The Summer of the Spanish Woman

by Catherine Gaskin

  ‘Lady Patricia, allow me to present myself. I am Paulo Fernandez Medina. On behalf of my family I welcome you to Jerez.’

  ‘Enchantée ‒ no, that’s French. Forgive me, señor. You will find us sadly lacking in Spanish. May I present my daughter, Charlotte.’

  My hand was also taken and raised, as he bowed. ‘Miss Charlotte … my pleasure.’ He had no difficulty pronouncing my name. His English was very nearly accentless.

  My mother was confused, as well as tired. ‘Your name again, sir?’

  ‘Paulo Fernandez. Husband of Lady Blodmore’s aunt, the Marquesa de Pontevedra. Forgive this poor reception, Lady Patricia. There was very little time to prepare. Richard Blodmore’s letter did not reach us until yesterday, and at the same time the telegram arrived here. Paco, of course, didn’t know what to do with it. But there is food waiting. No doubt you are very weary. I have given orders that rooms be prepared, but you must expect deficiencies. The house has been unused for many years.’

  My mother shook her head in confusion. ‘But you ‒ you don’t live here?’

  A wintry smile touched his lips. It occurred to me then that he had given us no smile in greeting. ‘No, Lady Patricia. This house belonged to your father only. I have … I have my own house.’

  My mother looked at him in astonishment. ‘But you are here to … to receive us. It is after three o’clock in the morning! You have waited so long …’

  He bowed slightly, as if to dismiss any idea of discomfort. ‘It is my duty ‒ no, my pleasure, as head of my house, to receive you and welcome you to Jerez. The hour does not matter. Doña Elena has also written, telling us of your … your kindness to her. I hope you will not find us lacking in gratitude or manners.’

  The import of the words finally sank into my mother. ‘You are … you are, then, the Marqués de Santander.’

  ‘To you, Lady Patricia, and the whole of Jerez, I am Don Paulo. We are simple people here. We much look forward to visits of strangers. I hope you will have a most pleasant stay among us. I am always at your service.’ He turned towards the table where a tray and glasses and a decanter were set. ‘May I offer you a copita ‒ a little cup, as we say here. In my opinion, this wine is among the best my bodega produces …’

  He poured four glasses, gravely handing one to my mother and to me, and then, after only a fractional hesitation, he brought one to Nanny, who had remained silent and in the background. ‘Oh, no, sir. I never touch it.’

  He shook his head and for a moment I thought his smile was genuine. ‘You will find … ma’am… that all of us here “touch it”. It is our life. Sherry is the wine of Jerez.’

  My mother jerked herself upright. ‘Oh, forgive me. I had forgotten. Marqués … Don Paulo, this is Nanny.’

  ‘Ah, another English nanny joins the ranks. You will find many here in Jerez. We all learn our first English from them.’

  ‘Irish, sir, if you please.’

  ‘Ah, how stupid of me. A thousand pardons. Lady Patricia, do sit down. A meal has been ready since ten o’clock, but still there will be a wait. In Spain, there is always a short wait, which we fill most pleasantly with our wine.’

  The big hound went to sniff at my mother, and then came to me. I put my hand on the silken ears, the great heavy folds of the muzzle, felt the wetness of her nose. My hand was rasped by her rough tongue. ‘Pepita, mind your manners!’ Don Paulo said. She turned her head, and then, as if ashamed, her great body slumped down, and her head went between her enormous paws.

  ‘What breed is she? ‒ I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a dog before. So beautiful … so gentle.’

  ‘She is a Spanish Mastiff. Hardly more than a puppy yet. Doesn’t know her manners. One of my sons gave her to me. You think she is beautiful, do you, Miss Charlotte?’

  ‘She is beautiful.’

  ‘Then you shall have her. You can take her back to Ireland with you. She is yours. A remembrance of Jerez.’

  A frown came to my mother’s brow, but then she smiled and held her glass forward to be refilled. ‘It is a marvellous wine. Somehow the sherry at home never tasted quite like this …’

  ‘Only in Jerez does the wine taste “quite like this”, Lady Patricia. You must enjoy it in its home while you may.’

  My mother laughed. ‘Then I shall be enjoying a great deal of it, Don Paulo. There seems to be some misapprehension. You do understand that we have not come on a visit? We have come to stay.’

  My mother’s hand remained where it was, as if frozen momentarily by the look that came and vanished almost instantly on Don Paulo’s face. His lips curved upwards, in the semblance of a smile. ‘A visit may be any length you choose, Lady Patricia. It may last a short time ‒ it may last a lifetime. In Spain, there is always time. But we are sorry to see our guests depart.’

  * *

  We hastily washed off some of the dust, and Don Paulo came with us to the dining-room when we were summoned. The room, like the one we had left, was sparsely furnished in the same heavy dark oak; it had a similar carved mantel. We were served, in a flustered, clumsy fashion by the manservant, Paco, while his wife, Serafina, brought dishes from the kitchen. Don Paulo refused food, just sipped his wine, and as hungry as we were, it was difficult to eat under the gaze of those hooded, secretive eyes. Nanny, for once sat with us; no other arrangement was possible that night, but clearly she was not comfortable. When the door leading to the kitchen opened we could hear the ceaseless talk of the driver and Serafina, the chatter of the two boys; there was laughter as the wine took hold. Everyone was obviously eating with gusto, and Andy was at the table with them. I realised then that Andy would be the first of us to learn Spanish.

  There was fish, and chicken, and beautiful pale, fat shrimps, and vegetables we had never tasted before, cooked in a way we had never imagined vegetables cooked. It was delicious. ‘All done in olive oil,’ Nanny said, while refusing most things. She grimly ate bread and butter.

  ‘Nanny,’ Don Paulo said, ‘you will get used to it. You must. Where would Spain be without its olives?’ He spoke to her gently as one would to a child. His colder, more formal tones were reserved for my mother and me.

  At last it was all cleared away, and Paco poured port for Don Paulo. My mother signalled that she also would have her glass filled. I watched her apprehensively. I dreaded the results of the combination of fatigue and hunger and the many glasses of wine. But Don Paulo did not linger. It was after four o’clock in the morning.

  He rose. He was not as tall as I had at first thought. It was his presence which was so powerful, I thought ‒ though he had great breadth of shoulders and chest. How old he was I couldn’t say; the dark eyes looked as if they had seen a thousand years, but there was great vigour in his body.

  ‘I will bid you good-night, Lady Patricia.’ Her hand was raised near his lips. ‘Miss Charlotte.’ He bowed. ‘Nanny.’

  A sense of panic seemed to penetrate my mother’s dazed fatigue. She half rose from her chair. ‘But when … when are we to see you again, Don Paulo? There are affairs to discuss … I was told …’ She looked helplessly at me. ‘Oh, Charlie, you remember all the things the solicitors said we were to ask.’

  Don Paulo bowed with finality, cutting the conversation short. ‘I am to be found at the bodega most days, Lady Patricia. If not there … then some other place. Someone always knows. One does not hide very well in Jerez.’

  ‘But when?’

  He shrugged lightly. ‘When you are rested. There is plenty of time.’

  He started towards the door, and Paco sprang to open it. Pepita, the mastiff, who had lain at his feet during the meal, rose also and went with him. Don Paulo turned. ‘Pepita, I have bidden you stay. Stay! Quedate!’ He stared at the dog and pointed to my feet. ‘You will stay with Doña Carlota. Pepita!’ The expression on the dog’s face was as unbelieving as my own must have been.

  ‘Oh, no!’ I said. ‘You can’t have meant it, Don Paulo. I couldn’t take such a wonderful dog from you. She is o
bviously devoted to you.’

  ‘Then she will show her devotion by doing as she is commanded. Pepita!’ He pointed once again at me. ‘You will stay with Doña Carlota. Go now! Go now!’ For almost a minute Don Paulo waited for his order to be obeyed. Finally, sadly, with only the faintest whine of protest, the mastiff turned, and came to me. With a great grunt she lay down on the floor beside my chair. She received her commendation in Spanish from Don Paulo. ‘You will have to learn English, Pepita.’

  Then he was gone. Paco went ahead to light his way through the passages. We listened to the two sets of footsteps fading into the distance. Pepita whined again, getting to her feet once more. She went to the door, listening to the last sounds of her master.

  ‘How could he?’ I said. ‘The poor dog is broken-hearted. How could he give her away just like that! Pepita …! Come, girl. Here … Pepita.’ She responded to the tone of my voice, returned to me, gazed at me with her huge dark eyes which pleaded for affection, for some understanding of this separation from her master. I stroked the silken head, huge and splendid. ‘Good girl … good girl. He’ll want you back, you’ll see. In the meantime, you had best make up your mind to wait.’ I kept on stroking her, feeling the contact with the animal as a sop to my desperate, swamping feeling of homesickness. I thought if I stopped talking to the dog, I might weep instead, and for my mother’s sake I could not do that.

  ‘It’s my opinion,’ Nanny said, ‘that that man would give away anything if it pleased him. He wanted to put you out, Miss Charlie. Upset you. He’s the sort who’d give away his own children if there was something to be gained by it. Pity it’s such a terrible dog. Ugly great brute, isn’t it?’

  ‘Pepita is a beautiful dog,’ my mother said. ‘And we don’t need your opinion of Don Paulo, Nanny.’ She poured herself more port. ‘But obviously we are not exactly welcome. All this talk about a visit. This is our house, isn’t it? Don’t we own part of his bodega? And isn’t there a vineyard? Why shouldn’t we stay? That man can’t drive us out. Come to welcome us, had he? Come to scare us off! That’s what he’d come for.’

  I looked around the room. It was very large, and the candlelight did not reach to all its spaces. The walls were bare, showing patches of mildew. There were no curtains at the windows. ‘I wish … I wish it weren’t so big. We’ll need so many things … servants …’

  ‘Listen to them,’ my mother jerked her head towards the kitchen. ‘We have servants.’

  ‘We have very little money.’

  ‘We’ll manage.’ She drank deeply. ‘There has to be good wine in the cellar. That Paco man didn’t get this in a cantina.’

  Nanny gave a little whine, rather like the mastiff’s. ‘I wish we’d stayed at home.’

  Distantly we heard the rumble of carriage wheels, and the sharp sound of horses’ hooves striking cobbles. The sound died, and then we heard the crash as the heavy doors were thrown together and closed, the protest of the metal as the bolts were driven home by Paco. It left a silence that was unnerving. I thrust my glass towards my mother. ‘I’d like some port, please.’

  Nanny glared. ‘What next?’

  ‘Next, Nanny, we’ll go to bed. One thing at a time. Didn’t Don Paulo say there was always time in Spain?’ I laughed shakily. I realised I sounded like my mother. That frightened me also.

  * *

  We were shown upstairs to rooms with big brass bedsteads, and Serafina brought hot water in Wedgwood jugs. Then she, with a grin of pleasure, beckoned Nanny to show her a large room, painted in flaking white. ‘Para la Nanny,’ she said. ‘Para los niños.’

  Suddenly I understood. ‘For the children. It’s the nursery, Nanny.’

  ‘Well, then, Miss Charlie, you’d best be finding yourself a husband, hadn’t you?’ came the dry answer.

  The beds were made up with linen sheets which bore yellow marks along all the creases, as if they had lain in the cupboard, waiting, for a very long time. Our rooms opened on yet another courtyard where the palm fronds rustled at the height of the windows. ‘Three courtyards so far I’ve counted in this place,’ I said despairingly. ‘Why did Grandfather have such a huge house? It must have stood empty all these years, and yet he never said anything about it. Just Serafina and Paco taking care of it ‒ probably one of their parents before them. I hate the thought of opening all those doors. These rooms are hardly furnished, as it is.’

  My mother spoke with unexpected clarity as she halted on her way to her own room. ‘We’ll only open each door as we come to it, my darling. Only one at a time. We’ve come to the land of sunshine and oranges and wine. And jasmine. Oh, Charlie, do you smell the jasmine?’

  I sat down on the bed, and stroked the mastiff’s head; she thrust her face at me trustingly. She was prepared to wait, she seemed to say, until her master came to take her back. In the meantime, she was mine. Then at last, with a grunt, she sank down and put her head between her paws.

  ‘Yes, we’d better go to bed, Pepita. It will all seem different tomorrow ‒ today. Jasmine and oranges and wine. There will have to be a bit more than that. God, I wish I were back at Clon ‒’ I stopped the words, even though there was only the dog to hear them. I must never say them; my mother must never hear me say them.

  The dawn light was breaking over the tiled rooftops on the town before I laid my head on the musty pillow in its Irish linen cover. I seemed to sleep only seconds before the booming of the angelus bell sounded, it seemed, right over my head. The notes were echoed by the bells of all the churches all across the town, deep, beautiful resonant sounds, shallow brazen discordant sounds, not one stroke matching another, as if every clock in the town was set at a different time. And through it came the homely familiar sounds of cocks crowing from courtyards and alleyways, from little pens near the houses of the poor, and the stable-yards of the rich. I sighed, and stretched and so did the dog on the floor beside me. Then we both settled back into sleep.

  I woke to the harsh bars of sunlight falling across my face through the wooden louvred shutters. For the first seconds there was total confusion; I had dreamed again of a great white stallion and a man on a distant shore, the opening of a gate that led to a rose garden. ‘Richard …?’ I sprang up and went and threw open the shutters, letting the full blast of the Andalucian sun fall on my face and neck and arms. It was strong and alien, far from that soft and misty shore. The dog touched my hand then, reminding me that it was late; she had been waiting, unfed and uncomplaining. I looked down at her beautiful, sad square face. She was real, and so was the sun. I had to stop dreaming.

  II

  We opened only a few doors that first day, and closed them again, anxious to forget what we saw. Some rooms were empty, some only partially furnished. Some doors stuck so that it needed Andy’s weight to push against them. Inside we found dust, sometimes an unpacked box or two. Serafina brought her mother, an old woman who inhabited one of the many rooms off the kitchen area; she had, it seemed, lived in the house when my grandfather had bought it. Her eyes were bright with interest, and she produced a few words of English with pride. ‘He stay one year. He buy things. Then he go away. I stay. Serafina stay. He never come again, but he pay …’

  We had given Serafina a little money, and she produced two cousins who began with her the immense task of sweeping, and beginning to wash all the marble floors. We listened to their incessant chatter, their laughter about things we could not understand. But the cousins would only stay a few days; we could not afford to keep them on full time.

  ‘Though heaven knows we need them. But we’ll have to manage just with Paco and Serafina. I suppose at this late stage I’d better try to turn my hand to a few things,’ my mother observed. ‘It won’t hurt us to make beds and do our own rooms. We can’t expect Serafina to do everything.’ I knew she meant well, and would try when she remembered to. But all her life she had been the sort who stepped out of her clothes and left them. Someone else, sooner or later, had always come and picked them up.

  We se
lected a few rooms we would try to make presentable, as few as we could manage with. For the rest, the doors must remain closed.

  ‘There’s stabling for twenty horses, Lady Pat,’ Andy told her. ‘But it’ll take more than a coat of whitewash to make the place fit again. There’s repairs needed. I can turn my hand to a bit of carpentry, nothing fancy though. But it’d need a real team of men to do a proper job.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to manage with whitewash, Andy,’ I said. ‘There’s simply no money for anything else. These two boys ‒ Serafina’s nephews, I think they are. They might stay on and give you a bit of help. We shouldn’t have to pay them much.’

  ‘Pepe and Jaime,’ Andy sighed. ‘Just try getting rid of them, Miss Charlie. They’re like fleas. They’ll stay. I think they’d stay for the meals they get in the kitchen and a roof over their heads. Might as well be back in Ireland, for all the difference there is here. The poor have nothing. The rich …’ His eyes swept over the marble expanse of the entrance hall, the curved marble sweep of the stairs, the carved wood of the banister and the big doors. ‘The Earl had some madness in him, buying this place. This is for the rich.’

  ‘He was fairly well off then,’ my mother said. We talked this way now in Andy’s presence. He had become part of our family, a link with home. ‘It was twenty-five years ago, remember, Andy. Before … before he began to send all the money he could spare to London ‒ to make more money.’

  ‘I remember it,’ Andy said. ‘Five years old I would have been, and all the talk about him going to marry the Spanish Woman, and then him staying away so long and coming back without her. So much talk there was … and they’ve been talking about it ever since.’

  ‘Nanny remembers all that,’ my mother said. ‘She was a young nursery maid then. When she wanted to frighten me, she would tell me that if I weren’t good my father would never come back again. What an age ago it seems. Times were good then …’ she sighed. ‘Charlie, go and ask Paco for the keys to the cellar. If I know my father at all, he laid in good wines as well as linen sheets …’