by Anne Weale
They had found a stretch of a new, wide road through the mountains, which eventually would carry a lot of traffic from the coast to the inland part of the province. At present virtually deserted, it was an ideal place for her to become thoroughly familiar with gear changes, three-point turns and the other basics of driving before attempting to drive in traffic.
Under Spanish law, novice drivers had not only to prove their capabilities at the wheel, they also had to have some knowledge of how a vehicle functioned. Jack taught her about the Range Rover’s internal workings in what he called ‘the backyard’—actually a large, walled garden where, next year, if the project proved successful, Simón was considering building a swimming pool.
‘You’re a very good teacher, Jack,’ she said, after the latest of his mechanical tutorials. ‘I thought you might be impatient if I didn’t get the hang of it right away.’
‘I like showing people how to do things…if they’re interested. It’s the bolshie, couldn’t-care-less attitude that gets up my nose. You may hear some blasts of barrack-room language if I see any signs of that among the riff-raff,’ he said in a grim tone.
He had taken to using this term to refer to the young people that they were expecting. Sometimes he called them ‘the rabble’. Cassia suspected that this was partly to annoy Laura. She also thought that at rock bottom it was the housekeeper, with her deeply embedded, genteel middle-class values, who would view the teenagers with suspicion and distrust while Jack, outwardly a ruthless disciplinarian, would be the one who understood and cared for them.
‘Time I had a haircut,’ he said, passing a hand over his head. They were sitting on an old stone bench, he drinking beer, Cassia eating a mandarina.
‘Must you? You look much nicer with it as it is now.’
In the time she had known him the original convictcrop had grown to a GI crew cut, and now was beginning to show signs that, left to itself, it might be luxuriantly curly. Even at its present length it made him look much less brutal than her initial impression of him. He would never be a handsome man, but neither was he as bruto as he had seemed at first sight. In a sisterly way, she was becoming very fond of him.
‘Why not let it grow a bit more?’ she suggested. ‘One day you may go bald, and then you’ll wish you’d enjoyed your hair while you had it.’
‘Maybe I should have a perm like Manuel,’ Jack said sarcastically.
The builders had only a few minor jobs left to do. Manuel was the youngest and least skilled, his heart set on becoming a pop star like the idol whose long, tangled hairstyle he had copied. In a few days the men would be gone, and the house would no longer resound with shouted exchanges in Valenciano, and bursts of heavy metal from Manuel’s ghetto-blaster.
Cassia laughed. ‘I can’t see you with a perm or a ponytail, but in a different way a shaved head is just as wayout. It makes you look threatening.’
‘That could be a good way to look when the riff-raff arrive,’ was Jack’s comment. ‘That reminds me—we’d better fax another sit. rep. tonight. We haven’t done one since Monday, and we’ll have the jefe on our backs if we don’t keep him up to date. Don’t let his friendliness fool you. He may not stand on ceremony, but when that guy says do something, he means it. I’ve met officers like him in the Légion. They don’t throw their weight about. They don’t have to. They’re tough on themselves and even tougher on anyone who doesn’t match their standards.’
‘I wouldn’t describe the Marqués as tough on himself,’ said Cassia.
Since his departure, she had taken to referring to Simón by his title rather than by his first name. Probably there was some fancy psychological term for her reason for this, but she wasn’t into self-analysis at present. She felt that the cure for her condition—if there was a cure—was keeping busy, not thinking.
However, as Jack had raised the subject, she couldn’t help saying, ‘Some people would consider his lifestyle was the acme of self-indulgence.’
Jack shook his head. ‘No way. OK, he’s got plenty of loot, and a title as long as your arm. But if you forget what you know about him, and look at the guy himself, what do you see?’
In her mind’s eye Cassia saw various images. The Marqués coming down the stairs at the hotel in his black salopette and coral-coloured T-shirt, his arms as brown as a gypsy’s. At the wheel of his car on the drive from Granada. Vigorously washing himself in the cold spring water flowing through the lavadero a few hours before he had changed the world for her.
‘I don’t know. What do you see?’
‘Someone who in a rough-house I’d sooner have with me than against me.’ Jack drained his bottle of beer. ‘He may go to glitzy parties and know lots of VIPs, but he wouldn’t be in good shape if his life was all wine and women. Come on—let’s get that fax done. This time next week we won’t be taking it easy. We’ll have the first batch of rabble here.’
The first intake of teenage ‘rabble’ arrived on a coach from Madrid. Watching them disembark, Cassia was torn between foreboding and pity. Some looked troublemakers. Others looked apprehensive. But, having not always had it easy in her own life, she guessed that even the most loutish were inwardly somewhat nervous at being taken far from their sleazy but familiar barrios and dumped down in an alien environment.
‘Gracias a Dios por Juanito!’ was Laura’s heartfelt exclamation as she looked at a youth with tattoos on the backs of his hands and a safety pin in his ear.
Jack didn’t like it when she called him by the Spanish equivalent of his name, and it was a measure of her reaction to the coachload that she should thank God for his presence. Their mutual antipathy was, if anything, growing more pronounced.
Although he had not yet had his head shorn, this afternoon he was wearing military-green combat clothes, with a strip of Velcro over the right breast pocket where the tape with his name had been worn when he was in the Légion. As he checked off the youngsters’ identities on the list on his clipboard, and gave them each a fierce stare, he looked more than capable of keeping them in order.
Although Jack had made several caustic remarks about social workers en masse, the two people in charge of the coach party looked a sensible pair. The man introduced himself as Roberto and his colleague as Maria-José. He looked to be about forty, she in her middle thirties. Their friendly but no-nonsense manner towards their charges led Cassia to hope that they would turn out to be very different from Jack’s estimation of the profession as a whole. Having never come into contact with social workers before, she was reserving judgement.
While Jack took Roberto and the boys to their quarters, Cassia showed Maria-José and the girls to theirs. The girls would be sleeping in a dormitory, their supervisor in a room nearby.
‘This is very nice,’ said Maria-José as she looked round her accommodation.
By the standards of the Castillo del Sultán, its appointments were adequate but basic. But, compared with those in lower-rated hotels, the bed was probably more comfortable, the furnishings in better taste. All it lacked were some personal touches, and Cassia had done what she could to remedy this by hanging a chart of Spanish wild flowers on the wall, putting some second-hand paperbacks from a swap-shop on the bedside table and buying a pottery vase at a car-boot sale. This, filled with pale carnations, stood on the window ledge with a handwritten card—‘Welcome to Casa Mondragón. We hope you’ll enjoy your stay here’—propped against it.
‘The meal times, the fire drill and so on are pinned up inside the wardrobe door,’ Cassia explained. ‘If you haven’t enough hangers, or if there’s anything else you need, please let me know.’
‘Thank you. I’m sure we’re all going to have a wonderful time. I’ve never been to this part of the country before. This is a beautiful valley,’ said the older woman, looking out of the window at the mountains.
‘I’m a newcomer here too. I came from Granada.’
They exchanged the basic facts of their lives before Cassia said, ‘I’ll leave you to settle in.’
>
On her way downstairs she was astonished to hear a distinctive male voice speaking to someone below. Her heart turned over. Simón was back.
He had finished his conversation and was on his way up the staircase when they met.
‘I…we weren’t expecting you today,’ she said, suddenly breathless.
He gave her a sweeping appraisal. ‘Am I a pleasant surprise?’
‘Of course.’ For something to say, she added, ‘I—I’ve just been chatting to Maria-José—Señorita Moreno, the girls’ supervisor. Have you met her?’
‘Many times. She was once a social butterfly. Then her novio was killed in a microlight accident. It made her rethink her life. She’s now committed to helping other people. Considering her background, she has an extraordinary rapport with girls from the roughest barrios in the city…and Madrid has some very bad quarters, where many girls see prostitution as their only option.’
He moved on up the stairs and Cassia continued down, wondering what Maria-José would say about him, if questioned. It would be interesting to know how someone who had her origins in his milieu but was now dedicated to helping the underprivileged would see him.
Of course, from Maria-José’s point of view he was a benefactor. But how would she reconcile that aspect of his character with the downside? If she had been a butterfly in the upper echelons of Madrid society, she would be bound to know about Simón’s reputation. She might even have attracted his attention. Ten years ago, fashionably dressed and coiffed, she must have been strikingly attractive. Even now, in a sweatshirt and jeans, with her hair cut close to her head and no make-up, she might not turn heads but she wouldn’t be ignored.
Maria-José sat next to the Marqués during the evening meal. On his other side was a girl whose make-up and clothes suggested that she might already have taken the option he had referred to. None of the girls was more than sixteen, but this one appeared to be eighteen or nineteen, until one looked closely and saw the signs of adolescence lurking under the veneer of mean-street sophistication.
Later that evening, the six adults met for a drink and discussion in a room reserved for them to relax in.
Warned that they would be called very early the following morning, most of the girls had already gone to their dormitory. The boys were still in the games room, playing pool and table tennis. Most of them were accustomed to staying up, watching TV or hanging about in the streets until midnight or later.
‘But this time tomorrow night I’ll have them all so flaked out they’ll be hitting the sack as soon as they’ve swallowed supper,’ Jack said with grim humour.
‘There was a lot of waste after tonight’s meal,’ Laura said crossly. ‘They hardly touched the salads.’
‘These young people aren’t used to good food, señora,’ said Maria-José. ‘In general we eat a healthy diet in this country. But now, in the cities, the junk-food culture of other countries is taking hold. I’m sure, after a few days here, in this wonderful fresh air and with plenty of physical activity, they’ll be eating their meals with as much enjoyment as Roberto and I did tonight.’
Her tact earned her an approving look from Simón, Cassia noticed. For supper the girls’ supervisor had changed into a white shirt and black skirt. Even in flat-heeled black shoes, gun-metal-coloured tights and a conservative mid-calf-length skirt, her legs were noticeably good. Except that her head was uncovered, she could have belonged to a religious order.
Cassia wondered if it might be her presence which had brought Simón back, and if he found Maria-José’s nunlike appearance a challenge.
The next day when, except for Laura, they all went out on the first trail-clearing exercise, it became clear to Cassia that whether or not the Marqués was challenged by Maria-José, he would be wasting his time. She was interested in her colleague, and he in her. The warmth of their feelings for each other might not have been obvious to anyone else, but Cassia, in love herself, was more than ordinarily attuned to the nuances of other people’s behaviour. She quickly picked up the small but significant signs of a more than professional rapport between the two supervisors.
By mid-afternoon most of the youngsters were as tired as Jack had predicted they would be. Their day had begun with a pre-breakfast march along the lanes through the vineyards. He wouldn’t tolerate lagging on the return to the village at the end of the first day’s work. He had taught them a simple marching song and moved back and forth along the double line, making them pick up their feet, straighten their backs and swing their arms. No one rebelled. In the combat fatigues he was wearing he looked awesomely tough. Even the youth with the pin in his ear didn’t have the nerve to test Jack’s authority.
A kilometre from the village, Simón fell into step with Cassia.
‘Tired?’ he asked, in English.
‘Do I look it?’
‘No, but you’re good at hiding your feelings and may feel it’s incumbent on you to set the girls an example. Maria-José tells me there were flowers and a welcome note in her room and in the girls’ dormitory. Was that your idea or Laura’s?’
‘Mine, but I expect Laura would have suggested it if I hadn’t.’
‘I doubt it. I’m not sure Laura fits in as well as I’d hoped. What do you think?’
It surprised her that he should discuss the housekeeper with her. ‘She seems very capable to me, and she gets on well with the cleaners.’
‘Yes, but she disapproves of this lot…and is also nervous of them,’ he said, indicating the double file ahead. ‘If they’re insolent, I don’t think she’ll know how to handle it.’
‘I’m not sure I shall,’ said Cassia.
‘They’re less likely to test your mettle. Laura’s an obvious target for cheeky backchat. They’ll see you as an icon.’
‘Me? An icon? You’re joking!’
‘On the contrary. You’re only a few years older. You’ve got your act together as far as appearance goes.’ After a slight pause, he added, ‘If they knew about it, they might even envy you your virginity. It’s a safe bet they’ve all lost theirs. Sex starts early in the barrios they come from. According to Maria-José, it’s one of the factors that keeps girls like these trapped. Only a few will break out. The rest, unless they get help, will end up as worn-out slatterns, like their mothers and grandmothers.’
At this point one of the girls who had been walking ahead of them suddenly turned round and clouted the boy behind her. When he attempted to hit back another girl jumped to her friend’s defence. The incipient scuffle was nipped in the bud by Simón striding forward to grab the boy by the scruff of his tracktop and fend off the two irate girls. All three were quickly subdued, more by his innate air of command than by his physical strength, Cassia thought, watching.
The Marqués didn’t come back to her, but walked the rest of the way with the now pacified combatants, leaving Cassia to mull over his conversation with her. It didn’t throw much light on his current state of mind in relation to what had happened the night before his last departure.
When she got back to her room, she looked at herself in the mirror and wondered if he’d been serious with that remark about her being seen as an icon.
It was rewarding to see how quickly and positively most of the teenagers adapted to their new environment. Given a longer stay, they would soon become as healthy and hopeful as the children born and bred in the valley, thought Cassia.
One morning Jack announced that, instead of trail-clearing, they were going to be taught to abseil. No one with a poor head for heights would be forced to take part, but he hoped that everyone, including the girls, would give it a try.
Cassia was still having breakfast when Simón stopped by her chair. ‘I’d like you to come with me this morning, if you will.’ As she would have risen, his hand on her shoulder restrained her. ‘Not yet. In half an hour. Meet me at the office.’
She could still feel the pressure of his hand when she rose from the table and, wondering what he wanted to see her about, went to the downstai
rs washroom to touch up her lipstick.
Simón was at his desk, with the door open, when she arrived at the office. He signalled her to sit down, said, ‘I shan’t be long,’ and went on tapping the keyboard of a notebook computer.
Even though he was concentrating on the screen, she didn’t risk staring at him in case he suddenly looked up and something in her expression gave her away. At the moment he couldn’t possibly know how she felt about him. Her near-surrender proved nothing. You didn’t have to be in love with a man to respond to his physical magnetism.
She had left the door as she’d found it—admitting the sound of young voices, laughter and running feet. In a few minutes they would be gone, swinging off down the back lane, with Jack shouting good-humoured orders to straighten up and speed up.
By the time Simón switched off the screen and closed the notebook the cheerful noises were dying down. He put the computer in a drawer and locked it with a key clipped, with others, to a chain attached to his belt. Replacing the keys in the pocket of his jeans, he said, ‘Jack tells me you’ll soon be ready for a driving test, but the testers are even busier than the professional instructors. I may be able to pull some strings for you. But before I do that I want to see how you’re getting on. I brought some L-plates with me. You can have a go at driving my car.’
‘Is that a good idea?’ she asked nervously. ‘I mean, your car is very expensive. I’d hate to damage it.’
‘There’s not much fear of that. I’ll drive to the place where Jack gives you lessons. You can take over there.’
Cassia wasn’t happy about handling his luxurious car, even on a deserted road. Recognising her dubiety, he said sardonically, ‘This is not, I assure you, a scheme to lure you to an isolated spot and force my attentions on you.’
A deep flush swept up from her neck. ‘I didn’t think it was!’