The Paper Marriage

by Flora Kidd

  “Isn’t it possible for the wealth to be shared? Can’t housing be improved?” asked Brooke.

  “In time. It is being improved gradually. You must realise, senora that the discovery of great mineral resources has rocketed Venezuela rather violently into the technological century for which it was not prepared either socially or politically. We have had to tear down old buildings to make streets wide enough for new roads for automobiles. We have had to demolish ancient cultures to accommodate new social and economic patterns. While destroying we have left ugly scars, but out of the mess and the rubble we are building noble creations,” said the young man.

  He sounded very intense and serious. While he had been speaking they had swept along the wide road into the outskirts of the city, which lay, a cluster of tall concrete towers, in its green valley surrounded by beautiful regularly shaped mountains which were now losing their colour as the sunlight faded. Lights glittered here and there from the buildings, like diamonds scattered carelessly amongst the concrete.

  “And over there you can just see one of those noble creations he was talking about,” said Dolores, a scoffing note in her light voice. “The new library building - another wonderful piece of architecture, but unfortunately there is no road going there and until one is built no one can reach it. To our right are the botanical gardens and straight ahead you can see the twin towers of the Centre Simon Bolivar, just lighting up.”

  “Now you sound like a tourist guide,” scoffed Juan in his turn.

  “It’s a very impressive city. What happens at the Centre?” asked Brooke.

  “Oh, it’s a complex of offices, shops and restaurants, and some government departments are housed there,” said Dolores.

  “Would I find the Department of Development there?” asked Brooke.

  “Yes, you would,” said Juan. “Why do you wish to know?” “I received a letter from that department expressing regret at the disappearance of my father, Tony Marston. He was on loan to the government and was doing a series of surveys to discover where iron

  ore deposits might lie....”

  “Juan!” exclaimed Dolores, and broke into a stream of Spanish as the young man jammed on the brakes of the car to avoid hitting the one in front which had stopped at the traffic lights. Startled by the violent movement, not yet used to riding in a car, Megan began to cry softly and had to be comforted by Brooke.

  “I am sorry,” apologised Juan in his stilted English. “I was surprised to learn that the wife of Senor Meredith is also the daughter of Senor Marston. It is a strange coincidence.”

  From then on he was silent as he concentrated on driving carefully. They passed along busy shopping streets thronged with home-going traffic. After a while they left the centre of the city and drove along quiet residential streets. Apartment blocks gave way to private houses, some built in traditional Spanish colonial style, with sloping pantile roofs and shutters on either side of their windows, some extremely modern in design with strange curves and angles. The houses grew larger and could no longer be seen as the grounds around them became more extensive. Overhanging trees cast shadows over the roadway and leafy vines festooned white walls or wrought iron railings.

  The car turned right. Light had gone suddenly from the sky and the deep soft darkness was pierced by the shafts of headlights which illumined briefly intricately wrought-iron gates wide open between two white stone pillars. Gravel crunched under tyres as the car swept slowly along a curving driveway and came to a stop before the long low shape of a house. Light glowed from windows set under a deep verandah roof which ran the full length of the front of the building.

  “Is this my daddy’s house?” asked Megan, rousing herself from the half-sleep into which she had fallen while the car had been winding through the narrow residential streets.

  “No, senorita,” replied Dolores. “It is the house of your grandfather and grandmother, but your daddy lives here just now. Don’t you remember it?”

  “No. I can’t remember anything,” said Megan in her clear childish tones. “I was knocked on the head in an accident. I thought Nain and Taid were my grandmother and grandfather. They live in Cheshire. I could have stayed with them for ever and ever. Nain said I could, but Daddy wanted me to be with him.”

  “This grandmother and grandfather are your daddy’s mother and father,” explained Brooke patiently. “Nain and Taid are your mother’s parents. Perhaps Dolores will tell you the Spanish names for grandmother and grandfather and then you’ll know both Welsh and Spanish names.”

  “El abuelo, grandfather. La abuela, grandmother,” said Dolores. “But they are not at home at present. They are away on a holiday. And now Juan will lift you out and carry you into the house.”

  The front door had opened and a tall, angular woman dressed in black stood waiting. As Juan approached with Megan in his arms she took the girl from him, hugging the child to her and lamenting over her in Spanish. To Brooke’s surprise the little girl did not seem to mind such treatment, but lay quietly against the woman’s bosom

  looking up at the dark lined face.

  “You will not mind if I tell my cousin Miguel about your arrival here?” Juan was saying quietly to Brooke . She glanced in surprise at his narrow face illumined by the light streaming forth from the open door.

  “He signed the letter I received,” she exclaimed, and he inclined his head in agreement. “No, I don’t mind. I would like to meet him. Now I’m here I’d like to find out more about my father’s disappearance. It was difficult from England.”

  “I understand. We would all like to know more about it,” he murmured, and held out his hand. “I shall leave you now. It has been a pleasure meeting you, senora!”

  “We’ll meet again, I hope,” she replied. “You have been very kind.”

  “De nada senora. You are welcome,” he replied with his flashing smile, and turned to Dolores to speak to her in Spanish, his voice softening affectionately.

  He went off in the car and Brooke and Dolores entered the house. In the wide, low-ceilinged hallway the tall woman was sitting on a straight-backed ornately carved chair and was nursing Megan on her lap.

  “This is Pilar, the housekeeper,” said Dolores to Brooke. “She doesn’t speak English. How is your Spanish?”

  “Practically non-existent,” answered Brooke. “I hope to learn it.”

  “Then greet her like this. Say Buenas tardes, senora. That means good afternoon.”

  Brooke smiled at the woman and repeated the Spanish words. They sounded strange to her ears and Megan clapped her hands and giggled. Pilar grinned widely, her dark seamed face lighting up with pleasure.

  “Good day, senora. How are you?” she said in very slow, stilted English, and again Megan laughed.

  “Say Bien, gracias, y usted” instructed Dolores helpfully, and once again Brooke repeated the Spanish words.

  “I am well, thank you. You are welcome to Casa Estaban, senora,” replied the woman.

  “Gracias,” said Brooke, and smiled again. To her astonishment the woman broke into a stream of swift, passionate Spanish.

  “She is saying that you are beautiful, a golden goddess from across the sea with hair that glows like a torch in a dark room,” translated Dolores with a chuckle. “You will find that people like Pilar, who has a large dose of Indian blood in her veins, are fascinated by people like yourself who have fair skins and reddish hair.”

  “I hope she doesn’t expect me to be perfect like a goddess,” sighed Brooke. “How am I going to talk to her?”

  “You will learn. Spanish is an easy language, and there are always other ways of communicating. Is there anything you would like me to tell her now?”

  “I would like to know if you can stay for a meal with us first. And then I’d like her to show me round the house while you are here so that you can translate for me. Will you do that?” asked Brooke.

  “Of course I will. Senor Meredith told me that I must help you in any way I can,” said Dolores, and then tu
rned to talk to the housekeeper.

  They took Megan to the big kitchen where another woman was preparing a meal. Pilar explained to the cook that Megan was to stay there to have a glass of milk and to look at some picture books she had provided, and then she took Brooke and Dolores on a tour of the house.

  Delighted by the old colonial-style house with its thick stone walls, its polished stone floors scattered with bright rugs, its wrought-iron grilles, its arched openings leading from one room to another, its square tower from which extensive views of the glittering city could be seen, Brooke came slowly to the realization that to keep a house like that Owen’s father was much more wealthy than she had imagined.

  “It’s a beautiful house,” she murmured, as they returned from the upper floors of the tower to the wide entrance hall where crimson-shaded lamps dispersed the shadows. Dolores translated the remark for Pilar, who immediately went off into another stream of Spanish.

  “She takes that as a personal compliment because she has had the keeping of this house for many years. It belongs to the Estaban family and Ivor Meredith had it restored and renovated for his second wife, Inez Estaban.”

  Owen had not told her that the mother to whom he had referred and who often criticized his lack of manners was his stepmother, thought Brooke, but then he had told her so little.

  “Pilar says that the father of Inez Estaban was a poet and a great patriot. He cared nothing for wealth and he could not keep the house. He was greatly shocked when his only daughter married an immigrant, a man who was no more than a miner,” continued Dolores.

  “She doesn’t seem to have done too badly out of the marriage,” remarked Brooke dryly.

  “I agree. Neither did the rest of the Estaban family. They are all shareholders in the company which Ivor Meredith started here over thirty years ago. But you see some of the old families of Spanish descent are very proud of their lineage, which goes right back to the conquistadors. Juan's family is the same.”

  “But your family is not like that?” guessed Brooke shrewdly, and Dolores laughed gaily and shook her head.

  “No. Like most Venezuelans I am a mixture. My father is a typical Venezuelan of mixed Spanish and Indian origins. My mother on the other hand is half German stock. Did you know that there is a German colony near the village of El Junquito outside Caracas and that its inhabitants are descendants of the first German settlers who came here one hundred and twenty years ago? They keep their own language and their own customs.”

  “No, I didn’t know. Does your mother come from that village?” “No. Her father came here with his parents just before the second world war. Like Ivor Meredith, he was an immigrant, a skilled worker who came to try his luck in a new country. When he grew up he married a Venezuelan girl. You’ll find that many Venezuelans are descended from Europeans and Americans who have come to work here in the oil fields and other industries.”

  The meal was served in the long dining room which was furnished with a splendid carved table of dark wood and huge heavy chairs upholstered in crimson leather, trimmed with brass studs, in the Spanish style. Over the table hung an antique wrought-iron chandelier in which real candles flickered. Their golden light created a warm and magical atmosphere in what might have otherwise have been an austere room.

  The main dish was simple yet tasty. It consisted of rice, meat and

  beans flavoured with the edible roots of yucca and plantano.

  “It is called plata criollo venezolana,” explained Dolores. “Criollo is the name given to those of Spanish descent who were born here after the Spanish conquest. They owned land and they developed the big haciendas where they grew coffee and cacao for export. For many years they ruled the country. It is to that class of people to which the Estaban family belongs, as well as our great leaders and revolutionaries of the past like Miranda and Bolivar,” explained Dolores.

  The main dish of the meal was followed by fresh fruit - guavas, mangoes and figs. Piping hot coffee made from locally-grown coffee beans followed the fruit. Then Pilar appeared and said that it was time for the Muchacha Megan and the Senora Brooke to go to bed.

  “She says that you must go to bed, otherwise you will not be beautiful for Senor Owen when he returns home,” translated Dolores with a laugh. “And I agree with her. You must both be very tired. I shall come and see you again to-morrow.”

  Megan went to bed in the room reserved for her in the ground floor wing of the house which had been allotted to Owen and his family. It had three bedrooms, a bathroom and a small sitting room and had access to the central courtyard or patio of the house, a delightful place planted with exotic flowering shrubs and trees, where a cool fountain trickled and tinkled into an oblong pool in which tiny coloured fish swam.

  After making sure that the child was comfortable Brooke went to the room which Pilar had told her was hers. It was big and furnished entirely in white and pink. A white canopy curved over the headboard of the wide double bed and a thick white counterpane, embroidered with pink roses, covered the bed. Tufted white carpet covered the floor from wall to wall and heavy rose-coloured draperies hung at the long window which opened on to the patio. The furniture was painted white and was decorated with gold-leaf paintwork. Truly a bridal room, thought Brooke ruefully, and wondered whether Glynis had shared it with Owen.

  A white door in one of the walls opened to reveal the bathroom which was also luxuriously appointed with a deep wide bath into which one would have to step down because it was below floor level and which was about the width of three normal-sized baths.

  Another door on the opposite side of the bathroom led into another bedroom, smaller than the one she had been allotted and decorated in darker colours, but furnished with the same sumptuousness as the rest of the house. It was obviously in use, and with a feeling of relief Brooke discovered, behind the sliding doors of the clothes cupboard, the grey suit which Owen had worn the last time she had seen him as he had waved good-bye to her from the window of the train which had taken him to London.

  Closing all the doors, she returned to her own room and began to prepare for bed. Someone had unpacked her cases for her and her nightdress was laid out on the bed. Her hairbrushes and her cosmetic case had been placed on the glass top of the dressing table. They looked woefully shabby in their new setting.

  The house, the rooms, the housekeeper, the glimpses she had had of dark-faced, black-haired maids, the furnishings, all the show of wealth alarmed her. When Owen had said that his father had made a packet she had not realized that Ivor Meredith could possibly be as wealthy as the house and its contents revealed. She had not known either that the Merediths were connected with an important Venezuelan family.

  But then Owen had told her so little about himself and his relatives. All that she knew about him She had learned from other people since she had married him.

  For instance, she had learned something from Glynis’s parents, who had sought her out at the hospital in order to meet the woman who was going to care for Megan, their only grandchild. She had felt sorry for them and had understood their reluctance to part from their daughter’s only child. They had appeared so pathetic and confused, and she could easily imagine Owen overriding their wishes in his rough abrupt way.

  “We can’t help worrying,” Mrs. Lloyd had said in her soft Welsh voice. “We haven’t any legal rights over the child and can’t afford to fight Owen in court for the custody of her, but it was Glynis’s wish that she should stay here with us. We love the child. It’s only natural that we should.”

  But after several days of hearing this complaint Brooke began to feel that she was on Owen’s side after all and when Mrs. Lloyd had said for the umpteenth time,

  “Megan is all we have left of Glynis,” she had retorted gently but firmly,

  “Have you never considered that she’s all that Owen has left of Glynis too? And what is just as important, all that he has of himself?” Mrs. Lloyd had given her a strange glance and had ceased to complain, but she had sa
id at parting,

  “Owen is a hard man. Likes his own way, he does. You’ll find out. He rushed Glynis into marriage, wouldn’t wait for a proper wedding, just as he’s rushed you.”

  This sketch of Owen, self-willed and impetuous, rushing women into marriage, had been filled out a little by Daisy Meredith, who was the mother of Dennis Meredith at whose engagement party Brooke had met Owen. A motherly Lancashire woman, Daisy had invited Brooke out to the Merediths’ comfortable house on the Wirral, overlooking the estuary of the River Dee, not far from the village where Glynis’s parents lived.

  “Another rush job, like the last one,” she had commented with a chuckle as she had sized up Brooke over the afternoon tea cups. “Always in a hurry, the Meredith men. And all because of a child. Megan is the reason Owen and Glynis married, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know,” Brooke had replied rather coolly, and had received a shrewd glance from bright brown eyes over the top of glinting spectacles.

  “You think it’s none of my business, I daresay,” went on Daisy Meredith with another fat chuckle. “But it’s just like Owen not to tell you anything. He didn’t tell us about you either, for all he was over to see us. I heard about you from Gwen, so here I am welcoming you to the family on behalf of the Caracas Merediths. They’ll like you, and you look as if you’ll be a good mother to the child. It’ll be a different kettle of fish taking Glynis’s place where Owen is concerned, though. She was a beauty and he was head over heels in love with her. Pity she couldn’t stand the climate out there. Well, I hope you’ll be happy, love. You’ve got a lot of courage. It’s not something I’d like to do - marry a stranger to take care of another woman’s child and go off to live in a foreign country.” Brooke sighed as she sat down in front of the dressing table mirror to cream the make-up off her face and brush her hair. Well, she had done it. She had married a stranger to look after another woman’s child and she had brought that child to this country as the stranger had asked her to do. She didn’t feel very courageous about it. In fact she felt tired and curiously depressed. She would have felt better if Owen had been there to greet her. But then she mustn’t ever expect too much from him. He had not married her because he loved her. He had, after all, been head over heels in love with Glynis who had been beautiful and whose place in his life would be difficult to take, even if she had wanted to take it.