Mad Dogs and an English Girl

by Caroline Waterman

  After this little adventure, I returned to the kitchen where the chorizo-making was now in full swing.Anita and I started to prepare the garlic and rice for the morcillas while Domi, Bea and the girl were busy with the meat. Jaime sat at the table, watching the proceedings and I noticed how his eyes followed the girl as she went about her work. She was looking as comely as ever and was wearing a tight, low-cut jumper which showed off her figure particularly well whenever she leaned across the table for another piece of meat. Each time this happened Jaime’s eyes would dilate with approval. She was well aware of this and sometimes threw him sly glances, tossing her head coquettishly. Fortunately, Bea did not notice as she was far too busy giving orders and directing operations. In fact, she was barely aware of her husband’s presence. He was everything that she was not: small, slim, shy and unobtrusive but despite being completely overshadowed by his dominating and extrovert wife, I guessed that this man had hidden depths.

  We worked till eight in the evening when Bea suggested that Anita and I should stop and get ourselves ready for the village dance and we were glad of an excuse to get away from the heat and odours of the kitchen. Although Anita warned me that this dance didn’t promise to be a particularly exciting experience, we both thought it would be amusing.

  It took us some time to clean sufficient mud from our shoes to make them look reasonably presentable. For all their lack of glamour, we had elected to wear them so as not to ruin our precious stilettos, remembering how they had suffered at the village wedding.

  Happily, the rain had stopped by the time we were ready to leave but the slippery mud made our descent to the lower village both difficult and dangerous.We slithered and stumbled along clinging to each other, trying to avoid the larger puddles and wondering why we had bothered to clean our shoes. From the crumbling cottages that lined our route, other young people were emerging in twos or threes: dark, moving shapes in the misty stillness of the night.We could hear the girls chattering excitedly, the smell of their cheap perfume mingling with the all-pervading stench of dung.

  By the time we arrived the dance had already begun. It was held in a dilapidated barn with a rickety floor and chairs lining the walls. At one end of the room the village band was making a brave but rather unsuccessful attempt at playing ‘España Cañí’. Their musical skill was no better than that of the band at the wedding, but we had to admire their enterprise. For isolated communities without radios or record players, the local band was an essential ingredient of village life and nobody cared how they played.

  Few people were dancing. Oddly, the girls were all sitting lined up against the wall while the boys sat opposite staring at them. They were all wearing their best clothes, the boys looking uncomfortable in faded suits, their hair plastered to their heads with grease, their red, work-stained hands spread awkwardly across their knees. The girls wore tight dresses and bright red lipstick. Anita and I hesitated momentarily, not knowing quite what to do, then we made our way over to the girls’ side and sat down, wondering what would happen next.

  The band struck up a new tune and two of the girls wandered out onto the middle of the floor and started dancing together.They were quickly followed by another pair until the whole floor was filled with dancing girls while the boys remained obstinately rooted to their seats. Anita and I looked at each other and tried hard to suppress our giggles.

  “Well, I’ll tell you something,” she whispered, “I’m not dancing with you!”

  She let out a little shriek of laughter and the other girls turned round to stare. At last, one of the shy males opposite managed to pluck up sufficient courage to make a move.Tugging nervously at the unfamiliar tie which imprisoned his neck and smoothing back his shiny hair, he rose hesitantly to his feet, looked around at the dancing girls then, stepping forward with sudden determination, he tapped one of them on the shoulder, disengaged her from her female partner and slid her into his arms. Encouraged by his boldness, several others immediately did the same and we soon realised this was the accepted routine. Anita and I watched these goings-on with increasing amazement as we sat waiting to see if any of them would have enough confidence to approach us. None of them did, so we remained wallflowers for the rest of the evening although some of the boys ogled us with open-mouth curiosity making us feel like aliens.

  “Oh well,” yawned Anita as we made our way back up the hill, “we didn’t miss much.They’re the most boring lot I’ve ever seen.”

  Supper that night was an enormous bowl of chick peas accompanied by lumps of thick, white pork fat followed by grilled mutton chops. Bea spent some time trying to force this enormous meal down her reluctant husband who said he wasn’t feeling hungry. She nagged and bullied him, complaining that if he didn’t eat up he would surely waste away; there was precious little of him as it was. Her loud voice ground away in a ceaseless flow as she piled yet more onto his plate, poking him occasionally with her fork to keep his attention. But Jaime wasn’t listening to her. The words went straight over his head as he sat there staring vacantly, his mind probably on other things.

  “Jaime!” screamed his wife.“Do you hear what I’m saying? Eat, man, eat!”

  He picked up his fork with a deep sigh and held it poised above his plate for some minutes, contemplating the chick peas with gloomy distaste. Then, with another sigh, he settled down to pick at them, muttering inaudibly under his breath.With a nod of satisfaction, Bea turned her attention to Marta (who was a carbon copy of her father in both looks and temperament), shovelling mountains of chick peas onto her plate, oblivious of her loud protests. Bea plonked the great cooking pot down on the table and appealed to us for sympathy in her dilemma. “What am I to do with such a family? I have two skeletons to feed and this is what I get all the time. Soon there will be nothing left of them and the neighbours will say that I’ve been starving them to death.”

  I decided that it would be wise to finish the chick peas down to the last crumb, which I managed to do with some difficulty but I could not bring myself to tackle the pork fat – much to Bea’s disappointment.

  By early afternoon the following day the clouds were beginning to gather again, rolling across the plain, dark and forbidding, threatening to make our homeward trudge across the fields as unpleasant as that of the day before. Aunt Domi peered anxiously at the sky and decided that we should leave immediately. The chorizo-making was now well under way so our help was no longer essential. Bea said she understood but would have preferred us to stay a little longer. There was still much to be done and, strangely, the girl hadn’t turned up that afternoon which she couldn’t understand. I noticed Jaime was also missing.

  The return walk to the station was a race against time and weather with the clouds chasing us all the way, blown in our direction by an icy wind. The station just came into sight as the heavens opened. However, we had made the journey in record time and just managed to catch an earlier train to Burgos. As we rattled along in the freezing carriage, the rain lashing against the windows, Anita and I reviewed our weekend. We both felt we would have liked a bit more time there: time to explore both villages properly and perhaps find some clue to the mystery of the secret tunnel.

  “I don’t believe it exists,” said Anita,“I think it’s just a legend.”

  “Perhaps it does exist but not many people know about it. Imagine living in an isolated place like that with everyone knowing each other’s business! It would be the ideal refuge for people wanting to hide themselves away from the neighbours.”

  “What sort of people?”

  “People who want to be alone together, away from prying eyes.”

  “You mean – like secret lovers?”

  “Something like that.”

  We both knew who we had in mind.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE END OF A DREAM

  I knew they were his footsteps. I could have distinguished them if a whole army had been marching along the Espolón instead of a few hardy souls braving the bitter wind that bleak win
ter’s afternoon.

  The footsteps were coming closer behind me, quickening their pace but, this time, they did not fill me with excitement and happiness. Instead I felt only dread and tension, the sickening kind that precedes an unpleasant ordeal.

  The day after Julio’s fleeting visit, I had seen Luis at Federico’s academy. As soon as I walked into the room I could sense that something was very wrong.Throughout the whole of our lesson he was silent, his eyes avoiding mine.When it was over, Don Federico, jovial as usual, invited us to join him in the Bar Paloma but Luis declined.

  “What is the matter with you two today? You both have such long faces,” observed our teacher.

  “I have a lot on my mind,” muttered Luis, “quite a few problems.”

  “Ah!” Federico switched momentarily to English. “When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions. Hamlet, Act four, Scene five. Now, have a drink with me. It will make you feel better.”

  Luis shook his head.“Thank you, but we have to go.” He took my arm and we hurried out into the street.

  “What was all that about?” I asked.“What’s the matter with you?”

  “I just can’t face the Bar Paloma – or Federico’s small talk. Not today.”

  We walked back towards Anita’s house, he chain-smoking, his eyes fixed on the pavement.

  Eventually I said, “You have to tell me. We can’t go on like this.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Suddenly, he stopped, pulling me aside, and we stood facing each other. He took me by the shoulders, his eyes searching my face anxiously.

  “Vida mía, something has happened. Something you have to know.”

  “Yes, alright. Tell me!” I felt unable to bear the maddening suspense any longer. “Do you think I haven’t noticed lately that something’s wrong? That you have ‘something on your mind’ as you told Don Federico? I need to know everything.”

  There followed an agonizing silence during which I could see him wrestling with indecision. At last he released me and turned away, passing a hand across his forehead.

  “I can’t,” he said. “Not now. I will tell you but not yet. Not here. On Sunday afternoon we’ll meet by the Hotel España at three.We’ll walk up to the monastery and I’ll tell you then. Now I have to think. Hasta luego.” He kissed me briefly, squeezed my hand, turned and was gone.

  I was left feeling stunned, sick with apprehension: like someone under sentence of execution awaiting the firing squad. But the fateful afternoon had now arrived and here I was, in the Espolón, attending that ominous rendez-vous. For a moment I was seized by the temptation to run away and mingle with the other strollers to escape what lay ahead, – but it was too late for now I felt his hand on my arm.

  I turned to look at him and was shocked by his appearance. His handsome face was ashen-grey and there were dark rings under his eyes. Had he really been cured of his tuberculosis I wondered, or would he suddenly collapse and die in my arms like some character from aVictorian melodrama?

  We walked together in silence, first by the river and then, leaving the town, we climbed the lonely hill up towards the monastery. He took my hand and we braced ourselves against the biting wind. It whistled through the tall poplars lining the road, tearing the last leaves from their skeletal branches, its mournful wail a fitting accompaniment to our anguished thoughts. For an hour we walked on saying little. It was obvious that he was more than reluctant to talk about the matter that was ‘on his mind’ and I was equally reluctant to press him.We were both cowards, trying to put off the inevitable for just for a little longer.

  Then the monastery came in sight and we stopped to gaze at the bleak, wintry landscape surrounding it. On the horizon, silhouetted against the ragged sky, a solitary monk was ploughing with a wooden hand plough and a pair of oxen, his brown habit blowing about him, his feet bare but for a pair of rope-soled sandals. I couldn’t imagine how cold he must have felt.This was an image from another age so perhaps Julio was right about Spain.

  “What a hard life they have,” I remarked,“and they’re not even allowed to speak.”

  Luis shrugged.“It’s the life they choose.”

  “But there’s nothing to stop you speaking so why are you behaving like a Trappist monk?”

  Luis shook his head in a gesture of hopelessness.“I don’t know how to begin. You see, I have deceived you and I’ve deceived myself too.” He paused.

  “Go on!” I urged.

  He drew me into his arms.“I love you.You must believe that.”

  A strange numbness crept over me, like a self-induced anaesthetic. “Go on!” I repeated, surprised at my own calm. “Or would it be easier if I said it for you? It’s the Institute gardener’s daughter, isn’t it?”

  I felt him flinch but I didn’t look up. I didn’t want to see his face at that moment. Instead, I closed my eyes and clung to him believing this to be the last time I would feel his arms around me.

  “How did you know?” he gasped. “I suppose I was a fool to think I could keep it from you. But she’s been away. She’s a nurse and she’s been in Madrid looking after an aunt of hers who is very ill. All this time she’s been away and now she’s coming back to Burgos – tomorrow, in fact. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Do you love her?” I asked in a dull voice.

  “I thought I did, until I met you. Now she means nothing to me. Nothing at all. Please believe me.You’re the only one I can love and that’s the truth.Tomorrow, when I see her, I shall tell her it’s all over between us. Finished!”

  I thought, poor girl! How terrible to have loved Luis perhaps for years, not just months, and then to suffer such a blow, such a humiliation! How would I feel if I were her, believing myself secure in his love all this time, waiting for him to come out of the sanatorium, confident of our future together and then, suddenly, after a few weeks absence in the noble cause of nursing a sick aunt, to come home to this? Cast aside for some foreign girl with whom he had become infatuated. I knew how I would feel and I couldn’t wish it on anyone. Besides, how could I be sure now that he really did love me? It might indeed be just a passing fancy in which case my fate could be the same as hers. All at once it struck me that I was fed up with being in love. It now felt like being caught in a trap like a rat, a slave to overpowering emotions. Suddenly, I wanted to be free again. The whole thing was becoming too complicated and too exhausting. I was angry with him for having deceived me, making me live in a fool’s paradise, and now the time had come to rub Puck’s lethal potion out of my eyes.

  All this time, while these thoughts were racing through my head, I was vaguely aware that Luis was caressing me, kissing me, and talking, but I didn’t hear his words.

  Reluctantly I drew myself away from him, took a deep breath and said: “Listen Luis! What you have just told me makes it easier for me to break something to you. I’m afraid you’re not the only one who’s been deceitful. Perhaps that will make you feel better. You see, I have someone else too. I knew him in London and he helped me to come to Burgos. I forgot about him when I met you, just like you forgot your girlfriend, but last week he came back to Spain and we’ve been seeing each other again.”

  I paused to see what effect my words were having. Luis was staring at me aghast, his green eyes wide open, shining in his pale face like two strange jewels. “So it was true,” he whispered, “Paco was right.”

  I continued with my lies. “I realize now that I’ve seen him again that I really do love him and what I felt for you before has gone. He’s very jealous so he must never know about us. I think it would be best if we stopped seeing each other.”

  Luis seized me by the wrist and tugged me towards him.“Who is it?” he demanded in a strangled voice.“Another Spaniard?”

  I nodded.“His name’s Julio but he’s not from Burgos.That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Paco saw you with someone in the Espolón, someone dark with a loud voice.Was that him?”

  “Yes.”

  He
groaned and leaned against a tree, burying his head in his arm. “And I didn’t believe him. I thought he was joking,” he said bitterly.

  He looked so dejected I longed to rush over to him, embrace him, tell him it was all a lie. Instead, I took his arm and said gently, “It was wonderful while it lasted: like a dream; but it’s over now. You must go back to your girlfriend and I to Julio. We have to wake up and, whatever happens, they mustn’t know about us.”

  By now it was becoming dark and bitterly cold and we were both shivering. Luis was still leaning against the tree, staring out across the fields like one in a trance. I suggested we should start walking back for I was anxious to end this wretched afternoon. He came out of his reverie and lit a cigarette.Then we made our way back down the hill, beneath the ghostly army of naked poplars swaying against the darkening sky.We neither spoke nor looked at each other as we walked side by side, each wrapped in a cloak of silent misery. We did not touch each other. The bond between us had been irreparably broken.

  I wanted to leave him at the cathedral but, as though wishing to prolong the agony, he insisted on accompanying me right the way home. By the time we reached the house it had started to snow, the great white flakes landing on our faces. Now that the moment had come to say our last goodbyes, I felt dizzy and slightly sick.

  Suddenly, Luis broke the dreadful silence. “You don’t mean what you said – about this Julio.You don’t really mean it, do you?” His voice was soft and it was all I could do to fight back the tears. Was I then such an unconvincing liar? “I need you,” he was saying, “I want you with me in Madrid.Tomorrow I’ll explain everything to Maruja – please, try to forgive me!”