The Man From Madrid

by Anne Weale

  ‘Pickled fish isn’t good for pussies,’ she told him. But he blinked his eyes and licked his lips so persuasively that eventually she shared one of the anchovies with him.

  Later she picked up Nicolás’s answer. Half-past six.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ON THE way to La Higuera, Cally dropped a thank-you letter in the mailbox fixed to the wall outside the Drydens’ front door. Her grandmother had had old-fashioned notions and, out of respect for her memory, Cally tried to stick to most of Granny’s ‘rules’, among them always writing to thank for hospitality rather than just ringing up.

  Although she had put on a slightly modified version of last night’s party face, she was casually dressed in jeans and an emerald cotton shirt with a navy sweater slung round her shoulders in case it was cold walking home. Although the days were hot, the temperature dropped sharply after sunset.

  Like most Spanish village houses, even the larger ones, the house Nicolás was renting had no space between its façade and the street. Its front step was a step up from the narrow pavement.

  Moments after she had pressed the bell-push set in the reveal of the doorway, she heard someone running down a tiled staircase. Then the door was opened and Nicolás loomed above her before he stepped back to allow her to enter. When she was inside, he closed the door and offered his hand.

  Cally was used to Spanish manners and would have thought nothing of it had he been anyone else. But shaking hands with Nicolás was different. The pressure of his hard palm against hers, and the grip of his fingers, ignited sensations she would never normally feel during such a commonplace ritual.

  ‘Welcome to my place,’ he said, opening an inner door and gesturing for her to precede him. ‘It looks a bit unhomely at present because—sensibly—the Fieldings have stored their most treasured possessions in a small house that Mrs Fielding used to live in on the street below this one. But I’ll be having some of my belongings brought down to fill the gaps.’

  He indicated the chimney-breast where two screws in the plaster were clearly intended to support a large picture.

  ‘I can only offer you wine. White or red?’

  ‘Red, please.’

  ‘You left the Drydens’ party early, I gather?’

  ‘I’d had a long day. What time did you leave?’

  ‘Soon after midnight. In the country, I keep country hours.’

  He disappeared round the corner of the L-shaped room, leaving Cally in the comfortably furnished living area which opened, through folded-back doors, into a dining section. Out of sight, she presumed, was a kitchen.

  There was still enough light for her to see the large courtyard garden at the back of the house. In one corner, its leaves turning yellow, was the fig tree that gave the house its name.

  Nicolás returned with a glass of wine in each hand. ‘Where would you like to sit?’

  ‘Here will be fine,’ said Cally, choosing a tub chair at right angles to a sofa rather than the sofa itself. She had shared a sofa with Nicolás before and did not want to be reminded of that occasion.

  He placed one glass on a table beside the chair and took his glass to a table next to a wing chair a couple of metres away.

  Then, briefly, he disappeared again, coming back with two pottery dishes, one for her, one for himself.

  ‘I hope you like maiz frito. It’s all I can offer at the moment. Tomorrow I’ll make time to get to a supermarket and stock up properly.’

  He did not, she noticed, ask her to recommend one. Perhaps Leonora Dryden had already briefed him on the best places to shop. Or perhaps he was a Twenty-first Century Man who could run his domestic life as efficiently as any woman and only needed a female in the bedroom.

  Nicolás sat down and crossed his long legs. He was wearing the chinos she had seen before, with a Madras cotton shirt. His brown tassel loafers were well-polished, worn with cream cotton socks.

  ‘So…here we are again,’ he said, ‘picking up the threads that were abruptly severed by an erroneous rumour. Do you always believe the worst of people?’

  ‘Not always. The evidence against you seemed pretty conclusive. I gave you a chance to explain yourself. You didn’t take it.’

  ‘Perhaps I hoped that already you knew me well enough to feel sure that I wouldn’t do anything seriously bad,’ he said dryly. ‘Or has my suggestion that we go to bed together damned me for ever? That’s a little hard to believe in this day and age.’

  Aware that her colour had risen, Cally said, ‘If it had damned you for ever, I wouldn’t be here, would I?’ Suddenly aware that this remark was open to misinterpretation, she hurried on, ‘And the reason I’m here is to hear what your project is.’

  He drank some wine and replaced the glass on the table at his elbow. ‘Have you ever heard of West Dean College?’

  ‘It’s a craft centre somewhere in the south of England, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. One of my English cousins is an aficionada…she’s enrolled for pretty well every course they run. Picture framing…gilding…antique restoration. You name it, she’s done it. It’s not only popular with the British, but with Americans too, and the reason for that is partly because West Dean is a beautiful old house with fine gardens and a large estate for visitors to explore. According to my cousin, it’s a place that refreshes the soul as well as teaching various forms of craftsmanship.’

  ‘Is that what you’re planning to set up here…a crafts centre?’

  ‘A centre, but not a crafts centre. The house across the valley isn’t comparable with West Dean. It’s smaller, it has no estate, and there is no enlightened benefactor like Edward James, who owned West Dean, to bequeath his fortune to fund it. The only money I have is what I have made. At this stage of my life, I don’t plan to give it away. Perhaps in fifty years’ time…’ His wide shoulders moved in a shrug.

  ‘So what sort of centre are you planning?’

  ‘A spin-off from my present interests.’

  ‘Last night you said you worked for a service provider.’ She wasn’t getting his drift. There seemed no possible link between the high tech stuff he was involved with and a valley in the backwoods of rural Spain where even broad-band—continuous and rapid access to the Net—was a distant dream.

  ‘I do. I’m the CEO so I work harder than anyone,’ he said, smiling.

  As always, his smile did disturbing things to her equilibrium. ‘So how come you can take time off to stay here?’ she asked, rather crisply.

  ‘Distance is dead,’ said Nicolás. ‘I’m in constant contact with my colleagues wherever I am. You’re not in touch with your office because you’re on leave. But you could be, if you wanted. When video-conferencing facilities have been brought to perfection, and every business has them, people like you will be able to work wherever you please.’

  Cally was unconvinced, but she didn’t say so. She used email but that was the limit of her technological expertise. It wasn’t a subject she could discuss with authority.

  Nicolás rose and fetched the packet containing the fried maize grains from the kitchen. When he would have topped up her dish, Cally said, ‘No more for me, thanks.’

  ‘Not nice, or too high cal?’

  ‘Very nice…but I’m not much of a nibbler.’

  ‘I am.’ He tipped a small cascade into his dish. ‘That’s why I run in the morning…to counterbalance the sins of the night before.’

  ‘Whatever sins of gluttony you’re committing, they haven’t started to show yet.’ Most of the men of his age she encountered in London were starting to get jowly and paunchy.

  ‘That’s the luck of the genes. I come from a long line of giraffe-shaped people.’

  ‘Giraffes don’t have broad shoulders.’ She regretted the comment the instant it was spoken. ‘Tell me more about this centre you’re planning.’

  His dark eyes mocked her. ‘Yes, it’s safer to stick to the point. If we wander off it, who knows where we might fetch up?’

  Cally was on the point
of telling him that she wasn’t going to tolerate sexy looks or ambiguous remarks, but she changed her mind and said nothing.

  To her relief, the teasing glint was replaced by a serious expression. ‘I want to establish a centre of excellence in the field of website design. At the moment anyone with a computer can set themselves up as a designer and the public has no way of telling if they really know what they’re doing or are learning as they go along.’

  For the next fifteen minutes, he presented his plan to her, speaking with a passionate enthusiasm that made it hard to be sceptical about the practicality of locating the enterprise in such an unlikely setting.

  Listening, she realised that here was someone who, under an insouciant manner, was intensely serious. She had heard this tone of voice before from authors expounding a theme for a book.

  He sat back and drank some wine. ‘You think I’m crazy, I expect. But at least it isn’t going to wreck your parents’ business. It might even do it some good if we have to use outside accommodation.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re crazy. I think it’s a bit of a gamble.’

  ‘All brilliant ideas are gambles at the beginning. It won’t be a huge money-spinner. But it will be a prestige-winner…if I can pull it off.’

  He sprang up to go to the kitchen, coming back with the bottle of wine to top up their glasses. In the few moments before he rejoined her, it struck Cally that the way he had sprung from the chair in one elastic movement was characteristic of his whole nature. He was a man of action, a natural innovator and pioneer. Time spent with him would never be dull, she thought. For the woman he married—if he married—life would be an ongoing adventure. It would never deteriorate into a boring routine the way most marriages seemed to.

  ‘Tomorrow, if you like I’ll take you over there and show you the house,’ he said. ‘It needs one helluva lot of doing up, but it has huge potential.’

  ‘How did you find out there was an old empty house there? Did a property agent send you the details?’

  ‘It’s my house. It always has been. It was left to me by a great-aunt who had sole ownership. She died when I was a baby, and the place has been falling to pieces ever since and probably long before that. It hasn’t been lived in since before our civil war.’

  It struck Cally that anyone who had owned a large house in Spain before 1936, when the majority of Spaniards lived in extreme poverty, would have had to be rich. She remembered the woman who had spread the hotel rumour had said that the only person who remembered its owners was old Señora Martinez who had worked there as a maid.

  Tomorrow, thought Cally, I’ll go and talk to her. She may know things about the place that even Nicolás doesn’t know.

  ‘I’d like to see it,’ she said. ‘But I think you’ll have to allow a lot of time for the renovations. This is a far cry from Madrid. Builders around here aren’t famous for their speed. There are usually endless delays. There’s a new house at the edge of the village which the alcalde’s brother is having built for his son. Last time I was here I asked him when it would be finished and he raised his eyes to Heaven and said, “Dios sabe!”’

  Nicolás laughed. ‘I’m prepared for that. But I’ve got a first-rate architect in charge and he only uses the most reliable builders, not the cowboys. However enough of my plans. I want to hear more about your work. I have a friend who’s in publishing in Madrid. He often complains about the British and American resistance to translations of the best books being published in mainland Europe.’

  Before she could comment, he added, ‘Before we get onto that, will you stay and share a pizza with me? If you say yes, you won’t, I promise you, be laying yourself open to an unwelcome follow-up.’ He gave her another of those devastating smiles. ‘If I had anything like that in mind, I’d have laid on some cava and caviare, not something as prosaic as a pizza.’

  Despite this assurance, Cally wasn’t sure that it was a good idea to resume friendly relations. On the other hand, if she went home, it was likely to be a dull evening, with her father sloping off to watch football as soon as supper was over, and her mother in one of her complaining moods.

  ‘OK, I’ll stay,’ she agreed.

  ‘Come through to the kitchen. We can talk while I’m throwing a salad together and tarting up the pizza.’

  He ushered her round the corner where the unseen part of the large room proved, as she had thought, to be a well-equipped kitchen which combined every modern convenience with a homeliness provided by the wood-faced cupboards and the marble work-tops usually found in Spanish kitchens. But here, instead of the usual and rather cheerless pale grey marble, the surfaces were rose-coloured veined with brown.

  Nicolás turned one of the dining chairs to face the working end of the kitchen. While she sat down, he moved to the other side of the work-top that separated the two areas and started preparing their meal with a casual efficiency that surprised her.

  Every time she thought she had him sussed, he revealed a new and unexpected aspect of his character.

  ‘We were going to discuss translations,’ he reminded her. ‘Does your firm publish any?’

  It was an opportunity to tell him that she wasn’t working for E&B any more, but she didn’t feel ready to share her private anxiety with him. They had shared the intimacy of a passionate embrace. They had also come close to enmity, at least on her side. They were not, and might never be, close friends.

  ‘Not many…hardly any in fact. I was very keen to publish the memoirs of a Spanish Grandee who has had a fascinating life. But I couldn’t sell the idea to our marketing people.’

  ‘Which of our Grandees was that?’ Nicolás asked. When she told him, he said, ‘He’s a fabulous guy. I’ve met him. He’s been a bestseller in Spain. How insular of your people not to be willing to give English readers a chance to get to know him. But of course both the Brits and the Americans do tend to be inward-looking nations…and, with some exceptions such as yourself, hopeless linguists.’

  ‘You were going to explain to me why you speak such flawless English. It can’t be because of your time in the US,’ she said. ‘You speak English-English, not American-English.’

  It seemed to her that, for a moment, he looked slightly embarrassed. But perhaps she imagined it, because then he said, ‘My mother wasn’t able to spend much time with me when I was small. I was in the charge of an elderly Englishwoman who had lived in Spain for a long time but never acquired more than rudimentary Spanish. So we spoke English most of the time.’

  Cally remembered reading somewhere that all the great sherry and port dynasties, in southern Spain and Portugal, had employed English nannies to look after their children. She wondered if Nicolás’s ‘elderly Englishwoman’ could have been an early graduate from the famous Norland College of Nursing which had supplied nannies to wealthy people from all over the world.

  It would tie in with her earlier supposition that the great-aunt from whom he had inherited the house across the valley must have been rich.

  ‘Since then, of course,’ he went on, ‘I’ve spent time in America and England. Has your Spanish been of use to you in your job?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I wonder if the Fieldings have any of your firm’s books. Have a look at the bookshelves through there—’ with a nod in the direction of the area where they had been sitting. ‘You might find something written by one of your authors.’

  Cally did as he suggested, but although the owners of the house had a catholic selection of books from all the major UK and US publishing houses, there was nothing with E&B’s colophon on the spine.

  By the time she returned to the kitchen to report this, Nicolás seemed to have finished his preparations.

  ‘Tonight’s supper will be an anticlimax after the feast Leonora gave us last night,’ he said. ‘I like that couple. Neither of them has any hang-ups, which makes a change in the stressed-out worlds we live in.’

  ‘You don’t seem to suffer from stress.’

  ‘I don�
��t have a mortgage and school fees and keeping up with the Joneses to worry about,’ he said, refilling their glasses. ‘I’m only responsible for myself…which makes life a whole lot easier. How is your stress level?’

  If you only knew! thought Cally.

  ‘Pretty good,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I don’t have a mortgage hanging over me. I pay rent to a friend for a share of her house. She has the mortgage problem, but as it’s a lovely house in a highly desirable part of London by the time she retires she’s going to be able to buy a mansion in the country if she wants one.’

  ‘Yes, long term, property is usually a pretty good bet,’ he agreed. ‘Although I notice that several small country houses between here and the coast had their value kiboshed when the autopista was built a few metres from their boundaries. That round-the-clock drone of traffic is not part of most people’s dream of a life in the sun.’

  As she murmured agreement, he added, ‘But I think your parents’ situation worries you, doesn’t it? Do they own the casa rural or are they still paying for it?’

  ‘They own it, but they don’t have any other income to fall back on if the business declines, so, yes, I do worry about them. Do your parents live in Madrid or the country?’

  ‘They’re divorced. My mother lives in Madrid. My father works overseas. My sisters are scattered. We’re not a close family. But I have the impression that, although you’re a dutiful daughter—perhaps too dutiful for your own good—yours is also what the shrinks like to call a dysfunctional family.’

  ‘Not dysfunctional,’ she said, a little indignantly. ‘They’re not ideally matched, but how many people are?’

  ‘Very few,’ he said dryly. ‘Which I guess is why our generation are wary of tying the knot without a trial run first…and a lot of those don’t work out.’

  ‘You wouldn’t expect them to,’ said Cally. ‘If people aren’t sure at the outset, the chances of it working are minimal.’