Spanish Lace

by Joyce Dingwell

‘My white.’

  ‘Fleurette, they’ll be dirty in five minutes.’

  ‘My white,’ insisted Fleurette.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ Zoe conceded for the sake of peace and progress, and Henri said sagely, ‘It won’t help, you know, she’ll get all the worse. You should be like steel.’

  ‘You mean firm?’

  ‘Hard. It is the only way,’ advised Henri.

  When Fleurette refused breakfast, when Fleurette refused the side of the car she was given, when, having changed with Henri, she still refused, Zoe was inclined to agree with the brother.

  ‘We’ll try taking no notice of her,’ whispered Zoe to David, for they were on the road by now.

  ‘If you say so, but I did have thoughts of handing her over to some guardia. Guardias are gendarmes, did you know that, young fry in the back?’

  ‘Yes. Police bobbies,’ nodded Henri. He added eagerly, ‘Can we?’

  Fleurette, too shrewd to be scared, only scowled more.

  She refused to look at the scenery through which they were travelling, at the small rivers of Tolosa foaming white with the refuse from its paper factories, and when the road climbed up to the first mountain pass, the puerto Echegarate, she turned away and said she was too tired to look.

  ‘Then close your eyes, Fleurette.’

  But after a moment of doing so, Fleurette declared it was too dark under her eyelids, and sat and stared stubbornly at the unpanoramic side of the mountain.

  ‘Are all small girls like this? Were you?’ groaned David.

  ‘She gets a witch sitting on her back,’ dismissed Henri with experience, ‘then she gets better again.’

  ‘Miss Cloud and Miss Sunshine.’

  ‘I don’t know those people,’ Henri said politely.

  He was a very satisfactory little boy, he enjoyed everything. He was adaptable, and when they came to a rather poor little village and stopped to watch sweet-faced nuns distributing bowls of soup to the children and the holy sisters, seeing his interest, handed him a bowl, he accepted it graciously, thanking them in his best formal French and with gallant bows.

  They had lunch in another village, very ordinary food but exquisitely cooked. After that they passed through rather bare, ochreous country in a succession of mesas, or tables, and the children, both bored now, fell asleep.

  The later start had put any ideas of travelling through to their journey’s end right out of their minds; they had decided they would be thankful to call a halt in Madrid. But it was some distance from Madrid that David pulled up at a small village, its only importance, or so it seemed, that it was at a road junction, as well as their own major route a fairly busy road meeting it from the west.

  ‘The afternoon is getting on, Zoe,’ David explained. ‘Madrid has at least two million people and undoubtedly a lot of busy streets; also I don’t know any detour to avoid the actual capital, just as I don’t know the best way in, so how about resting up here and starting off fresh in the morning?’

  It seemed reasonable, so Zoe agreed, though she looked a little dubiously at the paradore ... luxury hotel ... on the rise behind the road junction, which appeared all that the district had to offer. She felt that a posada ... an inn ... would be more in keeping with their resources. Also, Ramon had spoken of cibergues ... service stations with lodgings and food available.

  She said this to David, and he shrugged.

  ‘I have found even the paradores amazingly reasonable by Australian prices. Apart from this, there simply isn’t anything else. Wait here, anyway, and I’ll ask what cooks and how much.’

  Henri, who had wakened up, said admiringly of David as he beetled off, ‘My father never asks what they are cooking. I must tell him to do so next time.’

  David came back with a confident swing if a rather rueful grin.

  ‘You got it,’ claimed Zoe of the confidence in the same breath as she amended ‘You didn’t get it’ of the rueful—‘I did, but—phew!’ David wiped his brow.

  ‘Expensive?’

  ‘Quite moderate, as I said. Only four hundred pesetas for a family unit for you and the nips. Bath included.’

  ‘Then—?’

  ‘That third degree I was put through! Anyone would think I asked to bed down, too.’

  ‘Did you?’ giggled Zoe.

  ‘Well’—sheepishly—’I did ask for an adjoining room. I thought that might make you feel safer.’

  ‘Thanks, David.’ Zoe laughed at his ruefulness now, she could recall how Rosina had put the young men through long questionnaires at the hostel at Lamona. These Spaniards, she remembered saying to Diana, have a very rigid code of behaviour.

  ‘Anyway,’ concluded David, ‘you and the brats are in the west wing. I’m far away in the east.’

  ‘I hope the sun doesn’t wake you,’ teased Zoe, and began gathering up what they would need for the night.

  It was a very sober castle, and one, proffered David, where probably hermits of religious orders, wearing bushy white beards to their chests, long brown robes and sandals, once spent years contemplating life.

  Zoe barely heard him. She had followed the hotelier to the west wing and was standing contemplating the room. Timber beams, a restored fireplace, tall-backed straight chairs, simple carved bedheads, earthy colours but with splashes in lamp or rug of flamenco boldness. It was almost as though she had seen it all before through Ramon Raphaelina’s words. So this was another restored castel turned paradore.

  ‘The senorita likes?’

  The hotelier had a little English but a lot of astuteness, he had seen the quick eagerness in Zoe as she had crossed the threshold.

  ‘The senorita likes,’ Zoe said.

  David went along to his wing, and Zoe attended to the children, both tired enough now to listen to her talk about early supper and early bed.

  They fell asleep almost at once ... and just as well, for though Zoe almost convinced herself that the voice she heard in the courtyard an hour later could have belonged to someone else, she knew that Henri would have known ... and claimed ... that it was Ramon’s.

  She leaned out of the window ... it was dark and she would not be seen ... but she could decipher nothing, only hear the voice.

  The Spanish was beyond her, but she imagined it asked for and received lodgings, but asked it in a much different manner than had David. And why not, she thought, when undoubtedly, from Ramon’s description of these castels, this is one of the castels he has had restored? There would be no queries as to tariff here, no ‘Cuanto?’ ... How much? ... just a wing for the senor from the bowing hotelier, then how soon, senor, do you require a meal?

  She had not eaten herself, and now found she didn’t want to. Was it Ramon somewhere there downstairs? And was he travelling to Lamona as well?

  If he was, then it wouldn’t, couldn’t be ‘as well.’ She would do Diana more harm than good turning up at the same time.

  But perhaps she was imagining things, she had only thought it was his voice.

  But when dinner came up, and David with it ... ‘I actually got the housekeeper to let me eat here, I think it was because some V.I.P. had arrived and her attention was elsewhere’ ... she felt she knew the worst.

  She said nothing, though, and evidently David did not notice her preoccupation, for he ate the lomo en adobo ... gammon in pickle ... with enthusiasm, drank the white wine, then said he would hit the hay.

  Zoe, glad he was going, said it was a pity Henri was not awake to question why hay should be hit, and bade him good night.

  But she did not slip into bed for a long time. She sat at the window, looking out on the little necklet of village lights, listening to the noises of night ... a dog barking, crickets, someone plucking a guitar, sleepy birds.

  Then she was listening inside the castel, listening for a voice, for steps. Reaching out for a presence that she could feel so tangibly that she knew for certain that he was there. In this wing. Even in the suite below. Even beneath this floor.

  Ramon. She di
d not dare even whisper it, she only felt the letters with her lips.

  At last she crept into bed. He isn’t here, she said into the pillow. It mustn’t be him. Because if it is, what will we do in the morning? Especially once the children are awake? No, it isn’t, and it mustn’t be, him. Though ... with a sudden stab she could not understand, could not handle ... if it is, I—I—

  But by the time Henri and Fleurette were up, the latecomer of last night was gone. Zoe had heard the car’s soft purr and had run to the window, but again had seen nothing.

  But she had felt a void with such certainty and knowledge that she had no need for David’s breezy, ‘Guess what?’ as he came in with the hotelier’s wife.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That cove ... that Ramon ... he checked in yesterday after us.’

  ‘Senor Raphaelina?’

  ‘If you say so,’ shrugged David, ‘but I’m sure it was your guy. Only saw him that once in San Sebastian, but—’

  ‘David, we’ll have to go back,’ Zoe urged.

  ‘Go back?’

  ‘I told you about how he’s this relation of Miguel’s.’

  ‘Yes, but he won’t be around. Not for a while, at least.

  I was in the hall when he went out. No, he didn’t recognize me ... quite the lord of the manor, isn’t he, he never looked any way but his own. Anyway, Zoe, calm yourself, he’s gone up north. Taken the opposite road to the one we take. Isn’t that so, Maria? The senor? The one with the nose in the air? Up to Barcelona?’

  Maria tightened her lips. Now that there was no V.I.P. to attend to she could concentrate on her other guests, and the idea indeed of a young man breakfasting with a young woman, even with two children present!

  The sheer absurdity of it all, from their point of view, suddenly bubbled into Zoe, and she only just stifled a laugh. David caught the fever and barely concealed a guffaw. The twins contacted it, first Henri, then, emerging from her difficult mood, Fleurette.

  As Maria closed the door behind her with a bang, the four of them went into gusts of mirth.

  ‘At least,’ said Zoe between paroxysms, and nodding to the doubled-up Fleurette, ‘we’ve lost our server.’

  ‘I don’t know her,’ observed Henri, ‘and Fleur doesn’t either.’

  ‘No, darlings, nor do we,’ smiled Zoe.

  The castel was just a hotel now that he was gone, she thought. And today was another day.

  And a day that proved blue and gold and sun-drenching, as so many Spanish days do, appreciated Zoe, as soon afterwards they passed through sometimes cultivated country, sometimes wild and almost forbidding, past stretches of nothing but locust trees, past villages with streets preserved as national monuments because they were pure Moorish.

  Then they were on the last stage to the Spanish capital, the track becoming winding and with great boulders of granite on either side. Finally they entered Madrid along a wide motor road that ran between gardens, villas, small forests and swimming pools.—And left it again, without closer acquaintance, across the Puente de Toledo and set out for Lamona.

  The twins, not realizing what they had missed, did not complain, and Zoe made a mental note to fit the capital city in for them, in some way or other, though she did not know how, before they returned. She had ideas of flying back, though ... she could borrow from Diana, who, in a modest way, was a young women of means ... and flying would give them more time to look around before they returned to San Sebastian to await the senor’s return.

  Cornfields and vineyards were opening up now ... David, who had tourist literature with him, told Zoe that this was fairly near the Don Quixote country.

  And Senor Raphaelina’s, thought Zoe ... well, almost the senor’s, though Lamona had had fewer plains and more cultivation.

  After lunch ... sardines and black bread and cheese again ... in a charming village where sunlight danced on red roofs and on the faded awning of the Cafe Flores where they ate, they left the flats and rose in a gentle succession of mesas to that part of Spain that first had captured Zoe’s heart. She remembered the prodigious puffs of the little engine, then the olive groves, the tamarisks and oleanders, the peach and apricot, but most of all the orange-sweetened air.

  ‘We’re nearly there!’ she cried, happier than she would have thought possible, feeling ... quite absurdly ... almost as though she was coming home.

  ‘No sea,’ disparaged Fleurette, who evidently had pictured their journey’s end as another San Sebastian, and visibly the little girl’s mood descended on her again, that witch that Henri had spoken about climbed upon her shoulder.

  It would probably have settled there had not Diana and Miguel approached them at that moment from the village in the vineyard jeep, Diana perched precariously up in the seat and waving a bright scarf.

  ‘How did they know?’ gasped Zoe.

  ‘I crept away and telephoned them at the Cafe Flores. I reckoned we deserved a welcome after the mileage we’ve done, not so remarkable by Australian marathon cross-country standards, but on the Continent quite an achievement.’ David, who had stopped the car and got out to await the young pair, patted it proudly.

  Fleurette, attracted by Diana’s bright hair, was momentarily diverted, but her mood rapidly returned after Diana and Zoe had excitedly embraced and exchanged quick notes and Diana had tossed airily, ‘Welcome, piccaninnies.’

  ‘I am not that, I am a French young lady, and I did think there would be a beach,’ retorted Fleurette.

  ‘Would a wading pool do? Quite a large one? A ramp for model boats? A sand section for pies and puddings?’

  ‘Is there?’ asked Fleurette.

  ‘A ramp!’ Henri’s attention, too, was captured.

  ‘Diana, don’t tease them.’ Zoe knew Lamona and knew it had none of these things.

  ‘As soon as David mentioned the children I rang the Morales,’ laughed Diana. ‘That’s the place I’ve been governessing, Zoe. Fortunately Vittoria and Francisco Morales are great friends of Miguel and his uncle, so don’t mind how many hours I spend down here.’

  ‘But what has that to do with my children?’

  ‘Their elder pair, Jacinta and Josefina, have returned to school, leaving only small Juan, who becomes very blue when he’s alone.’

  ‘A pale blue or a dark blue?’ asked Henri, intrigued, and Zoe said quickly, ‘Henri is factual.’

  ‘No, I am French.’ To prove it, Henri repeated it in French.

  ‘Anyway, the Morales are delighted to have the children to divert Juan.’

  ‘You’re sure about the pool, you weren’t just saying it?’ asked Fleurette cautiously.

  ‘Quite sure. I’ve paddled there myself.’

  ‘Then,’ demeaned Fleurette, ‘you were far too big.’

  Diana met Zoe’s eyes and quirked. She suggested driving straight up to the Morales’ and leaving the children there first.

  Any doubts that Zoe might have had as to her charges were dispersed at once. The Morales were young, friendly, obviously very comfortable, and as anxious for company for their youngest as Diana had said.

  Again any doubts that the children might have had also vanished. The pool took up almost the entire side terrace, an ambitious affair of blue tiles, imported yellow sand and a plentiful supply of what goes with such activities. Best of all, Juan took at once to Henri, and Zoe had no doubt that Fleurette, though holding back, soon would make the cosy duo an even cosier trio.

  When she left the Casa Rosada ... the Morales’ house ... the small fry were so occupied with each other they did not answer her buenas tardes.

  ‘If you are off duty who will look after them, Di?’

  ‘There are stacks of servants ... you must have noticed yourself how many waiters hover around a table ... and the Spanish are terribly fond of the pequenos,’ Diana explained. ‘Now we’ll go down to the hostel where I’ve booked you and David rooms.’

  ‘With considerable difficulty,’ suggested David feelingly.

  ‘Yes. Rosina was not at
all impressed with you bringing a young man with you, Zoe. However, Miguel did a lot of talking’ ... a quick, proud, loving look at her tall Spaniard ... ‘and you’ve been put in the barn, David.’

  David said, not at all put out, ‘Last night I had a room over a stable, and the way these Spaniards restore things I’m now looking forward to my digs.’

  ‘Your uncle restores, Miguel,’ observed Zoe to the Spaniard, and both he and Diana darted Zoe a look of inquiry.

  ‘I’ve met him,’ Zoe informed them simply, ‘and that’s why, in a way, I’m here.’

  ‘But you always said you would come for our wedding.’

  ‘Yes, I did ... but after the wedding would have done just as well. But since I have met Don Ramon Raphaelina I’ve known I must come before, not after.’

  ‘Not to prevent us.’ It was Miguel, and his voice had risen hotly. Well, that was good, appreciated Zoe, she would have been saddened for Diana to have a laggard lover.

  ‘No, of course not, but to urge you to wait for the senor’

  ‘For Uncle Ramon?’

  ‘Si.’ Zoe was unaware that she answered in Spanish. But she was aware of the look in Miguel’s face, a half-wistful look, a desiring look. He is a Spaniard, she thought, and though he loves Diana there is still the urge to do things in the traditional way, in the Spanish manner.