A Very Special Man

by Marjorie Lewty

  ‘Rubbish,’ Chloe told her hardily. ‘I keep on telling you, he’s not in love with me. He’s in love with some beastly Spanish girl. It’s all just a cover-up to save offending his grandmother’s strict code of morality. In his book I’m just a stand-in for the girl he would like to marry but can’t. So really, Jan, there’s nothing to get excited about.’

  All the same, it was difficult not to get a little excited as the week before the wedding progressed. Chloe spent several mornings in Leamington, at the large stores there, choosing what she hoped would be the right clothes to cover the wedding and the time in Spain afterwards. She didn’t know how long Benedict proposed to stay in Spain, but in any case the amount of clothes she could take would be limited by airline regulations. Later on, when they returned to England, and she began her ordinary duties, she could decide what more she would need and shop accordingly.

  The worst part—or rather, the most embarrassing part—was the smiling interest shown by the salesgirls when she came to choosing lingerie. Seeing the engagement ring on her finger they became cosily involved in the showing of filmy, minuscule garments designed to entice rather than conceal. In the end she found herself buying the pretty, frothy things quite recklessly, using her credit card. By the time the account came in she would presumably be in receipt of a salary—or should she call it an allowance? At any rate, Benedict would have the pleasure of paying for all these intimate garments, even if he never actually saw them, Chloe told herself, trying hard to be utterly objective about the whole matter, and ending up by blushing rosily when the salesgirl handed her the carriers with a warm, ‘I hope you’ll be terribly happy.’

  It was easier in the gown department. For the wedding she chose a simply-cut dress of pure wool jersey in ice-cool blue, with a pin-tucked yoke, a narrow silver kid belt, and a short, swingy coat to match. Pale grey gloves, shoes and handbag seemed right. Finally, as she was leaving the first floor she saw just the hat she wanted. It was of white velvet, shaped like a nineteenth-century gentleman’s smoking cap, with a tassel on the end of a long cord. It sat cheekily on her shining hair and would, she thought, lend a touch of fun to what must be anything but a deeply serious occasion. And if, from inside, a small voice seemed to be warning her that it should be a deeply serious occasion, with love and commitment on both sides, she turned a deaf ear to it.

  She opened her eyes again and saw that they were still among the clouds. Benedict looked up from his papers and said, ‘I’m neglecting you shamefully. Just let me finish this lot and then I can forget work for the time being.’ He looked down through the window and must have spotted some familiar landmark through the clouds, for he said, ‘We’ll be seeing the mountains soon, then it’ll really be Spain.’ He covered her hand with his and gave it a hard squeeze. If they had really been on their honeymoon, Chloe thought bleakly, she could have responded, could have leaned towards him, linked her arm in his, laid her head against that hard, muscular shoulder. But his gesture and the excitement in his voice wasn’t for her, it was for Spain and what to him must be a homecoming.

  She closed her eyes again and tried to concentrate on how lovely it would be to be in Spain again. But soon her thoughts swung back to this morning and the wedding and as events came closer in time they became more blurred and unreal and all that remained were confused impressions. The short, dry ceremony at the register office in Warwick—the little party walking to the Lord Leycester Hotel, near the historic East Gale of the old town. Jan, looking flushed and pretty in a pink dress— Aunt Catherine, very correct in a grey tailored suit. There were Benedict’s aunt and uncle from London, greying and distinguished, both being reassuringly pleasant to her. And Benedict’s colleague from the new Birmingham office, red-haired and talkative and obviously enjoying being the life and soul of the party as he proposed the toasts and organised the cars. Looking back, it was like one of those dream sequences in a TV play, where things swim and merge into something else and nothing is real and solid.

  And yet, in a funny way, it had been real and solid. Perhaps that was because Benedict had organised everything so expertly. Only the three of them—Chloe and himself and Jan—knew the truth of the matter. To the rest of the world this was a real wedding, a man and a girl marrying for love, and it had been hurried along solely because of the illness of the Spanish grandmother. And in a funny way, too, Chloe had almost believed that herself, standing beside Benedict as the toasts were drunk and the good wishes showered on them. She had smiled and smiled and felt, for that brief time, like a deliriously happy young girl who has just married the man she loved.

  Which was the one true thing in this false situation, she thought wryly. She might as well admit it now, at the beginning, and then she could try to put it behind her and do the job she had agreed to do, coolly and unemotionally, as Benedict had stipulated. She opened her eyes the merest crack and saw his left hand resting on the papers he was studying, the fingers smooth and firm and dusky gold against the whiteness of the paper, the nails carefully trimmed. Partly hidden by the cream-coloured cuff of his shirt a square wrist-watch on a broad silver bracelet lay flat against the fine dark hairs of his forearm. Oh God, I love him so much, Chloe thought helplessly, as something primitive and deeply disturbing moved inside her. And she almost laughed aloud as she remembered that Roger had accused her of being frigid.

  A stewardess approached for orders and as their drinks were placed in front of them Benedict tucked his papers away, snapped the lock of his case and said, with satisfaction, ‘That’s enough of that for the present. Now I must brief you on what to expect when we get to Seville. There doesn’t seem to have been time to give you a proper picture yet.’

  Chloe sipped her drink, ice-cool and refreshing. ‘Your grandmother lives in Seville ? In the city itself?’

  He nodded. ‘In the old part. It’s a smallish house, but she loves it. She moved there from the estate outside Jerez when my grandfather died and there she has remained all these years, driving backwards and forwards to the estate and the bodega and keeping a very firm hand on the running of the vinery. My uncle lives at the Jerez villa, with his family. My Spanish uncle, that is. We call him that to distinguish him from Uncle John, whom you met at the wedding this morning. Uncle John married an English wife, my “Spanish” Uncle Richard married a Spanish wife, my Aunt Isabel, who calls him Ricardo.’

  ‘It sounds rather confusing,’ Chloe ventured.

  ‘Oh, you’ll soon get used to the set-up. My grandmother, by the way, likes to be called Dona Elisa, although I suppose she is actually plain Mrs Dane.’ He grinned and added, ‘Perish the thought! She can never forget that her ancestors were of noble Castilian birth, and I think the fact that she was brought to live in Andalusia when her father inherited the vineyards there, has always rankled slightly. She feels that her spiritual home is in Madrid—Seville is the next best thing.’

  ‘And yet she married an Englishman,’ mused Chloe.

  He looked suddenly grim. ‘That’s what falling in love does for you. She adored my grandfather and hated England. Of course, I don’t suppose England was exactly at its best when she first saw it, soon after the end of the 1914 war. The new freedoms of the twenties and the era of the Bright Young Things must have horrified her. I shudder to think how our modern social attitudes would seem to her.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Chloe, ‘Spain must surely be changing too?’

  ‘Oh, indeed it is, and changing fast, but Grandmother prefers to ignore that, tucked away in her house in old Seville.’ He looked suddenly sad as he added, ‘And it’s hardly likely to catch up with her now.’

  There was a little silence, then Chloe said, ‘Is she in hospital in Seville?’

  ‘Hospital? My goodness, no. It would take more than a couple of doctors to get Grandmother into hospital! Catalina gave me a graphic description of how the old lady sat bolt upright in bed and defied them to move her. She didn’t think much of all their modern treatments, and if she was going to die she prefer
red to do it with dignity in her own home. She’s being well cared for, of course. There are nurses, and the couple who look after the house for her and do the cooking, Pedro and Marta. And Catalina, of course.’

  ‘Catalina?’

  Chloe thought she sensed a momentary hesitation before he replied, ‘Didn’t I include her in the list? Catalina is a sort of distant niece of Aunt Isabel. She was left an orphan at fifteen and nobody knew what to do with her until Grandmother offered to give her a home. She’s seventeen now, and there was some talk of her going to university, but it fell through when Grandmother’s health began to fail and now she’s more or less taken over the running of the house.’ He hesitated again and then added wryly, ‘I think you should know, perhaps, that Grandmother had some idea that Catalina would make a suitable wife for me. Quite absurd—she’s only a child. I’m fifteen years older.’ He changed the subject abruptly. ‘By the way, Chloe, how old are you ?’

  ‘Twenty-two. Twenty-three in July.’

  He grinned. ‘Just the right gap between us, then. To make a success of marriage the man should be older than the girl, they say.’

  ‘Do they?’ She turned and looked out of the window again at the clouds drifting past. Then, impulsively, she turned back and met his smiling eyes with an angry frown. ‘I wish you wouldn’t make a joke about it,’ she said hotly.

  The smile disappeared, the dark eyebrows lifted. The arrogant Benedict took over. ‘I wasn’t aware that I was making a joke about it.’

  ‘Of course you were,’ she said crossly under her breath, with a cautious look across the aisle. ‘You were pretending that ours was a—a real marriage and it makes me feel—feel—’ She broke off helplessly and to her horror the tears suddenly stung her eyes.

  A strong hand covered her own and held it tightly. She squeezed her eyelids together and heard his voice, deep and quiet and very close to her ear. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, I’m an insensitive brute, rushing you into this. You carried it off magnificently this morning and it’s a shame to tease you. I just thought it might be easier for both of us if we kept it as light as possible. Agreed?’

  She sniffed and nodded speechlessly. His face was very close and she felt suddenly breathless.

  ‘Good,’ he whispered, ‘that’s a pact, then.’ He leaned nearer and for a dizzy moment she felt his breath on her cheek and then the touch of his mouth as he planted a kiss just behind her ear, lifting her hair away as he did so. ‘Sealed with a kiss, as all good pacts between man and woman should be,’ he said softly. And then, ‘Look, you can see the mountains. Not long now!’

  Chloe was engulfed in misery. She had allowed herself to get emotional—the very thing she hadn’t intended to do—and had made a fool of herself. He had comforted and encouraged her as if she were a child. From now on, she vowed almost savagely, she would play it his way, play it light. She took out a handkerchief, blew her nose, and said with tolerable composure, ‘What time are we due in Seville?’

  The taxi from the airport drew up in a small square on the south of the city and Benedict got out, paid the driver, and had quite a long conversation with him in Spanish, which Chloe didn’t attempt to follow as she was too busy looking around her at the plaza, with its orange trees and splashing fountain and its beautiful wrought-iron cross half hidden among the magnolias. It was over two years since she had been in Spain and she had never been south of the Sierra Morena mountains before. She hadn’t realised how different Andalusia was from the dry aridity of the central plateau.

  When the taxi had at last driven away Benedict said with a smile, ‘The Spaniard loves to talk, it’s considered very rude to be a man of few words here.’ He picked up Chloe’s case. ‘We have to walk now. From now on the roads are too narrow to allow cars, which is quite a relief sometimes.’ He himself had brought only his bulging briefcase as luggage. No doubt he kept a supply of clothes and everything else he would need here at his second home.

  ‘The driver was talking about the end of the feria,’ he said as they turned off the square into a narrow street, so narrow that it was almost a passageway. ‘It was in full swing when I was here last week and the whole place had gone quite crazy, as it does every year. Everybody converges on the city from miles around.’ He glanced at her as they walked along. ‘You haven’t been to the fair in Sevilla?’ When she shook her head he said, ‘I must bring you here another year; it’s something not to be missed. Out of this world.’ He grinned. ‘We’ll dress up and you shall ride side-saddle behind me along the roads between the casetas. Our firm has its own caseta, with free drinks for all intending customers. It’s marginally like one of the big exhibitions in England, only vastly more exciting, and with a wonderful collection of side-shows, swings and roundabouts, to say nothing of several of the greatest circuses in Europe. Yes, we must certainly come next year, you’ll enjoy it.’

  Chloe nodded politely and said nothing. Here he was again—speaking as if they had a real marriage, with years and years ahead of them to enjoy things together. She bit her lip in vexation.

  But her anger evaporated in sheer fascination as they walked further into the maze of narrow, winding streets, paved with bricks in herringbone patterns. The houses, washed in white or yellow, held street lamps fastened to them by elaborate brackets. Some of the houses had oriel windows projecting from them, some had balconies with iron railings from which hung long swathes of delicate greenery. Every now and then a small, exquisite patio, burdened with flowers, could be glimpsed behind wrought-iron gates. The scent of stocks and roses hung on the air, where the heat of the afternoon still lingered.

  At last Benedict stopped before a studded wooden door, pushed it open and led the way into a patio. ‘Here we are,’ he said, ‘welcome to the Casa Serrano.’

  ‘Oh, it’s beautiful!’ breathed Chloe, looking around her, enchanted. The patio was surrounded on three sides by a low house, washed white, with a balcony running all round it. The top of the balcony was lined with flowerpots from which dripped green flowering plants that formed a shimmering curtain to the balcony and whose tendrils almost covered the walls below. In one corner of the patio stood a small well with a whitewashed masonry rim and on this were more flowerpots, larger ones, overflowing with roses of all colours and sizes. A flight of stairs led up to the balcony and from the rails of this, too, hung masses of flowers. The whole made up a tiny fairyland of colour and perfume.

  ‘Beautiful!’ she said again. ‘I’d no idea…’ She turned to Benedict who was standing watching her, obviously pleased by her enjoyment. ‘I see now why Woodcotes appealed to you. But Woodcotes could never be like this, I’m afraid.’

  He picked up her case and said, ‘Perhaps not, but Woodcotes will have its own charm—when you’ve finished with it. Now come along into the house. We must see if we can find somebody.’

  After the riot of colour in the patio the inside of the house was dim and shadowy. Benedict stood inside the door and called softly, ‘Catalina?’ When there was no reply he turned to Chloe. ‘I’ll leave you in the salon for a few minutes while I go upstairs to find out how things are.’

  The room where he took her gave the impression that it might have existed unchanged for a hundred years. The furniture was of the solid, dark mahogany she had seen often before in Spanish houses. There were smaller ornaments—carved boxes and ornate glass vases—and the carpets were in exquisite, faded colours. On the walls hung portraits in massive gold frames. These, Chloe supposed, would be the Castilian ancestors; they certainly looked arrogant enough. There was one portrait—of a man younger than the rest, in full regalia and plastered with medals—that gave her quite a shock, for the dark, thickly lashed eyes that seemed to be weighing her up as they stared out at her were Benedict’s eyes. In this room you would never be able to forget his Spanish blood.

  Just behind her was a crimson velvet chair with a heavy fringe reaching to the floor, and she sank down into this rather quickly, feeling like Alice in Wonderland when she found herself growing s
maller and smaller. The events of the day, crowding in on one another, had almost blotted out the real reason for her being brought here, but now that the prospect of having to be inspected by Benedict’s grandmother was almost upon her she began to feel quite sickeningly nervous. The fact that the grandmother had wanted him to marry this Catalina didn’t help at all; in fact the old lady would probably dislike her on sight for that very reason.

  She tried to convince herself that none of this mattered. She had done what Benedict had asked of her and now he could produce her, like a rabbit out of a hat, to prove that he wasn’t going to bring shame upon the precious family name, and that was all there was to it so far as she was concerned. She tried to laugh away the sinking feeling inside, but it refused to budge, and she sat on the edge of the crimson velvet chair and dug her fingers into her damp palms and waited for Benedict to come back.

  After what seemed an eternity, but was probably about five minutes, he appeared in the doorway. ‘Will you come up now, please, Chloe. Grandmother would like to see you.’

  She stood up immediately. ‘How is she?’

  ‘A little better, I’m assured, but still very weak. We shall only be allowed a very short visit. Come.’

  His usual easy, half-mocking tone had gone, and he was grave, serious, formal. It was almost as if, in this house, he had reverted to the haughty pride of his Spanish forebears. With a fast-beating heart Chloe followed the tall straight back up a narrow staircase with a heavily-carved balustrade, and along a maze of passages to a door at the end of one of them. He knocked and held it open ceremoniously for Chloe to go in.

  It was, she thought, like a scene from some medieval play. A nursing Sister in nun’s habit sat beside an enormous bed, in the centre of which, propped against snowy lace-edged pillows, was a tiny, frail woman in a cotton gown, heavily embroidered round neck and wrists.