The Summer of the Spanish Woman

by Catherine Gaskin

  Since this was a small vineyard, and we could afford to waste nothing, they pressed the pie yet again; they called this the espirraque. It was used as fertiliser, or as pig food. It seemed to me a hard way to get food for pigs.

  The must from the treading and the first pressing went into butts. This would go to the bodega, and eventually become wine. The must from the second pressing would be vinegar, or low-strength wines, which would eventually be distilled. The must was funnelled into casks; the funnels also had sieves so that no skin or pips would go in. Then, after about six or eight hours the miracle of the fermentation began ‒ the violent, spontaneous fermentation without which there can be no wine. One of the reasons for working at night, Mateo told me, apart from it being cooler, was that the fermentation came more slowly, and the slower the fermentation, the better for the wine.

  I watched, exhausted and appalled by what I had witnessed in the hours of only one night. ‘The better for the wine,’ I repeated. Now I said it dully, fatigue and concern having taken away the edge of my pleasure in this, my first harvest.

  The butts were only partially filled to allow for the turmoil of the bubbling fermentation; they were fitted with a cane tube to prevent the must from overflowing. I saw them loaded on to carts to start the journey to the bodega. I watched them, the first butts of must from my vineyard, start down the track to the road. It had cost so much, in money, toil, hope and time. It would never at this stage, pay for itself. I looked back at the men straining in the lagar, and wondered how money could ever pay them. But men had planted vineyards for hundreds of years, had tended them, and lived to extract their precious liquid. Whatever my feelings now, I was irrevocably committed. My legs ached from the treading, the tannin of the grapes burned my skin. My back broke from labouring at the screw of the lagar. I had done none of these things, and yet I had done them all. My blood was in that wine, and the wine was now in my blood, its violent fermentation was an excitement I craved. I would live for the next harvest, in hope and dread.

  And when the men rested in the hot hours of the afternoon, I rested also. But exhausted sleep brought only dreams of harvests, more and more harvests. When I woke I was bathed in sweat, as if I had been straining at the screw of the lagar.

  It was often Pepita who wakened me. She had come with me to the vineyard house, but had to be confined indoors, unless I walked her on a chain, because she was in heat. She hated the enforced imprisonment of these times, and begged to be taken out. So before darkness fell, I walked her. Because of the man in the watch tower ‒ they called it a bienteveo, meaning ‘I see you well’, one didn’t move about the vineyards at night. Pepita endured the long days of the vendimia as best she could, as we all endured them.

  * *

  My small vineyard would yield no more grapes, even though the men went back a second and a third time to find the grapes at their exact state of ripeness. We were pressing our last carretada. I had seen little of Don Luis during this time, but Mateo had been constantly at Las Ventanas Verdes, then hurrying back to oversee the operation at his own vineyard house. He had been busy for both of us; the yield of the vineyard seemed to belong as much to him as to me. But he took his added burden cheerfully. Don Luis was a good employer, and had obviously bidden him, and would pay him, to help out the novice on the adjoining ground. So he advised, helped, made decisions, and yet gave me the sense that I was still mistress here.

  But he was, faithful to Don Luis’s instructions, at Las Ventanas Verdes, overseeing the loading of the butts on to the cart, with another eye on the last pressing from the lagar, when Carlos arrived.

  Carlos also looked weary. No doubt the days of the harvest are anxious times for all who deal in wine, however remote they make themselves from the actual business of growing the grapes, and providing the must. Without the constant stream of wagons bearing the must to the bodegas, there would be nothing to fill the butts scoured and cleaned and prepared to receive the new wine. The quality of the must had to be judged even though in the making of sherry there is no such thing as a vintage. The true character of the must would not emerge until the second fermentation was over, during the cooler weather, when the wine fell bright. Only then could it be classified, and take its place in the solera. That was work for later days, and for the experts. But while the harvest was being brought in the men of the bodegas worked as long as the carts brought the must in. It had to be examined, checked for volume, the price decided. The butts had to be stored, given their place in the bodega, even though that would be a temporary place.

  Least of all, in the days of the harvest, did they want trouble from wives who didn’t know that their task was to stay at home, and see that everything there ran smoothly.

  So Carlos, after the four days it took me to bring in my small harvest, came to Las Ventanas Verdes.

  He found me in the courtyard of the house, watching as the last must ran from the lagar. He had slipped off his horse and was beside me before I knew it. There had been so much noise, so much to do, I didn’t hear the new noise.

  ‘So, Carlota … and how has the harvest gone?’

  I was deceived. I took it as a natural greeting.

  ‘Well enough. We have all worked hard. I don’t know yet what price I’ll get for the must, but it will …’ I stopped. His face, burned by the summer sun, lined with weariness, had contorted in anger.

  ‘Do you think I care what you will get for your miserable few butts of must? For four nights you haven’t been at home! Look at you! You look like a scarecrow. You are a disgrace … a disgrace to any man!’

  I looked down at my dress, splashed and stained from the pulp of the grapes. I put my hand self-consciously to my hair; it was rough, and straggled over my eyes. Even my hands seemed rough; they had caught too much of the sun and the freckles stood out on them. I knew I looked hardly different from the women who joined the men cutting the grapes.

  Carlos continued: ‘Do you suppose I enjoy the laughter at the bodega when another of your carts comes in with the must? The laughter about the madwoman who labours like a man, who leaves her children to take care of themselves while she takes care of her few little grapes ‒ who leaves her husband to look after his own needs …’

  I could not help it. Perhaps it was the sun, the work, the worry. I said what I had never wanted to say to him. ‘And aren’t there plenty of other women to take care of your needs, Carlos? You haven’t missed a woman during these days. You have plenty of women. It’s only a wife who isn’t at home ‒ and that hurts your pride. Well, let it hurt ‒’

  We had spoken in English, so the words were not understood by Mateo and Antonio, who were standing close by, nor by the tiradores who had stopped the pushing and pulling at the screw of the lagar in fascination at this unexpected entertainment which had come their way. They all stood, slightly open-mouthed, amused that the gentry quarrelled just as noisily as peasants. I think they even guessed what the quarrel was about. But they were all motionless and staring at the instant that Carlos lashed out with the full power of his arm, and struck me across the face. I hadn’t braced myself for that, and I found myself sprawling on the hot flagstones of the courtyard. For a moment I lay there, the breath knocked out of me. Then I sat up, and put my hand to my lip; it came away smeared with blood, and I could taste blood on my tongue. I spat out the blood with all the gusto that any peasant woman would have used. Through lips that were already swelling, I said to him: ‘Go back to your women, Carlos. Your scarecrow of a wife will return when her work here is done. Not before.’

  I sat there in the sun, dazed, feeling sick. Carlos, for the moment, did not want to continue the argument. Perhaps he was regretting the blow, though he had most perfectly demonstrated the admired machismo before this group of workers. I heard his footsteps on the flagstones, the movement of the horse’s hooves as he remounted. He called to me. ‘You will come home. I shall expect you.’

  ‘Expect me when you see me.’

  He jerked angrily at th
e horse’s mouth, and as he clattered through the archway, he nearly ran down Don Luis, who stood within its shadow. We listened to the dying sounds of the hooves on the hard soil of the track. Don Luis came forward, bending over me, lifting me under the arms. ‘Back to work!’ he shouted to the gaping men. A moment later the grunting noise of the marrana began.

  He supported me around the waist as we went into the house. Conceptión had appeared ‒ she may have seen and heard the whole event ‒ and she brought brandy and glasses to the big room. Don Luis poured for us both, dismissing her. I was surprised to find that my hand trembled as I accepted the glass from him. I wasn’t afraid, and I didn’t yet feel the pain. I was angry ‒ probably as angry as Carlos had been.

  ‘If I were half a man,’ Luis said, ‘I would have pulled him from his horse. I am dishonoured, as well as you.’

  I stretched my grazed, dusty hand across the table to cover his. ‘There can be no dishonour where none is admitted, Don Luis. I admit no such thing. You are the finest man I know.’ For a moment he covered his face with his hand. And from the room where she had been shut up, Pepita howled her protest. It was as if she knew every movement, every word, that had passed in the courtyard. She seemed to howl her protest that she hadn’t been there to prevent it.

  * *

  I stayed with Don Luis and Amelia until the swelling and bruising had gone. I knew that all Jerez must be talking of the quarrel, and possibly enjoying it. I spent my days resting in the shade of Amelia’s beautiful rooms. Her maid massaged oil into my hair to counteract the dryness and dust of the vineyards, washed it, and brushed it until it shone. I had scented oil in my baths, and scented cream on my hands. Amelia produced two lengths of lawn and her seamstress made them up. ‘The colour doesn’t suit me,’ was all she said. She was very thin and pale and languid in those hot September days; she lay on her chaise most of the day, and made only a small effort to walk in the garden at dusk with me and Pepita. There seemed to be a special communication between her and the dog; Pepita seemed to know Amelia’s failing strength. As they walked the big dog kept thrusting her nose under Amelia’s hand, and then running around to her other side, nudging her as if trying to give her support. One day I found Luis watching this. ‘If only ‒’ he said. ‘If only Pepita could give to her what she needs …’

  The dinner gong was sounded, and Amelia and the big dog turned on their circuit of the lake and came back to the house.

  * *

  I received my payment for the must from the bodega. It seemed such a pitifully small sum to reward that enormous effort, and all of it was owed to Luis. I had my account books with me and I studied the figures anxiously, putting aside sums for an extra gift to Mateo and Antonio, putting aside what would be needed for the planting of a new slope, one that would rise from the hollow and up the ridge, and beyond the next hill. When it was planted it would be the first time I would not be able to see all my vines by walking the perimeter of the house.

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said to Luis, ‘I should stop. Wait until the rest of the vines have come into production before I plant further. I have almost no money left to repay you. It is barely the interest on the debt.’ But I knew if I stopped I would have wasted the money spent in August on the agosta, the deep tilling of the new slopes.

  ‘If you are so cautious you will never make your fortune, Carlota. One has always to be in debt. It is the first rule of making money.’

  ‘I’m not so certain about that.’ I was thinking of how my grandfather had plunged again and again, always borrowing on the next year’s income from Clonmara, never free of the spectre of bankruptcy.

  ‘That is how it is done, I assure you. And as for collateral ‒ your vineyards are the best I can have.’

  So I signed yet another note and added the total in the account books. It was bigger than before, as if the year’s harvest had never been. I didn’t dare think of what would happen if a harvest should be poor, or fail entirely. ‘No, do not think of it,’ Luis said. ‘You were born to be lucky, Carlota.’

  Looking around me, at the disarray of my life, I wondered how he could say it. And yet as Amelia struggled to get through each day, hardly able to drag her skeletal frame from one room to the other, it seemed I was indeed lucky. ‘I must go home to my children,’ I said. ‘I have been pampered and cosseted here. I have lived like a duchess. My children won’t know me when I get back.’

  Amelia’s thinly transparent face glimmered in the dimness of the room. ‘I wish you didn’t have to go.’ By mutual agreement we didn’t talk of Carlos. ‘I feel there isn’t much time left now.’

  ‘You’re not worse,’ I said, and was instantly shamed by the lie. She had seemed to hold the illness at bay for so long, but now it gained rapidly on her, and the flesh fell from her frame. Doctors had come and gone. Luis talked of taking her to Morocco for the winter. ‘I think I would rather stay here in peace,’ she said. She did not know that one doctor, whom Luis had merely introduced as a visitor to Jerez, had been brought from Vienna. He had talked, Luis told me, of the multiplication of white blood cells. ‘She may live for quite a long time,’ he had said. ‘But the smallest infection may be fatal.’

  So Luis tried to guard her from infection, and she shrugged off the precautions. ‘You cannot hang a curtain between me and the world,’ she said. ‘If someone sneezes in the same room, I may catch cold. And if I take care, I may live to be a hundred.’ So I returned to the Plaza de Asturias, and the household hardly seemed to notice. My children came to greet me as if I had been gone only for the day ‒ except Juan, who now could count, and who had counted the days. ‘Next time you go to the vineyard, Mama, you will take me. I am old enough to work now.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘You are old enough to work.’

  Only Maria Luisa looked at me with her little sharp sideways glance. ‘The town thinks you are very kind to be such a friend to Amelia. It cannot be easy for a healthy young woman to spend so much time with an invalid. But you look well, querida.’

  ‘I have rested,’ I said.

  ‘And Carlos has waited,’ she answered. ‘He has waited with a patience I did not expect of him.’

  Carlos returned from the bodega that evening, and he smiled at me as if there had been nothing to forgive on either side. ‘You look well. Your visit to Amelia has done you good.’

  I was wearing one of the new dresses. My hands were smooth, my hair was shining. ‘There is a little supper party at the Garveys’ tonight,’ he added. ‘We will go, perhaps …’

  We went, and played cards, and someone played the latest music that had come from London. We talked of the war, and how it might affect shipping between Cadiz and London. Everyone said it would all be over by Christmas, even though by now all of Belgium was gone, and the Germans were fighting on French soil. Carlos paraded me through the rooms, bowing and smiling, his hand possessively through my arm. He had decided to laugh away whatever tales had spread about the scene at the vineyard house that day. A wife had been unruly, and he had handled it in the only way a real man could. It was all over.

  He was once again that night the tender, delightful lover of the early days of our marriage. He took pleasure in me, and seemed to strive to give me pleasure; and for his sake I also tried. I think he was deceived, as I meant him to be. He stayed at home every night for more than two weeks.

  ‘You have frightened him just a little, querida,’ Maria Luisa said. ‘But do not play too strong a hand. When he is in a rage, he loses caution.’ She bent her head again over her sewing. ‘It makes one wonder if those stories of his mother being a gypsy were true …’

  Chapter Three

  I

  We planted the new slopes in January. The weather had been dry, and Amelia was able to drive out to watch the work. She sat for an hour in the warmth of the winter sun against the south-facing wall of Las Ventanas Verdes. Antonio had carried her from the carriage, and Conception had wrapped her in a rug. I had brought out the best wine the cellar at the Plaza
de Asturia offered. We drank it quietly together, saying little. Amelia held up her face to the sun, as if trying to draw strength from it. I watched the steady progress of the men working the rows, under Mateo’s direction, he marking out with a chain where each root should go, distributing the iron stakes which would hold them steady, seeing that each was firmly trodden in, and fertilised. The immemorial work of the vineyard.

  Suddenly Amelia spoke. ‘The wine tastes good, Charlie.’ It was the first time she had ever used that name; I hadn’t even been aware she knew it. ‘It tastes better out here, in the air ‒ in the sun.’ It was a red, full-bodied burgundy; strange how one sought to tempt her to eat and drink things that seemed life-supporting ‒ red, rather than white, meat rather than the delicate shrimp she preferred. Her eyes were not on the working men, but on the slope of the vineyard which had been named for her. Now, in winter it was nothing more than straight rows of dark, leafless roots thrusting up their vara y pulgar, finger and thumb, indicating the future twisted and gnarled appearance they would assume in their maturity. Now it looked like a burned landscape; impossible to imagine the lush greenness it would wear in the summer.

  Suddenly she said, ‘Be very kind to Luis, Charlie, please. He will be lonely. You, the children, the new vineyards ‒ they give him interest. He is fond of Juan, I know. You must take Juan to the bodega to visit him. You must let Juan show him how he rides his pony.’