The Summer of the Spanish Woman

by Catherine Gaskin

  ‘He will not be lonely, Amelia …’ Then the words faded; it was useless, hypocritical, to protest that she would be there to keep him from being lonely.

  She smiled absently. She had been a pretty young woman when I had first seen her, but her illness had seemed to drain that youthful attractiveness. Now, as she sat there, her face seemed suffused with a kind of radiance, which gave her an unearthly beauty. She still stared at the blackened stumps of the vines, and we both knew that she would never see the green shoots of spring.

  ‘I do not think Luis will marry again. Two failures are enough. Poor man … Such cruel jokes life plays on us, Charlie.’

  The sun seemed to slip at that instant, and the first shadow appeared in the deepest hollow between the slopes. She gave a slight shiver. I called for Antonio to come and carry her back to the fire in the big room. I had wanted her to go to the carriage and start the journey home, but she ordered Antonio to put her down in the chair by the fire. ‘We will finish the wine, Charlie.’

  And so we did, in the room that Amelia’s hand had subtly transformed. She had made what she called ‘little presents’ to Las Ventanas Verdes. Nothing too grand or ostentatious for the basic simplicity of the house ‒ Moorish rugs, a brilliant hanging for the wall, some vivid pieces of pottery, some clay figures from Mexico which dated from before the Spanish conquest ‒ things that I suspected were much more valuable than she claimed. Some extra chairs had come ‒ heavy dark oak, which suited the house, a great carved dresser to display the pottery. She had brushed aside my protests. ‘I must have something to do when I’m in Seville between consultations with the doctors. Please, don’t refuse me. It is the first time I have ever had the interest of buying things for a house. Luis’s first wife furnished Los Cisnes so completely that there has never been anything for me to do there …’ So now as the firelight flickered over her pale face I saw her look around and take pleasure in what she had accomplished. The sun slipped further down, so that now only the very tops of the vineyard slopes were lighted by it. Watching it, we finished the wine.

  * *

  Two days later, at six in the morning, Luis sent a message that she was dead. I went and found her, with lighted candles about the bed, looking so peaceful, so beautiful, that all the ravages of her illness were wiped away. Luis sat quietly, watching her. ‘It’s you, Carlota,’ he said, without even turning. ‘See how lovely she looks.’

  I dropped to my knees beside her, and touched her smooth, cold hands. Then I turned and placed my hand on Luis’s, as it rested on the arm of the chair.

  ‘Shall we pray for her?’

  He smiled a little, and shook his head. ‘The praying is over, as her life is over, Charlie.’ Now he also called me that name. ‘No ‒ do not let me see you weep. You do not weep, Charlie. You have always been so strong. You gave her strength. Did you know that you gave her strength? I don’t care what the doctors said … about how soon or how long it would be until she died. All I am sure of is that she lived longer because she drew strength from you. You will give your strength to many people, Charlie. Give me a little of it now.’

  He rose, and led me from the room. In the dining-room he ordered the servants to open the shutters to let in the growing sunlight of the winter morning, and he ordered coffee to be brought for us both. I wondered what would be said in the town about us sitting here, talking of the vines, the war, horses, all the everyday things of our lives while his wife lay dead in a room upstairs. But I did not care. It was what Amelia had foreseen, had wanted. It was his loneliness which needed the small comfort of my presence.

  * *

  In her will Amelia left me what seemed to me at that time to be quite a large sum of money, and she also left me the pieces of jewellery which had been Luis’s gifts to her, and which did not belong by descent in his family. I was stunned, and a little shocked.

  Maria Luisa shook her head. ‘They will say you were her friend for what you could get from her. I know it was not so, querida, but that is what they will say.’

  ‘I didn’t know she had any money of her own to leave to anyone.’

  Maria Luisa mentally riffled through her formidable knowledge of the town’s interlocking relationships. ‘She was the granddaughter of Manuel de la Riva, and he was the son of Tomás de la Riva y O’Neale. There was money. Her own.’

  There was also a long oak chest, a very old chest which Amelia had found in Seville. Luis said she had wanted me to have it ‒ and its contents. I went through them with him, a painful and sad task. It contained an odd assortment of things. There was a collection of lovely fans, some surprisingly good water-colours Amelia had made of the lake and the black swans in the early days of their marriage when she had been stronger. ‘I had them framed, but she decided they weren’t good enough to hang. She had so little confidence in herself …’ There was a heavy brass book stand. ‘That was a present for Las Ventanas Verdes ‒ it arrived from Seville the day before she died.’ There were a few elaborately bound books of Spanish poetry. ‘I will make an effort to read and understand them properly,’ I promised Luis. There was a tiny, beautifully wrought pistol, with ornamentation in silver and mother-of-pearl, laid in a velvet-lined marquetry case, with its own compartments filled with silver bullets. ‘We saw it in a shop in Vienna. It seemed to amuse her, though heaven knows why. I doubt she ever fired a weapon in her life. I remember in those days I was grateful for anything that distracted her. We got this petit point bag in Vienna, too. I don’t remember her using it, though. And here are some porcelain models of the White Horses of Vienna ‒ the Lipizzaners.’ He was unwrapping them from cotton wool to show me. ‘She meant to have a cabinet made to display them, but she seemed to lose interest ‒ perhaps she couldn’t find the right place in this house to put it. And here are some tapestry bell-pulls from Paris. All little pieces of Amelia’s life, Carlota. She put them all together in this chest for you. Her book of recipes ‒ though I don’t think she ever used it. She said our cook didn’t pay attention to them. Her First Communion veil, and the prayer-book ‒ her father has written in it, see.’ He handed me the exquisite little volume, bound in vellum with a stiff edging of gold, and a golden clasp. ‘When you have a daughter, they can be for her First Communion …’

  Then he closed the lid of the chest, as if he were unable to continue. ‘How, I wonder, am I to go through the rest of her things, her clothes, her shoes… They should be given to some charity, but I don’t …’

  ‘Maria Luisa,’ I said. ‘Maria Luisa will do all that. Trust her. She is very tactful, and very discreet. Nothing will go where it will not be needed and appreciated.’

  He nodded. ‘One has a need of the Maria Luisas of the world. What a pity we don’t more often tell them …’

  I had the chest taken to Las Ventanas Verdes. I knew that was where Amelia had meant her little personal treasures to be. As I began to distribute her things about the rooms I was aware of a terrible sense of desolation and loneliness. I was also aware that I had never had a friend of my own age before Amelia ‒ and there could be none to take her place. Remembering Luis’s remark about the Maria Luisas of the world not being told of their worth, I wondered if I had ever properly told Amelia what she meant to me ‒ or had I even known it until she was gone? But I had named a part of a vineyard for her, the only gift I had to give.

  * *

  The quarrel with Carlos started when he learned of the money Amelia had left me. He seemed to assume that part of the money would be for his own use. ‘The whole household needs money,’ I protested. ‘I must save something for the children.’

  ‘The Marquesa will take care of the children. You have only to ask.’

  ‘I will never ask anything of her.’

  He shrugged. ‘No matter. There are plenty of other ways to use the money. The children don’t need it now. I have a few gambling debts ‒ trifling, but still one does not like to owe one’s friends. And that tiresome tailor in London has been dunning me for money. I shall not g
ive him any more of my business, but it would be better if the matter was settled …’

  ‘There are my debts,’ I said. ‘What I owe to Don Luis. For the stock, labour ‒ oh, a number of things.’

  He looked at me darkly. ‘I see ‒ she has left you money only so you may pay it back to her husband. A fine legacy! And how much do you owe Don Luis?’

  I didn’t dare tell him. I had told so many lies about it in the past, pretending that more came to my mother from her interest in the bodega than was the fact, that we had sold a small piece of property in Ireland ‒ property which did not exist. I had not been able to reveal to him the extent of my debt to Don Luis. So now I named half the sum.

  ‘Well, pay him back! No man should be allowed to say that my wife is in debt to him! It is a humiliation for me!’

  ‘But he does not say it. He never mentions the debt.’

  ‘It’s well to be so rich he can overlook a debt of that size. Pay him!’

  He left, and I did not see him for two days. Then he returned full of good humour. I had no idea where he had spent those two nights, or if he had even shown himself at the bodega. The reason for the good humour was evident. He was riding a wonderful mare, almost black in colour, not big, but so beautifully proportioned that all her movements seemed sheer perfection. As the two of them moved about the stable-yard, demonstrating her walk and her trot, they were two beautiful creatures seemingly fused together. When Carlos was entirely happy with the animal he rode, it would be hard to find anyone to equal his horsemanship.

  ‘She is beautiful, is she not, Carlota?’ he called to me. ‘Her name is Carmen. I got her from Domecq …’ I gasped. This was the talked-of Carmen, the fabled mare that everyone said Don Jaime would never part with. Whatever persuasion Carlos had used, the mare was now his. But the animal could not have changed hands for a small price.

  ‘I have sold the other mare ‒ she was nothing beside Carmen, was she? Now I give you back Balthasar ‒ formally. Carmen is your real wedding present to me. And I have acquired four polo ponies. I knew you would agree that it isn’t right that I should have to beg a mount from other men …’

  So now I understood that between the purchase of Carmen and the polo ponies, the settling of his gambling debts and his tailor’s bills, there would be almost nothing left of Amelia’s legacy. Whatever feeling Carlos might have had about my owing money to Luis had been swept away in a fit of jealousy and self-indulgence. He bitterly resented his poverty, and my lack of a dowry. He was simply taking what he regarded as his by right, taking it as the price of peace between us. I was certain that Amelia had left me the money so that the debt on the vineyard might be cleared, and money provided for future planting and for labour. Now Carlos had taken most of it. Perhaps he had even done it with the thought that I would be forced to give up the vineyard to settle my debts, and my refuge from him would be gone and my little base of independence destroyed. I watched him show off Carmen, and himself, to the whole household, servants and family, who had come to the stable-yard to look and admire and applaud, and the feeling of rage in me was so great that I trembled, and had to go inside, away from the sight of him and the mare, and all it represented. Never, I thought, never ‒ no matter what, would I let Carlos take the vineyard from me. I would never give it up.

  ‘I’ll never give it up,’ I said to Pepita. ‘Never – never!’

  The same week, by letter from Ireland, came the news that Richard Blodmore had joined the British Army at the outbreak of war, was commissioned, and already stationed in France. The letter did not come from Elena. Perhaps she wrote to the Marquesa, but she didn’t write to us. The news came, along with a great deal of local gossip, from one of our neighbours at Clonmara. ‘Spiteful old goose,’ my mother said of Lady Sybil Wareham. ‘She thinks we’re all too safe and cosy here in Spain. Wants to shake us up a bit. Write back to her, Charlie. Find out what other news there is.’

  At her dictation, since no one else could translate her idiom, I wrote back. It was the beginning of a long and terrible sequence of letters, sometimes many months apart, which related to us the course of the war, but more particularly the devastation it caused among those we knew, some of whom we also loved.

  ‘Harry Lake was killed at Mons,’ I read. That had been as long ago as August, when I had been living through the last day before the grapes were to be harvested, and had ordered Mateo and Antonio to begin the agosta to prepare for the new vineyard. ‘Lord Blodmore, I hear,’ the letter went on, ‘is stationed somewhere near Ypres, though one isn’t supposed to say such things. I suppose he was involved in that terrible battle there where they used poison gas. But Elena says he is all right. I expect you people in Spain feel quite detached from this. All the places around are selling their horses. The demand is quite unbelievable …’

  ‘Don’t read any more, Charlie,’ my mother said. ‘I don’t want to hear about the horses.’

  So I took to writing to Lady Sybil, and anyone else like her whom I thought might spare a few minutes to write back. Never once did I directly inquire about Richard Blodmore, but always, I hoped, there would be some spin-off of gossip which would carry his name.

  In those days I grieved for Amelia, and I prayed for Richard Blodmore. One morning, at the side entrance of the church across the plaza, I almost knocked over Nanny, who was coming from the first Mass. ‘Why ‒ it’s you, Miss Charlie! I’ve never known you to go to Mass except on Sundays and Holy days.’

  ‘Perhaps I have a little more to pray for now, Nanny.’

  She looked at me closely, her face puckered into a frown, her eyes squinting as if she sought to read in mine whatever wisdom had grown there. Then she patted me on the shoulder. ‘That’s right, dear. Prayer never went amiss. And you’ve a woman’s troubles to bear now, haven’t you, Miss Charlie?’

  She went slowly on her way back across the plaza to the house, and I went into the church. I lighted two candles, one for Amelia, who would have understood, and one, with a sort of smothered apology, for Richard Blodmore. I had always believed that one couldn’t make bargains with God, and so prayer had to be entirely disinterested. How could I ask Him for the safety and life of Richard Blodmore? I looked up at the statue of the Virgin at whose feet the candles burned. The Spaniards always talked of her as if she were far more important in the scheme of things than Christ her son. ‘One woman to another,’ I said aloud in English. ‘Would you help?’ The calm, grave face looked sightlessly down at me. I was reminded of those waxen faces of the dolls in the castle at Arcos. Why pray where there was so little faith? That time, I turned away, but often I went back to light candles ‒ always one for Amelia, and one for Richard Blodmore.

  II

  That summer Andy married Manuela, a niece of Serafina. I had been a little taken aback when he came to me to announce his intention, and then I stifled my exclamation of surprise, and made it one of pleasure. ‘I’m so glad, Andy. I’m so glad you won’t be … be alone, any more.’

  He shrugged, and smiled shyly. ‘Might as well make up my mind to it, Miss Charlie. There’s no going back any more, is there? I mean ‒ we’ll never go home again, will we?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, Andy, we won’t be going home. But you … you know you’re free to go, if you want.’

  ‘I’ve settled, in a sort of way. Can’t see what I’d be going back to. Lord Blodmore, when he was here, made a point of seeing me and saying there was always a place for me there at Clonmara, but I knew he’d rather I stayed here with you and Lady Pat. My mother and sisters are all nicely fixed in that cottage he settled them in. But the two brothers enlisted in the British Army. Things can’t be so good if they’ve got to do that. Couldn’t see myself enlisting in the British Army, somehow. And there’s Manuela. I wouldn’t like to leave her behind, but somehow I don’t sort of see her in Ireland. I doubt it’d suit her.’

  I nodded agreement. ‘I doubt it too, Andy.’ And my heart was breaking. This seemed the final severance of the link with Clonm
ara, the admission that none of us would ever go back.

  We gave Andy a splendid wedding reception in the courtyard of the house in the Plaza de Asturias. Maria Luisa was furious with me for the expense incurred. ‘Must we use such good wine? You don’t realise what you’re doing in inviting all Manuela’s family. They will all come, I do assure you ‒ down to the last third cousin twice removed. Food for them all, and wine. You must be mad!’

  ‘Perhaps. But Andy is family, Maria Luisa. We would want him to feel proud before all his new Spanish relations, wouldn’t we?’ I was thinking of my own hurried, secret marriage, the wedding breakfast shared only with Carlos. Andy deserved more.

  She shrugged, as if resigning herself to a lifetime of dealing with such foolhardiness. ‘You Blodmores ‒ I suppose I must expect such madness.’

  ‘Not all the time, Maria Luisa. Just some of the time. And we do love Andy.’

  She looked outraged. ‘You love a stablehand!’

  I nodded. ‘That has to be the truth. How else could I put it?’

  She sniffed. ‘Next you’ll be saying you love a dried-up skinflint old spinster called Maria Luisa.’

  I laughed. ‘And next you’ll be saying you love the crazy Blodmores, who give you nothing but trouble. Not even the Marquesa de Pontevedra could pay you enough money to stay on with us if you didn’t love us ‒ and forgive us for a great many things.’

  She lowered her head over the sheet of paper on which she had been worriedly doing her calculations. ‘There never was a love that wasn’t helped by a little money. And are you going to be godmother to all Andy’s family?’

  ‘You cynic!’

  She looked up. ‘There must be someone in this household who doesn’t see everything in terms of either vineyards or horses … Thank the Holy Mother I never fell in love!’

  III

  She appeared at that moment of Andy’s wedding feast when everyone was just drunk enough not to notice her presence, much less recognise her. It was, of course, Maria Luisa who first saw that dark figure hardly emerging from the deeper shadow of the arch. The lanterns were lighted all around the house, but the light was soft. A great deal of wine had been drunk, and my mother had reached the stage when she thought she could join in the Sevillanas. With the natural looseness of a born horsewoman, she could readily fall into the rhythm of the dance. She was wildly applauded.