A Forbidden Love

by Kerry Postle

  With his hand grasping hers, he dragged her round the streets, far, far away from the boots, and far, far away from a fate too savage to contemplate.

  Chapter 27

  Quiet streets, noisy rumours. Over the next few days there were fewer troops on the streets but the ones who were there patrolled their designated patches with menace. There were no more offers to carry women’s baskets, no more kicking balls around with the village boys. The soldiers who were on duty were quiet, brooding, as dangerous and unpredictable as bulls.

  Where the rest of them had gone was the source of much whispered speculation – perhaps they had gone on to pacify the next village, the Captain had even suggested that they’d gone on leave and were enjoying some much-needed rest and recuperation after the hardships of their campaign so far.

  But it wasn’t the soldiers that the good people of Fuentes were really interested in. It just felt less painful than discussing what was really gnawing away at them. A terror-drenched silence filled that particular void.

  Though the stultifying summer heat lay heavy on every person in Fuentes, many shuddered with the chill that ran through them as Death’s icy finger traced its broken, frozen nails over their bodies. Only the sounds of mourning, spewing and spluttering from behind closed shutters disturbed the eerie quiet, and added to its heavy load, giving the game away. Sometimes a wail could be heard, sometimes a shriek, always the sound of anguish.

  The war had begun and not just for Doctor Alvaro. A knife had been plunged into the very heart of Fuentes. No matter what the town’s politicians had believed, the villagers were soon to learn that there was no such thing as a peaceful invasion. That they had opened their gates and welcomed their attackers in, would soon add an excruciating turn of the knife. Their spirit of conciliation would seem pathetic, love of country of no value to these invaders whose land, though it bore the same name, shared no other of its attributes.

  Even the list makers would feel the pain.

  The peaceful invasion had come to an end.

  Women and girls as young as fourteen had gone missing that day. Paloma, she was only fourteen.

  And while the inhabitants of Fuentes de Andalucía prayed for their safe return, the village was subjected to further indignities while it waited. Those on the lists handed in to the Captain on the evening of the landowners’ dinner party were rounded up immediately. Local councillors and officials were put on trial. Executed. Some with apparent cause. Most without. Workers returning from the fields were taken in and taunted.

  Fear spread throughout every home, fuelling horrific rumours and ghastly stories.

  Yet the worst story of all was one that was so awful that no one could bear to pass it round at all. It was the one that everyone sensed. And so, in those holding days, between the day a truckload of soldiers left the village and the day that they returned, if any woman was harassed in the streets the fact that she had lived to tell the tale marked her out as one of the lucky ones. To make it home, shut the door and slide down to the floor, back pushed against it, that was something to be thankful for.

  The unlucky ones were those who had been taken the day that Maria went out for tomatoes and bread. And everyone knew it. They just didn’t know how unlucky.

  The rumour that some soldiers had gone off on leave to a large country estate was generally accepted to be true and passed on loudly. El Aguaucho, outside the town of La Campana, north of Fuentes de Andalucía, was identified as the estate in question. It had land, a well and plenty of space to accommodate a tired group of soldiers looking for some rest.

  Passed on more reluctantly was the rumour of what happened to the missing women. This seeped round the back streets of Fuentes like malodorous gas. Some dared not inhale the noxious serpentine tale and those who did were left gasping for clean air. A truckful of women was what was required, on the Captain’s orders, that day to boost the men after a punishing campaign to take the south, so the rumour unfurled. And when a truckful of women had been rounded up, eyewitnesses dared to whisper, they were herded together like livestock, all ready to be taken to slaughter. A truckful of women from the town – taken to experience some real men.

  Disbelieving eyes observed trucks of soldiers drive away, their livestock for the weekend in tow. Some villagers watched from the shadows as scales of relief and guilt seesawed with confusion within their minds. Pleased it wasn’t them, their mothers, their daughters, their sisters, who they could see being roughly thrown into the back of a truck by brutish hands. So sorry to see that it was the mothers, daughters, sisters of friends who, taken in their stead, had saved their own loved ones from this plight. Those poor women, they thought. Their lives will never be the same again.

  Chapter 28

  The moment Maria had closed the door of her house, the day Luis dragged her home, she leant with her back against its dark solid wood and slid to the floor. She crawled on all fours, pulling herself up the stairs, breaking down as she went. When she got to her room she lay herself prostrate on the floor, unable to find the strength to get herself onto the bed.

  She lay there in a state of semi-consciousness, her mind falling between worlds. Luis had risked his own life to save hers. She wished he’d saved Paloma’s instead. She flopped her head and knees to the side like a rag doll who’d had her stuffing heart ripped out. Nightmarish images came, unbidden, to her mind and she shook. She shook with the certain knowledge that Luis de los Rios had saved her from something dreadful, and with the no less certain knowledge – though she would have wished it otherwise – that it was she herself who had put her friend in harm’s way. Oh, Paloma. She closed her eyes but the images played on the inside of her eyelids and wouldn’t go away. She screamed inside.

  ‘Maria?’ Her father had gone round as many safe houses as he could possibly get to without getting caught but he hadn’t found her. He’d heard the rumours and prayed to God for the second time that day. He gave a passing thought to the boy in the church. If Anselmo could get him to the Espinoza boys he would be better off than anyone still in the village. ‘Maria?’ he cried, his voice strained and vibrating with fear. But his daughter didn’t answer. She had to be there, he told himself. He ground his teeth, tensed his face, clenched his fist. He punched the wall. It did not yield but the skin on the doctor’s knuckles was split and bloody. The sound of his frustration rumbled up the stairs and seeped into his daughter’s head. She moaned. Her father sensed her presence. He looked in all the rooms, ran up the stairs. ‘Maria!’

  He rushed to revive her, bathed her burning skin.

  ‘Paloma. It’s Paloma,’ she said, delirious. That night Doctor Alvaro slept on the floor next to Maria. He cradled her in his arms.

  When she awoke he tried to give his daughter something to calm her. Maria refused. She wanted nothing to make the suffering less. She would take nothing to make her forget.

  Maria would fight. Stay strong. Face the truth. Accept responsibility. No matter what. No matter how seductive the promise of oblivion seemed in the shape of small pills at the bottom of an innocuous looking glass bottle.

  Maria wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep.

  The following days Maria stood sentry at the window, looking out for Paloma. For clues. Now, absolutely forbidden to leave the house by her father, all she could do was watch and wait at the upstairs window, wishing, hoping, praying for Paloma to appear in the street below. Fourteen years of age. Two years younger than herself. The sweetest, funniest, happiest friend. It crossed Maria’s mind that she should try writing down what had been happening in the village these past days and weeks, but the memories of what she’d seen made her anxious.

  She prayed that her friend had been dragged off the truck by vigilante villagers and was hiding in a safe house worrying about Maria as Maria was worrying about her now. But she knew better than to believe it. She’d seen Paloma pushed onto the back of a truck with her own eyes, witnessed the Captain strike her. If any brave soul had rescued her friend, word of it
would be all around Fuentes by now. Instead everyone was whispering about the truckloads of soldiers that had driven away, whooping, jeering and taunting their female prey trapped in the vehicle ahead of them.

  And that wasn’t all they were saying. Some said the women were taken to cook and dance for the men. Others that they had been abducted to provide distraction of an altogether more sexual kind.

  But it didn’t really matter why they’d been taken, the most important thing was that they’d be brought back. And nobody thought for a moment that they wouldn’t be.

  Maria thought of Luis. He’d saved Maria, tried to save Paloma. If one good soldier existed, then surely others might exist. Hope glowed in the embers of her heart.

  *

  ‘Tell me what you know, Papa. What are people saying?’ Maria asked. Paloma had been missing for two days. Doctor Alvaro looked at his daughter. Deep, dark shadows encircled eyes full of desperation. She’d not been able to keep food down, not been able to sleep at night. But he knew that she would feel better soon, that her appetite would return and that sleep would win out in the end.

  Unlike the wretched relations of the missing girls. Doctor Alvaro had been called upon to care for them, although the rumours had got there first. ‘They’ll cook and dance then get brought back. We’ll see them by the end of the week. I can feel it,’ each father, husband, mother, brother and sister had insisted, clutching on to his arm so tightly that their nails very nearly broke the skin. But each one feared the worst. The doctor had been able to see it in their eyes, hear it in their broken voices. Sedation had been the best that he’d been able to do for them.

  He put his hand out to touch Maria’s hair to make sure she was really there.

  ‘It will be over soon,’ he told her, unable to meet his daughter’s searching eyes. ‘They’ll come back soon,’ he told her as he sought solace in the floor. But just as his patients hadn’t been able to fool him with their pretence at optimism, he couldn’t deceive his daughter with his well-intentioned lies.

  The throbbing heat still draped itself over the village. The air was still heavy with foreboding. Soldiers patrolled the streets with menace. Villagers found breaking the curfew were punished in the village square; others with republican connections were picked up in the early hours of the morning and taken no one knew where. Gunfire punctuated every hour of the day and night. Women kept themselves inside.

  Villagers hid behind thick walls, wailing, waiting.

  Doctor Alvaro went to his study. Planning. Preparing escape routes for those in line for a knock on the door in the middle of the night. He picked up the photo on his desk. It was of his wife, young, smiling, hopeful. He put it down. Maria. He couldn’t protect her if the soldiers came for him. It was time to set his own escape plan in motion. Before it was too late.

  Chapter 29

  Knock, knock, knock. Doctor Alvaro jumped out of bed. His heart leapt with fear. It was the middle of the night. This was it. Maria appeared at his door, a metal rod in her hand. The sight of his fearless child amused him. Knock, knock, knock. But as he heard the knocking at the door for a second time all amusement disappeared. ‘Go back to your room. And stay there.’

  He went downstairs, his mind racing. The soldiers would have come for him, not his daughter, he reasoned. He thought of Anselmo. He would know what to do. Come for Maria.

  He pulled the heavy wooden door open.

  ‘Doctor,’ a frightened voice gasped. A young man with messy hair and dirty face pushed past Alvaro, falling into the hallway. Alvaro arched his head and examined the darkness outside before quickly shutting the door, concern and relief etched on his forehead. ‘Richard?’

  The young man clattered around the dark house, Alvaro pushing him towards his study. ‘Sit’, he snapped. In the half light he could make out that the boy was wearing, underneath layers of grime, some sort of blue uniform, his dirty face streaked with dried tears.

  ‘I came back to see if she was all right. Then she had so many things to tell me … I couldn’t leave her … and now I can’t get away. I need your help. Please.’ Richard Johnson spilled his confused story out to Doctor Alvaro. Bit by bit, with the help of a why, who and what, the tired man slowly unpacked the chaotic words of this boy who’d been fool enough to get back into Fuentes without thinking of a safe way to get out.

  He’d got word of what had happened in Fuentes as he was making his way back to England. And his mind was made up to return. Worthy sentiment. Stupid action.

  ‘I’ve seen Father Anselmo,’ Richard said. ‘He will take care of the family. Once they’ve got Paloma back.’ An uncomfortable silence followed the mention of her name. She was still missing and the minds of both men struggled to suppress thoughts of what might be happening to her.

  Alvaro threw open the study door.

  There, standing in the darkness of the doorframe was Maria, spectral white in her nightdress, the metal rod held above her head, ready to strike. And there, standing in front of her, was her father and a dishevelled man with pale, red-rimmed eyes and fair lashes.

  ‘Richard.’

  Her mouth fell open. She too had thought he’d gone back to England weeks ago. She didn’t understand. She looked at her father for answers, but he shrugged his shoulders. It wasn’t for him to give them to her.

  She looked at Richard. He looked shabby, distracted, older somehow. And when he looked at her, she saw that he was searching for answers of his own. He knew, about Paloma. Guilt and shame dragged her eyes to the floor like lead weights.

  Did he blame her?

  Her father held out one hand to her and another to Richard and pulled them both in to his body. If only protecting them could be that easy. Maria dared to look at Richard Johnson from the safety of her father’s chest. It seemed absurd that Richard should be here now. She noticed that he was trembling, his mind elsewhere. She reached out and placed a hand on his arm to calm him. It felt good to be able help someone.

  ‘Come,’ her father said to both of them. ‘We have much to do.’

  *

  Doctor Alvaro slipped away before daybreak but not before cleaning the lost boy up and putting fresh clothes out for him. ‘Sleep boy,’ he said as he left. ‘You need rest.’ But though he slept no rest came. Visions of what had happened in the village haunted him, fear of what might happen to the girl he loved scorched him, and guilt that he might go back to England and never return shook him. By the time he woke up he felt exhausted.

  ‘I know what they say has happened to Paloma,’ Maria whispered as he entered the sitting room and went to sit next to her on the sofa. She too had had a disturbed night, and not only as a result of Richard’s appearance in the middle of the night. Ugly words of violation had floated to the surface of her mind as she’d thrashed unhappily around in her bed after she’d returned to it. And they were continuing to do so here.

  Yet ugly words of judgement now accompanied them. Her innocent friend had always assumed she’d get married. What if Fuentes, with its narrow customs and traditions, would no longer consider her fit for this? Damaged goods. Used. That’s what she’d be.

  Maria snorted. As if any of that mattered.

  But the vile thoughts still came. She couldn’t stop them.

  She put out her hand and grabbed Richard’s. It was comforting that he was here even if Maria couldn’t fully comprehend why. He let her take it and he clasped his other hand over hers. That one movement made her feel protected, anchored, and she smiled up at Richard with gratitude.

  The doctor returned to find Richard and Maria, asleep on the sofa, hands grasped tight like brother and sister. He went to wake them but changed his mind, instead hiding himself away in the study. There was much to do.

  It was a dog barking in the street that eventually woke them. They looked at one another, bleary-eyed. The sadness was still there but a calmness had descended on them both. Neither one spoke. Words somehow seemed too trivial to be able to express how they were feeling at that moment in time.
And, mysteriously, words weren’t necessary, because both Maria and Richard knew – what each of them thought of Paloma, what each of them felt for the other, even that Richard had a secret love. The feelings were deep, painful, beautiful and no words were sufficient to express all of that.

  Maria patted Richard on the back of his hand in thanks before moving to the window and beginning her silent vigil for her friend with the long dark hair, sparkly eyes and mischievous smile. She longed for her friend to return while bracing herself for the worst she could imagine.

  Richard pulled up a chair to keep her company. He noticed her shiver, though the heat was now great. He responded with the gentlest of kisses on her cheek which caused ripples of warmth to lap the edges of the Paloma-shaped hole his friend had within so that, drop by drop, human kindness seeped in and gave her hope.

  ‘Richard?’ At the sound of Maria’s father’s voice, the boy stood up and made his way to the study, taking the warmth of human kindness with him. It seeped out of her little by little, allowing the cold to inhabit her Paloma-shaped hole once more and leaving Maria exposed to her own solitary thoughts. Still at the window. Still looking down into the street, looking for traces of her dear sweet friend. She would wait. For Paloma. For her lovely, lively friend, Paloma, to dance about in the street below and wave up at her, a broad smile of recognition on her face. And to retake her rightful place in Maria’s heart.

  Chapter 30

  The hours passed and the doctor and the English boy did not appear from the study and Maria did not move from the window. A buzz of a fly filled the darkened room, loud and disgusting, asking to be squashed. It would be easy to swat it with a book, crush it with a shoe. It sounded slow, heavy, like everything else in this August heat. Maria’s breath was quick and shallow. She willed Paloma back home, drawing up a pact with God, Jesus, Mary, and every saint she could remember, that she would be a good person for the rest of her days, be a good daughter, help the poor, go to confession … if she concentrated hard enough Paloma would appear. And now, to have the spinning of this spell broken by the monotonous intrusion of a fly, that living harbinger of death and decay, well, she was going to have to crush it.