A Forbidden Love

by Kerry Postle

  As I write this letter I realise I know you so well, yet know so little about your life, a deficiency I plan to address in the lifetime that will be ours.

  There. My plan unravels once more. War, an ugly business, yet its hideousness emboldens me to reach out for beauty and not let it slip away.

  Maria stopped reading the letter for a moment and clutched it to her heart. She let her head fall back though she was a fool to think that would stop the tears. The moment she looked at the letter again down they splashed. Words already distorted by tears became more distorted still. She went over to find a handkerchief in her dressing table drawer to catch them as they fell. She read on.

  To leave you is to leave the greater part of myself behind but I hope that I too take the greater part of you with me.

  The poor girl howled.

  All my love,

  Luis

  She turned the letter over. There, hastily scrawled, was the part she’d seen many times.

  Meeting place: the Parque de Malaga (by the monument to Antonio Muñoz Degrain)

  Time: 10–11am

  Day: Friday

  I’ll wait for you.

  Chapter 52

  Manu had attempted to contact Maria eighteen times after that fateful trip to the Casa de Campo. The first ten times it was either her father or her grandfather who fended him off, aware, without caring, that this might bump their own names up on a list. They could equally have had Manu’s name added to some other list if they’d wanted, such was the dog eat dog atmosphere that had set in, but they resisted all offers. Manu was only a boy after all, albeit a potentially dangerous one. And he was trapped, along with everyone else in the city. The following seventeen times he called, Maria had the strength to turn him away herself.

  But then two things happened to make her think again.

  The first was bread raining from the sky. It was the last months of the war, though Maria didn’t know it at the time, and planes were dropping loaves over the capital. Each was wrapped in the Spanish flag with the words ‘In national Spain, united, great, and free, there is no home without a hearth or a family without bread,’ written on it. People were hungry in Madrid. Worse than that, they were starving. Rumours that the bread was poisoned went round. But it mattered little. They were so hungry they ate it anyway. It was clear the people had had enough. It made Maria realise that so had she.

  The second thing that caused her to think again was the letter she received from Manu’s sister, Lola. It piqued her conscience, stirred her memory, and made her realise that, no matter what, Maria was bound to Manu. He’d dragged on the ties of loyalty between the two of them but Lola’s letter reminded Maria that she knew his family as well as she knew her own. Paloma had been his sister, Cecilia his mother, and, after her own father, she knew them more than anyone else in the world.

  And so, on the eighteenth time of his calling, Maria agreed to see him. She owed it to his family. And she’d had enough of the war. Besides, there was something she needed to ask him.

  It was spring 1938 and even though the sky looked like it had been painted by El Greco, heavy with black, white and grey with only the smallest of blue patches peeping through, Maria agreed to walk around the Retiro Park with him, armed with an umbrella and a heavy coat. The chestnut trees were always so beautiful there, even in the rain, and she loved the peace she experienced sitting under their broad-leaved bowers no matter what the weather.

  As luck would have it, it was dry. She sat on a bench, Manu next to her and she breathed in the cold air. It was refreshing, clean, and as she looked around at all the trees and flowers in blossom and bud she too felt the first flush of something beautiful take root within her heart, and it warmed her. A memory of Luis fluttered around her, as pretty and delicate as a butterfly. It landed on her shoulder. She did not flick it away. He would love it here, she thought.

  She smiled at Manu with the promise of new beginnings. He smiled at her in between blowing on his hands then rubbing them together.

  She shared Lola’s letter with him, reading it out to him sentence by sentence. He stopped her when it came to news about a child. This information did nothing to warm him up. A cloud of shame hovered over his features, followed by a look of concern for Maria. ‘Oh no,’ she exclaimed, shaking her head. ‘We were never close in that way, Richard and I.’ She laughed. Manu didn’t.

  ‘I wish I’d killed the bastard,’ he said.

  ‘A walk around the lake?’ Maria said, tilting her head in the direction of the expanse where a lake had been before the war. In a blacked out city a reflected moon would be all the information an enemy pilot would need to locate his next target. The water had to go.

  Maria and Manu walked along the path in silence. Maria had to make him see the good in what she was telling him. Lola was alive, and Cecilia. A cause for celebration in itself. And the baby. The very thought of her lifted Maria’s heart and gave colour to the world. It would lift Manu’s too if he would only let it.

  ‘So why did you want to speak with me?’ Maria asked.

  Manu did not answer straightaway, instead he coughed as if to clear his throat, and even then, the words that followed did not come out smoothly.

  ‘To say sorry … about what happened. At the Casa de Campo.’

  Maria said nothing in return. She had nothing to say. She did not blame Manu for what had occurred. She was ashamed of the part she’d played in it, ashamed that she’d sought it out, ashamed that she’d wanted to shed blood that night. She had gazed into the abyss willingly that morning and it had stared right back. She had known at once that she had to tear herself away. Perhaps Manu did too. She nudged into him, hoping a playful push could convey more than any words how very sorry she was too.

  ‘Hey!’ he said. Images of Lola flashed before him. Lola, his annoying sister who used to nudge into him all the time when she was little. He moved his neck from side to side as he recovered his balance but the words Maria had hoped to dislodge still didn’t flow. She didn’t know what else she could say; he didn’t know how to say it. Maria looked into the waterless lake. The sight struck her as absurd.

  ‘Is she well? Lola?’ Manu said at last, the frosty edge to his voice slowly thawing.

  ‘Oh yes, she is so very well Manu. And happy,’ Maria answered, hoping to melt it completely with the warmth of her words.

  ‘And the baby? A girl, you say?’ Manu asked, his words both hopeful and hesitant. Maria nodded. Manu was nearly there and she was overjoyed. She took his hand in hers. For her sake as much as for his. They would both need to hold on to each other when Maria told Manu the baby’s name.

  ‘She’s called her …’ Maria paused to stem the flow of tears that were queuing up to be shed behind her smiling eyes. ‘She’s called her … Paloma.’

  Manu cried. It had been a long time. They hugged one another like cubs and raised their arms in the air while they both shouted ‘Paloma!’

  ‘Look,’ Maria said, pointing up at the sky. ‘The clouds have all gone. Let’s walk some more.’ And they did. While they reminisced. ‘And Manu,’ she said, remembering to put her question to him before she forgot. ‘About that night at Cortijo del Bosque, the night of the dinner, when you escaped, I saw you come from the direction of the kitchen. I thought there was a soldier on guard.’ Manu nodded his head in response. ‘What happened?’ she said.

  Chapter 53

  When she got home the first thing she did was go to her room and unfold the much loved though very dog-eared piece of paper. She extracted it from the depths of Cervantes for the second time that day. She looked at its deep folds, ran her finger around the soft and tattered edges and looked at the beautiful shapes of tear stained ink letters on greying paper. And as she read the words they formed so she conjured up an image of the person who had taken the care and time to write them. His eyes were before her, one brown, one blue, and she felt that he was with her. She turned the letter over and read the words she already knew: Malaga, midday, Friday.
In themselves there was nothing inherently beautiful in these words. They were informative, nothing more. But if she went to the place at the time specified oh how life would open itself up to her like a rare, exotic flower.

  She had thought herself unworthy of such happiness, thought Luis undeserving of her love, for oh so many reasons. But she had endured and survived the suffering. She had been taken to the edge of bitterness and found it to be a lonely, cruel place, as for revenge, she found it harsh and unforgiving. Bitterness, revenge, punishment – they were all prey to corruption. She’d been guilty of them all. But as she held Luis’ note in her hand all guilt melted away and understanding and forgiveness came in its place.

  Today was a day for righting wrongs, shedding light on confusion. Manu had revealed to her that Luis had been the person who had allowed him to escape the night of the dinner while Maria had a strong suspicion that Luis had saved Richard too. Her hand glided over the letters she’d received from Richard and Lola. She still had one letter to write to Richard; she would see that she asked him about the soldier who saved him then.

  She re-read a section of Richard’s letter: ‘… remembering our days together in Fuentes, that picnic, the bike ride, I realise now that I would like very much to know how she is …’ It seemed so clear to Maria now. She would write to him, tell him about Lola’s baby that was so obviously his.

  *

  By the time Richard Johnson received the news from Maria he’d been home for three months. He was convalescing at home in Chelsea but wasn’t proving to be the easiest of patients for his parents, Margaret and Peter. He’d meant it when he told himself that war was a futile exercise and that the only useful thing he could do was to treat his loved ones well, but it was still driving him insane to read the misleading headlines in the newspapers, and as for his parents, they were driving him round the bend. He wanted to beat the pudgy faced Franco to a pulp and dispatch his mother and father off to the Outer Hebrides for a while. He consoled himself with the knowledge that they liked it there. But still. Human nature. One minute contemplating the meaning of life in all its beauty, the next wanting to smash it to smithereens. He blanched at the very thought of it in all its paradoxical contrariness.

  ‘Cup of tea, dear?’ his mother asked, her voice wavering with a recently developed tremor, as she popped her head round the door.

  ‘You’re so English, Mother! A cup of tea isn’t the answer to all the world’s problems.’ She withdrew almost scraping the floor apologetically. The poor woman was thrilled to have him home, safe, but frustrated that she didn’t seem to be able to say a thing right in his eyes.

  His father rushed in, a letter in his hand which he slid behind his back as he saw his wife slide out. ‘Yes please, darling,’ he said, following her.

  Richard was vaguely aware and irritated by excitable whispers coming from the hall.

  ‘Oh, but I nearly forgot,’ her mother said as she fell back in the room, nigh on hopping with delight. She looked back into the hall where her husband was waiting in the wings, willing her on. Her son expressed his impatience with a kick of his footstool. His mother looked back into the hall again. Then said it. ‘You’ll be looking forward to reading this,’ she splurged, allowing her tiny wrist to spring gently before she threw a letter into the air. It landed in Richard’s lap. She left the room, jubilant, hoping the letter was what he’d been so obviously waiting for.

  The moment he saw it he flushed with pleasure. He looked down at the letter in front of him. It made him smile to recognise the unmistakably Spanish handwriting and wonder at the miracle that such a thing should exist – nationality expressed in the writing of a word. And a wonder still greater, that he should know the very identity of the writer. Maria.

  She had written four pages, eight sides, to him.

  The first half page of the letter Maria had written in English. It was faultless – she’d produced eight grammatically perfect sentences. Verb endings were sound, tenses appropriate. Yet they communicated so very little of importance that by sentence six Richard was starting to lose the glow of excitement that had preceded the careful opening of the envelope.

  That she gave up on the English was a blessing all round. A liberation for her because at last she could truly communicate and a relief for Richard who bathed in the feelings she set free in the words on the page that danced and played and ran and jumped all around him.

  His eyes now raced over the words. He found the one he was looking for – ‘Lola’ – followed by some that he wasn’t expecting at all. He threw the letter in the air and shouted ‘Paloma!’ His parents came rushing in. Richard got up and kissed his mother. He kissed his father too.

  He looked up and out through the window at the all-too-typical English sky. Uniformly grey, with only one shaft of yellow light breaking through quite low in the sky, he marvelled at its beauty and how he could ever persuade Lola to love it too.

  Maria’s work was done. She had written the letters she’d had to write, now it was time to read the one she’d been given for the third and last time.

  Chapter 54

  War was over. Maria was out in the streets with her father and grandfather the day the nationalist forces celebrated. 19th May 1939. All of Madrid was there to cheer. Neighbours, servants and concierges would have been forced to denounce them if not.

  Maria looked up at the planes overhead spelling the victor’s name; they almost made her laugh. Almost. F R A N C O. Crass. In the way dictators so often are. It was absurd that her country should be ruled by a madman of limited intelligence. Yet it was a reality.

  A young woman, about Maria’s age, with cheeks so sunken you could use them as shelves, pushed past her. ‘Peace is here at last!’ she said as she made her way through the gathering crowds. Maria started. It was true, the war was over. Surely that was a cause for celebration.

  But this peace, she asked herself, would it be any different?

  She looked at the soldiers as they paraded by, rifles erect, and she shuddered. The old hatred bubbled up to the surface of her consciousness once more. She stood there, glowering. Yet as she searched their faces for answers Maria slowly felt the anger slip away. These soldiers were more than the uniforms they wore. All human, all flawed. If she had learned anything during this vile war it was that the capacity for people to commit good and evil was the same on both sides. Not that this excused it: it did not.

  She continued watching the procession. Soldiers – young boys, gnarled war veterans, mercenaries – paraded by before her. On horseback, motorcycles, in trucks, on foot. Wave after wave of them. The crowds applauded, saluted. Then it was the turn of decorated generals to come by. They saluted back to the crowd, their arms strong and proud, standing upright and firm in the front of chauffeur driven cars. All except one.

  Maria stared at him. There, sitting in the back of an open top car was a man she thought she knew. Slumped and shrunken, only his uniform kept him upright. And even from a distance Maria could see that the man’s skin was a patchwork of open sores across his cheeks with a disease eaten nose. Who was he? She studied him. A shiver of recognition passed through her entire body at the memory of the man’s coldness. It was him. Captain Garcia. And he knew her too. His cruel eyes had picked her face out from thousands in the crowd. Maria felt pity for the surrounding soldiers; they’d had compassion squashed out of them, been used as a brutalising force. Even the Africanistas who had been pulled from Morocco to punish the Spanish people, they were victims too in their own way. But Garcia. He’d been a sadist of the worst sort. Maria stared back at him. There were some things she could never forgive.

  Killing in war was inevitable. Yet even war must have its rules. When these rules are broken, that’s when the most heinous of crimes are committed. And Garcia, Maria remembered, had broken all the rules. She played with the sunflower pendant around her neck with one hand, and patted her hard-backed companion, Cervantes, with the other.

  She still felt the guilt when she thought of
Paloma. She’d made a mistake that day in calling for her. But she saw now that it was an innocent one. She’d been an unwitting pawn in a very ugly game. She had been a child herself, taken the wrong turning at the wrong time. A mistake – and she would always regret it. But it was not she who had committed the crimes against her dear, sweet friend. She stared back at Garcia; she felt no sympathy for him.

  As she watched the victory parade go by tears rolled silently down her cheeks. The crowd swayed, causing her to lose her footing slightly. Her father, still by her side, caught her. She looked in his eyes. She saw her sorrow reflected there.

  Chapter 55

  The war had been over for almost a year now and Maria and her father were living in Malaga. By day Doctor Alvaro was working at the Sanatorio de San Jose in Malaga, treating patients with nervous conditions. By night he was attending the sick in the poor areas of the city; the Civil War might have ended but division between the haves and have nots was still stark. He was also working with an underground group smuggling people to safety. The good doctor was the same as he ever was, helping the persecuted and oppressed, of which there were many in the aftermath of the war; he just had to be careful that he didn’t get caught and add to their number.

  Maria too had found work, helping the sick; on her father’s advice, she said nothing of the past. If Doctor Alvaro was concerned for his own safety in these deceptively peaceful times, he was doubly so when it came to his daughter. She’d lived in Republican Spain during the war; he knew that women were being thrown into prison for less. And now the Nationalists had won, it was time for them to fashion the people in their own image. There was no more right to choose, no more liberty. Men had to be strong, hard-working, virile; women caring, obedient, virtuous. The true masculine; the eternal feminine. Both would be patriotic. Both would adhere to the Catholic Church.

  His daughter had a free spirit and a strong will that she’d already exercised negotiating time off every Friday. She would need to disguise it.