‘Well, have you come to take over the business as well?’ he said in English. It could have been a joke, but it was not.
I shrugged. ‘I have some little time to wait until Luis will be ready. I like to walk in the bodega.’
‘Do you remember much about what I told you the first day?’
‘A little. I know more about the vines. The management of the solera is new to me.’
‘That first day …’ Then he stopped. That first day he had taken me through the bodega, I had met Carlos.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘We will go to the sala de degustación. We will take a copa together.’
I had often seen him in the sala when I had waited for Luis, but never before had he himself invited me to take a copa. I hurried after him as he turned away and walked down the long aisle between the butts. Could age be mellowing that fearsome old man? Perhaps Maria Luisa was right in saying the old liked to remember the pleasant things.
A hush fell momentarily over the bodega members gathered in the sala when we appeared together. Old customers of course knew Don Paulo. He greeted them by lifting his hand in salute, but chose for us a small table where there were only two chairs. He called for the whole spectrum of the sherries to be brought, and glasses for each. We went from the richest oloroso, through an amontillado, to the marvellous tang of the fino. It was extraordinary; I felt almost shy with him. We had never really held an ordinary conversation before, and we did not know how to talk, so we sat in silence. No one else approached, though normally the sala was a great place for socialising, for changing from one group to another, for introducing strangers, for making friends.
‘And shall you give me a manzanilla, as you did the first day?’ I said at last.
He called for the manzanilla, and that reminded me of Sanlucar, where the grapes were grown. He raised his glass. ‘Here is a health to your new son,’ he toasted.
‘Then my son will be a sharp and salty character, like the wine.’
He stared at me a moment longer, and I was dismayed to see his ageing, hooded dark eyes were bright with tears. He rose abruptly. ‘Good-day, señora.’ He left the sala without a word to anyone about him. I slowly sipped the wine that had in it the taste of the sea. He had loved Carlos very much. He tried to forgive me for his death, and he had not succeeded. No doubt he feared that with my marriage to Luis, his grandsons were being taken away from him. For the first time I felt pity for him. Beware pity, I reminded myself. He had not pitied me.
V
That spring Luis took me to the Fair in Seville. It was the first time I had ever been to that legendary event. Now Luis and I had our own caseta, our ‘little house’ where we could entertain and dispense hospitality to all Luis’s friends. They came from everywhere in Andalucia, and some even from Madrid. I thought it was his way of introducing me to a wider circle than I had known in Jerez. Everyone who could manage it always came to Seville to the Fair. Carlos had gone every year, staying with friends, and claiming it cost him nothing. There had never been money for me to go; Maria Luisa had never been able to squeeze out enough to provide the new dresses. This time I had more than I could wear. My children rode their beautiful ponies, gifts of the Marquesa, all of them, accompanied by Andy and another groom, through the passages between the casetas, wearing Andalucian dress, their saddles decorated with silver, silver on their soft boots. Juan was ten, Martin nine, Francisco eight; they were babies no longer, and would soon be young men. I was complimented on their good looks, their horsemanship, their manners. Luis talked of the day when Tomás would be old enough to join his brothers. I loved the parade of the young men on their horses, the perfectly gauged nonchalance of their horsemanship, the way their eyes went from one young girl to another, sizing them up, thinking perhaps of their looks and their dowries. The Fair at Seville each spring seemed to serve no real purpose except as a great social gathering which included all classes and every sort of person, from grandees of Spain to the lowliest gypsy. There was music and lights, horses, women, wine and food in one grand mix. I was bewildered and delighted, and also strangely tired.
Luis had planned that we should go on to visit Madrid for a few weeks before the hot weather came to the capital; the children were to go back to Jerez with their tutor, Ian Frazer. But when the Fair ended, I asked for us to return with them. ‘I’m not feeling very well, Luis.’
His face instantly clouded with concern. ‘What is it, querida? You are not well?’ All kind of memories of Amelia’s illness must have flashed through his mind in those few seconds. ‘I shall bring a doctor at once.’
We were alone in our sitting-room. The hotel looked out over the wide beautiful avenues of the city. The Geralda dominated, as always. Seville was a place of sensuous beauty, and orange trees grew on the streets. Our breakfast table had been set near the balcony, so that we watched the city slowly pick itself up after the week’s mammoth celebration. I hadn’t eaten anything, just sipped my coffee, and counted the few motor cars now to be seen mingled with the city’s population of horses.
I slipped my hand over to touch Luis. ‘I have prayed, and lighted candles, as I used to do. There will be no need to call a doctor. I consulted one yesterday morning when you thought I was shopping. Luis, we are to have a child.’
The expression on his face was almost painful to watch, the quick succession of joy, of fear, and then, of doubt.
‘Do not doubt it, Luis. Do not doubt me. I gave my promise. It is truly your child.’
He buried his face in his hands and wept.
VI
During that pregnancy I was guarded and cosseted as if I might break in two. At times I grew weary and impatient of Luis’s concern, his hovering presence. He did everything he could to keep me either in the house or garden, and there was always a servant within call, so that I could not lift a book, or stretch for a fan, or pour a cup of tea. Luis tried to bring a nurse from Seville to be with me constantly, but I rebelled against that. He indulged me in every possible way, but there were still things forbidden to me. I was not to go to the vineyard house; the roads were too rough. It would be better if I did not go to the hacienda with my mother; I might be jostled by the mares and foals. I was sometimes sharp with him as he laid yet another stricture on me, reminding him that I had borne four healthy children, and then, very quietly, he would remind me of the miscarriage on the night Carlos died. For all his joy, he was dismayed that this pregnancy had followed so quickly after the birth of Tomás; I could not have had enough time to recover sufficiently. Seeing his face, alight with hope, and yet fighting back a terrible fear that this child also might be lost, I gave in to whatever he wanted. So much of his belief in himself as a man rested in this child that I could not deny him. But the months of waiting seemed longer and more tedious than ever before.
Something that lightened those months was the return of Edwin Fletcher. He had written and asked if he could come back as tutor to the children. ‘It is absurd,’ I said, giving the letter to Luis. ‘He is over-qualified for such a position. He took it only as temporary work while he convalesced after he was gassed during the war. He has a brilliant mind, I believe, and there should be a great future for him. He will be wasted here … tutoring little boys.’
‘He does not seem to think so,’ Luis answered, tapping the pages. He read from them: ‘England is very far from being the land fit for heroes that they promised us. I am homesick for Andalucia. I long for the sun. These winters half kill me, but there I know I shall be well. I hope I shall be able to get back my rooms with the Señoritas Hernandos Delgado. I hope Juan has not become so good a horseman that he leaves me completely behind. I miss Lady Pat. I miss you all.’ Luis recalled the coughing, the breathlessness, the fragility that no amount of Andalucian sun could cure. ‘Tell him to come,’ he said. ‘We should count ourselves lucky.’
So he came, and now his salary was paid by Luis, not the Marquesa. He was a welcome companion for some of those months of waiting. He returned as if to a bel
oved place, to a beloved family, and there were presents for all of us, even for Andy, which was more than I thought he could afford, but no one could offend him by protesting. At Luis’s request, he brought many books in English to stock the library shelves ‒ not just books of scholarship, but the kind of fiction Luis thought might interest me, and help to pass the time. It was a suddenly empty house when they all, the three boys and Edwin, departed for the Marquesa’s northern estates in Galicia for the worst months of the summer. ‘I would send you also,’ Luis said, ‘to escape the heat, if it were not for that long journey. It is too far, the trains too uncomfortable, too slow.’ What he did not add, but a fact that I knew, was that he feared my being out of his sight, as if the longed-for child might be snatched from him. For myself I would not have wanted to go. Even the coolness of Galicia would not make acceptable months of living under the Marquesa’s eye and rule.
So I waited, with as good grace as I could muster. We did not entertain, and I did not accept invitations. Luis said the excitement, the noise, the heat of such occasions was not good for me. My mother and Maria Luisa came almost every day, and brought gossip of the town. I still wrote letters for my mother to Ireland. Through all the replies I searched for some mention of Richard Blodmore, but they were few. ‘Lord Blodmore,’ Lady Sybil wrote, ‘has been very quiet since the end of the war. He does a good job as Master of the Hunt, and he’s become a very successful farmer. But he’s very quiet. Hard to shake a word out of him. Perhaps the effects of his injury are worse than we know. Such a shame. He used to be such a handsome man. Lady Blodmore is very dashing … But we do miss you, dear Pat. How good the old times used to be at Clonmara. There never was such a man as your father. I miss him still. Perhaps it’s just that I’m getting old, but nothing seems the same since the war, and this poor country is heading into such trouble …’
‘Yes, the old times at Clonmara,’ my mother sighed. ‘They were such good times. I wonder why anyone wants to change things? They were all right once.’ She saw everything in terms of the simple and indulged childhood she had had; she knew only that her father’s tenants had been well treated by the standards of the times. She failed to see why it all had to tumble into the chaos that threatened. Edwin Fletcher tried to explain the complicated issues to her, the difficulties of establishing a united, but free, Ireland; but it was too much for her confused mind. She kept returning to the memories of her childhood. ‘We were all right then,’ she said.
My mother and Maria Luisa often came after the siesta, and at Luis’s urging sometimes stayed for the evening meal. They would sit with me as I lay in the bed in what had been Amelia’s room. Maria Luisa usually with a piece of needlework, my mother fluttering restlessly about, her concentration never focused for very long on any one subject. There had been only a few new pieces of furnishing introduced into the room since Amelia had used it. I had had the best of her collection of fans framed and they hung each side of the big gilt-framed mirror over the mantel. Her water-colours of the lake and the black swans were on the wall facing the bed. I dismissed completely Maria Luisa’s observation that it was a little morbid that I gathered the possessions of Luis’s former wife about me. ‘Nonsense, Amelia and I were friends. It’s perfectly natural. And these, in any case, she left as special gifts to me.’ Luis had found a beautiful Louis XIV corner cabinet, inlaid with Sèvres plaques in Seville. Here, at last, the exquisite porcelain models of the White Horses of Vienna found their show case. They were depicted in all the classic exercises of the Haute École ‒ Piaffe, Levade, Courbette, Pasade ‒ all of them small masterpieces of the ceramic worker’s art. They were a special delight to my mother, and she often opened the case and handled them. I was always nervous when she did this after she had had wine with lunch, but she was very careful, as gentle as she would have been with a live horse or with a child. The bottom shelf of the cabinet also displayed the beautiful little gun in its marquetry box, surrounded by its silver bullets. I had never touched it since the night I had killed Pepita with it. My mother, the first time the cabinet was in place, displaying its treasures, clucked her tongue in disapproval when she saw the gun. ‘It’s not been cleaned, Charlie.’ So next time she visited, she brought oil and cloths, and thoroughly cleaned it. ‘Such a pretty thing,’ she said admiringly. She also waxed the marquetry box, even polished the silver bullets.
‘It’s a pity, Lady Pat,’ Maria Luisa said, ‘that things in your own house don’t similarly interest you. We have a few brasses that could stand your attention.’
My mother pulled a face at her and laughed. ‘Oh, brass! What’s that? We have nothing half as lovely as this. Besides, you know I always keep my own guns beautifully cleaned.’
But she truly loved the White Horses, and I was tempted to give them to her, but didn’t because they had come from Amelia, and Luis might have been hurt. Nor did I give her the little pistol. I no more wanted to forget Pepita than I wanted to forget Amelia.
The autumn months came, and I moved heavily now about the house, feeling grateful to obey Luis’s and the doctor’s instructions to rest. Through the wet months early in the winter I sat before the fire, and was often too listless to read a book. Edwin and Luis kept the children away from me for all but short periods. ‘They tire you, querida. Three rowdy boys … What can you expect?’ Tomás was brought to me each day by Nanny. He was a happy baby, but too energetic for me to hold on my lap for more than a few minutes. ‘This one is full of sparks, Miss Charlie,’ Nanny said. ‘He’ll be a bit of a handful later on. Give his brothers a run for their money. Now rest you, my lamb. You’re looking tired. Come now, little Master Tomás. Kiss your Mama. Look, he’s worn you out, the little devil …’
On a stormy night late in November, with the wind thrusting in from the sea, a month before the baby was due, I went into labour. It was not at all like the other times. This was not the intense but brief labour that had characterised the other births; it was slow, protracted, exhausting. I heard myself scream, and could not believe it was I. I saw, through a haze of sweat and pain, Luis’s frightened face near mine, felt his hand clutch mine. ‘Courage, querida. It will come soon now.’ But it was agonisingly slow. More than a day passed, and the contractions went on. The doctor never left. Luis would not allow him. Another doctor came from Seville. I heard their murmured words when they thought their drugs had dulled my senses. ‘Another few hours we can wait, but no more. Then we must take it from her, or she may die, and the child with her.’
I opened my eyes. ‘I can’t die!’ I screamed at them. ‘I must give Luis his son!’ And then I screamed again as another contraction gripped me. They were close together now. ‘Bear down now, there’s my good lady,’ the nurse said. ‘Keep bearing down, and you’ll soon have a fine child.’ They gave me ropes to pull on, and a cloth to clench my teeth against.
At last I heard it, the cry of a new-born child. A feeble, pitiful cry, like the mewing of a kitten. But a living cry.
Luis’s daughter was tiny and fragile and beautiful. She did not, even for a few hours, have the red and rumpled look I had come to expect of all new-born infants. She was white and neat and her cry was only a feeble protest against the roughness of her journey into the world. When she was washed, Luis himself came and laid her in my arms. I had to guide the reluctant little mouth to my breast.
‘She is perfectly formed, our child, querida. She is so beautiful it is hard to believe.’
‘I’m sorry it wasn’t a son, Luis.’
He smiled at me. ‘What foolish things you say, my Carlota. We have a beautiful daughter. She will be the queen of Andalucia.’
When she finished feeding she opened her eyes wide, trying to focus, trying to gain some hold on this frighteningly harsh world into which she had been born. Her eyes were very dark, like Luis’s. She was the only one of my children not born with the light, greenish eyes of the Blodmores.
* *
For a time she hovered on the edge of life, as if she had not the strength
to grasp it. Her cry was a mere whimper. She was difficult to feed, and yet seemed hungry. It was torture to see how Luis hung over her cradle, hardly daring to breathe if she slept, putting out a finger tentatively to touch her tiny ones when she was awake. He would not leave her to go to the bodega. Only reluctantly would he leave her in charge of the nurse to try to get some sleep at night. He grew haggard; the scar was very white against the grey of his skin.
Then one morning I wakened to see the nurse bending over the cradle and the sight of the tiny arms beating the air as if in anger. The cry was sharp and demanding. When the nurse brought her, she sucked greedily at my breast.
‘Go and tell Don Luis,’ I said softly. ‘Wake him if he is asleep. Tell him she is well.’
* *
But it was still a fragile, light form, beautiful in her long lace robe as white as her skin, which the Marquesa held in her arms for the baptism. This was a formal ceremony, merely to receive her names and mark her entry into the Church. She had been baptised within an hour of birth because it had seemed so possible that she would not live. She received the water, and all her names without a sound ‒ Luisa, Isabel, Patricia, Angela, Miraglo ‒ which means miracle. She was, in truth, the miracle of Luis’s life. She was the angel-child. He possessed nothing more precious.
And for me, Dr Ramírez told me that she would be my last child.
BOOK THREE
SPANISH TWILIGHT
Chapter One
I
Our lives settled into a quiet rhythm. At times it seemed almost too serene. I kept expecting some storm to sweep out of the sky at us; I found myself looking over my shoulder watching for the thunder-cloud, listening for the distant rumble. Very faintly it could be heard, but it was far away, and indistinct, a sound I could not quite identify.
On the surface I was busy; I had a family of five children, but with servants there seemed little to do except give orders. Nanny had as much help in the nursery as she asked for, and yet she was jealous of giving over the care of Tomás and Luisa to other hands. Edwin Fletcher now kept Juan, Martin and Francisco at lessons full time. Juan was maturing quickly; he was by turn charming, boisterous, assertive, confident. His younger brothers looked to him as a natural leader, and he accepted that position without question. It was what he had been born to, his manner suggested. Tomás, who was just as assertive, was as yet too young even to interest, much less challenge, Juan.
The Summer of the Spanish Woman Page 41