by Anne Weale
‘To England.’
‘To relations?’
‘No, both my parents were only children. I’m on my own now.’
‘That can be an advantage. Families aren’t always the support they’re supposed to be. I have no brothers or sisters, but I do have numerous more distant relations and they’re mostly a pain in the…neck.’
By now they had passed the souvenir shops near the bottom of the hill and were in the Plaza Nueva, not far from a chemist’s shop. Cassia showed him where it was, and would have retrieved the basket and taken her leave.
The Marqués had other ideas. Keeping a firm hold on it, he said, ‘If you don’t mind waiting while I buy this stuff for Isa, I’ll walk you home.’
Why he should wish to do so was a puzzle she couldn’t fathom. Then a wild possibility occurred, which made her heart lurch with apprehension.
CHAPTER TWO
COULD it possibly be that with Isa put out of action by her wrenched thigh muscle the Marqués had it in mind to make a pass at herself?
Cassia had read about men with insatiable sexual appetites. If Simón de Mondragón’s grandfather had died because of that predilection, perhaps it was a family trait.
The chemist’s shop was an old-fashioned establishment, its walls lined with mahogany lockers topped by ceramic jars painted with the names of the physics they had once contained. Having recently reopened after the afternoon closure it was crowded, mainly with elderly people who knew the chemist and his assistant and liked to have a chat while they made their purchases.
Standing at the side of the shop while the Marqués waited his turn, Cassia expected to see signs of impatience on his face. But in fact he appeared to be interested in the conversations going on at the counter. More than once the grooves down his lean cheeks deepened with amusement as he listened to forthright opinions on the government and the city fathers from people whose lives were at the opposite end of the social spectrum from his own.
Among Cassia’s neighbours in the Albaicín, many of the older ones could remember the civil war in the thirties. It was probable that, being aristocrats, the Marqués’s family had supported the Nationalists led by General Franco. Acts of heroism as well as many terrible atrocities had taken place on both sides. In the public cemetery near the Alhambra, where her father was buried, more than two thousand granadinos had been executed, most of them long forgotten. Only the brutal execution by Nationalist partisans of Granada’s young but already famous poet, Federico García Lorca, was a war crime still widely remembered.
Thinking about the poet, Cassia wasn’t aware that the Marqués had finished being served until he said, ‘Sorry to keep you waiting so long.’
She came down to earth with a start. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Outside the shop he said. ‘You were looking very sad in there. Were you thinking about your father? Tell me about him.’
‘He was an artist. Not a very successful one. The things he wanted to paint didn’t sell. To keep us housed and fed he had to paint what would sell—picturesque views of the Alhambra and the Generalife gardens. I liked them, but he despised them and the people who bought them. It’s a difficult life, being an artist. I’m glad I haven’t inherited his gift. I can’t draw for peanuts,’ she said lightly.
‘Nor can I, but I’m interested in art. I’ve inherited some fine paintings and I’m adding to the collection. Do you have any of the paintings your father did to please himself?’
‘A few.’
‘I’d like to see them, if I may.’
‘They’re not for sale,’ said Cassia, in case he had hopes of buying the works of an undiscovered genius for bargain prices. ‘I shall never part with them.’
‘I’d still like to see them.’
A woman from the gypsy community in the cavehouses on Sacromonte, the hilltop above the Albaicín, approached them, offering a sprig of heather.
‘To bring luck to you and your pretty young lady, señor,’ she wheedled.
Cassia expected him to ignore her, or to wave her away with a gesture. To her surprise, he took some coins from his pocket. ‘People make their own luck, señora,’ he said, putting them into her hand and taking the already wilted sprig.
‘But they aren’t all born with your looks, handsome,’ she quipped, with a flash of gold teeth. She turned to Cassia. ‘You’ve picked yourself a fine fellow, señorita. But when they’re as fine as this one they have many opportunities. Don’t give him all he wants. Keep him guessing. Remember, the fruit on the tree inside the locked patio always looks more delicious than oranges growing in a roadside orchard where anyone can pick them.’
‘You should be writing poetry, not selling heather,’ said the Marqués. With a bow he presented her with a flower removed from the basket he was carrying.
‘She’ll need a strong will to resist you!’ Laughing, the gypsy touched the rose to his cheek before going on her way.
‘I hope you don’t mind my giving away one of your flowers,’ he said, reverting to English. ‘I’ve always liked the gypsies. They’re part of the Spain of my childhood, which is rapidly disappearing. Every year we become more like the rest of Europe. A homogenised world may have some advantages, but it isn’t as colourful and interesting.’
He handed the heather to her. ‘Do you believe in luck and fortune-telling and all those gypsy stock-in-trades?’
Cassia shook her head. But she did believe that gypsies were shrewd judges of characters, able to gauge at a glance a great deal about the people they accosted. Clearly the gypsy had recognised that the Marqués was a practised charmer, and also that she, Cassia, lacked the experience to handle him.
They were now at the point where the New Square merged with the old Plaza Santa Ana. A few yards further Cassia would be turning off into the labyrinth of narrow streets and steep alleys, where the churches had once been mosques and many of the little squares still had the public wells known by the Moorish name agilbes.
She said, in a businesslike tone, ‘It’s a long trudge up to my place. I doubt if you’d find my father’s pictures worth the effort…and the sooner Señorita Sanchez rubs that stuff on her leg the better, don’t you think?’
‘In my experience of minor skiing injuries it’s rest not ointment that cures them.’ After giving her a thoughtful look he added, ‘And I think the gypsy’s warning rather than concern for Isa is your main reason for trying to put me off, Miss Browning. Let me relieve your mind. At this stage of our acquaintance I have no intention of…’ he paused for a moment, his black eyes glinting with amusement’…trespassing in the locked patio.’
‘I never supposed that you had,’ she said untruthfully, unable to stop herself blushing under that mocking regard.
‘Yes, you did. Why deny it? There’s been a strong hint of disapproval in your manner since we arrived. It interests me. I should have thought in your job you’d be used to unmarried people taking holidays together. There’s nothing unusual about it. But you seem to have me tabbed as an incorrigible stud who might even make a pass at you, given the smallest encouragement.’
It was disconcertingly close to what she had been thinking about him earlier.
She decided to speak her mind. ‘Hotel receptionists—like air stewardesses—do get quite a lot of passes made at them. More on the Everest principle—because they are there—than because of their personal attributes. I don’t flatter myself I’m the sort of girl who would normally attract your attention. But you might flatter yourself that, being a marqués as well as good-looking, you have only to crook your finger and…’ She left the conclusion unspoken.
He laughed. ‘Do I really strike you like that? An arrogant rooster who thinks he has only to crow and all the hens will…? Well, as the chickens you eat come to supermarkets via broiler houses, you won’t know what hens do when the rooster puffs up his feathers and signals his virility.’
In fact, Cassia had lived in places where domestic fowls scratched the earth for things to eat, laid their e
ggs where they wished and abased themselves in readiness when the rooster wanted to tread them. But it wasn’t an analogy she had ever expected to hear in conversation with a man who was almost a stranger.
Momentarily forgetting that she ought not to reveal staff gossip concerning the guests, she said incautiously, ‘I gather Señorita Sanchez isn’t the first girlfriend you’ve brought to the Castillo. There seems to have been quite a string of them…and your grandfather was the same.’
‘But he had a wife and I don’t. That makes a difference. Or do you belong to a sect which believes all sexual relationships are wrong unless their object is procreation?’ he asked.
‘No, I don’t believe that…but nor do I believe in promiscuity,’ she added. ‘Anyway, how you behave is none of my business. I’m sorry if I’ve been impertinent, but it was you who raised the subject.’
‘Actually it was the gypsy who brought it up. They’re great judges of character. She recognised you as a lamb consorting with a wolf. Has your father been the only man in your life?’
It was a shrewd guess that she would have liked to contradict. In the face of his wide experience she didn’t want to admit that her own was negligible. Her father had frightened men off. A jealous and suspicious husband—not without reason, as matters had turned out—he had been a possessive father. In his eyes she had never grown up. He had seen all young men as a threat to his little girl’s purity.
It was only after he had been told that his illness was incurable that he had consented to her taking evening classes in secretarial skills, financed by her job as a cleaner. She had never had any real freedom until the day John Browning had died.
‘My life has been rather a strange one. But I’ve liked it that way. What I see of other people’s lives doesn’t make me feel I’ve missed out,’ she answered. ‘Probably you don’t have much time for reading. But for me books are better companions than people.’
Yet again he surprised her by saying, ‘Up to a point I’d agree with that. But it doesn’t do to spend all one’s time in imaginary worlds, or even in worlds that were real but are now part of history. Books are only one of life’s pleasures. There are many others—skiing, for example. Living so near a ski-resort, it’s a pity you haven’t tried it. Was that a question of expense, or wasn’t your father ever well enough to ski?’
‘He wasn’t always an invalid, but he wasn’t interested in sports. Only in art. Have you been in the Albaicín before?’
‘Only once, but that was at night and by taxi. We were trying out a recommended restaurant. I come to Granada for the skiing, not for the other attractions.’
‘But you have been inside the Alhambra?’
‘Yes, and envied my ancestor who saw it as it was when Boabdil, the last sultan, surrendered it to Isabella and Ferdinand five hundred years ago. What the tourists see today is only a pale shadow of the way it was then.’
‘But it’s still a magical place, especially at night when it’s floodlit. Do you know that definition of heaven as eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets? For me, the summit of bliss would be having the Alhambra all to myself for a whole day, early in May.’
Her face lit up at the thought of it. Then with a laugh she added, ‘An eventuality as unlikely as…as buying a share in the ticket which wins the big prize in the national lottery. But at least by living in Granada I can get into the Alhambra for less than the tourists pay.’
Speaking of tourists reminded her that many of them found the cobbled lanes and long flights of uneven steps in this ancient neighbourhood a tax on their stamina. But, as she led the way up a succession of ascents which left unfit sightseers red-faced and breathless, the Marqués followed at her heels with the ease of a man conditioned to strenuous exercise.
The house where she lived had nothing about its façade to suggest what lay behind its tall, heavy door and shuttered windows. Unlocked by a heavy, old-fashioned key weighing half a kilo, the door gave into a dark hall with a wide stone staircase which narrowed on the next flight and narrowed again on the third.
‘Who else lives here?’ asked the Marqués.
‘No one at this time of year. In the summer the owner and his family move up from their apartment in the city centre. When the temperature down there hits thirty it’s cooler and quieter up here.’
‘But as cold as a vault in January,’ was his comment.
‘On the staircase—yes. But I have a gas heater and I wear woolly tights in the evening. You may find it hard to believe, but one can survive without central heating,’ she said, glancing over her shoulder.
‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ he said drily. ‘The house where I spent a lot of my early life was heated by braseros under the tables. Our shins scorched while our backsides froze.’
She had seen the large shallow containers he was talking about. They fetched high prices in street markets and antiques shops, being used now as decorative objects, not for their original purpose—burning charcoal. But she hadn’t expected him to be familiar with their shortcomings as heaters.
‘If you heat by estufa, how do you get the gas bottles up to this floor?’ he asked.
The question was another surprise. Stoves fuelled by butane gas in heavy metal canisters were the heaters in common use among ordinary people. Lorries delivering the brightly painted canisters were a frequent sight. But why should a rich man know that handling them was a problem for women living alone and old people?
‘The lorry drops them off at the top of the street and I have a trolley,’ she said, unlocking the door to the studio. ‘I couldn’t carry a full bottle upstairs, but pulling it up isn’t difficult.’
‘Not for a man, or even a big, beefy woman, but you don’t come into that category,’ he said as she took off her coat.
His appraisal reminded Cassia that shortly after her father’s death a plumber had come to the flat. He had been about the same age as the Marqués. After repairing the washing machine he had continued talking, watching her in a way which had made her increasingly nervous. She had felt seriously at risk and, although nothing had happened, had afterwards vowed that never again would she be alone with anyone she couldn’t be certain was trustworthy.
Now she was in that situation again: alone, at the top of an empty house, with a man who had insisted on coming home with her for no better reason than to carry a basket of flowers which weighed less than the average bag of groceries, and to look at paintings she had told him were not for sale.
‘I see you have a roof terrace…and a spectacular view,’ he said, moving towards the wall of glass installed, with the owner’s permission, by an earlier tenant who had also been an artist.
‘Yes, the view makes the flat. If it looked out on a blank wall it wouldn’t be anything special.’
Cassia opened the door to the terrace and gestured for him to precede her. Not only did the flat have the breathtaking view of the Alhambra and the snowy peaks beyond, it also had, looking down, a bird’s-eye view of the many walled gardens called cármenes for which the Albaicín was famous.
After admiring both views her visitor turned his attention to the terrace itself. ‘Were all these plants here when you moved in?’
‘No, they’re ours…mine—the nearest I’ve come to a garden.’
‘You obviously have green fingers,’ he said, strolling round. ‘To have so many flowers out in January is quite an achievement.’
‘Some of them are really weeds. This creeper with the yellow flowers wouldn’t be allowed in most people’s gardens, but I like it and it grows anywhere…as this does.’ She touched the glossy dark leaves of the ivy growing up the wall of the house next door which, being higher up the steep street, had its top floor above where they were standing. ‘It’s hard to believe that as the pigeon flies we’re not far from the Gran Vía, isn’t it?’
The Marqués nodded. ‘If I were your landlord I’d live up here all year round.’
‘But where would you put your car? None of the houses i
n this street has a garage or even a parking space.’
‘I should have to walk, as you do.’ He returned to the studio and began to study the paintings arrayed on its walls.
In the final months of his life John Browning had destroyed more than half his canvases, leaving only what he considered his finest works. He had also weeded out many of the drawings and sketches in his portfolios. Another artist living in the Albaicín had offered to buy his easels and other painting equipment. They had now gone from the working end of the studio, leaving only the boards on trestles which, with the few bits of furniture, had been there when they’d arrived.
She had done what she could to make the place homely, but it must have seemed a stark and comfortless habitation to anyone accustomed to the luxurious elegance of Simón de Mondragón’s various homes. She wondered what he was thinking as he moved slowly from picture to picture.
‘Do you like your father’s work?’ he asked suddenly.
She didn’t, but had never said so, and wasn’t about to disclose her private reactions now. Her taste was for figurative paintings, not these wild abstracts, the strong, often clashing colours applied with a palette knife or with strokes of her father’s thumb, the impression they gave being one of violence and anger.
‘I’m not qualified to judge it, but, anyway, time is the only true test of an artist’s worth, so I’ve read.’
From his glance at her Cassia saw that he knew she was being evasive, but he didn’t press her for a more definite answer. Nor did he express his own reaction except to say, ‘There’s a lot of luck involved in an artist being successful in his lifetime. Where did you and your father live before you came to Spain?’
‘Lots of places. France…Italy…Greece…Morocco. I liked Greece the best, because we lived on an island and I did a lot of swimming. In the summer Señor Alvarez lets me use the hotel pool, very early in the morning before the guests are up, but it’s not like the sea.’
‘Did you learn to speak Greek as well as you speak Spanish?’
‘No, we didn’t stay there long enough. How do you come to have such idiomatic English?’