The Summer of the Spanish Woman

by Catherine Gaskin

  This was said during one of the Marquesa’s visits. She had a habit of descending on our household unannounced, and the children were turned out for her inspection. She agreed to a small salary for the first seamstress, and partly paid for the assistant. A laundress was engaged full time so that the clothes of the children should always be immaculate. Maria Luisa was jubilant. ‘The only way to deal with the rich is to demand things. Otherwise they don’t notice how you have to struggle ‒ or pretend not to. The rich are usually very mean with their money, except when it comes to spending it on themselves.’ She even, to my mortification, got a small additional stipend for Nanny.

  ‘Nanny is our responsibility,’ I had protested. ‘We brought her here, and Richard Blodmore paid her ‒’

  ‘And would you have Richard Blodmore go on paying for the nanny of your children? That won’t do! And Nanny stays on here now because she is needed by us. The Marquesa will not have it said that her godchildren do not have a proper nanny. But she complains about Nanny’s accent. It isn’t English enough.’

  ‘It will do,’ I said. ‘It was good enough for my mother and myself.’ I know I snapped at her, and afterwards I apologised.

  She softened, as she so often did when we were alone together. ‘It’s all right, querida. I understand.’ She pulled off the little steel-framed spectacles she had taken to wearing. ‘It’s not been an easy time, has it? Three children in less than four years. Always pregnant, or about to be pregnant, or getting over being pregnant. That woman, descending on you, wanting to run your life, but not willing to pay for it. Giving expensive gifts that we can’t sell for fear of offending her. Spoiling the children. Criticising your mother ‒ yes, I know Lady Pat is something of a trial, but she is our trial. How she behaves is no business of the Marquesa’s …’ Then she put her glasses on again, and once more bent over her recipe book. With Maria Luisa it was always a recipe book or an account book, and both were used in trying to manage a growing household on a tiny budget. We had reached the stage that when the yearly dividend from the Fernandez, Thompson bodega was paid into Don Ramon’s bank, we were already several months in debt against it. I think it was only the knowledge that the Marquesa had stood godmother to our children that saved us at times. People were always willing to lend money, at good interest rates, of course, where they smelled even more money. Perhaps they presumed what Carlos had hoped for ‒ that the christening presents had taken a more tangible form than expensive, but generally rather useless toys or trinkets. It was a matter of interest and speculation in Jerez that the Marquesa de Pontevedra displayed no interest at all in the children that Don Paulo’s other son, Ignacio, had produced. And she had sent only a token wedding gift when the third son, Pedro, was married. Jerez was betting on the chances of my children being remembered handsomely in the will of the Marquesa, especially the oldest son, Juan, who was clearly the favourite. The Marquesa was not an old woman, it was true, but she was not young. Someday she would have to name the heirs to that part of the vast fortune which was not tied to the title. True, these children of mine were no blood relations to her, and she had cousins of every degree scattered through all the noble families of Spain. Yet Jerez was remembering the time, now almost thirty years ago, when my grandfather had come with her to Sanlucar, and a marriage had been expected. Those with very long memories even declared that my son, Juan, as he grew older, bore a remarkable resemblance to the handsome Earl of Blodmore.

  Because the power of patronage was so great, Jerez was even forgetting the scandal of my hasty marriage to Carlos, and the untimely arrival of a child who clearly had not been premature. At least, if Jerez was not forgetting it, they chose now to overlook it. The godchildren of the Marquesa de Pontevedra could not be ignored, so I must be accepted along with them. The knowledge of our poverty, despite all Maria Luisa’s careful managing, was common. We were invited to most parties, and had to refuse many of them because it was impossible to return them equally. A few times a year we in our turn gave little parties to whom we invited only those we could not leave out. Maria Luisa pared the list down to the bone, and the cost down to the last peseta, but still they cost too much. ‘I thank the Lord for the cellar Lord Blodmore laid down. Without it, we would be undone.’

  Between ourselves, though, we never talked about the fact that my grandfather’s cellar was also causing problems for my mother. As titular mistress of the household she had access to it whenever she pleased. Maria Luisa had had the best wine placed on the highest racks where she could not easily find it, but she seemed to care less and less for the quality of what she drank. By the time of the siesta too often she went off to her bedroom with the deliberate, upright walk of someone who has drunk too much, and knows it. She snored softly through the afternoon hours, and was ready and brightly expectant for the first copita of the evening to be served. My mother now seemed to hark back to the past more often. Dates became confused. In her mind, every birthday of Juan’s recalled the death of Edward the Seventh, which had occurred in the month he had been born ‒ and that led back to memories of her one London season, the balls, the race meetings, the triumphs she had had, the attentions of Edward, who had then been the Prince of Wales. She would always stop, though, when it came to the point when she had been taken back to Ireland because of those attentions. I wondered, sometimes, if her runaway marriage might not have been the outcome of her frustration and disappointment at that time. The parallel in my own life was rather frightening. Could we Blodmores do nothing prudently, and in the right time?

  She was, as Maria Luisa said, a trial, but she was our trial. She was a loving, carelessly spoiling grandmother to my children, playing with them, helping Nanny bathe and dress them, singing to them, and never with a single word of Spanish.

  ‘I can’t ever remember her doing anything for me,’ I said to Nanny. ‘I didn’t know she knew how to bath a baby.’

  ‘Nor yet she does, Miss Charlie,’ Nanny said. ‘Haven’t I to be keeping my eye on her every second to see that she doesn’t let the little one slip down into the water and drown his self? To tell you the truth, Miss Charlie, I could be doing without her help. She’s more like another child to take care of, but one I can’t give orders to … she being Lady Pat.’

  And yet, for all that her little ‘habit’ as it was politely termed in Jerez, was known, she was still popular, and still invited about. The fact was that she was still beautiful, still graceful, and still sat a horse in a way that wrung the admiration from even the most demanding Andalucian horseman. The men admitted, though reluctantly, that in the exercises of the High School of Equitation she was very nearly the match of any man among them, and they boasted that they were better than anything seen in the famous Spanish Riding School of Vienna. Around Jerez she acquired an affectionate nickname, among those who were too humble even to address her. They called her La Dama del Caballo ‒ the Lady of the Horse. With Balthasar and Half Moon she displayed the patience she showed towards her grandchildren. No time spent schooling them was wasted for her, and I thought they were her happiest hours. She had the gentleness that some Spaniards lacked; she was never in a hurry, and she had the courage that even Balthasar recognised and responded to. She learned the exercises of the ‘Haute École’, and trained both horses to them, though generally only stallions had the strength for the more extreme demands. But she enjoyed training Half Moon on the short rein and the long longe rein, enjoyed introducing her to the exercises of the ‘Piaffe’ ‒ a cadenced trot on the spot ‒ the ‘Passage’ ‒ which we called the Spanish Trot ‒ and the ‘Passade’. These they called the ‘Schools on the Ground’. Only Balthasar was able to progress to the higher art, the ‘Schools Above the Ground’, which are all based on the ‘Piaffe’. With him she actually achieved the ‘Levade’, the ‘Courbette’, and that heart-stopping movement of the ‘Capriole’, when for an instant all four legs were off the ground, the forelegs tucked in towards his chest, the hind legs almost out straight with his belly. The stable-yard
whose size Andy had deplored, proved big enough to accommodate these training exercises and every morning, before the first glass of wine, my mother worked there for several hours. As soon as they were able to, my children demanded to be taken to watch Granny work her horses. They sucked their thumbs, and were infinitely patient and interested, as she was. It was hard for me to understand the extreme discipline that gripped my mother during those morning sessions, and then watch her come to lunch, and the first of a long succession of copitas.

  The schooling stopped during the hottest months. ‘The darlings need grass and shade and trees,’ my mother wailed. ‘Where are they to find them?’

  They were found on the hacienda of Don Luis on the road to Arcos. Like Don Paulo, his partner, Luis was also a cattle breeder and a breeder of bulls; he had olive groves and his cattle grazed under the productive cork trees. He had smiled and shrugged when he heard my mother’s first protest that she could not accept such generosity. ‘What is two more among so many?’ So Balthasar and Half Moon had summers of freedom when they never felt even the touch of a halter. Then, when the grape harvest was past, and the weather became cooler, they came back to Andy’s stables, and the work began again. During the summer months they lost some of the polish my mother had put on their training, but they were healthier, and more eager.

  My mother had made a sensation, during one exhibition of horsemanship organised for charity, by appearing in the traditional dress of the Andalucian horseman, wearing the short jacket, the round black hat with its rolled brim over a spotted blue headcloth, and the matching sash about her slim waist. She rode as they did, with the right hand tucked disdainfully inside her frilled shirt, controlling Balthasar only with the knees and the left hand. She wore black trousers and the beautiful Andalucian boots with their swinging fringes. Some of the ladies were scandalised, but the men, once they were over the shock, applauded. Courage was admired, however it was displayed.

  During those years Half Moon was bred to Balthasar. Her colt was a lovely graceful creature, but showing strongly Balthasar’s strain of stamina and nobility. We called him Rodrigo.

  ‘You are not the only one who breeds well, Charlie,’ my mother said, gazing with rapture at the thin-legged creature following his mother through the pasture at Don Luis’s hacienda. ‘I think we may not geld him. Perhaps he will turn out to be as great a stallion as Balthasar.’ She was wearing the black trousers and the elaborately decorated and tooled leather zahones, the protective chaps which the horsemen wore on the outer sides of the legs. It was now her daily uniform, as much as a riding habit had been at Clonmara. Little lines were now appearing about the corners of her eyes because she went so often without a parasol in the sun. But the red hair remained as red as ever, the eyes their extraordinary light green. Some women said the red hair was not quite its natural colour, but the men, if they noticed, didn’t care. She could still, whether on horseback, or dressed in silk for an evening party, draw a crowd of males about her. ‘But I’m a granny now,’ she would protest, and continue to flirt, and to drink just a little too much.

  While she delighted in her grandchildren, she was bored by my seemingly endless pregnancy. ‘Why, Charlie, if you don’t stop it you’ll forget how to ride! And you always had such a pretty seat on a horse, and good hands. Ah, well ‒ one can’t have everything at the same time … Perhaps we should start charging stud fees for Balthasar …’

  Did her mind run that way because Carlos’s proof of the vaunted machismo was so evident? Did she equate him and Balthasar? No longer did she warn me to hold Carlos close, no longer did Maria Luisa caution me against turning a tearful face to him. We were long past that stage. His infidelities had to be taken for granted. He was always carelessly good-humoured, loving with his children, absent-mindedly affectionate with me ‒ and always, from the first, unfaithful. He meant no personal insult to me by it. It was just the way he was made. It was not in his nature to couple with one woman for life. In that, indeed, he was like the stallion. He enjoyed love-making, to me as well as to other women. He was never brutal in the act; he was tender, considerate, imaginative, and all it meant to him was the casual satisfaction of an impulse. I do not think he ever loved me, but he liked me, and I had to be grateful for that. As I had never wholly loved him, I could not offer any reproaches, even unspoken ones. I wondered did he ever sense that beneath the passionate nature he enjoyed so much in bed, the spirit of me was barely touched at all? Our love-making was physical, and nothing more, so my heart was not wrenched by his infidelities. He could not know, and did not care to know, that feeling I had within me, that capability to love with more than my body, had been given to Richard Blodmore, who had done no more than kiss me, and hold me briefly in his arms. So it seemed there was almost an unspoken pact between Carlos and myself. The heart of neither one of us would break for the other.

  There was a conflict, openly, though, over the ownership of Balthasar. Carlos bitterly resented my mother taking the stallion over for training in the ‘Haute École’, and riding him in exhibitions. I had made an impulsive gift of the stallion to Carlos on our wedding day, a change of ownership which my mother totally ignored once Balthasar was back in the stables at the Plaza de Asturias. There was, however, no getting past my mother’s attitude, and so, since I could not ride myself for much of the time, Carlos reluctantly took over Half Moon. Then my mother began to train her, and also insisted on the summers being spent out on grass. So Carlos bought himself a handsome little mare, not an outstanding animal, but a very good one. He simply handed me the bill. We couldn’t pay it, and I saw Maria Luisa’s lips go white as she saw the figure. We looked for something we could sell, and there was nothing. There were the expensive presents the Marquesa and Don Paulo had given to the children, but the absence of any one of them would have been noticed and given deep offence. Amelia, coming to call on the day I had had the bill for the mare from Carlos, found me deeply dejected. She got the story from me, and she was indignant.

  ‘Men ‒ they’re all the same! Except Luis, who must be a saint. Let me talk to him ‒ I’m quite sure he would advance the money ‒’

  ‘No, I couldn’t! Not Luis. He’s been so generous about the vineyards. I couldn’t be more in his debt.’

  ‘Then let me ‒ No! ‒ Carlota, don’t refuse me. I have money. I never use up all my dress allowance … and lots of other things. Please, Carlota, let it be just between us. I’ve never been allowed to help anyone before. I’ve never had a friend to help, in fact. It would be a kindness …’

  I felt the tears of weakness, shame and relief running down my cheeks. I blew my nose mightily, and scrubbed my face with Amelia’s dainty handkerchief. ‘How did you ever get mixed up with such a terrible family as this? We have brought you and Luis nothing but problems.’

  ‘You have brought us a family, Carlota. That we cannot buy.’

  So I accepted a loan, with no idea how or when it would be repaid. I insisted on writing a promise of repayment for Amelia, which she accepted with a shrug of indifference, as if she might toss it in the waste-basket as soon as she got home.

  I had, in my own fashion, marked the birth of my sons. Before I became pregnant with Martin I had consulted with Don Luis and I had borrowed more money from him, with his encouragement. The next section of fallow land was ploughed at its proper time in August, and made ready for the winter rains to soak in before the levelling and planting in January. By that time I was quite well on with my second pregnancy, and thought of the vines being planted for this child, as the first had been for Juan. Don Luis had wanted me to take more money, so that more land could be put into production, but I had not dared. Only Maria Luisa knew the size of the present debt to him, and I knew that any show of an excess of money being spent on the vineyards would encourage Carlos to further extravagance. ‘It is uneconomic to plant in small pieces,’ Luis argued. I had to refuse him. We seemed to be in debt everywhere, and it frightened me. ‘I must wait,’ I told him. ‘I am one season on
with the first vineyard. One season nearer a harvest with which I can repay you.’ My worst nightmare was that when the vines came to maturity we should have several seasons of poor or bad harvests, when not only would I lose money on my own venture, but the money paid by Fernandez, Thompson would be less. I knew that the sources of our extra financial help puzzled Don Ramon ‒ we were already borrowed to the hilt with his bank. But I think he supposed that some assistance came from Don Paulo, or possibly the Marquesa. I let him think it. With Carlos we kept up an elaborate pretence that the money was squeezed somehow from Maria Luisa’s budget. He didn’t care to enquire into the details; to discover exactly how we managed, how we lived at all, might oblige him to acknowledge unpleasant facts. There might even be a suggestion that he should contribute towards our expenses. He simply reasoned that three extra children ate little enough, their clothes were provided by the Marquesa’s generosity, and they required nothing further spent on them. So long as no one troubled him with the details, he seemed content, no, he seemed almost anxious, to remain ignorant. It appeared to me that he took just the barest amount of interest in his work at the bodega to satisfy his father. He was always a good representative for the firm of Fernandez, Thompson, ready to drink and talk with those who came to buy, ready, always, to take the enjoyable journey to London to sell. He always returned from London in high good humour, with presents for all of us, and new clothes from his tailor. ‘A breath of fresh air,’ he always said. ‘I enjoy London …’ His English was kept honed and polished, and he knew that if he should bring home some English traveller who had come to Jerez to buy sherry, he would be received at our house without question, and without that slight frigidness of etiquette which seemed to plague many Spanish ladies. Maria Luisa would rush to the cellar to plunder once more the stocks of good wine, she would somehow contrive some delicacy from the kitchen, and we would put on a good front. It brought business to Fernandez, Thompson, for which Carlos got the credit. It didn’t hurt, as Carlos saw it, to have an earl’s daughter to introduce as his mother-in-law. He had a handsome brood of children to show off. There was even Balthasar, if the caller was interested in good horseflesh. Before visitors Carlos would talk jokingly about ‘my little businesswoman’ when the talk came around to the vineyard project I had embarked on, and there was the added eccentricity of my being accompanied wherever I moved, not by a lapdog, but a huge Spanish Mastiff. Carlos made a joke of this too, though at other times he declared Pepita a nuisance. But on the whole, though he grumbled continually about lack of money, Carlos appeared to enjoy life as only those of his nonchalant disposition can. Nothing seemed to worry or disturb him for very long. His quick bursts of temper, though sometimes savage, were soon over, like summer storms. Mostly he smiled, hoped for money in the future from his father, and possibly from the Marquesa, and asked not to be troubled by the minor, boring details of domestic life. So when I made my private arrangements, indulged my passion for the vineyards, I did it without too great a sense of guilt.