Like One of the Family

by Nesta Tuomey

  ‘Yes, he has great charm,’ Claire unconsciously agreed.

  Fernando stared. ‘You know Alejandro?’

  Claire was confused. ‘I’m not sure... maybe not,’ she stammered in embarrassment. ‘Sheena and I met a Spaniard of that name and she has been going about with him ever since. Really we know very little about him, only that he has a friend called Miguel.’

  ‘Miguel Delgado?’ Fernando enquired ominously, ‘Qué sinverguenza!’

  Claire was startled by the anger and contempt in Fernando’s voice.

  ‘Delgado is not fit to associate with my family,’ Fernando said haughtily. ‘I have warned Alex against this man many times but my brother is weak and easily led.’

  He was only saying what Claire herself had suspected.

  Fernando’s expression softened. ‘Ah but I cannot tell you how happy and relieved it makes me to know you will be here with my mother while I am away. You will keep her alive until I return, of that I am certain.’

  ‘I only wish I could be as sure,’ she admitted honestly, ‘but I’ll gladly stay with her if that’s what you and your father want.’

  ‘En absoluto,’ Fernando said with a sad smile. ‘In fact, I could not go if you did not assure me of your presence,’ adding passionately. ‘Tu eres mi angel.’

  Claire blushed at the intensity of his emotion and felt a little light-headed again. She put her hand to her forehead.

  ‘Perhaps I ask too much,’ Fernando looked concerned. ‘You have already spent so many hours with my mother. Please tell me frankly if you cannot stay.’

  Claire said firmly. ‘Of course I’ll stay. There’s nothing I want more.’

  Fernando gave her a glowing look of gratitude. ‘Muchísimas gracias, mi Clara,’ he said fervently. And before she realised his intention, he had bent his head and kissed her full on the mouth.

  It was late evening when Elena woke up. She opened her brown eyes and stared at Claire with some deep emotion struggling in their depths. Claire leaned nearer the bed, feeling frustrated and not a little, frightened. Oh, if only there was some way she could help her. She was just about to call for Nurse Lewis when she saw Elena deliberately blinking and, with a thrill of relief, understood she was saying, ‘Get our alphabet.’

  As she hurriedly fumbled with the pieces, Claire was all the time conscious of Elena’s anxious gaze trained on her. At last she sat poised with the box on her lap and said quietly, ‘I’m ready, Elena.’

  At the beginning of their relationship Señora Gonzalez had asked Claire to call her by her Christian name. She had no daughters of her own, Elena said, but if she had been so blessed she would have liked them to address her in this way. Claire had felt both honoured and embarrassed, but in time grew accustomed to it.

  Now she asked, ‘Is it a vowel?’

  Elena gave no sign. Claire ran quickly through the first few letters, and when she reached the letter L Elena blinked. This was followed by a vowel which was followed by V and Claire knew Elena meant ‘love’.

  The next word began with F. ‘Fernando’? Claire guessed.

  ‘You love Fernando?’

  Elena blinked.

  ‘He has gone to fetch Alejandro,’ Claire told he. ‘Love’ again, then it was the third letter of the alphabet before Elena reacted again.

  ‘Is it me?’ Claire asked.

  It was, and then it was ‘Fernando’ again.

  ‘You love Fernando and you love me?’

  Elena gave no sign. Claire was puzzled. So what could she mean? Then it broke upon her and she flushed.

  ‘You mean that Fernando loves...’ She couldn’t go on.

  Elena blinked and some of the anxiety eased in those painfully aware eyes. Claire spoke slowly and clearly.

  ‘You think that Fernando loves me and you wonder if I love Fernando?’

  Elena blinked again.

  Claire chose her words carefully. ‘I am very fond of him and I would be honoured if he loved me.’ It was true. Any more than that she couldn’t say, but there was no mistaking the relief and happiness in Elena’s gaze. As they continued on with questions and answers, it became clear that Elena’s main concern was that Claire should allow Fernando to take care of her. Claire stared, convinced she had somehow got it wrong.

  ‘But why should I need anyone to take care of me?’ Claire asked puzzled. When Elena indicated that she believed this would be Fernando’s wish, Claire attributed it to some loss of translation, or perhaps the strange fancies of a dying woman.

  ‘Is there anything else worrying you?’ Claire gently asked her. But no. Elena was happy now and resigned to whatever would happen. Strangely she did not show fatigue but seemed powered by some tremendous inner resource. After almost an hour it was Claire who had begun to flag. She shifted in her chair and was aware of Elena watching her closely.

  The next word was ‘tired’ and then ‘Claire’, followed by ‘concerned’. Elena was concerned that she was growing tired.

  ‘I am a bit,’ Claire confessed. She took a turn about the room and came back to sit at her bedside again.

  Elena wanted Antonio.

  When he came, Claire handed the alphabet to Antonio and went out into the night to get some air herself. She felt exhausted but content. Her prayer to the Madonna had been answered.

  Claire sat for some time in the garden under the stars, where Jane had sat so often during her convalescence, and felt her mind go blank. After so much concentration she felt all played out. She saw Nurse Lewis bustling towards her in the gloom.

  ‘My dear, you look poorly,’ Sarah said in her direct fashion, ‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea.’

  Touched as always by the woman’s thoughtfulness, Claire sat sipping the warm liquid, feeling some of her weariness fall from her. Soon she went back inside, feeling ready now to cope with whatever the night might bring.

  As she sat once more by Elena’s bedside Claire hoped that Sheena would not be too worried when she was absent another night from the apartment. However, since her friend had stayed away herself all night so many times she didn’t think there was any real likelihood of this. She had made several attempts that day to phone Sheena and got the engaged signal so often that she was beginning to think the telephone must be out of order. She yawned and resolved to try again in a little while.

  As it grew late Claire began to feel hungry and slightly light-headed, but even when Nurse Lewis tiptoed into the room and laid a gentle hand on her arm, saying, ‘Won’t you come away and have a wee rest, lass,’ she shook her head.

  ‘I’m fine, Nurse. Honestly. I promised Fernando I’d stay with his mother until he returns.’ Antonio was snatching a nap in another room and Claire feared that Elena would be distressed if left entirely alone.

  ‘Very well then.’ Sarah came back often throughout the night and tried to get her to sip a cup of tea or eat a piece of toast, but Claire refused everything but the tea.

  Claire could feel Elena’s eyes on her face from time to time, but there was none of the earlier agitation mirrored in their dark depths. Elena was at peace now.

  Towards morning Fernando and Alejandro arrived at the hospital and with grim expressions hurried down the corridor to their mother’s room. Elena was still conscious but very weak. Hour after hour, by a tremendous effort of her will, she had kept herself from slipping away until her sons arrived.

  She looked at her sons long and lovingly and her eyes, the only mobile part of her, were intelligent and bright, and then she slipped into a deep sleep from which she never awoke.

  ‘She is gone,’ Fernando came out to tell Claire. She put her arms about him and held him close, and he buried his face in her hair and broke into muffled, childish sobbing. When he eventually regained control he gave her a last sorrowful look and went back into the room to join his father.

  Claire felt every muscle aching and her mind was floating in a kind of limbo. Elena was dead but she could not really take it in, they were just words.

  Sarah Lewi
s brought her into a nearby room, sat her gently on the bed and began undressing her with kindly, capable hands. ‘You can sleep here,’ she said. ‘You’re in no fit state to go anywhere.’

  In her exhaustion Claire hardly heard her and was barely aware of Sarah removing the last of her clothing before she was deeply asleep.

  Sarah stared, taken aback by the unmistakable curve of Claire’s belly, her swollen, veined breasts. She had been too many years nursing not to recognise that the girl was pregnant.

  Sarah could not repress feelings of shock and disappointment as she drew the night-dress over Claire’s head. She reminded herself that young people today looked on pregnancy out of wedlock in a very different way to older folk like herself. She had different values, she supposed, but she would never get used to it. Such a lovely young girl too. Remembering the way the young Spaniard had held Claire so tenderly in his arms, Sarah assumed that he was the father.

  Claire stirred and opened her eyes. Nurse Lewis was sitting on the bed holding out a cup of tea to her.

  ‘I thought you might like this before you get up,’ Sarah said quietly.

  Something in the older woman’s restrained tone surprised Claire. She sat up and took the cup, cradling it in her hands. She had been asleep six hours and could have slept twice as long.

  ‘I’ll bring you some toast when you’ve drunk that,’ the nurse said. Again there was that cautious intonation, as though humouring a sick person.

  ‘Thank you but please don’t go to any trouble,’ Claire begged. She looked down at the unfamiliar night-dress, blushed and avoided Sarah’s eyes.

  Sarah saw the blush and was puzzled by Claire’s modesty, having already unconsciously judged her to be other than the innocent she had at first assumed. When she returned with the toast she sat down again while Claire nibbled it, and was unsurprised when the girl suddenly hopped out of bed and ran to the hand basin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Claire gasped. ‘For a moment I thought I was going to be sick.’ She raised an apologetic face from the bowl and glanced at Sarah.

  Sarah returned her gaze steadily. ‘Sit back into bed, child.’ When Claire slipped back under the sheet she said, ‘How long have you been like this?’

  Claire stared at her uncomprehendingly. What was she getting at?

  ‘How long have you been feeling sick?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘I’m not sick,’ Claire began, and then she remembered all the times she had felt dizzy and nauseous lately. But that was just migraine. She threw off the sheet, her head whirling. ‘I must go back to the apartment,’ she cried. ‘Sheena and Ruthie will be wondering where I am.’

  ‘Sit still a moment,’ Nurse Lewis said sternly. ‘Do you really not know what ails you?’

  Claire looked at her desperately. She couldn’t be what she read in the woman’s face. How could she? Terry had always used a condom. Even when she had begged him not to he had always insisted. But what about the first time? Suddenly she saw herself and Terry lying on Jane’s bed, both of them carried away by passion. She was filled with panic.

  ‘I really must go,’ she mumbled. ‘I’ve been away too long as it is.’ She got out of bed and the floor rushed up to meet her. Only for Sarah’s supporting arm she would have fallen.

  Claire lay on the bed after Nurse Lewis had left the room and gazed down at her belly, which had always been so flat, and then higher up to her swollen breasts. How was it she hadn’t noticed these changes before? She had a sudden image of herself long ago, lying on a bed in the holiday cottage with Jane bending over her, gently examining her breasts. Claire had to bite her lips hard to keep from crying out as this image was replaced with another: Elena urging her to allow Fernando take care of her. Claire burned with new shame and insight. Did everyone know what she herself had failed to see? She broke out in a sweat and grew dizzy again.

  Claire left the hospital without seeing anyone. It was very hot, even hotter than the previous day, and a headache throbbed into life as she covered the two miles to the apartment. There, the rooms were hot and airless and she automatically pulled over the heavy curtains to block the burning light.

  There was half a jug of water in the fridge and she drank it, then went into her room and lay on the bed. She was badly shocked, for it had never occurred to her that she would ever conceive. Her head ached and she closed her eyes.

  She was awakened by the sound of someone calling her and struggled through the fog of sleep surrounding her, in an effort to take in what the voice was saying. ‘Claire, please Claire, wake up.’ Somehow Ruthie was back. How had she got there? With difficulty Claire opened her eyes and focused them on the little girl’s anxious face.

  ‘Who brought you, Ruthie?’ she asked through dry lips. Slowly everything began to come back: Elena’s death and her own pregnant condition.

  ‘Ignacio drove me. He’s waiting downstairs,’ Ruthie was saying. ‘Sheena rang the hotel because she couldn’t get any reply here. She said to tell you she was going away.’

  ‘Going where, Ruthie?’ Claire tried to take it in.

  ‘Gibraltar.’

  ‘Why would she go there?’

  ‘She has gone to meet Alejandro,’ Ruthie explained, pleased and proud to have such an important message to deliver.

  ‘But how was she getting there?’

  Again Ruthie had it off pat. ‘She said that Miguel was taking her.’

  ‘Miguel?’ Claire felt shock and dread as she remembered him and the contempt in which Fernando held the man. ‘Are you quite sure she said it was Miguel?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ Ruthie said brightly. ‘Cierto! Absolutamente!’

  THIRTEEN

  Sheena began to worry when they were in Gibraltar three days and still had not met up with Alejandro. Perhaps Miguel had lied to her like he had lied about so many other things, she thought. He had said they would stay in a hotel and then brought her to a cheap lodging house, where people screamed at night and threw things at the wall, and bought bread and cheap wine to consume in their room. And he had assured her he would buy her a T-shirt and change of underclothing, but she was still in the clothes she had been wearing when she left Nerja.

  On the third day Sheena pointed all this out to Miguel in as light and reasonable tone as she could muster. At once he turned morose and taciturn and refused to speak answer her questions. When she persisted, he shouted at her and slapped her face. In their lovemaking too, he had grown more violent and increasingly knotted the scarf about her throat so that she was almost on the point of suffocation. He left her sobbing on the bed and went out slamming the door behind him, and did not return until nightfall.

  Left alone in their motel room for hours Sheena grew afraid. She had no money, having used her last few pesetas to ring Ignacio’s hotel.

  By the time Miguel returned Sheena was resentful and starving. She submitted to his caresses and when he fell asleep, desperation gave her the courage to go through his pockets. With the thousand peseta note she found there she went out to a cafe and bought herself a Coke and a hamburger. Men eyed her and women whispered. She knew how strange she must look with her bruised throat and clothed in the grubby dirindl skirt and sun-top she had been wearing for days, but she was past caring.

  She bit ravenously into the hamburger, almost choking in her haste to get some food inside of her. Her throat hurt her but she was hardly conscious of it as she quickly cleared the last crumbs from the plate and washed them down with sips of Coke.

  A little later, Sheena returned to the motel, feeling less afraid of Miguel now that she had some hot food inside her. Tomorrow she would find Alejandro, she promised herself, as she slipped quietly back into the room and gently closed over the door.

  Miguel lay snoring on the bed, and despite her earlier optimism, Sheena felt suddenly downcast. What if she didn’t find Alejandro? She was struck anew by the precarious state of her position, without money and far away from her sister and friends. Her chin wobbled and lonely tears suddenly pricked her eyes.
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  Sheena slipped out of her crumpled clothing and lay down beside Miguel. A few more tears squeezed out of the corners of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She choked on a sob and suddenly longed for her twin with a desperation she had not felt since she was six years old and had found herself trapped in a neighbour’s loft with flames licking into the straw. Terry had come running across the yard looking for her and, hearing her frantic screams, had dragged her clear just in time. If only Terry was here in Spain now, Sheena thought longingly. Oh, if only he were then everything would be all right.

  Terry awoke with a start and lay still for a moment before reaching for the light switch over his bunk. His heart was thumping and his body was drenched with sweat. He looked dazedly about the shadowy cabin, still in the grip of the frightful dream he had been having. Christ! he thought. He shuddered and sat up.

  He sat hunched over, his head in his hands, trying to rid himself of the disturbing image of his twin being slowly garrotted by some lunatic. The usual night sounds from the top bunk, instead of irritating him, gave Terry a feeling of security and, in the aftermath of the nightmare, he listened to Pete’s snores, almost with affection.

  Terry swung his legs to the floor and crossed to the wash-hand basin, where he doused his head in cold water. Remnants of the dream still clung to him. He had dreamt it twice before. Each time his twin was pleading with him to help her, and each time he was forced to stand helplessly by and witness her slow strangulation.

  Terry vigorously towelled dry his hair and went to lie on his bunk. In their early childhood he and Sheena had been very close and often experienced a similar kind of telepathy, but it hadn’t happened in a long time. In the troubled years since their father’s death, Terry had distanced himself from his twin and although, at the time, this first rift in their relationship had hardly been recognised by either of them, they had never been so completely at one again.