by Anne Weale
They wandered from room to room. Cally said, ‘I wonder what it was like in its heyday. Do you suppose there are photographs of it in old forgotten albums?’
‘Maybe. I’ll have a look some time.’
Presently, he unlocked a door at the rear of the house that led out to what had once been a formal garden. Elaborate urns set on the tops of pillars marked flights of shallow steps.
Cally was sauntering down one of these, a little ahead of Nicolás, when what she had thought was a stick suddenly started to move. The realisation that it was a large dark snake made her gasp and jump back, catching her heel on one of the steps behind her and losing her footing.
If Nicolás hadn’t been watching and grabbed her, she would have fallen. He shot out his hands and caught her around the lower part of her ribcage, or at least that was his intention. But as she lurched sideways, arms flailing in a vain attempt to recover her balance, his right hand covered her right breast.
‘It was only a ladder snake…not venomous. The sun brought him out,’ said Nicolás, shifting his hand to her midriff and holding her steady.
And then, while she was still reeling mentally, not so much from the shock of the snake as from the electric sensation of his hand on her breast, he turned her around and drew her against him and kissed her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AS SHE had the first time he kissed her, Cally forgot everything but her need to be in his arms.
She responded as freely and eagerly as she had the first time, perhaps even more ardently now she knew she was in love with him.
Whatever restraint her brain might impose—but for the moment it was switched off—her body had longed for these moments. His mouth was like water in the desert, the feel of his body against hers like food after starvation.
When at last they stopped kissing and looked into each other’s eyes, Nicolás said huskily, ‘What this garden needs is a summer house with an ample supply of cushions. If it had somewhere private and comfortable, would you say no to me this time? Now that we know each other better?’
Cally leaned back in the circle of his arms. She put hands on either side of his face and caressed the slanting cheekbones and the taut brown skin with her fingertips.
‘But still not well enough for that. I would like you to make love to me. I can’t deny it. But the last time it happened, I regretted it later. How do I know I wouldn’t regret it this time? It’s a gamble, and I’m not a gambler.’
He captured one of her hands and pressed his mouth to the palm. Then he dropped his arm from around her and stepped back.
‘I think we had better go and have lunch and talk about this unsuccessful relationship that seems to have put you off trying again. But first I must lock up here. Come—’ He took her by the hand, as he might have done with a child, and led her back to the house.
Half an hour later he parked the car outside a barrestaurante in a hamlet of perhaps twenty houses on a mountain road with a view of the coast.
The only other customers were an elderly couple sitting outside under a striped sunbrella and six Spanish workmen at one of the inside tables.
Nicolás chose an outside table as far away from the other couple as possible. After they had decided what to eat from the simple menu, and a bottle of wine had been brought and their glasses filled, he said, ‘Now tell me the story of your love life?’
‘There isn’t very much to tell. A friend had a bad experience that put me off experimenting when I was in my teens. When I was twenty I fell in love…or what seemed to be love. It wasn’t. It was also a disaster sexually,’ she said bluntly. ‘After that I decided there was a lot to be said for being celibate.’
Having described two years of increasing anguish in the baldest possible terms, she held her breath, dreading him telling her that her lover had been a dolt and he, Nicolás, was an expert lover who would make the experience perfect for her.
To her infinite relief, he didn’t do that.
He said, ‘What sort of bad experience did your friend have?’
‘She was very pretty and had lots of boyfriends. She caught herpes simplex. Although it was treated, it’s been recurring ever since. Sometimes it never recurs. Sometimes it does apparently. She’s been told that if she has a baby, she will have to have it by Caesarian section to avoid infecting it.’
Nicolás said, ‘Teenage promiscuity carries some nasty penalties. Nobody denies that. But that doesn’t mean that making love is always like Russian roulette, Cally. Intelligent adults can give each other pleasure without those kinds of consequences.’
‘I expect they can,’ she agreed. ‘But men can take pleasure for granted. Woman can’t. You may be an exceptionally good lover…or you may be like the previous man in my life. It’s not a chance I’m prepared to take…except under certain conditions which don’t apply in our case.’
‘What conditions?’ he asked.
She drank some wine, choosing her words carefully. ‘If I loved someone, and he loved me, then I would chance it. Not otherwise. Sex is rather like chocolate…a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips. Sometimes it’s hard to resist transient pleasures. But I think it pays off in the long run.’
He leaned back in his chair, his expression thoughtful. ‘I think you may be allowing two bad experiences—your friend’s and your own—to warp your judgment. Life is about embracing experience, not rejecting it. This guy who was your first lover…was he also a virgin?’
‘I don’t know. I shouldn’t think so. He was twenty-three.’
‘Did you tell him he was leaving you cold? Not as bluntly as that, but tactfully?’
‘I felt that if he didn’t know, there wasn’t much point in telling him.’
‘So you lay back and thought of England, as the saying goes. Where does that expression come from?’
‘I’m not sure. I’ll look it up. Which reminds me, that website address you sent me, as an example that Edmund & Burke ought to copy…how do you come to know about Harlequin romances? Does one of your sisters read them?’
‘As far as I know my sisters never read anything but fashion magazines. I was introduced to Harlequin books in San Francisco at an Internet conference. I heard some of the women delegates discussing the fact that, in the city’s financial sector, there were special jackets on sale so that women business executives could read a romance in public without other people knowing. I don’t know why they would feel embarrassed about it. If men want to read John Grisham or Stephen King, they do it and don’t care who knows it.’
‘It’s a man’s world,’ said Cally. ‘For some reason, stories involving crime and violence are more socially acceptable than stories about emotional relationships.’
‘Do you read romances in secret as a substitute for the real thing?’ he asked her.
She said lightly, ‘I seldom read novels of any kind…and I haven’t given up hope that “the real thing” will happen eventually. Which is one of the reasons I’m not going to have an affair with you, Nicolás. If and when my Mr Right materialises, I believe he’ll be pleased that I waited for him. Think about it. When you marry, do you want your wife to have a long line of lovers in her past? Be honest.’
At this point their salads arrived, with a basket of bread and a yellow pottery bowl filled with alioli.
When they were alone again, Nicolás said, ‘It would be unreasonable to expect my future wife to have a past far more immaculate than mine. For both sexes, there’s a difference between being promiscuous and having relationships that, although not permanent, do involve real liking and affection. Post-marital fidelity is a lot more important than pre-marital abstinence. I think you may be using Mr Right as an excuse to avoid having to use your judgment…having made an error of judgment before.’
‘But I am using my judgment,’ she objected. ‘I’ve admitted…demonstrated that I find you attractive. But reason tells me it would be a mistake to go beyond friendship. Hopefully, I’m not going to be here for much longer. There was a job
for a commissioning editor on one of the book trade press sites this morning. With a bit of luck I may get it and then I’ll being going back to London and our paths won’t cross any more…or only rarely.’
‘London isn’t far by air. I go there several times a year.’
‘So you may, but when people are based in different countries there’s no point in getting involved…unless they’re both mad about each other, and we aren’t,’ she said firmly. ‘Tell me more about your friends. What does he do for a living, and why was she living in Granada when they met?’
‘Simón’s involved in the management of land and property,’ said Nicolás. ‘Cassia’s father was a painter and the narrow streets and stairways of the Albaicin have always attracted artists. If you had accepted their invitation to dinner, she would have told you how they met. Were you telling the truth about Juanita not being able to stand in for you, or was that a polite excuse?’
‘I felt I would be an interloper,’ she admitted. ‘You’ve known them a long time and have lots of things in common.’
‘I don’t know Cassia well. You would have been someone for her to talk to while I asked Simón for advice. You have far more in common with her than I do. Why not change your mind and come?’
Cally hesitated. Then common sense reminded her that, although there might be no harm in going out to dinner with him, the drive home could be hazardous. If he kissed her goodnight, her resolution might weaken. She might find herself in his bed instead of her own.
It was hard to be strong-minded in daylight, and much harder late at night.
‘I would rather not,’ she said quietly but firmly.
Nicolás made a very Spanish gesture expressing a mixture of bafflement and resignation. Changing the subject, he said, ‘If I hadn’t had a project of my own for La Soledad, I might have sold it to Simón for his children’s scheme. He wants to expand it, but suitable properties aren’t easy to come by.’
For the rest of the meal, they discussed impersonal topics. On the drive back to Valdecarrasca, they hardly spoke, both immersed in their private thoughts.
Cally was wondering if she had done a foolish thing in rejecting Nicolás’s advances. He wanted her. She wanted him. Was it madness to turn down the chance to erase for ever the memory of her earlier affair?
There was no real doubt in her mind that he would be a much better lover than clueless Andrew. It would be impossible not to be. Even the way Nicolás kissed and held her was different.
Knowing he would have his full attention on the bends of the winding mountain road, she shot a sideways glance at him, remembering the feel of his face under her fingers.
How lovely it would be if they were going back to his house for a shared ‘siesta’.
She remembered the old man who had spoken to her this morning. Enjoy being young while you can. Before you know it, you’ll be as old as I am. Already she was halfway through her twenties. Before long she would be a thirty-something, with no possibility of meeting a man to compare with the one beside her.
She wondered how he would react if she suddenly announced a change of mind. But even after the mid-morning glass of champagne and another two glasses of wine with lunch, she didn’t have the courage to say, ‘I’ve been thinking it over. If you want me, you can have me.’
Nicolás, though he was driving with the care the road demanded, was also mentally reviewing the way he had, for the second time, mishandled his relationship with Cally.
Both times he had been too precipitate for a woman who was like no other he had ever met.
He was both touched and exasperated by her determination to forego the best and most important of all the sensual pleasures until the mythical Mr Right came along. Presumably, despite her close associations with Spain, she saw Mr Right as an Englishman.
He knew and liked a number of Englishmen though, in general, he had more in common with Americans with their can-do attitudes and openness to innovation. Among the European nations, he saw Spain as being in the ascendant and Britain as being in decline, a state that befell all imperial powers eventually. It had happened to the Greeks and the Romans, and to Spain as well, centuries earlier.
Glancing at Cally’s averted face as she gazed out of the window, he wondered what she was thinking about and if she was now determined never to let him lay a finger on her again.
Earlier today it had been in his mind to ask her to join him on his Christmas trip to the Ariège, a beautiful and relatively undiscovered region of France to the north of the Pyrenees. A friend of his had been there and reported simple but good accommodation and one or two excellent restaurants.
Staying there with Cally, walking in the foothills by day, and sharing a duvet by night, would have been good for them both.
Unfortunately he had muffed his chance of achieving that objective when they were in the garden at La Soledad. The snake had presented him with the opportunity to hold her—his palm still held the memory of her softness—and instead of being content with that for the time being, he had gone too far. Referring to what they might have done in a nonexistent summer house had been a tactical error, conjuring up images that, for her, had unpleasant associations. Whoever the lout was who had botched her initiation deserved to be shot. No wonder she was nervous of being let down again.
Nicolás had never felt protective towards a woman before, except in the ordinary way of carrying things for the elderly and intervening if small boys were too rough in their dealings with small girls. It seemed to him that most females between those extremes could look after themselves pretty well. Certainly all the women in his family could, and none of his girlfriends had shown any sign of vulnerability.
Cally was different. As far as he could make out, she had spent most of her life looking after her parents instead of being cherished by them. That she should have to spend Christmas being a general factotum, instead of having a good time with her contemporaries, annoyed him intensely.
He wondered how much interest her parents took in her job problems, and if they were secretly hoping that she wouldn’t be able to get another job as an editor and could be persuaded to run the casa rural on a permanent basis, leaving them free to play golf and bridge.
‘If you’ll drop me off at the corner by the school, that will be fine,’ said Cally, as they neared the village. ‘Thank you very much for lunch, Nicolás. It was a nice place. I’ll pin the flyer the owner gave me on our noticeboard. Some of our guests may want to try it.’
He did as she suggested, stopping the car near Valdecarrasca’s school and jumping out to walk round the bonnet and open the passenger’s door for her. But Cally was already on her feet when he reached the car’s nearside.
‘I hope you enjoy your evening. Thanks again for my lunch.’ She gave him an artificially bright smile because, inwardly, she felt close to tears.
After today, he would probably never want to see her again. What man would, after such an emphatic rejection?
‘My pleasure. We must do it again,’ said Nicolás.
But she felt sure it was just a polite form of words. He couldn’t possibly mean it.
The next day Cally paid a visit to Dolores Martinez’s grandmother to ask her about her time as a kitchen maid at La Soledad.
As Spanish country people regarded bunches of flowers as tributes to take to the cemetery, not as social offerings, she took a box of chocolates.
The old lady was in bed, propped up by pillows, wearing a black crocheted wool shawl over her nightdress. People of her generation, and indeed many of the over-sixties, went into mourning for husbands and other close relations for at least a year and sometimes for the rest of their lives.
After some preliminary politenesses, Cally began by saying, in Valenciano, ‘I’ve heard that, when you were a girl, you worked at the big house called Solitude on the other side of the valley. Can you remember what it was like in those days?’
The old lady’s face lit up, perhaps with pleasure at being invited to reminisce. ‘
I remember it well…better than I can remember what happened last year,’ she said, her smile displaying the many gaps among her teeth. ‘Every year is the same now, but when I was young there was always something happening. I don’t know why they called the house Solitude. It was always full of people when the family came from Madrid. They were a big family and often their friends came as well. They had motor cars before anyone else…’
Once launched, she was unstoppable. Cally wished she had had the forethought to bring her microcassette recorder. She was not going to be able to remember every detail. The story the old lady was telling was a fascinating insight into the social life of a grand family as glimpsed by one of the youngest and least important members of the household.
After about half an hour, she suddenly fell asleep. When it seemed she was not going to wake up for some time, Cally tiptoed from the room and asked the granddaughter if she could come again another day.
‘Certainly…whenever you please. It’s nice for her to have company. We’ve all heard her tales a thousand times,’ said Señora Martinez, with a gesture expressing extreme boredom.
As soon as she got home, Cally typed as much as she could remember of the old lady’s reminiscences. She badly needed something to take her mind off her two major problems: being out of work and in love with Nicolás. Working on a piece of social history would give her something else to think about. It was even possible that, suitably edited, the reminiscences might be saleable, or at least worth preserving in a local history archive.
She was picking up emails that evening when the name Nicolás Llorca appeared, the subject of the message being Party.
Cally opened it and read—I want to return the Drydens’ hospitality before I go away for the holiday period. I’m having a party on Constitucion Española. I hope you and your parents can come. 8.30 p.m. Nicolás
Spanish Constitution day was the first of two national fiestas that took place early in December, the second being to celebrate the Immaculate Conception.