I pushed his arm away and sat up. ‘When the fuck are you going to tell me you had lunch with Violeta today?’
He winced. ‘I was waiting until you are better. You are not yourself, you are—’
‘Just tell me!’ I folded my arms, staring at a loose thread in the blanket while my heart raced.
He took my hand. ‘Listen, you don’t have to be upset. She was at the club, this week she performs at other club there but she had a night free—’
‘You knew that?’
‘No! She goes everywhere all the time. Last time I didn’t know even when she came to Granada. But I talked with her in the break, things are not good for her. Problems with boyfriend, much pain from the shoulder and… I think having too many drugs again. So I ask her have lunch with me today. She talked, I tried to encourage.’ He put a hand to my cheek and turned my face toward him. ‘Is that a bad thing that I do?’
Too nice a guy. I smiled weakly at him. ‘Of course not. And did it help?’
‘I don’t know, I hope that yes. At the end she ask about you, and liked that you play the flute. She is not like her sister. Isabel told you, yes?’
‘When Liz and I were having lunch by the fountain. She hates me.’
‘No, no. It is because she thinks of Violeta. When their mother died she look after her, gave up many things. But she is tired of the responsabilidad - is why Violeta can have many boyfriends, but still Isabel wants me to be alone and wait for her to come back.’
‘She thinks… she will?’
‘Exactamente - she is crazy! One day she will understand. Maybe already she begins, because it was different with other girls, I could tell her it is not serious. But with you…’
I found myself holding my breath. ‘With me..?’
‘I… could not say that.’
The first time that he had ever spoken of our future. Having been on the edge of screaming about Violeta, I was now sending a silent thank you to her and the mad sister for making this discussion happen.
‘Serious,’ I said, hoping he’d say more. But he just carried on stroking my hair. I wanted to press him, ask what I always asked boyfriends sooner or later. Even though I always ended up like the Spanish baby, covered in burst bubble and utterly miserable. No, leave it, I told myself firmly. But then opened my mouth anyway. ‘What’s going to happen with us?’
‘Happen?’ The classic stall; not a good sign.
‘In the future.’
‘The future,’ he repeated, as if we were in an English lesson.
Damn it, why did I have to do this? He’s right, I’m not well. And now I’m about to start crying like a spoilt child. ‘Need the loo,’ I said, getting up.
He pulled me back. ‘No you don’t,’ he said gently. Then put me on my back and leaned over me. ‘The truth is, I don’t know. But I know what I want to happen.’
He wanted us to always stay friends. How many times had I heard that? Almost as many times as I hadn’t. ‘What?’ I whispered.
‘Todo.’
‘All?’
‘And for now I want…’ He ran his hand down my body. ‘Todo esto.’
I laughed, my head light and clearing. ‘All yours.’
Chapter 18
reconciliar vt to reconcile
‘Call me.’
There wasn’t long before Spanish, but I had to make sure Jeremy was okay, that Duncan hadn’t rung to say Pavlova had had an accident…
‘Hi, anything wrong?’
‘No, not at all. Just promised Nando I’d say hello to you. And give you an abrazo from him next time I see you.’
‘Oh.’ Did I care about that? After an evening of Javi showing me how he’d bought a keyboard and the software so we could start on our next piece; a hilarious co-cooked judias verdes, re-enacting our first date; talk of a weekend in Almería meeting his family? No. Well, a bit. It was good to hear Nando could remember who I was. That perhaps some of that tenderness was real, giving a modicum of meaning to what I’d done.
‘Yol?’
‘That’s nice.’
‘He’s got tickets for us to go again tonight. But Nico’s not sure, wasn’t happy about the way Gabi was flirting with him when they shared a lemon mousse.’
‘Hang on - you went to dinner?’
‘Yes. It was a great evening. You’d never think a dancing gitano who left school at fifteen would be so well-read, a follower of not just flamenco but contemporary and ballet… Art too, he’s been to most of the best galleries in the world… and you should see him sketch. Behind all that sensual machismo there’s a self-educated intellectual. Fascinating.’
Clearly Jeremy was fascinated; he’d probably fallen in love, the first time in a long while. Poor, poor Jeremy; he was so horrendously barking up the wrong tree.
‘So will you go?’
‘Maybe, I’ll see what they… No, what am I saying, course I will. I know what you’re thinking, Yol, but… at least he’s good research material.’
‘I can imagine.’ Once again I envied the way he went through life taking on disappointments and sculpting them for his artistic, emotional - and nowadays financial - fulfilment.
‘So how’s it going there?’ he asked.
‘Great. But I’ve got Spanish now. I’ll text you later, okay? Actually you could call me tonight - Javi’s suggested I stay at home and work on our new piece while he’s out playing with his old group.’ That’s if you haven’t gone clubbing with Nando, I nearly added, but it didn’t feel right to tease him when he was on such a hopeless quest. ‘Abrazos.’
‘Abrazos a ti también,’ he said. Hugs. I texted some to Javi too and then bounded up the stairs to be nice to miserable hug-free Núria.
But she wasn’t miserable; she gave me a smiling welcome - which was just as well as nobody else was there yet. She offered me a mint, asked how I’d got on with my homework and patiently re-explained the imperfect subjunctive; Carlota must have had a word.
The others arrived: Liz with a heavy cold; the two young German girls looking pale after a late night at Le Chien Andalou. All horribly better than me, even with their ailments, as became even more evident when Núria started the class with a listening test. Liz was kneeing me and mouthing are you alright?
I was relieved when it was time for our break, knowing that after it we’d be back on the solid earth of grammar and homework corrections. But Núria wanted a word.
She waited until we were alone, then patted the chair next to her and pulled out a thermos. I sat down and watched her hand encircling a cup, trying not to envisage where it might have drunkenly touched Javi…
Carlota came in, her mouth falling open and then turning into a smile. ‘No es importante,’ she said, and went out again.
‘Ac-tu-ally,’ Núria said, ‘let’s take these outside. I will show you my secret azotea.’
I followed her through the door beads out into the sun. At this level, the building was a warren of rooftop sun terraces, outdoor staircases and stone paths leading to the cave-like classrooms dug into the hill. Amparo and I had had fun exploring every corner of it on my first visit. But Núria took me through a metal door marked Privado onto a flower-filled and newly whitewashed terrace - the one in the website that we’d laughed about not being able to find. She closed the door behind her and I imagined myself joking with Liz later, saying I mean, we were three floors up with non-health-and-safety-height walls - thought she was going to throw me from the bloody roof.
But she got me to sit down on the bench next to her, gave me a low-fat biscuit and started to tell me how my understanding of Spanish was on a markedly lower level compared to my speaking and writing, and that she suspected that I had difficulties with attention. Trastorno de déficit de atención.
I’d had pupils with Attention Deficit: a girl at school who never remembered her lesson time and was forever coming out with tangential comments about Dr Who, a boy in a previous school who kept getting off the piano stool to look out of the window. In my schooldays,
kids like me who were fidgets or dippy daydreamers were just expected to behave; it had been difficult and demoralising. But somehow that didn’t make it any easier being diagnosed with special needs at the age of thirty-eight.
‘Yolanda?’
‘I’m not good with concentration, no,’ I said, feeling the first prick of idiotic tears and pretending to shield my eyes from the sun. Then I reminded myself of my flute performances. ‘Although I can, for some things.’
‘For your music, or something else that you are very interested in.’
‘But I’m very interested in Spanish.’
‘Perhaps. No, I’m sure you are. But you have no confidence.’
‘Maybe I should go back to the easier class.’
‘No. But I suggest that next time you come, book one-to-one classes to work on your listening. I do these and would like to help you. Meanwhile, practise listening to any Spanish person who will speak slowly for you. Oh, this is stupid…’ She lowered her voice. ‘Javi speaks good English, but you must make him talk to you more in Spanish, okay?’
I smiled, nodded. He only really tended to speak Spanish to me when we were in bed, but she didn’t need to hear that. ‘He does sometimes, when he sees me doing my homework and remembers.’ Just like Jeremy, he ended up laughing at my blank face and putting me out of my misery. ‘Maybe if I go to the office and ask, I could do some one-to-ones this week.’
She had a space in her timetable, and although it clashed with my Compás class we agreed that Javi might be better at helping me with that.
After the lesson I went off to the office to arrange it, Liz shaking her head in amazement. Javi had texted that he couldn’t get home for lunch, so I invited her back to the flat for a sandwich.
‘Qué bonita!’ she was saying as I unlocked the door.
‘Not a word of Spanish, please, I’m about to have another hour of it.’
‘Are you sure Javi’s going to like this?’
‘Well, he said be nice to her. If I’m ever going to live here I need to be able to understand what the hell people are saying. Like you - I don’t know how you do it.’
‘You’ll get there. But… has he said something then?’ ‘Sort of, yes.’
He opened the door before I could get my key out. I put my arms round him and sank into his chest. ‘I’m so completely Spanished out, you’ll never believe what—’
‘Yes I’ve heard. This is good, Yoli. But we have a visitor.’ The girl Isabel had been chatting to before she came over to me at the restaurant, at this proximity looking about twelve. I glanced around to confirm that Isabel wasn’t with her. ‘But don’t worry, no more Spanish. This is my sobrina, and she speaks excellent English, don’t you Rosita?’
Rosita smiled broadly, apparently unashamed of her set of protruding and uneven teeth. And presumably unashamed of the behaviour of her… (what the hell was sobrina?) the previous day. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said, holding out a bangled hand.
‘Rosita works hard and saved money to go to England this summer. Do you know the best place to do a course?’ Rosita was dipping churros in to a bowl of chocolate and getting quite a mucky mouth; was she old enough to come to England on her own?
‘In autumn she will study turismo in the university.’
Eighteen? ‘Oh! Well, my friend Emma sometimes does summer work at a language school in Brighton…’
‘Bry-ton,’ Rosita repeated. ‘I know it, in the South. She can tell me the name of—’
‘Of course.’
She asked me where I lived, what Brighton was like. Then the door buzzer went and she stopped mid-sentence. It suddenly came to me: sobrina, niece. She was Isabel’s daughter - and by the look on her face she was expecting a displeased mamá at the door.
‘Wait,’ I said to Javi, getting up and planning to hide in the loo until Isabel had gone.
But he smiled, put an arm round my waist as if preventing my escape and opened the door. Isabel was there with her usual hand-on-hip, chin-in-the-air stance. There was a moment where incredulous looks were exchanged, then a simultaneous burst of rapid Spanish from the three of them. It began to look like the loudest voice would win the argument; and for pitch and intensity, together with the energy of youth, Rosita had the edge.
Javi suddenly let go of me, opened a bottle of wine and poured a glass for Isabel. Rosita was talking calmly to her mother now, something about friend and kindness.
Isabel turned to me. ‘Sorry what I say at restaurante. And… thank you help to Rosita.’ Then she put her hand out, ran her fingers down some of my hair and made some comment about it.
‘She says you have pretty hair but need a little cut. She wants to do this for you, she is peluquera.’
‘That’s very kind, but maybe another time…’
She’d gone. ‘She means now, Yoli. She goes to find her scissors.’
Gone eleven but it looked like every little house on the hillside still had lights on. Perhaps somewhere out there slept adorable Spanish children who’d learn to play flute or piano with me, musicians who’d speak slowly enough and let me join their trio or quartet.
I leaned over the repaired wall on the side of the balcony for the glimpse of the Alhambra, presiding with such benevolence over the city. What had the guide said? The Moorish rulers hadn’t wanted to show off; people would look up at these homely pink blocks, never guessing at the paradise-like interiors they contained.
Above it, a starry sky promised another sunny day tomorrow. That’s mostly how it would be from now until October, Javi had said, even if the nights were cool. I went inside and listened again to what would be the first section of Sevilla, smiled to myself and closed down the computer. Sorted out the kitchen; in this bonita but tiny home there wasn’t room to be untidy.
Of course, maybe after a while we could afford - might even need - something a bit larger. But meanwhile, where would I put my things? The bed in the second room would have to go so that we could have a piano for my teaching. But most of my stuff would have to be left behind in England. Perhaps Jeremy would give me a section of his basement; I could visit it like a shrine when I went over to see him. I’d go for a week or ten days; that would be okay, wouldn’t it? We’d walk along the canal to the Narrow Boat, cuddle up on the sofa with Pavlova and watch films, go to Sadler’s in December for the Matthew Bourne show. In the spring I’d sort out the garden. In the summer I’d check he was looking after it, maybe visit him in Cádiz… But winter, spring and summer: how often would Javi be happy for me to go back and stay with Jeremy?
Eleven thirty: Jeremy wasn’t going to ring. I started to worry about his evening, imagined him walking home alone, with a depth of depression and anger at self-delusion that only Fernando Morales Montoya could bring about. I decided to call him in the morning.
I washed, put on my pyjamas - even though they’d probably get taken off later - and got under the covers. Then my phone rang, as if he’d been waiting for me to get into bed before he called, to have a bed-to-bed chat like we sometimes had at home.
‘Yol! Not too late are we? Haven’t woken you up?’
‘No, no. I’m waiting for Javi anyway. Good show?’
‘Wonderful. Oh… Gabi says hello… hold on.’ Chatter in the background; it sounded like they were in a restaurant. ‘…wants to talk to you.’
What was I going to say to Gabi? I didn’t know anything about her, other than that she moaned about the sun and had flirted with Nando in front of her husband. But what a relief to hear Jeremy sounding so chipper…
‘Yoli! How-are-you?’ Nando. That deep, caressing voice resonating painfully. Even after all this time, even though he didn’t matter anymore.
‘Oh… fine!’ I said, quickly sitting up; I couldn’t speak to him lying on my back in bed. I couldn’t speak to him anyway; I was trying to form a question about the show, but nothing was coming out.
‘Jeremy say you are with boyfriend, tocaor granadino. What he is called?’
‘Javi.’<
br />
‘Javier…?’
‘Benites.’
‘Mm. I not hear of him.’
‘He only plays in Granada. Although he recently joined—’
‘And he play you well?’
God, how could he know that’s what we… ‘Er… yes. Es muy simpatico.’
‘Sí. But he is married.’
‘Separated. For some—’
‘Pues… why he not have divorcio?’
How much had Jeremy told him? We’d be discussing infertility treatments next.
‘Yoli?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah, still you are there. Lo siento, I ask too much.’
I’d said too many yeses already. Was this caring or just bloody nosey? It was hard to tell, but I didn’t want to seem too bothered. ‘So… are you pleased with your show?’
‘We have changed some things, is better. Even the dance to the song of Pilar, remember that?’
‘Of course.’
‘At the end is now more… conexión. I like you see it. Why you not come, can tell me if prefer.’
Because I’m here with Javi, you self-absorbed hombre.
‘Oh… Jeremy wants his móvil. Adiós Yoli, besos.’
He’d gone. I lay back in bed and breathed out heavily; it was okay, I’d spoken with him, and now probably wouldn’t have to again for…
‘Everything okay there?’ Jeremy asked.
‘Don’t do that again.’
‘What?’
‘Putting Nando on the phone.’
‘He asked to talk to you, just like all my friends do,’ he said, more quietly.
‘Friends as in… Vicente, or Nico?’ I asked. ‘How’s it going?’
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