Nurse in the Sun

by Claire Rayner

  She went into lunch full of pleasurable anticipation of the weekend’s jaunt, and resolved not to let Sebastian feel at any time that she had let him down. She would impress this aristocratic old Spanish lady or her name wasn’t Isabel Cameron!

  She dressed with more than usual care on Sunday morning, rejecting two or three outfits as too flighty, or too revealing, or too sophisticated, settling in the end for a navy and white tailored dress of some severity. With white gloves and a neat white bag to complete her outfit, she looked, she told her reflection in the mirror, a perfectly suitable type to work in the hotel of an aristocrat - and then grimaced at herself and hurried down to meet Sebastian.

  He was waiting for her in the foyer and greeted her with an air of portentousness that at first amused her a good deal; she was beginning to realize that Sebastian nursed not only respect for his old mother, but a definite awe. She remembered fleetingly the way Jaime Mendoza had talked of “the Señora” on the day she had arrived at the Cadiz, and for the first time felt a sharp twinge of anxiety. Was this visit perhaps more than a piece of kindness to an old lady (which was how she had seen her trip to Valldemosa up to now). Was it perhaps a confrontation with a formidable personality which could be embarrassing at best, or job-losing at worst?

  She looked at Jaime, standing behind his desk in the posture of alert and very responsible managership he always wore when Sebastian was anywhere about, and he looked at her for a moment and then looked away, almost as though he were embarrassed, and her uneasiness grew. Clearly, Jaime saw some special significance in this visit; perhaps she might indeed come back to the Cadiz tonight with her marching orders.

  “Do I look right, Sebastian?” she asked anxiously. “I tried to choose something that would be suitable - ”

  “Indeed, you look very suitable,” he said, and smiled at her. “Sometimes a hat is considered necessary on formal occasions, but since this occasion, though of some significance, is not to be unduly formal, then a hat is not a matter of great importance. Mendoza! We return tonight. If there are any severe problems during the course of the day, you know of course where I can be reached. Now, Isabella, we depart - ”

  Jaime held the door open for them himself, hurrying round his desk to wave the hall porter away so that he could perform the office, and as they went through he looked at Isabel with a gaze of such mournful intensity that she was again embarrassed. From the beginning she had seen him as a joke, pure and simple, and regarded his attempts to flatter her as so much nonsense; but looking at him today she thought perhaps he really had wanted to get to know her better, and was hurt because she accepted Sebastian’s advances while rejecting his own.

  “God help us!” she told herself, climbing into the passenger seat of the big car as Sebastian held the door open for her, “it would be all too easy to have my head turned here! All these people fussing over me - it’s only because I look different to the local girls; that’s all. They’re being dazzled by carroty hair - ”

  Sebastian was driving himself today, and he handled the car with great skill, sweeping it round corners and along the broad boulevards, already filling with strollers early though it was, with smoothness and ease. He spoke little until they were out of the town and its suburbs, and moving across the flat plain towards the blue green mountains thrusting themselves craggily against the vivid blue sky.

  And when he did start to talk, it was on a very superficial level, pointing out interesting sights they passed, from simple things like huge fig-laden cactus clumps or extraordinarily gnarled and ancient olive trees, to modern hotel blocks or pretty farmhouses. And her uneasiness grew, for she was now even more convinced that she was to be displayed to Señora Garcia, to have her suitability for her job assessed by the ultimate authority. Why else should Sebastian be so very neutral, so very correct and remote? Even for him, this morning’s behaviour was noticeable for its restraint.

  But as the drive went on, she began to relax. After all, what was the worst that could happen? As she’d told herself before during this summer on the island, all that anyone could do would be to fire her. If she were sent home, well, so what? She could return to her job at the Royal whenever she wanted, she knew that; Matron would welcome her with open arms, for well trained theatre sisters were hard to come by. And if going back to the Royal meant the misery of seeing Jay again, she’d have to put up with it. And anyway, she didn’t have to go back to the Royal even if the old lady waiting for them up there in her mountain village did decide that she wanted to get rid of her enfermera. There were plenty of jobs, plenty of opportunities for a Royal trained nurse -

  So she relaxed, and began to watch the scenery with the usual pleasure she found in the island’s beauty, the greenish grey leaves of the olive trees, the pink and blue and yellow washed houses, the goats belled and tethered, the Don Quixote type windmills.

  There had been a long silence between them as the big car swallowed the miles and the mountains marched nearer, filling more and more of the windscreen-framed view with their massy shapes. The flat fields had become fewer giving way to narrow terraces of earth on which olive and almond trees fought for ascendancy, when he said, “Look back.”

  Obediently, she turned her head, and then swivelled round even more, her breath catching with delight at what she saw. They had clearly been climbing steadily, for now the plain lay behind them, undulating with colour variations, and beyond it, in a soft haze of heat and smoke was Palma, edged by its silvery blue cloak of bay, and crowned with the cathedral. The building seemed to ride above the city in a bubble of air, its great spires and towers floating like silk banners, and she marvelled at the incredible skills and dreams and imaginings of the medieval craftsmen who had built it. To create such a building today, with all the aids of modern science, would be achievement enough; that it had been built so many hundreds of years ago said almost more than could be comprehended of the quality of those men of the past.

  Haltingly she tried to say some of this to Sebastian, and he turned his attention briefly from the road and smiled at her, that melting rare smile of his, and said “I’m happy. It is important to me that you should have this feeling for my ancestors. For they were among the builders of the cathedral and the city - of the entire island, in many ways. I am happy you understand. But, I knew of course, that you did. Why else this journey, hmm? Ah - see ahead there? Above those terraces? There is Valldemosa - my Valldemosa. To me, it looks not as though it were built, but as though it grew out of the rocks - ”

  The houses and churches and the great convent buildings climbed away up the side of the mountain, curling into the clefts of rock trustingly and so elegantly that she knew at once what he meant, and nodded her agreement, and he turned his head and smiled at her again, and she smiled back, feeling better than she had since leaving the hotel.

  And then, they were there, sweeping along a great yellow dusty road edged with tall trees that was a cool airy avenue that finished in a small central plaza, and he eased the car in behind another much smaller one and switched off the engine before turning to her.

  “So, I think perhaps we park the car here and look a little at the village before we go to my house. Madre does not expect us for perhaps another half an hour, so - we use the time to visit Valldemosa itself, yes?”

  He helped her out of the car, and for a moment she shivered a little in the morning air, for bright and strong as the sunshine was, still there was a bit of ice in the air, and he smiled and took her elbow in that warm protective grip.

  “You feel the breath of the mountains, yes? Even now, in the height of the summer it is always here cool, and chill, and comfortable. Below in the plains the heat can sit on your back like a grinning monkey, but up here, always peace and cool and comfort - ”

  They walked through the town, small and neat and pretty, and she looked about her with real pleasure. The houses with their tiled plaques depicting some favourite saint, carefully affixed beside each front door; the tiny shops tucked away b
ehind small shuttered facades; the gardens of the convent, filled with the affectionate greenness of trees and shrubs; the broad paved courtyard of the convent itself with its well, its old ladies in shawls selling incredibly delicate crochet work and embroidery - it was all enchanting.

  And finally, he took her to the inevitable bodega, to drink a glass of wine (“to take the mountain chill from your bones,” he said, smiling down at her) and she was even more enchanted, for in the centre of the vast room they came into as they ducked under the low lintel of the doorway was an ancient well, with a huge bucket-bedecked wheel above it, and black beams and white walls and rough-hewn wooden tables and chairs.

  “It’s so absurdly story book!” she said, standing in the middle of the room and staring about her, at the vast barrels let into the walls, and cut away to provide shelves which were loaded with dusty green wine bottles. “I mean, there were pictures of places like this in my books when I was a child, but I never thought they really existed.”

  “Indeed, they do! This one is a little spoiled, perhaps - you see? The cheap souvenirs, the rubbish they sell - ”

  He pointed to tables laden with music boxes shaped like grand pianos, with dolls dressed in flamenco costumes, and toy bulls with miniature banderillas in their shoulders, and grimaced.

  “Well, perhaps - they are rather ugly, I agree. But the room itself - nothing could spoil that.”

  “No. We drink, yes? You will leave it to me?”

  “As long as it isn’t too heady,” she said. “It’s not much after eleven in the morning after all, and there’s still your mother to face - I mean, I’d not like to meet her in a state of incomplete control of myself!”

  He laughed. “You need not fear. What I bring you is good - now, you see there in the corner? Go in there and sit and I come to you with our collation - ”

  In the corner was a classic Spanish fireplace, a small room with a hole in the ceiling beneath which burned, on a stone slab in the middle of the floor, a great log fire. Round the walls of the little room were settles with goatskins thrown over them, and she settled herself into one corner, breathing in the scent of wood smoke and trying to push down the uneasiness that was threatening to rise in her again.

  He brought two glasses of amber wine, and a plate of sweet soft almond biscuits, and they raised their glasses at each other, and sipped, and she let the wine slide over her tongue and exclaimed her delight at the taste.

  “It’s - what does it taste of? It’s awfully sweet, but it’s like - oh, I don’t know. Bottled sunshine?”

  “That is an elegant way to describe it!” he said. “It is the local muscatel - the village is famous for it. The taste is of the grapes - like sipping flowers and fruit, is it not?”

  The next half hour went by very swiftly as the wine warmed her to a rosy glow, and relaxed her so that incipient uneasiness quite melted away. And when he looked at his watch and said “Ah - it is near to noon, and we are expected, yes? I think we go now - ” she stood up quite happily, and followed him from the bar with smiles and nods for the people who wished her a soft “Buenos diás!” as she passed them, and felt no nervousness at all. But by the time they reached the car again and were driving along the narrow twisting streets of the village, the tension was returning, and she sat silently as he drove on, feeling the warmth of the wine shivering away to be replaced by nervousness.

  The car swerved sharply, and she held on to the door as it slid into darkness and then out again into the cool green light of a paved courtyard. They had driven under an archway, and she peered out in fascination. The courtyard was not very big, but beautifully balanced, with the inevitable well in the middle, complete with winch and chain and bucket, and on each side the buildings rose to end in a steeply sloping roof under which a long balustraded gallery ran right round. The windows below the gallery were shuttered with green painted wooden slats, and everywhere there were plants, vines and bay trees and shrubs in pots.

  The total effect was utterly delightful and when he had opened the door of the car for her and helped her out, she said impulsively, “But this is beautiful! How can you bear to be in Palma, even in such a modern and splendid hotel as the Cadiz, when you have a home like this?”

  “Because I must earn my living, for myself and for my family,” he said, and led the way across the uneven stones of the courtyard towards a door on the far side. “To have such a home is, I agree, a delightful matter - but people must eat, and I as the man of this household must be responsible for this. The days when our land could maintain us are long gone, Isabella. But I do not distress myself too much. My mother lives here, and I can come to refresh myself from time to time.

  “And I can think of the day when I bring here, for always another lady to care for the house and the people of it. Yes?”

  “Yes,” she said, and could think of nothing more to say. For they had gone through the door he was holding open, and were standing in a wide room with a richly tiled floor gleaming with age and polish, and walls on which the most splendid of Persian carpets hung, with heavy, almost black, carved wood furniture, and white walls to set off the whole. The total effect was a restrained richness, of years of cultured taste culminating in the creation of the perfect setting for a life of peace and scholarliness and art.

  “You like it?” he said softly, and she could only nod and stare, but he seemed contented with her reaction, and led her further into the house. They went into two other rooms, one a dining room, rich with brass ornaments and showing its Moorish influences strongly in the fretted metal of the low hanging lamps and the low couches about the walls; the other a more relaxed and comfortable but still very rich sitting room.

  “And now, I take you to the sitting room of my mother. She awaits us there, as always -”

  He led her back, through the rooms they had already seen, and across the courtyard to a door on the far side, and this time it was opened for them by a middle-aged woman in a heavy black dress, her hair pulled back severely from her face.

  “Buenos diás, Señor,” she said and her voice was soft and pleasant to listen to. Sebastian nodded at her, and spoke in crisp Spanish, and she answered in the same soft tones, and then he turned to Isabel, taking her elbow to lead her through the door the woman was holding invitingly open.

  “My mother is well, and waiting for us. I saw her last night, of course - but I left for Palma this morning too early to disturb her. But she is anxious to see us. Come.”

  Through a narrow passage way, across a small inner hall, through another door, and into a room so cluttered, so filled with furniture and pictures and plants and rugs that it made Isabel feel breathless, as though the weight of years was pressing on her shoulders. She saw with one swift comprehensive glance that this was because of what the room contained, for the pictures, the photographs of men on horseback, women in stiff studio poses, children in communion dresses, eyes soulfully uplifted above the folded hands, clearly spanned the past half century. The ornaments that crammed the crowded little tables, the cushions and embroidered covers - all reminded her powerfully of her own grandmother’s room, the one in which she had spent the last bedridden years of her life, with all her memories clutched round her like a blanket.

  Across the room was a window, open and unshuttered, and looking out onto a pretty walled garden which was a riot of greenery and colour. And sitting in front of the window in a high backed chair, her feet on a footstool and her legs wrapped in a rug was the most wrinkled woman Isabel could ever remember seeing.

  Her hair was as black as Sebastian’s own, and strained back from her forehead so tightly that it seemed to be pulling out at the roots at the line where it met her forehead. Beneath it, her eyes were dark and very bright, but all round them, the skin that was as sallow and olive in tone as Sebastian’s was creased and twisted into a myriad lines, so that for one irreverent moment, Isabel found herself thinking of her as a very old and gnarled walnut -

  Sebastian had left her standing at the do
or to move immediately over to the old lady and kiss her on both cheeks, and murmur to her, and then, even as Isabel started to feel uncomfortable posed there in the doorway, he turned and beckoned to her, while still speaking softly to the old lady. She nodded, and stared very directly at Isabel, listening but keeping her mouth firmly closed.

  Isabel moved forwards, a little awkwardly, as Sebastian broke into English.

  “Isabella, I present you to my mother, who bids me welcome you to her home and thanks you for your company.”

  The old lady jerked her chin slightly, indicating a chair, and Sebastian stepped forwards and pulled the chair out a little, so that Isabel could sit down, and said, “My mother asks that you make yourself comfortable, and wishes to know whether you will take a little wine, or perhaps coffee with her?”

  Looking at the old lady, sitting there staring at her unblinkingly with her lips still tightly closed, Isabel wondered wildly for a moment whether she was communicating with her son by telepathy, and then almost giggled aloud, for the whole thing was becoming more and more story book, as Sebastian added, in exactly the same tone of voice, “I would suggest you say you would like coffee, Isabella, for this would be proper.”

  “Then indeed, I’ll take some coffee, if I must,” she said, and tentatively smiled at the old lady, who merely sat and looked back at her.

  Sebastian spoke to her again, and this time she nodded briefly, and he picked up a small bell from the table beside the old lady’s chair and rang it, and so quickly that it was obvious she had been standing outside the door waiting for it, the housekeeper in her black dress came in, bearing a tray in her hands.

  The next ten minutes were filled with the ritual of coffee pouring, of offers of milk and sugar, biscuits and cake, and then the housekeeper was gone, and the three of them were sitting solemnly staring at each other and sipping from the very delicate china cups the thick black brew they had been given.

  And then started what was for Isabel the most extraordinary half hour she had ever spent in her life. The old lady started to question in a cracked rather deep voice, never taking her eyes from Isabel’s face, and showing no response of any sort to the answers Isabel gave and which Sebastian again translated.