards at Tarifa, the herds of goats cropping already almost bare ground, the occasional patches of lush growth, wheat, alfalfa, sugar beets, vineyards, the olive groves of silver-grey ‒ all an austere beauty which nothing in Ireland had prepared me for. The bones of the country had seemed to show through, presenting a lean, but aristocratic face. We passed through Puerto de Santa Maria, where, I remembered, Richard Blodmore had said the vines producing the sherry grape began. We got lost looking for the road that led to Jerez, circled the huge bull-ring several times before we found it. Then the dark stretch to Jerez itself. ‘There’ll be bandits about, I’ll be bound,’ Nanny muttered.

  We took no notice of her. The outlying houses ‒ they didn’t much resemble the cottages of Ireland ‒ began to come closer together. Lights showed in a few cantinas, but we did not stop. Even Andy was finding the day in the saddle under the sun more than enough; he urged the driver on. But it was still almost three o’clock when the first paved road of Jerez rumbled under the wheels.

  ‘And now,’ my mother said, ‘we have to find the house ‒ and not a word of Spanish between us.’ Then she voiced the same thought that had been nagging at the back of my mind all day. ‘I wonder if the telegram the shipping agent sent from Gibraltar really got here, and if it made sense to anyone? Well, Blodmore did say there was a caretaker. But I wonder if he can read …?’

  The answer seemed to spring from the darkness at us. We had passed through some sort of arch which appeared to signal the beginning of the town proper, and almost immediately there were shouts from two young boys who rushed at the carriage waving lanterns. I heard the word ‘Drummond’ repeated several times, and ‘Plaza de Asturias’ which was where the house was. The sudden shouts and the lights upset Balthasar, who swerved violently. For a sickening half-minute I thought Andy was going to be thrown as he struggled to hold the great horse, and keep Half Moon from being injured. Only a superb horseman could have done it; once again I silently blessed his presence, and Richard Blodmore. The tw
o boys hastily retreated, and now came more hesitantly into the circle of light thrown by the carriage lamps. They eyed the big white horse fearfully as they gave their message in Spanish to the driver. Now the words, ‘Doña Patricia’ were mixed with Drummond. Whatever they said, it pleased the driver. He leaned around from the box to shout to my mother and me; he gave his toothless grin and slapped the reins on the backs of the listless horses, and began to follow the lamps of the two boys.

  The town was dark, and mostly shuttered, though one or two cantinas were still open. We passed through broad streets and narrow alleys, through plazas where oleanders scented the night air, and palms rustled above our heads. There were massive decorated churches with belfrys, tall elegant houses, fronting on plazas, whose sculptured outlines could be seen against the warm night sky. In one or two places the shutters were still open. In the poorer places children cried; in the richer areas we caught glimpses of crystal chandeliers and heard the sound of music and laughter, saw the movements of servants. Some places even had electricity. ‘A shameful hour to be up,’ Nanny said. ‘Wouldn’t you think every Christian would be in bed, and oh, don’t my poor old bones ‒’

  ‘If you’re so old you’ll be no use to us,’ I said brutally. ‘You’ll take the next steamer back to Ireland.’

  ‘And mightn’t I do just that. What with some people getting too big for their boots all of a sudden, and giving orders. Lady Pat, I’m surprised you let this chit talk to Nanny this way.’

  ‘Enough!’ my mother retorted. ‘I’ll not bother to put you on a steamer, I’ll strangle you with my bare hands if you so much as utter another word. Besides … I think we’re here.’

  The boys, barefoot, and wearing ragged clothes, had led the carriage into a small square, which was completely shuttered and dark. A fountain and the outline of a church were its only grace notes. The boys waved the driver on to the other side of the plaza. They stopped before the tall and closed façade of a house; the windows were all shuttered and turned blank faces to the silent, deserted plaza; they all wore grilles of wrought-iron which completely covered them and bowed outwards, like cages. There were no lights, and the way was barred by an ancient iron-studded door. One of the boys banged with his stick on the wood. The sound seemed to reverberate in an almost endless emptiness within, as if it echoed on itself. Then there was silence again.

  ‘Can there be anyone there?’ my mother said. ‘No lights … nothing. And yet the boys were waiting for us. But it’s so late. Oh, dear God …’ Her weariness and uncertainty broke through. The boys started banging again. Balthasar pawed the ground restlessly. He wanted a stable, his oats and water. Even through my own exhaustion I was once again made aware of the breeding lines in him; like any aristocrat he was certain his needs would be attended to. For two days he had been smelling the familiar smell of the country which had bred him. He knew what he might expect here.

  At last they came ‒ the muffled cries in the distance, the drawing of stiff bolts still far away. The boys beat more furiously, and called out. They were answered now by voices on the other side of the big door, and the sound of more bolts being drawn. Even then, only a small door within the big one opened, and a head was thrust cautiously out.

  There was a rush of talk, in Spanish, answered by the boys. I guessed we had been expected for hours past, and they had all but given up hope. A man and a woman shabbily clothed, of indeterminate age, emerged finally and came close to the carriage. They stared up at the three dust-streaked faces, clearly unsure which they should address themselves to. The woman bowed, the man took off his cap, twisting it in nervous hands.

  ‘You are welcome, Doña Patricia. You are welcome to the home of your father.’ It was all said in Spanish, but the meaning was plain enough. My mother fell back against the old leather cushions. ‘Thank God … at least we’re here.’ Then she leaned forward again. ‘Gracias … muchas gracias.’

  There were smiles now, smiles from the man and the woman, smiles from the driver and the two boys. No matter how late, we had arrived. There was another delay while together the man and the woman, assisted by the boys, struggled to open up both sides of the big doors. They gave grudgingly, on hinges that had long been without oil. The carriage moved forward, through the portal, and beyond it through yet another set of doors, and at last into a courtyard. There was an impatient whinny from Balthasar; Andy climbed stiffly from the saddle. The man was pointing to yet another archway which appeared to lead to the stables. The man opened the carriage door and helped my mother to alight with all the flourish of a great gentleman on a great occasion. He had clearly now decided which one was Doña Patricia. ‘This is my daughter, Miss Charlotte,’ my mother said with great distinctness, no doubt hoping he would understand. Instead he looked puzzled and worried.

  ‘Char … Char …’ He shook his head.

  ‘Doña Carlota,’ the woman hissed, digging him with a sharp elbow. Comprehension broke on the man’s face. ‘Ah! Doña Carlota! Bienvenido!’

  For the first time in my life I liked the sound of my own name. ‘Doña Carlota, indeed!’ Nanny, having been placed unerringly as having a lower status, had been left to scramble out herself. ‘Nanny,’ my mother said, indicating her.

  The two smiled, but briefly. Then astoundingly, the man said in clear English. ‘Ah … si … English Nanny.’

  ‘Irish!’

  ‘Are you going to stand there all night arguing?’ Andy threw in. ‘The horses, Lady Pat ‒ the horses!’

  The driver was now talking rapidly to the manservant. The upshot seemed to be an agreement that the baggage would be unloaded, the ladies escorted inside, and the carriage and horses taken to the stables. ‘Pronto ‒ Quickly!’ The boys were scrambling about on the roof of the carriage like monkeys; the straps were undone, the trunks handed down. It was all accomplished with the maximum of shouts, orders, and counterorders. Once again I was reminded of similar scenes in Ireland. I licked my dry lips, and found a smile for the woman servant who was peering into my face. The woman jerked her head in the direction of my mother, who, crumpled and tired, still wore her air of regal authority. ‘Bella …’ the woman whispered. My mother, I thought, like Balthasar, looked as if she expected only the best.

  At last the bags were off, and Andy and the driver were escorted to the archway that led to the stables. Two lamps were suspended from brackets, and illuminated a further space that seemed as large as this. While all this was being done, the boys started to carry the first of the bags through another great studded double door, which led into a large hall. I hesitated just a moment, looking around me. Even in the dim light a feeling of decay hung on this strikingly handsome house. A series of arches formed a sort of cloister on three sides of this first courtyard, broken by the entry to the stable area. But there was evidence of rot in the wooden shutters which barred all the windows; in places the finely decorated stonework of the arches had crumbled, weeds grew rampant between the stones of the court, and the cracked marble basin of the central fountain supported its own colony of rank weeds. The beautiful hanging lanterns were rusting, the glass in many of them broken. Alien vines twisted through the roses which climbed the columns of the arches. It was beautiful, and sad.

  ‘Charlie! ‒ are you dreaming, Charlie?’ My mother’s voice. The woman beckoned and waved her lamp towards the hallway where the boys had vanished. The lamp flickered on frayed tapestry, and a broad flight of shallow marble stairs. We followed the waving lamp into a long, wide passage beyond the stairs. The passage, I guessed, looked into the cloistered courtyard we had just left, but every window shutter was closed, and the smell of rot greeted us, an oddly damp smell in the warm airlessness of the night. We passed through two more sets of double doors, and by now I had lost my sense of direction. The shuttered windows had changed to the other side of the passage, so it was possible they looked out on yet another courtyard. The floor we walked on was black and white marble squares, cracked in places, dulled with a film of dirt. Little piles o
f leaves and curls of dust lay in the corners, as if swept there by the winds of winters long ago, and left.

  ‘I’m thinking there might be a ghost or two in this place,’ Nanny said.

  ‘Hush!’ But I silently agreed with her.

  Now the woman paused before another set of doors. All had been elaborately carved, but this one bore traces of faded gilt outlining an escutcheon. The woman straightened her apron, tried to tuck in the straying wisps of hair that escaped the cloth tied about her head. Then, with an attempt at a grand gesture, she flung open one of the doors.

  ‘Las señoras, Don Paulo!’ She bobbed a curtsey, and hurried forward to light candles which were placed on a long, carved stretcher table of dark oak.

  Everything in the room was dark. Only one window was unshuttered, and I caught a glimpse of stars in a dark blue night sky, heard the familiar rustle of palms as a slight breeze relieved the airlessness. Even in the heat, the embers of a fire still glowed in a great hearth surmounted by a carved stone mantel. From a high-backed chair a figure rose ‒ rose slowly as if he had been dozing there. As the light of the candles reached him, I saw a man dressed in a suit of fine black linen, a white linen shirt and a black tie. His iron-grey hair sprang back thickly from a face that was darkly olive in complexion, with features whose leanness just escaped the look of sharpness. He had hooked black brows over eyes whose thick lids gave them a hooded, secretive appearance. Except for those hooded lids, he would have been strikingly handsome. He wore his air of command and position with ease, like his clothes.

  He bowed, and came slowly towards us. Beside the chair an enormous hound had risen, stretching as if she also had been sleeping. She was brindle-coloured, with a square skull, black muzzled ears and nose; her great size and breadth of build gave her an appearance of grandeur and nobility which was only slightly diminished when she cocked her head sideways to look at us with an air of great good nature. With a flick of his finger the man commanded her to sit. He then approached my mother, taking her gloved hand which was grey with dust, and lifted it near to his lips, in the gesture Richard Blodmore had used.