by Kerry Postle
Until they’d been forcibly torn apart.
Don Felipe’s gift of a ball to Luis had seen to that. The boy had kicked it around the house, breaking a porcelain ornament. As it had fallen to the floor it had shattered into a thousand pieces, one of which had lodged in Manuel’s left cheek. Luis had called for his mother, called for Cecilia. Both women had come running to find him cradling his injured friend in his arms.
There was to be no friendship after that. ‘Luis knows better than to kick a ball around the house. He knows the value of things, whereas that half-wit of a boy Manuel has no more respect for civilised living than a wild animal,’ Dona Sofίa had cried.
‘But Mama. It was me. It was my fault. All my fault,’ her son had told her bravely. ‘Can I see Manu? See if he’s all right?’
But it was no use. No matter how many times he had reasoned with his mother there was to be no shifting Dona Sofίa from her position. It was all Manuel’s fault. She blamed him for everything. And when Luis had run to the village, determined to see how his dear friend was getting on, Dona Sofίa had blamed Manuel some more. Dona Sofίa had always managed to keep her son away from Fuentes de Andalucía and its inhabitants until then.
That Cecilia wasn’t dismissed there and then was a miracle. A miracle brought about by Luis. He’d pleaded with his mother on Cecilia’s behalf and she had given in. But she was determined not to do so again.
Four months after the ball incident Luis was sent away to school. Dona Sofίa wouldn’t have him going to the village again.
The child was ten.
Poor Dona Sofίa. What had she done? She’d waited for a child for such a long time, had feared she might never be able to find one. And then she’d sent him away.
Of course, his mother missed him terribly when he’d gone. And she would pour out her heart to Cecilia whenever she could to shout about the fact. And Cecilia wouldn’t – couldn’t – condemn her for that. But Luis was homesick. And Dona Sofίa’s eyes were forever red and sore, her nose constantly streaming. ‘What should I do?’ the wealthy landowner’s wife asked her penniless housekeeper. An observer would have thought Dona Sofίa regarded Cecilia as a friend. Cecilia made the fatal mistake of thinking so too. As one mother to another. Cecilia dared to give Dona Sofίa her most truthful counsel.
Oh, the insolence.
Cecilia had very nearly lost her job that day. ‘How dare you Cecilia! We’re providing that boy with a first-class education. But then, I wouldn’t expect you to understand.’ The housekeeper had put her fingers to her hot cheek, her employer’s red hand print upon it. She had momentarily forgotten her place. She wouldn’t do so again. It was clear that to Dona Sofίa, Cecilia was no more sentient than a wooden sculpture that she’d had fashioned to her pleasing.
And so now, though happy to hear that Luis was coming home, Cecilia kept her excitement well and truly to herself.
Chapter 8
Maria looked at the page in front of her; apart from the title, Cumbres Borrascosas, the only marks on it were the rings left by the numerous cups of water she’d had and the ink that had splashed as she’d thrown down her pen. Cumbres Borrascosas. Even that wasn’t original. She’d taken it from the English classic, Wuthering Heights. She looked through her window, exasperated. As she watched the heat vibrate over the expanse of countryside beyond the village, inspiration hit her with its golden arrow. She picked up her pen. Crossed out her first attempt. Replaced it with Campos Sofocantes. There. Sweltering Fields. Much better. Now she could start to write her epic story of love between wonderful strangers from different lands, where the heroine was from Spain and the hero from England. She put pen to paper once more and wrote ‘based on a true story’. She was on fire.
But something had changed, after the picnic. Maria, for all her knowledge of the secrets of the human heart, was the only one who didn’t realise it. Blinded by her own importance she still believed that Richard loved her, and that she loved him, despite her body repeatedly telling her to the contrary – though it had been thankfully quieter of late. Perhaps due to the fact that he wasn’t coming round as frequently as he once had. Not that she minded. In some ways she preferred it. His absence as ever gave her the space to preserve his image, perpetuate the myth that she loved him.
In truth, before the picnic his constant attention and desire to please her had been vaguely irritating. He’d once brushed her fingers with his which she’d found deeply disturbing. And not in a good way. She hadn’t been able to look at him without feeling nauseous for days. She’d convinced herself then that this was because she was lovesick.
But one Tuesday morning, as she anticipated Richard’s visit, she questioned the heavy feeling in her heart. Tuesday was the day when her father would check on the English boy’s health as arranged, and this Tuesday Maria had started to feel anxious about his impending visit the moment her bare feet touched the wooden floor as she got out of bed. She busied herself in the kitchen, peeling the vegetables and getting everything ready for the evening meal. She’d not seen Richard since the Wednesday before; Seňor Suarez had taken him to Seville. She told herself she was looking forward to seeing him, hearing all about his trip, what he’d seen, what he’d eaten, who he’d met. She played at being in love again. But as she set about getting everything ready in the kitchen and as the hour of his arrival approached she could not stop herself from shaking with fear.
This wasn’t love.
She’d gone out to meet Paloma earlier in the day. They’d sat under their olive tree, played their game. But Paloma too had been preoccupied. The heavens were raining down upon her mother up on the estate, thanks to Don Felipe and Dona Sofίa, and something had happened to Lola which she didn’t want to talk about. The future, Maria could see, was not looking bright for Paloma. But her own had also lost its lustre. The thought that she might have to spend the rest of her life with Richard Johnson had turned her winged sandals to stone filled boots. The girls brooded, too ill at ease to let limbs interlace and hopes soar.
They said goodbye and went home, both deep in thought. Dark clouds of their own making were gathering on the horizon for both of them. Little did they realise that these would soon seem as refreshing as summer rain when the real storm broke out.
Chapter 9
On 17th July 1936 Spanish soldiers rose up against their own government in North Africa and mainland Spain. The pools of unrest that had been bubbling away under the surface of the country were starting to erupt. Ordinary working men and women gathered around radios in neighbours’ houses and listened for news. Seňor Suarez and Doctor Alvaro poured over newspapers and relayed their contents to the villagers. Father Anselmo prayed for peace. The mayor called an emergency meeting, then another one, followed by another one. Richard Johnson sent a telegram home. Uprisings were stopped in one part of Spain, re-started in another. These were the stutterings of war. The nation watched and waited, hearts in mouths.
By the 19th and 20th of July the rebellion had been defeated in Madrid and Barcelona. ‘Stopped two days after it started. That means that there will be no war,’ Doctor Alvaro assured his daughter, although the meetings that were being held in the village hall signified the opposite. The military uprising, no matter how many assurances Doctor Alvaro gave his daughter, had begun, and though held at bay in key cities, it was sweeping its bloody way up from the south.
For weeks, rumours seeped on ahead, wraith-like. They rustled through the olive groves at first, too remote and far-fetched to be believed. But as the soldiers got closer so the rumours threw up dust on stony roads, stamped their way down streets and round corners, eventually making their way up the stairs and into the study of Doctor Alvaro.
Soldiers, Spanish soldiers, were on their way. They were marching into Spanish towns and Spanish villages, shooting Spanish men, Spanish women and Spanish children.
The stories were too preposterous to be believed.
The doctor was in shock. Reason told him this shouldn’t be happen
ing – couldn’t be happening. Yet slowly, forced to dredge through the deepest, darkest recesses of his mind, he had to accept that what he was hearing was true. It was a madness, no doubt. He hoped his country would be cured of it soon.
Outside in their village nothing had changed. The sky was still blue. The sun still scorched the fields. The English boy’s skin was still red. Maria still talked to her friend Paloma under the olive tree, for the moment. When the world looked the same today as it did yesterday it was hard to imagine it otherwise. But civil war was marching its way inexorably towards them. Doctor Alvaro knew that it would leave nothing, and no one, unscathed.
Though not everyone feared its arrival.
‘At last! Thank heavens!’
The morning after the rebel forces rose up in Madrid the newspapers were full of it. This was what Don Felipe had been waiting for, ever since his return to the estate. The coup. At last the boil that to him was Republican Spain was about to be lanced. Left-leaning, liberal, lax, it had threatened to destroy everything he and his wife held dear, to rob them of their God-given power and wealth. Not any longer. An atmosphere of breezy excitement permeated every room of the house, even in the stultifying heat of the summer.
Don Felipe attended the emergency meetings in the village to calm proceedings and offer himself up as the voice of reason. The rebellion was coming. And it would save them. Spain would soon be great again. And his farm, no longer prey to the evils of land reform, nor held captive to the destructive demands of workers, would return to its former glory. In a world where everyone knew their place there would be work for everyone.
‘We really must decide on the guests for the dinner,’ Dona Sofίa said to her husband when he returned from the latest village meeting. Don Felipe entered the living room, waving his hand dismissively.
‘There’s a change in the air already,’ he started. He was in no mood for discussing social plans now. It might be guests his wife started with but then she would go on to the menu, the table, the dress … No. He’d felt a growing respect directed at him at the meeting today and he had no desire to dilute the pride this instilled within his breast with a discussion about chiffon or crêpe de chine, chicken or rabbit. He looked anywhere but at his wife so as to avoid the look of utter disappointment that he knew to be on her face.
‘We’re on the brink of greatness again. I feel it,’ he said, determined not to give in to his wife by answering her. ‘Order is returning, I can taste it. With each meeting at the town hall there are fewer dissenting voices. As for the ones that persist, they aren’t as excitable as they used to be.’
‘It’s done. Luis has enlisted in the rebel army,’ Dona Sofίa said with quiet acceptance. ‘Funny how our side is called rebel,’ she sighed. ‘I always think of those terrible communists in Russia with their frightful revolution whenever I hear the word. Can’t we be called something else? I find it such a disturbing, ugly word.’ And with that, having given up on getting her husband to engage in dinner party planning, she handed Luis’ letter over to him to read.
She’d been expecting news of her son’s entrance into the army for days, and although she told herself she was delighted about it, there was something in her that urged caution.
‘I’ve also had word from my father’s friend, Captain Garcia, that he will be in charge of the regiment – Luis’ regiment – when they come to Fuentes.’ Dona Sofίa held out another letter. She attempted to squeeze out a broad smile but could manage only subdued pride.
‘The … the … the … It will turn out well, won’t it, Felipe?’ she asked, unable to bring herself to say the word. War. She’d wanted it to come. Dreamt Luis would sign up for it. But now that he had … flames of truth licked around Dona Sofίa’s icy heart causing a stammer of doubt to creep into her voice.
‘Luis. A soldier. Why, that’s excellent news darling,’ her husband boomed with confidence. He allowed his eyes to meet hers for the first time since entering the room. ‘Of course everything with be all right,’ he thundered with blind belief. ‘Spain will be for the Spanish once more. The Russians have been pulling the government’s strings for far too long. The Republic will be crushed at last.’
‘Will it be so very dangerous?’ his wife asked, still perturbed. ‘The w-w-war?’
‘No,’ he roared. ‘But it will be glorious. Glorious, I tell you Sofίa. We will win the war and crush the rats, snakes and spineless creatures that have tried to ruin this great homeland of ours with their Marxist ways.’
Dona Sofίa felt a fingernail drag itself lightly down her back. War. Its meaning exploded within her mind. ‘Will it be dangerous?’ she asked again, suddenly afraid what war might mean for her son.
‘No, my love. It will be over before it’s begun,’ Don Felipe said. His brow furrowed, vaguely irritated by his wife’s momentary lack of enthusiasm: not least because it threatened to cast a shadow over his own optimism. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I suggest you draw up a list of the people you want to come to dinner when Captain Garcia is here.’
‘Oh, that reminds me,’ she said as an afterthought. ‘The Captain says that he wants you to draw up a list of troublemakers. Standard procedure. He wants to make sure that once secured, he leaves our village in good hands, disarms the bad. But, apparently, you know about this already.’
Chapter 10
Summer in southern Spain, always hot, usually calm, often sleepy, turned into a screaming hell as rebel soldiers scourged it with their fire and brimstone rain. The region was hit hard, leaving troughs of devastation so deep that rivers of agony trailed in their wake. This too was standard procedure. The earth and people were scorched to ensure that once regained by the rebels the country would never fall back into left-wing hands. For every rebel killed, ten from the opposing side would be destroyed. And that was a promise.
Yet before this hell was let loose upon Fuentes a strange calm descended upon the village and its inhabitants. Many found it unsettling, oppressive. While for the owners of Cortijo del Bosque it heralded a return to the proper order of things, their workers were quiet. Some called it cowed. Little matter the word used to describe it. The point was that this was how Don Felipe (and Dona Sofίa, in spite of her occasional pangs of conscience) liked it. Troops – ‘our troops’ – were bringing with them a new future that, not just Felipe and Sofίa, but landowners all over Spain believed would be the heroic restoration of a golden past. All talk of reading and rights would soon evaporate, becoming nothing more substantial than a quivering mirage in the heat of the day.
As for Dona Sofίa’s pain triggered by concerns for her son, that too would be rendered equally insubstantial once replaced by the excitement elicited by the planning and preparation required for their ‘very special’ dinner party.
‘I really do believe that no guest will have been to a dinner as truly splendid as the one we’re having, Felipe!’ Dona Sofίa beamed as she clapped her hands together and brought her index fingers to rest on her chin.
Her husband nodded as he read an article about Britain and France and their policy of non-intervention in the war. Now here was something to celebrate. ‘Splendid! Truly splendid!’ he mumbled in his wife’s direction.
Dona Sofίa paced the room with anticipation and beamed with delight, clapping her hands some more.
‘There will be twelve at table. You, me, and – of course – darling Luis, then there will be the Captain, and …’ She paused, unable to think of another soul, despite having drawn up a list the day before, and the day before that … ‘You’ve been to all the planning meetings in the village Felipe, who else deserves an invitation? You decide,’ she said to her husband.
Yet while the landowners were in a celebratory mood, back in his house in the heart of the village, Doctor Alvaro was entering a state of mourning. He’d not slept at all the night before.
Not long after the rebellion had broken out, a little-known rebel general had taken to broadcasting daily updates on the progress of the army and Doctor
Alvaro had taken to listening to them. Every evening he would sit next to his radio and guffaw at the colourful language, ludicrous claims and comic timing of this bombastic fool.
Queipo de Llano was the name of this trumped up little man, prone to lavish exaggeration, who had entertained the doctor so well. Until reports started reaching him from neighbouring towns and villages confirming that the General’s gruesome stories were true. It was true that working men were being killed for being part of a union, it was true that to have voted Republican was enough to make you a criminal, it was true that having an uncle who had a son who had a friend who had once spoken to a Republican was also a crime. The doctor shuddered at the loss of reason. The world, his world, hadn’t always been like this. He scratched his head. Was it his age that was making him see things this way? Had life always been this absurd? He didn’t believe so.
And last night he knew so when he tuned into the radio to listen to Queipo de Llano once more. Doctor Alvaro was not the one losing his moral sense. As he sat, crouched as if in pain, next to his transistor, he flinched. For one obsessed with purity the General surpassed himself in defining sin. The General’s little tales of appropriate punishments meted out to women struck the noble doctor repeatedly in the heart. Women seen talking to the ‘enemy’, women related to the ‘enemy’, Queipo de Llano shared his methods for converting them all. Shaved heads. Castor oil. And worse. Oh, how his soldiers would teach them a lesson they would never forget.
De Llano. Alvaro had thought him a caricature of a tyrant in an old melodrama, had found his radio broadcasts hugely entertaining, full of bombast and boasting. Until the doctor found out that all that the General threatened he meant.