‘Except the lies.’
I sat up. ‘Look, I needed Nando for Jeremy. When anything I could do felt like it might make the difference… How can you think I would… I nearly lost Jeremy, d’you understand? Jeremy. If you want to go off on a strop about something so stupid compared to what we’ve been through - what we’re still going through - then go.’
He put his head in his hand. ‘Okay. The truth is… there’s Fernando but… it’s Jeremy. Your love for each other, so strong, I see it like the first time. It is stupid, as you say, and very bad of me, but it is difficult not be jealous. I’m sorry Yol. So sorry.’
Chapter 26
perdonar vt to forgive
‘So has he forgiven me?’ Jeremy put down the programme and leaned over to read the text I was tapping out.
‘Forgiven you what?’
‘Everything. The baby-making comments, our kiss goodnight - although he should understand there was a lot of apology going into that. And… I dunno, keeping you from him by having the accident in the first place - although arguably that was partly his fault.’
‘So you do remember something about—’
‘Perhaps remember’s too strong a claim, but I’ve sort of pieced it together, yes.’
‘I don’t want us to blame him.’
‘Of course we don’t. But am I perdonado or what?’
‘Well, I don’t think he would have bothered sending you that email if you weren’t.’
‘Email.’
‘Yesterday. Come on, think.’ He started reaching into his pocket. ‘Without the notebook. I don’t think you wrote it down anyway.’
‘Uh.’ He prodded at his forehead as if pressing a button; I started to giggle. ‘How d’you stand being this dippy all the time? It’s like being another species.’
‘Thanks a lot. Come on, try harder. I’ll give you a clue: Lor—’
‘Oh yes. Sent me that article on films and books about Lorca. Brilliant. I’m going to add it to my website… once I can recall how the hell to do that.’ He looked at his watch and then opened the programme. ‘Aha, we’re starting with your favourite. Hush. Look, the one about the clown family.’
‘I know, I can’t wait.’ I flicked on to the cast pages. ‘All the same faces. Must feel like a family themselves.’
‘Yes, but can you imagine, stuck together on tour for months… Never mind listing the shows each dancer’s been in, they should list the other dancers they’ve been in - now that would push up the programme sales.’
‘God, you really are disgusting sometimes, Jeremy.’
‘But it’s what we’re all wondering, isn’t it?’
I turned the page: more faces, sultry or smiling. ‘Yeah, but imagine the upsets when the lists don’t tally, people denying or even forgetting…’
‘True. Perhaps some kind of grid would be more efficient.’
‘But this sweet chap, and where’s my favourite… Edina. I’m sure they don’t just…’
He shook his head. ‘Dancers tend to be comfortable with their sexuality, there’s nothing wrong with that. And not just dancers, probably most under-thirties these days.’
‘So you think I’m just a hung-up old prude.’
He squeezed my arm. ‘Nothing wrong with that either. Nando thinks it’s sweet.’
‘Oh yes, I was going to ask what you were doing listing my lovers for him.’
‘He doesn’t like mujeres faciles, must be the gypsy blood in him. They’re supposed to marry virgins, you know.’
‘Ah. So a man-slag himself but likes women to—’
‘Hang on there! There’s been plenty of ladies, yes, but mostly it’s been relationships with dancers in the group. Hasn’t shagged a fan in ages.’
So a lying man-slag.
‘Have you forgiven him yet?’ he asked.
My heart stopped. ‘What?’
‘Madrid. Buying the tickets before obtaining a progress report from Matron.’
‘We’ve had words. I explained a few… Doesn’t like criticism, does he?’
‘Can’t have you two falling out… only four weeks until he comes to stay, you know.’
‘Er… must be more like—’
‘No, he’ll stay at Paco’s for some of the rehearsal period but he’s hoping to move to us during the week before the show. How’s Javi going to like that?’
‘He’s not. But I’ve sort of told him, it’s okay.’
‘Sort of?’
‘Well… not the bit about you being away for some of it.’
‘Yol. Whatever happened to dame la verdad?’
‘Why don’t you just tell him?’ Charlotte asked.
‘Tell him what?’ It wasn’t just the sun and the sea; I’d sunk into a stupor out there, too in limbo, too distant - despite being geographically nearer to Javi and probably on the same line of latitude as Nando and Jeremy.
I ran my hand through the sand, enjoying the free if uncertain movement of my middle finger. I should have brought my flute out with me, started getting my technique back; it would have helped tether me to my real life. Whatever that was going to be.
‘Yolly? That you want to move to Granada. It might speed things up if he knew how you felt.’
How I felt. How did I feel? I still loved him. But somehow I didn’t feel a need to speed things up. We needed time together, without Violeta round every street corner, Jeremy next door. Even if he could have joined me here with the family, finding chances to be alone together… I watched the grains of sand flow through my fingers. Almería: shame we missed that. Perhaps he’d rearrange it soon, maybe add a couple of days together at that place he was talking about further along the coast. Before the Granada festival started in a few weeks’ time and he’d be playing almost every night until the middle of July.
‘How’s the tum?’
‘Paracetamol’s kicking in,’ I said.
‘Have you thought about going to the doctor? Hate to say it, Yolly, but this could all be a sign you’re heading towards an early menopause.’
Helen, fed up of me rifling her bag for painkillers at gigs, had once said the same thing. Told me there was some test you could buy. Great, I could put it in the cupboard next to my pregnancy ones. But I’d had that ovulation feeling at the Thanksgiving…
‘I’m not having that.’
‘Yes but if you are, wouldn’t it be worth knowing?’
I didn’t want to think about it, and anyway there was nothing I could do; they were hardly likely to sell the tests in Minorca, holiday-land of the happy young English family.
Simon was issuing instructions; Emma had an appealing theory that dominant males were the most likely to have kick-up teenagers, but for now the boys were at his feet, enthusiastically unwrapping something.
‘A dinghy?’
‘A little tent. Encourages them to get out of the sun a bit.’ It popped up within minutes; nothing like the old days, all those poles, strings and pegs… I lay back and turned over. ‘D’you remember how we used to have a tent up nearly all summer when we were little? Mummy used to get fed up about the grass.’ I closed my eyes. ‘Yolly? Sleepy thing, aren’t you.’
Mitch’s last postcard. From Ketchi… somewhere in Alaska. Not showing a tent, but a scary-faced totem pole. How cross Mum had been when she found he’d given a five-year-old a sharp knife to help him carve ours. There was possibly a tent in the background. It was the only card without a memory - but perhaps that too was there in the background.
I sat up. ‘I’m going in. Coming?’
‘Gotta hold the fort, Simon’s going off for some ice-creams.’
The waves were just foam and frills, not like the passionate pulling and clapping ones at Cádiz, where Jeremy hoped to be spending time with Nando at the end of July. Where Javi and I were welcome to join them, they’d both said, although that didn’t seem very likely…
‘Yolly!’ She waved a huge ice-cream in the air.
I waded out and was met by Phoebe, grabbing my wet arm with her
sandy little hands. ‘Come and eat it in the tent, we all are.’
‘Sorry Feebs, need to get dry and warm up.’
‘It’s boiling in the tent!’ she said.
I smiled and went over to my towel. Boiling in the tent…
Charlotte was trying to calm a Magnum-dispute between the twins.
‘Look, have mine, I’ll just have a bite or two of Mum’s,’ I said.
I lay back down. Turned my head. Turned my thoughts back to Almería, concentrated on trying to remember the name of that village Javi had mentioned. I pictured a cove, perhaps sandy with some pebbles. Rock pools Javi could show me. Looking up from the beach we would just see pine trees, donkeys in a field. Maybe a camper van or two. No tents. Or maybe a few. Boiling tents. Inside, the smell of sweaty grass, the sickly green light on faces…
‘Yolette, how many of the papas of your friends can make grass skirts, you think?’
A difficult question. I had just two friends, and I’d only met one of their Daddies - a very white man in stripes who didn’t look like he’d ever even sat on grass, let alone made anything with it. Secondly, as often with Papa, things were not being what they were called; what he was holding up was too knicker-showing to be a skirt, and wasn’t made of grass at all but the long leaves of that sprouty plant that Mummy was going to be angry about.
‘It’s boiling in here,’ I said.
‘Are you going to try it on?’
‘In my bedroom.’
‘But the idea is you come out and give Maman and Charlie a surprise.’
‘They’ve gone in.’
‘Have they?’ He looked cross or worried, it was hard to tell which. Or why. ‘I’ll help you. We have to be very careful or it will break.’
He started to lift off my dress.
‘No,’ I said, pushing it back down.
‘You’re sweaty in this, Yolette, don’t you want to be a cool girl of the jungle?’
He pulled the dress up again. It was round my neck, covering my face, he didn’t know about the buttons at the side… I started to feel trapped and flail around.
‘Shush, calm down. Let’s try again.’
He found the buttons. My dress was going to come off. Just my dress, to put on the leaf-grass not-skirt. But jungle girls don’t wear knickers, so maybe not just my dress…
‘Don’t! I know! I know what you do with Charlie! And I’m telling, so go away!’
I scrambled to the tent flap… but looked back at him. Why would I do that? There was no point in listening to him denying it, if that was what he was going to do. But perhaps I wanted him to say that he’d stopped. Later, much later, I found out he could have said that. But he just looked at me with wide eyes, slowly shaking his head. He never said it. Not then, or when he left that evening with the guitar cases and the big bag. Or when he came to visit us a few weeks later. Or in any of the other visits, stretching further and further apart until he did, completely, go away.
I opened my eyes, my heart beating. ‘Charlotte. It’s time to see Papa.’ I sat up. ‘Well, for me anyway. We’re going to meet when he comes back from his cruise next month.’
Her mouth was open in shock - an expression oddly similar to Papa’s in the tent.
‘Lunch at his flat, with his ladyfriend.’
‘On your—’
‘With Jeremy, of course.’
‘Yes.’ She put a hand on my arm. ‘Just don’t expect too much, Yolly. I don’t know if I ever could… but if you feel you can forgive—’
‘Well actually, I’m rather hoping he’ll forgive me.’
Chapter 27
volver vi to return, go back
‘There,’ I said.
‘Here? But where did I…?’
I pointed to the wall and tried not to hear those sounds.
‘Blimey, they could have cleaned up the blood.’ He was tracing the dark smear with his finger and chuckling.
I opened my bag. ‘I think I’ve got some water…’
‘No, I rather like it.’
Then he was doing some slow motion re-enactment.
‘Oh please. How can you find this funny.’
‘Easy, when you don’t remember a damn thing about it.’
I started up the steps to the road. Up where Jeremy had been carried in a lurching stretcher.
‘Yol! Where are you going?’
‘Home.’
‘No! Back down here, now!’
I hesitated, then flopped down the steps with my arms folded.
‘Come on, we’ve come this far… and okay, I’ll have to tell you - I booked a table at the Narrowboat. Or rather they booked us.’
Ting-ting and a whirring. This time not in my head. Jeremy pulled me over with a nervy excess of force. Especially considering the speed of the bike, which seemed to have slowed down to look at us, a lycra’d leg coming down to stop it. I was about to tell the insect-person on it to piss off.
‘I’m sorry, are you Jeremy Webster?’
‘Most of the time now, more or less.’
‘You’re looking so well… I’m a friend of Kev’s, he was so cut up about… Would you… We’d love it if you came to dinner with us one evening. Both of you, of course…’
‘That’s very kind, but no thank you. If I bump into - no let’s re-phrase that - see him down here, we’ll get a coffee at the barge cafe together, but…’ He put his arm round me. ‘Think we need to move on from this.’
They nodded at each other, and Kev’s friend waved us on to go under the bridge.
They’d been looking out for us, patted us as if we’d just run the marathon and led us to a table with a white tablecloth covering the uneven wood. A vase of red roses. A big card with a possibly tactless canal-view picture on the front. Champagne.
‘Like a wedding!’ One of the waitresses remarked. ‘You deserve it.’
Jeremy picked up my hand and kissed it. ‘She does.’
‘Not really,’ I said when we were on our own. ‘Look… you do realise it was my fault? I stepped in front of the cyclists and you grabbed me and took the impact.’
He sipped his champagne.
‘You didn’t know that, did you.’
‘Of course I did. You were forever… Oh please, don’t start crying, it was an accident. Enough of this. Look how much better I’m getting, especially since Madrid. You’ve been wonderful, but I think I needed a change. Going there did me a world of good.’
‘Stimulation. A place where the siestas you need are part of the culture. Or were they stimulating too?’
He put a hand to his face; Jeremy, blushing. ‘Don’t tease me, please.’
‘So you’re… well, properly together now, lovers.’
‘As together as we can be. It has to be a secret. But Toni and Pilar know and were lovely about it…’ He leaned forward and took my hand. ‘He’s so beautiful, Yol, you just can’t imagine.’
I could. ‘You’re both beautiful,’ I whispered back, picking up my glass and clinking his. ‘I’m really happy for you.’
Our meals arrived, but I looked at my watch and pulled out my phone. ‘Sorry, just got to try Javi again. He said he’d check about the weekend. I’m still hoping we might get away to the coast.’
‘Nice to have you back… even if you do stop me getting my marking done,’ Emma said, sipping her coffee over a third form comprehension. ‘Never saw either Helen or Kirsty in the staff room - think they thought it was a bit beneath them.’
‘That’s definitely Helen. Kirsty’s just a bit shy. Can’t complain though, they did a great job. But I’ve got to sort out who’s doing what for the concert.’
‘You are going to do one of your Martin-Benites compositions, aren’t you?’
‘If they learn the parts in time. How did the play go?’
‘Okay. It’s getting easier. So any plans for the weekend?’ She looked out of the window and jerked her head towards some girls walking past in sodden PE clothes. ‘Looks like they abandoned Sports Day practice and you�
�ll be getting a little flautist next lesson.’
‘Good. No, no plans. Yesterday I was still hoping to get a last-minute flight, but I couldn’t get hold of Javi. Times like this he just seems so far away.’
‘Why don’t you do what he did? Just go next weekend. If he’s busy you could always go and see your friend again.’
‘Liz. Yes, I could, and I could take my flute out and practise. Good idea.’
I’d become accustomed to him looking out for me, but he wasn’t there. Then I remembered something about Andrew picking him up for a meeting.
I went into my flat, took off my shoes and soaked cardigan. A good time to call Javi, but there was no reply again; perhaps he too had pupils to catch up on. I checked my phone: no missed messages. Checked my calendar: nothing to do with Javi on the June page at all, unless you counted the opening of the Granada festival on the twenty-fourth and the World Cup Spanish matches that Jeremy had scribbled in.
I padded through to the second bedroom. Why did I call it that? It had no bed and was unlikely to ever have an occupant; if and when I had a baby it would be a Granadino. The flights website, one at a horrible hour the next Friday morning…
Then the phone rang; I dashed through to the kitchen. But it was Jeremy.
‘Are you seeing Helen and Kirsty tonight?’
‘No, they moved it to Monday. How are you doing? Come over, you idiot.’ A pause.
‘Jeremy?’
‘Yes.’
I put the kettle on, pulled out the Laughing Cavalier and Madame Pompadour; I’d pushed them to the back of the cupboard when Javi was here and they didn’t look too happy about it. Tea bags in. Soya milk. Normal milk. Teaspoon. He was taking a heck of a time.
He arrived, staring at some pieces of paper in his hand. It looked like he’d finished off that article and had printed it off for me to read, but for some reason it was just single spaced like an email. Then I realised it was an email.
He looked up briefly. Eyes watering.
‘What’s the matter?’
He took my arm, sat me next to him on the sofa. Held me tightly against him, the papers in one hand. I waited to hear about Andrew’s cutting feedback, how writing was still so difficult. Poor Jeremy. I moved closer.
FLAMENCO BABY Page 24
