Spanish Lace

by Joyce Dingwell

  They left her for the corrida.

  She spent an amusing half hour watching the people pass through the turnstiles. They were all dressed up in their finest clothes and many of the men wore rosettes. The women wore lace in their hair, she noted, and often a flower as well.

  The audience dwindled, so she poured some citronade, nibbled some chocolate and turned the pages of the magazine.

  Then she was sitting listening, listening to a fanfare so loud and so unavoidable that she might just as well have attended the fight. She bit her lip in frustration. She had no wish to follow the wretched thing by ear. If only she could get away.

  But she couldn’t. A few yards from the car she would be lost, and that would upset the rest. ‘

  She rummaged for something soft to stuff in her ears, and eventually tore the edge of her handkerchief. Not that it made much difference. Every detail, it seemed, of the fight came sharply out to her, more sharply, she felt sure of it, than if she had been there to see, for there was nothing to distract her here, she had to pay attention.

  She heard the amplifiers screaming something that sounded like ‘matadors’ Then she heard ‘... banderilleros ... picadors...’

  Next there was a silence, and that, to her tortured nerves, was far worse than the telling noise. A soft ... at first ... roar that circled the arena, growing louder as it spun back to where it started told her the bull had entered. Now her palms were wet, but her lips and throat were dry. She alternated between hot and cold for almost twenty minutes. Then a change crept into the sound ... and into her. She felt sure a moment afterwards as the roar that had kept up for all those twenty minutes grew to deafening proportions that the bull had been killed.

  Tt’s horrible!’ she protested aloud. She knew she could not sit through another fight, and was just about to open the door of the car to escape, escape anywhere, no matter if she was lost, when she saw her party emerging from the arena. Evidently they, too, had had enough.

  Diana looked sick. Miguel looked disgusted. David had his head turned away. But Celestina was saying brightly, too brightly, ‘These poor mawkish people, they have to leave early. Me, I could stop all day.’

  ‘You lie. You hated it the worst!’ David came up to Celestina and said it distinctly and forcefully. He even put his hand on her shoulder and repeated the words. Repeated them only a breath away from her face.

  Everyone looked and waked, but a strange thing happened. Celestina of the bitter tongue, the instant temper, did not answer back. She simply stared at David—stared dumbly. How long she would have stood there staring, Zoe could only conjecture. It was David himself who broke it up. He said masterfully, standing no nonsense, ‘All right, girl, don’t hold everything up, get in.’

  For all that it was a fair distance to Lamona, it was practically a silent return.

  Zoe, for one, felt that night that she could well have done without the third outing, but being a guest felt obliged at the same time to go along with the rest. Besides, the sea was something entirely different from a bullfight, she told herself, and her previous stay at Lamona having availed her Lamona only, not even the brighter lights of Esterella, and certainly no coast, she should at least see as much as she could of the district—Diana’s district?

  She went to bed early, for tomorrow the take-off was to be pre-dawn so as to give them as much of the Mediterranean as the day allowed. It was a fairish hop to the particular beach that Miguel had chosen, but by Australian standards nothing over-formidable, so Zoe sat back and decided to enjoy herself, for Diana and Miguel seemed in better spirits, and David had either persuaded or coerced Celestina to come along, and was unmistakably pleased with himself about that.

  Also the road was a different one again, which made for more interest; it cut through forests, it wound, serpent-like, steeply upward, it rounded bends and sometimes the car seemed to teeter over the very edge of the cliff.

  But there were plains ... or vegas ... too, the hills around them circled in blue haze, the higher mountains behind the hills almost ink-blue, except the eternal snow crests of the dizzier heights.

  ‘The Sierra Nevada,’ said Miguel, seeing the direction of Zoe’s gaze.

  Celestina, taking the advantage of the stop brought out a picnic hamper, and such a hamper! As usual, the general note was simplicity, but the preparation meticulous.

  Just bread, cheese, a loaf of meat, onions and olives, but presented with such care that, only that the subject was food, Zoe could have described it as exquisite.

  A little embarrassed at David’s unwavering gaze at her, Celestina snapped at him, ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘You. Sitting near the hamper you have provided. I’m thinking how nice you would be in an apron sitting in a kitchen.’

  Celestina started to sneer, but flushed vividly instead.

  They drank coffee from a flask, then pushed on again.

  It was mid-morning when they arrived at Margaretha, Miguel’s chosen beach. It was white-sanded and the water rather more than the Mediterranean millpond that Zoe had had in mind.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Miguel, ‘it is more rough today than usual.’

  The girls changed first in the beach shack, then the two men put on their trunks.

  With much catching of breath, they all dived in the water, Zoe still complaining of Pacific-size breakers in the so-called calm Mediterranean, then, exhausted, they came back to the sand to laze and bake.

  After lunch they baked again, and eventually slipped into sleep.

  Zoe woke first, smiled at the other sleepyheads, and decided to take a walk, gathering shells, hunting for crabs, keeping an eye out for a likely piece of driftwood.

  She found some delicate starfish, some sea lilac, but nothing very exciting, nothing of which she could say to someone, ‘I picked this up on a Mediterranean beach.’

  She walked further away from the beach towards a mass of dark rocks where the sand was more pink than white, and where there could be a more interesting sea harvest.

  Gulls swooped above her, and she admired the flight patterns they made against the tall cliff that rose quite steeply from this point. She noticed idly that the waves were real boomers now, occasionally hitting the base of the darker rocks, darker because of their wetness, and sending up towers of foam.—What she did not notice, and should have, was the rising tide.

  There was a minute beach in front of the rocks and beneath the cliff. It looked as though it might produce something likely, and without a thought Zoe clambered over the stony end of the inlet and scampered across the narrow width of sand.

  It proved disappointing. What had looked like stranded anemones from the distance proved only clusters of kelp and cuttle. But while she was here she might as well examine the back of the rocks where they thrust up into the cliff.

  She was rewarded with scuttling crabs and amused herself by staying quite still until they came out again from where they had hidden when they heard her approach. She did not realize how long she played this game until she emerged again and saw how far the tide had risen. Even as she noted that the rocks were wet far higher than they had been before, she saw the big waves foaming towards her. It came so quickly there was nothing else to do but stand where she was.

  The wave caught her with vicious force as it went under her to the rock-based cliff, then, not satisfied with that, it fell back on her again. All at once she was being turned and twisted and thrown about. Within seconds, moments, she was out in deep water. New waves were piling up the rolling, boiling turbulence, she was being drawn under, then coming up again ... but all the time going further out. Once during a choking moment of breath she saw how far out and felt like giving in there and then.

  The voice came to her as in a dream. It said, ‘I can’t get you, but there’s a big wave coming. Relax and let it take you in.’

  She saw nobody, but she saw the wave and she did what she had been told ... to no avail. The backwash of the waves took her out again. But not so far as before, a
nd the next wave brought her a little closer.

  There were times when the turning, twisting and throwing about resumed again, the desperate choking for breath, but still she did as that dream voice had directed ... and was still shouting. Though that was only her fevered imagination, she thought.

  Then the biggest wave of all was bursting over her, snatching her up and rushing her in, and this time, before the backwash could claim her, someone was lifting her sodden body, half carrying, half dragging her beyond the sea’s slobbering reach.

  She was lowered to dry sand, and there she stayed for a long time, cut, bruised, exhausted, half-drowned. Then slowly her body loosened, her mind cleared, she could hear and see again.

  She could hear the waves receding now, losing their fury with the turn of the tide. She could see a face. Supporting herself on an elbow, she looked disbelievingly up at the face.

  It couldn’t be ... it mustn’t be ... But it was.

  It was the infinitely angry, quite coldly furious face of Don Ramon Raphaelina.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  He did not speak unkindly to her, though she knew it was an effort. She knew that the attentive hands helping her carefully to a sitting position, supporting her once she managed that far in her limp, sodden state, were fairly itching to do something else.

  ‘Gently, senorita.’—’Take a little rest, senorita? She heard his quiet, soothing voice, well aware that he was cursing her and her foolishness with every Spanish curse.

  ‘You are aware of this piece of coast, Miguel,’ she heard him attack his unfortunate nephew, without any preamble at all, without any prior greeting in spite of the fact that he had not seen him for months, ‘you know that the number of people who have walked this particular small beach at the height of the tide ... and returned ... can be counted on the fingers of one hand.’

  Next it was Celestina, his cousin. ‘Victims have been claimed where this girl ventured, and well you recall it. Between the rocks and against the cliff the tide runs up hard and rough and each wave recedes equally violently.’ Miguel stood silent under the attack. Even Celestina found no words to retort.

  They were back on the safe main beach now. On Ramon’s orders Zoe was being plied with hot coffee, covered in rugs.

  He knelt beside her and massaged her cold fingers, but his touch, for all its outward gentleness, was insidiously angry.

  ‘Ramon, I did not expect you,’ Miguel inserted at last. ‘And most certainly not at Margaretha.’

  ‘Fortunately I was going past in my car ... no matter now the specific reason except that it was an extra business chore I suddenly remembered ... when I saw the figure in the water. At any other period of the tide I would have taken no notice, but at this period I did take notice, and I ran down the cliff and went after the person.’

  ‘Yes,’ they all said, and for the first time Zoe noticed his soaked clothes, saw that the rest were noticing it too. ‘You are wet,’ she said inadequately.

  ‘Si, senorita, I am wet.’ It was the first sharpness he had flashed at her, and he seemed quite incapable of stopping it, but she accepted it humbly, for she knew she deserved it; she simply had not looked before she ran on the small beach, she had not weighed up the possible dangers.

  ‘I think we all should take coffee,’ said Miguel, obviously unhappy.

  ‘No,’ Ramon brushed aside his nephew’s suggestion. ‘We should all go home. I’—he stood up—’will take the senorita in my car, she will be more comfortable there.’

  Zoe knew she would not be more comfortable there, emotionally, anyway, but she was too chastened to try to wriggle out of a long return solo with this fierce, glowering man.

  Obviously glad it was not them to accompany him, the rest piled into their car, and Don Ramon, helping Zoe to her feet, half carried, half led her to his.

  Once the hairpin bends were over and there was nothing to stop her speaking, Zoe mumbled, as they began crossing a vega, ‘I’m sorry, senor.’

  A wave of his hand dismissed the apology,

  ‘Presumably, being Australian,’ he said, ‘you are not exactly inexperienced in the sea, yet you have been guilty of a very careless act, and that act the taking for granted of a condition, of a state of being, and for just reward of your inattentiveness you have been punished with a very near brush with death, but it is not my intention ... now ... to deal with this.’

  Zoe did not like that ‘now’, nor his ‘intention to deal with,’ not with anything that concerned her, but he looked so ready to—to—well, to adopt a nursery story, to gobble her up, she kept a wise and silent tongue in her head.

  And on that note they came back at last to Lamona. He left her at Rosina’s with instructions about warm milk and bed, and Rosina lapped it all up with gusto. She had liked Zoe from the start, and did not mind administering to her, and when it was ordered by the senor, whom obviously she adored, it became almost a Royal order.

  In no time Zoe was in her cot. Milk by her side. A compress on her brow.—But, she thought ruefully, if Rosina thought these things conducive to oblivion, she did not know the incipient wrath of Don Ramon. As though she would sleep with that promise of a reckoning hanging over her. As though she would—

  But when she opened her eyes again it was manana. Tomorrow.

  Diana was first on the phone.

  ‘Darling, are you whole or in pieces? And I don’t mean the sea, I mean—’

  ‘Di, don’t be a fool.’

  ‘But you were a fool, weren’t you? Zoe how could you have walked along that death-trap? Good heavens, it’s not as though you didn’t know!

  ‘I knew, and now I’m chastened. I simply wasn’t thinking of danger.’

  ‘Well, you certainly stepped into it after you stepped out of the water, didn’t you? Miguel, who knows his uncle well, says he’s never seen him quite so mad with rage.’

  ‘I didn’t step out of the water, I was carried. As for the rage, I have to report that Don Ramon, except for a short outburst, was a perfect gentleman all the way back.’

  ‘I can hardly believe it.’

  ‘I’ve been warned,’ added Zoe forlornly, ‘that the real impact will be felt today.’

  ‘Poor you! But in a way you deserve it, doing a fool thing like that. Leaving aside your foolishness, Zoe, what a wretched coincidence it being Miguel’s uncle on the cliff road at that time ... nothing personal, darling, I wouldn’t have you drowned for the world ... but imagine Ramon turning up before he’s expected. Wouldn’t it!’ Di sighed. ‘How was he to you?’ Zoe asked with feeling.

  ‘You saw!’

  ‘I was only half there, Di.’

  ‘Well, the same polite exterior as was shown to our casualty. Seems once more the impact is yet to come. Indeed, the only favourable treatment meted out was to Celestina.’

  ‘He was cross with her. I heard it.’

  ‘At first. After that—’

  ‘Naturally.’ Zoe’s tone was dry.

  ‘He was also pleasant to David.’

  ‘That surprises me.’

  ‘It surprised me. I rather thought ... I rather gathered...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That Don Ramon and Celestina—well, you understand.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Zoe was aware that her reply was sharper than it should be.

  ‘Well, if you don’t, you do have some queer after-effects after all, for it was you who first told me. Ramon and Celestina, I mean. However, evidently it’s not true. It can’t be. Ramon was terribly nice to David.’

  ‘And how did Celestina take that?’

  ‘Does anyone know how Celestina takes anything?’ said Di unguardedly, for of late everything about Celestina had been perfect.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Zoe. ‘In the beginning she took Miguel’s enrapt looks whenever you were round in a very bad grace. I know because she even expressed her feelings to me.’

  ‘That’s a long time ago,’ excused Di, guarded now, ‘and she’s been a wonderful help.’

 
‘Giving you un-wonderful advice.’

  ‘Oh, darling, not that talk again.’

  ‘That talk,’ insisted Zoe. ‘Anyway, there’s really no chance now, is there?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Well, for that civil wedding—’

  ‘So long,’ Di said in a strained little voice, ‘as there is a wedding.’ She said hurriedly that she must attend to the children, and rang off.

  Zoe wandered around the hostel, finding little of the pleasure in the gardens that Antonio attended that she used to. The pecans and avocados that had fascinated her no longer kept her in the corner that Antonio reserved for them. She went and sat on a stone bench and thought: ‘What now?’

  Apart from reuniting with Di, she had no real excuse to be here. The children had been the senor’s idea in the first place, thus the senor’s responsibility, he and he alone was responsible for their return to their parents. Even while they were here in Lamona she had nothing to do with them. In the Casa Rosada they came under Vittoria’s and Diana’s care.

  In short, she thought, I am redundant, and I’d better have a final talk with Di, urge her to make haste slowly, though, with the senor present, I hardly need advise that, he will do the advising. And, she thought, wryly, the seeing that he is obeyed. She had no qualms whatsoever that Ramon would accept Diana, accept her very graciously, and not because of any attraction he found in her friend but because of his inherent good manners. Besides, loyally, one had only to look at Di and know what kind of girl she was, know that any apparent speed in the affair has only been in the name of love. And—remembering Browning, and Browning’s wife Elizabeth, and how Ramon had known those most romantic of poets—love is something that Ramon understands.