My mother fell back, a little nervously. In Carlos’s eyes I saw the dwindling of that look he had always until now given me, the look of affectionate indulgence one might give a playful kitten ‒ or a young child. What came to replace it, I was not exactly sure, but I knew that our period of uncritical acceptance was over. We had not had even the brief honeymoon young lovers are entitled to. Something had been stripped from me that day which could never be replaced. I was scarred and pitted with the wounds my grandfather had inflicted, and had had inflicted on him, like the face of the woman in the castle.
Ella está viva.
Chapter Five
I
My first son was born after a labour that was agonising, but mercifully short ‒ so short that it was easy to forget it. Carlos took both things for granted; the first and most important thing being that the child should be a son; secondly that I should produce him with as little fuss as possible, and that I should recover my strength in hours, rather than weeks, which was the case with most gently-bred ladies. He waltzed the baby around the room in his arms, pausing to kiss me on the forehead.
‘But you are not like other women, querida. Did I not tell you that you are the stuff of the brave bulls? This afternoon my father will come to visit his grandchild. You will be ready to receive him.’ It was spoken not as an order, but with the simple assurance that nothing else but obedience was possible. I was only a woman, after all.
Nanny, however, asserted her rights. ‘Don Carlos, that child is a few hours old. You’ll make him sick swinging him all over the place like that.’
‘Nonsense, Nanny,’ Carlos said. ‘The child is as strong as a horse, already. And look, he does not mew like a kitten. He laughs! You see, already he knows his father.’
Carlos was always to be a winning father to his children, in the moments he remembered he was a father ‒ always affectionate, laughing, taking little responsibility for the way they grew up. The discipline would not come from him, but from Nanny, myself and Maria Luisa. He expected obedient, intelligent, well-behaved children, but he didn’t want the bother of helping them to become those things. My mother, as she watched this proud waltz around the room, seemed to want to carry it on herself. ‘He is wonderful! Beautiful! A son ‒ oh, Charlie, dear, a son!’
There was a little catch of heartbreak in her sigh of pleasure. How desperately sons had been needed in our family, and in the family of Don Paulo. And of we Blodmores, only I knew that my grandfather had had, at last, a son, the son he had longed for, the child who had lived and died in two days in that castle on the rock of Arcos. I nursed my healthy, laughing infant at my breast, and sighed myself, but with gratitude. ‘He has the eyes of the Blodmores,’ my mother said.
‘Better for all of us, Lady Pat, if he looked exactly like my father.’ But Carlos still smiled, proud and satisfied. There would be plenty more, his manner implied, who would look back at the beholder with the dark eyes of the Fernandez family.
Yes, it was all over successfully, but the months in between had not been so easy. I had kept it easy on the surface, as much as I could. The very fact that the baby had been born here, in the house in the Plaza de Asturias, had been against my wishes, but good sense had made it inevitable. I had wanted to be at the vineyard house, the place I loved. Carlos’s pride had forbidden it; he needed a palacio, even the ruin of one, for his son to be born in, and besides, when the time came I would need the midwife and doctor quickly. I had longed for the peace of the place that had become my beloved refuge, the ministering hands of Conceptión, the smiles of Antonio. It had been inevitable in the months of our marriage that we had come to stay more often at the Plaza de Asturias than the vineyard house. The journey each day, to and fro, had been too long to make to the vineyard house ‒ Carlos had had nowhere convenient to return for the long, late lunch and the siesta. During the rainy months of the winter the roads were bad, and the track up to the house on that albariza soil had become dangerously slippery. My mother, driving out one day in a ramshackle dog cart she had acquired, had almost overturned trying to get the horse up the slope on which his feet could find no purchase. She had ended up abandoning the cart, and leading the horse up to the house, the two of them liberally caked with grey mud. ‘Charlie, the first spell of dry weather I’m going to send Andy out here to move you into the town. It’s downright dangerous.’
‘I’m perfectly all right,’ I said. ‘I like it here.’ It was true. The house still enchanted me, the big light white rooms, almost bare of furniture, the fires that Conceptión kept constantly replenished, the deep quiet and tranquillity that surrounded me, all of these, I thought, were good for the child.
‘You may be all right,’ my mother snapped, in a rare mood of peevishness. ‘But what if you have an accident, and harm the child?’ She had been more shaken by her experience than she admitted. She sat and drank freely from the brandy she had brought with her.
‘The child … yes, the baby.’ The child was all important. It was the reason Carlos had married me. If I did not give him a healthy child the fault would be mine.
‘Besides,’ my mother added, ‘Carlos has been staying too many nights at the Plaza de Asturias ‒ or supposed to be staying. He comes to supper, then he goes out “for a little visit” he says. You’ll have to watch him, Charlie. You’ll have to be there.’ She wasn’t very subtle in her hints of what I already suspected. But when Carlos had married me, he had made no promise of absolute fidelity ‒ and especially to a wife who was heavily pregnant.
So reluctantly I had returned to Jerez to live, to await the birth of the baby. As much as the vineyard house itself, I missed the daily inspection of the small venture I had persuaded Carlos and my mother to let me undertake. Really, it had needed only my mother’s permission, and the help of the little money she could spare ‒ the land and the vineyard house were hers ‒ but it would have been unthinkable to begin anything of the sort without Carlos’s permission, and seeming advice. He gave it grudgingly, with a shrug of his shoulders, no doubt thinking of better ways he could use the money. We seemed always to be scraping for money and what I proposed would take many years before it yielded us a return. But what I had dreamed that first day I had visited the vineyard house, the dream of seeing the rough land cleared and the orderly rows of vines planted, had its small beginning. Antonio had hired some labour to begin to clear the first few hectares of land. I had pegged and marked out the land on the slope that went down to the main road, the land nearest our neighbour whose rows of well-tended vines and beautifully tilled land had first roused my envy and ambition. Carlos had agreed, as had my mother, as one gives in to the wayward whim of a pregnant girl, in order to keep her happy. But I watched the fires that autumn that marked the first clearing of the brush, choked in their smoke, and dreamed that I was beginning to plant a vineyard for my child.
After I was forced back to the town, on the dry days during the winter Andy would drive me out to see how the work progressed. The land had been intensively ploughed in October, too late, everyone said, for that work, but I was too impatient to wait until next summer, for August, when the agosta, the first deep tilling of a vineyard should properly be done. The soil had been broken to a depth of about sixty centimetres ‒ I was learning to count this way now ‒ by men working with a narrow hoe. We had then to wait until enough rain had fallen during the winter ‒ between twenty and thirty centimetres was needed ‒ and this usually had come by January. Andy would never let me walk up to the house when the ground was wet ‒ it was true that the albariza became extremely slippery in the wet weather. As the winter ended, and I was growing heavy with the child, the land was levelled, and marked out in what they called the marco real system, based on the square, the distance between each plant kept at a strict one and a half metres. It was not as economical of the land as the other way, the tresbolillo, the triangle, but it meant that a man could work along the rows and reach across the whole width of the lane as he moved. It was my neighbour, he whose immaculately tended
vineyards had given me the desire to try for my own, who advised me in all this.
I found to my delight and comfort that the land belonged to Don Luis. Carlos showed so little interest in my tiny, infant project, that I took it on myself to visit Don Luis. His seamed, sensitive face lit up with interest when I told him what I was trying to do ‒ and how little money there was to do it with.
‘You shall have the advice of my foreman ‒ Mateo. He lives at the vineyard house closest to yours.’ When I told him there was no money to pay for a specialist in viticulture, that Antonio’s knowledge must suffice, he shook his head. ‘A badly planted vineyard will cause nothing but regret. When it is ready for production, in five years time, you may, if you’re lucky, see twenty-five years of excellent harvests from it ‒ and some even go to forty years. It is essential that you do it properly from the beginning.’ He smiled at me. ‘I almost envy you your project. The land has been lying fallow all these years. The strength has gone back into the soil. Mateo will be thankful you are no longer growing a crop of weeds whose seed will blow into his soil. You will have good harvests, Doña Carlota.’
So it was under Don Luis’s eyes that the first vines were planted. We planted in the marco real system on his advice. ‘There’s an old saying in Spanish agriculture about leaving plenty of room for growth. Retirate de mi que daré por ti por mi. Get away from me and I will yield for both of us.’ He also advised me on selecting the stock, which for this vineyard was Berlandieri X Riparia, a purely American stock which had replaced the native vines after the phylloxera had destroyed them. Before the new vines were planted, the fertiliser was brought in esparto grass baskets, about twelve kilos for each hole dug. By the time I had paid for that, I knew I could not pay for the plant stock also. It was then Don Luis offered me my first loan.
‘I’m sure Carlos would not permit it,’ I said, and still I longed to accept, because if I did not, the work would stop, and the new vineyard go back to brush.
‘Carlos need not know. Carlos is a …’ He hesitated, just perceptibly. ‘Carlos is an intelligent young man, but very easygoing. If you do not bring him your problems, he will not look for them. If he asks, say I managed to give them to you at a very favourable price, since I was buying many for myself. I will even make a bill of sale … the labour of the men need not be included. We will bury that item as firmly as we plant the vines.’
‘And for security? I have nothing to offer you.’
‘You have the best security. Your future harvests.’
So, although I didn’t own the land, I made myself believe that I owned the harvests that would come from it. I signed a paper for Don Luis, which was so obscurely written that I doubted any lawyer would have given it a second glance. But it was enough for Don Luis and me. We signed it, shook hands on it, and took a copita together. I felt both content and excited ‒ happy.
‘All this activity is bad for you,’ Nanny had grumbled. ‘You should be quiet, and think of your child.’
‘That’s what’s wrong with most women,’ Maria Luisa snapped. She was often irritable these days, trying to cope with our tangled finances, trying to run our disorderly household, trying to let us hold our heads up in the sharp-sighted community which little escaped. ‘What Charlie is doing may well be the best thing she could do. At least she’s doing something.’ When she was tired, and her guard was down, the name Charlie slipped out. Normally she did not approve of it, but when she used it, I felt her affection break through the barrier of her formal manners.
‘I hear that Don Luis’s wife is ill,’ Nanny observed.
‘Hear? ‒ where do you hear such things?’ Maria Luisa demanded. ‘Who do you have to talk to?’
Nanny stiffened her back. ‘There are other nannies. A lot of them. Most of the good families have them. We meet. We meet when they take the children out. There aren’t many have my experience.’ Since her total experience seemed to have been as a nursery maid when my mother was a child, and then as a fully-fledged Nanny to me, and neither of us had, by polite standards, turned out very well, I wondered what these other, exiled nannies really thought of her. But it would have been cruel to deny her their companionship. At best she knew only the absolute minimum of Spanish words to ensure getting her necessities. But the English, Irish and Scottish nannies, who seemed to be prized by the families of Jerez, were valued partly for the very reason that they refused to learn any Spanish. The children in their charge, of necessity, had to speak English.
‘So … so, Amelia is ill,’ Maria Luisa mused. ‘She always has been, more or less. Made a habit of it. I wonder what it is this time …? It would be God’s blessing if she were pregnant.’
‘It’s not that,’ Nanny said. ‘That we would know.’
Don Luis spoke to me of it one day when we drove out to the vineyard to watch the progress of the planting. The foreman, Don Luis’s foreman, Mateo, had laid out the iron stakes which were to support the vines, and was supervising the men hired to do the planting, adding the last of the fertiliser as each root was tamped into position. I noticed that Antonio worked beside Mateo with no sign of resentment at the other man being placed in a superior position. Antonio seemed to share my own dream, the dream of all the sloping land my mother owned one day being covered with the fruitful vines. By that time he would have learned a great deal about viticulture, more than he knew from observation and from hiring himself out as casual labour at the times it had been needed. He himself should be a foreman on the day the dream came true. Evidently he meant to be ready for it.
‘You will have something to give your son, Doña Carlota,’ Don Luis observed as he came back from an inspection of the planting. ‘As he grows, so will the vines. By the time he begins his schooling, you will have your first harvest. By the time he is a young man, the vines will cover all of your hillsides and reach right around to join my land again. Yes, you will truly have something to give your son.’
I turned then and looked at the beautifully tended land, the mature vines pruned almost down to the ground, as was the custom here in Jerez, which belonged to Don Luis. I couldn’t say anything, but he seemed to know my thoughts. ‘Yes, it is a pity I have no son ‒ no child for whom I grow my vines. Well …’ He shrugged. ‘We accept what God sends. My poor Amelia is not well. Did you know?’
I didn’t want to confess I had listened to Nanny’s gossip. I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry.’
He sighed, and then gave the order to the coachman to proceed. The coachman, I knew, had instructions to move at a snail’s pace. I was not to be bounced about; everyone understood that.
‘Yes … not well. Not well at all. Something we don’t understand. I brought specialists from Seville, and lately one from Madrid. They cannot understand it. They say they must have her in hospital for tests. They even talk of her going to London, or Vienna.’ He gestured helplessly. ‘I don’t understand a thing they say, and I suspect they only talk that way because they don’t have much idea themselves what might be achieved. Amelia, for the moment, refuses to go anywhere, especially as they can promise her no certain treatment, much less a cure. I can’t say I blame her. She is wise in her own way, Amelia.’ He turned to me, almost pleadingly. ‘Would you not come now and take tea with her? She loves her English afternoon tea. She is always so anxious that it be done correctly. She would like your company …’
From my faint recollection of the languid young woman I remembered from the evening of the splendid party they had given, I rather doubted that she would want the company of someone as insignificant, as socially muddied, as I was. And yet I thought Don Luis’s request was genuine, and I would have done anything to please him. To my surprise Amelia showed pleasure when she saw me, roused herself from the sofa where she had been lying, and came to kiss me. I didn’t think it was because she particularly liked me, but she, like myself, sought to please Don Luis.
‘And how does the vineyard go? It is the talk of Jerez, you know. Just imagine, you have been here only a few months,
already married, planting a vineyard, and … and …’ Primly she tried to avoid gazing at my swollen body. We were still playing the game that my baby would be born the decent nine months after my marriage to Carlos. But I knew that half the town was running bets on how much premature my child would be.
‘Only with Don Luis’s assistance,’ I said, accepting lemon tea in a beautiful Crown Derby cup. ‘Without him I would be floundering. But somehow … somehow I think it would have pleased my grandfather. I think, when he bought the vineyard, he truly meant to continue to work it. The old records show that it was a good producer before the phylloxera …’ I intended, I was determined to bring up my grandfather’s name whenever I could. It was an eternal irritant, I knew, to Don Paulo, and a blow at the Marquesa. My love for my grandfather demanded that he be recognised. I would never be quiet out of deference to the power of those two; I would be silent, for pity’s sake, about what I had seen that day at Arcos.
Amelia clapped her hands in a pathetic gesture of gaiety. ‘Listen to her, Luis! Is she not something? … already talking about the records of the vineyard. I imagine she knows exactly how many butts it produced the year before the phylloxera. Very soon she will be in the corner with all you men talking of the last harvest, the next harvest, how many butts … and on and on.’ Then her little, pale face crumpled, ‘But you will have a baby also. Truly, you are blessed.’
This was not the whining young woman of Maria Luisa’s recollection. Along with her envy of my pregnancy, there was a gladness, for my sake, I thought, and still a shade, a forlorn, hope that soon she would share my state. There was more sadness in the face of Don Luis; there was sadness, and no hope at all. I remembered what Maria Luisa had said of him. ‘He is not macho …’ There was no woman on earth, however strong or well, who could cure that if it were indeed the truth.
I found myself going more frequently to visit Amelia; sometimes Don Luis joined us, more often he left us alone. It was a strange friendship we formed, with so little in common. But Amelia had lived nowhere but Jerez, and she was curious about Ireland. I could tell her only about Clonmara; until a few months ago, my world had been as narrow as hers. But she liked to hear anything I cared to tell her, facts and fantasies dragged up from Irish history. She surprised me one day by saying, ‘How different your country’s story might have been if Philip’s Armada had succeeded ‒ aren’t the Iberians and the Hibernians of the same race? England would have been Catholic again, and Ireland would probably be free …’ Then she threw in quickly, as if to get it over with: ‘I shall be going to Vienna soon with Luis. The doctors are talking of some sort of treatment. There is some man called Roentgen who has found some way of taking pictures of one’s inside, and perhaps finding out what is wrong.’ She reached out suddenly and took my hand. ‘I’m so frightened, Carlota. I wish I were strong like you. They talk of things being wrong with my blood, but no one seems sure what to do. Will you pray for me, Carlota?’
The Summer of the Spanish Woman Page 21
