Spanish Lace

by Joyce Dingwell

  ‘You are good-looking,’ said Zoe.

  ‘I am neither Spanish nor English. I am nothing, I tell you.’

  ‘You said that once about me.’

  ‘Yes, I remember. It was because I saw the real danger in the flame-coloured hair, not yours.’

  ‘You speak of Spaniards not wanting you, yet Miguel looked further than a Spaniard,’ pointed out Zoe.

  ‘Also further than a half Spaniard. Oh, believe me, I know what I’m saying. I fit into no category. I am better educated than the villagers here, they would not want me because they don’t understand me, and I, because of that would not want them.’

  ‘You could leave,’ Zoe pointed out.

  ‘I could not. I have little money.’

  ‘You could work.’

  ‘I could not. I am neither rich nor poor, can’t you understand? I am in a class who needs work but mustn’t.’

  ‘You worked in the vines.’

  ‘That’s family work. That’s different.’

  ‘There must be many women in your position in Spain.’

  ‘Yes, and do you know what they are? Duennas to the young daughters of their relations. They are helping aunts. They come in and chaperone. They sew fine seams. Look at me, do I seem like that? Like—like fine seams? I have my mother’s hair and my father’s eyes, but when it comes to character I don’t know at all.’ Celestina put a trembling hand to her mouth. ‘All I know is I don’t want to wither away like the unpicked grapes. I—I would sooner be crushed.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Ramon about this? Surely he has friends—’

  The moment of softness was gone in Celestina. ‘Certainly he has his friends. And certainly he would speak. But all my life I simply thought it would be Miguel ... no, I didn’t love him, but we had grown up together and I expected ... Then when that expectation stopped, something else had to be started. What does the English side say? A door shuts, a door opens.’

  ‘And the door now is Ramon?’

  ‘Why not?’ boldly. ‘He is certainly richer and more attractive than any of the friends he could introduce me to.’

  ‘But you might fall in love, Celestina. Oh, yes, I know your views on that, but—’

  Celestina did not answer, which rather surprised Zoe, she had waited for another sneer concerning love.

  Then she saw that Celestina was not looking in her direction, but down the flagged path leading from Rosina’s and Antonio’s hostel.

  David was striding over the flags.

  Back at the hotel, Zoe rang the Morales to ask about the children.

  Vittoria Morales answered. Diana, she reported, had left for the village. Undoubtedly she would call to see her friend, and if so the Casa Rosada would be honoured to have her present for lunch.

  When Zoe demurred, not wishing to strain the hospitality, after all two children added to the household was more than enough, Vittoria Morales said there was a matter regarding the little girl Fleurette she would like to discuss with Zoe. She had noticed some of Fleurette’s characteristics at times in her Juan.

  ‘I am no nurse,’ put in Zoe.

  ‘But you have a little knowledge,’ Vittoria claimed. ‘Diana says you helped your late father who was a doctor.’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘Do please come back with Diana. We would love to have you.’

  ‘Very well. Thank you,’ accepted Zoe.

  Diana called in, as Senora Morales had said she would, looking irresistibly beautiful in a rather dirndl type of dress, quite full, peasant-embroidered, and well to the knees as with all Spanish dresses.

  But she had bare legs and sandals and carried, not wore, her head scarf. Rosina smiled at her, but not as warmly as she smiled at Zoe. She found her a little too vivid. The Spaniards loved brilliance, but only in touches. The flamenco bright rug in an earthy room, for instance.

  ‘Darling,’ said Diana, sinking down on Zoe’s bed, ‘we can talk at last. Miguel rang me at the Casa Rosada and said you are thumbs down on our marriage. But you knew all along it was what I wanted.’

  ‘Yes, and I am very glad for you. But has it to be now?’

  ‘Zoe, I’ve taken all this time to bring Miguel to the point of proposing, you can’t say I’ve rushed him.’

  ‘Not as far as a proposal goes, but as marriages go, yes.’

  ‘Why should we wait?’

  ‘You know why. You know that Miguel—’

  ‘That he was this Ramon person’s ward? Yes. But we’re not dependent on him, and as far as I’m concerned don’t intend to be. I’m rather surprised at you, Zoe, you were never that kow-towing type before.’

  ‘I’m not now, but I have observed the Spanish, I have seen how traditional they are. Di, Miguel will always regret it if he doesn’t go into marriage in the right way, with his uncle’s blessing.’

  ‘If he waits for that he’ll never go into it at all.’

  ‘Celestina speaking.’ Zoe’s voice was dry.

  ‘Well, she should know him.’ Di shrugged. ‘He’s her cousin.’

  ‘And her future husband?’

  ‘I don’t think so ... that is ... well ... To tell you the truth, Zoe, I’ve never considered it like that.’

  ‘Well, consider it, darling. Consider this sudden haste. And don’t, don’t, Di, act too soon.’

  ‘The trouble is,’ sighed Di, ‘I love Miguel, and that’s something you can’t understand. You’re a darling girl, but you haven’t met up with love yet, have you? When you do...’

  When I do. For a moment Zoe stood quite still at the window to where she had gone when Di had come in and claimed the bed. When I do ... If I do ... If I can ... Now.

  ‘Zoe, you’re not attending. We’re all going down to Bordola to a bullfight.’

  ‘Not I.’

  ‘I said that, too. But Celestina thinks that a Spanish wife should have that experience. Miguel agrees.’

  ‘Of course he agrees,’ Zoe said sharply. ‘He is much too agreeable with everything.’

  ‘You are tindery!’ commented Diana.

  ‘Also I’m not going to a bullfight.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘I will go up to the Morales with you, though. Vittoria Morales wants to discuss Juan, though how I can help—’

  ‘I told her some of the things you’ve told me. Your father’s experiences, I mean. Those children—those difficult ones—’

  ‘You mean the ones he believed to be near-autistic. But this is quite different.’

  ‘Perhaps, but Juan is another person entirely from his brother and sister. Vittoria says sometimes he has the click of castanets in his voice.’

  ‘And Fleurette, according to Henri, carries a witch on her shoulder. It’s just the different natures.’

  ‘But you’ll still talk with her?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Not that there was anything concrete to discuss, Zoe later found. Juan, she privately thought, was just what many youngest are—a little too important, a trifle indulged. Fleurette, she had decided previously, was simply the female of the twins, and in France the female is very important, even over-cherished.

  However, it helped Vittoria to discuss moods, be reassured that a small crimson face was often nothing more serious than plain bad temper.

  All the same when Zoe observed Fleurette’s evident mood of bad temper ... she was sitting away from the other children right at the end of the wading pool ... she thought suddenly of Henri telling her that he had succumbed to every child ailment, but Fleurette? Nothing. She remembered again how her father had always believed that a clean slate in childhood health made an illness strike more easily. Was Fleurette sickening for something to which previous maladies had rendered Henri immune?

  ‘She hasn’t the nice nature that he has,’ observed Diana, who had joined Zoe after Vittoria had been called to the telephone.

  ‘Either that or it’s something coming,’ murmured Zoe thoughtfully.

  ‘My darling doctor’s daughter!’ Di laughed
. ‘No, it’s spankable, not treatable.’

  ‘All the same I’ll ring the Bontonnes again.’

  ‘But not tonight. For tonight we’re running you down to Esterella to look at the shops. It’s our nearest large town, and you missed out on Madrid. Then tomorrow we’re off to Bordola for the fight.’

  ‘I’m not going,’ repeated Zoe.

  ‘Yes, you are. If it comes to it that you still won’t attend you can sit in the car and just listen to the crowds ... get the effect that way.

  ‘Then the next day we’re starting at piccaninny daylight to the beach at Margaretha. It can be done with comfort there and back if we leave early and return late.’

  ‘The next day again?’ asked Zoe a little tartly.

  ‘We thought by that time,’ said Di carefully, ‘that you would have seen our way and be ready to attend our marriage.’

  ‘Di, weddings take longer than that.’

  ‘Not civil weddings.’

  ‘You’re not serious!’

  ‘Very serious. It’s Miguel who counts with me, not an exchange of rings from a velvet cushion.’

  ‘Blessed rings,’ Zoe waited, then implored, ‘Di, stop listening to Celestina. Don’t even consider this thing.’

  ‘I have considered it. I have decided on it. I’m only sorry you don’t see eye to eye with me, Zoe. I’m only hoping that in the next few days you will.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then’—Di shrugged, but not as happy a shrug as she would have liked, and Zoe knew it—‘that’s your bad luck.’

  ‘I’ll go now.’ Zoe broke the little silence that had settled between them. ‘I’ll go and ring Fleurette’s parents.’

  ‘But be ready for us as soon as Miguel can leave the vineyard.’

  ‘Six in the party again?’ asked Zoe.

  ‘Four only. Philip isn’t at all interested in Celestina, I’m afraid.’

  ‘She could still come.’

  ‘I told her that, but she declined. She’s taken a definite dislike to poor David.’

  Love and hate are akin. At once the phrase rushed to Zoe. She shrugged it off.

  ‘I’ll stroll back now. No, I’d sooner walk. It’s beautiful under the trees.’

  ‘And you’ll like Esterella. Here’s something for Spanish towns, Zoe: People don’t sit at home after dinner looking at T.V., they walk and talk and greet friends. They live? Diana had forgotten her moment of resentment, she was an effervescent type, and now she was sparkling again. ‘We’ll show you tonight.’

  Zoe nodded, and later went off.

  The dust in the lane was soft under her feet and the shadows of the trees were lacy. More Spanish lace, Zoe thought whimsically, smiling at a peasant boy going past on a mule, his little sister behind him sitting sideways and holding up an umbrella.

  She passed a man wearing a striped poncho and driving black goats.

  At Rosina’s she had no trouble in contacting the Bontonnes, and when she did was assured there would be no worry with Fleurette. She was an extremely healthy child—for all her air of delicacy, stronger, actually, than Henri. The explanation was the same as they had given her last time they spoke on the phone.

  ‘The connection was bad,’ said Zoe. ‘All I heard was “... difficult at times...” “... convincing act ...” ’

  ‘And that is Fleurette. In short, a difficult small miss. When we get to the States we must have a consultation with a child specialist.’

  ‘So any rise of temperature and any occasional seeming out of sorts—’

  ‘Are not serious at all. Medically, that is. What a pity the connection was bad and you’ve been concerned.’

  ‘I’m assured now,’ Zoe assured her, impressed by the healthy candour of the parents.

  She talked for a while, repeated her care of their children, and rang off.

  It was not a very gay party that set out for the bright lights of Esterella.

  Zoe was preoccupied, David was moody ... pondering no doubt on the refusal of Celestina to go with them ... and, for all their determined interchange of laughing words, Diana and Miguel were unhappy. They would not have admitted it for the world, but Zoe could see that happiness was heavy going for them, something that had to be striven after, strained for, not quick and sweet and spontaneous as joy should be.

  ‘Why has she got her spite into me?’ David was puzzling aloud. ‘What have I done?’

  ‘David,’ said Diana severely from her seat by the side of the driver, ‘Celestina knows Esterella off by heart, that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t.’

  ‘Then we’ll show it to you, won’t we, Miguel? It’s happy and animated and—and—’ In spite of herself, Di gulped. At least it was either a gulp or a caught-up sob. Caught up because of the happiness she herself was not experiencing? wondered Zoe shrewdly. She saw Miguel take a hand off the wheel and squeeze Di’s.

  As they approached Esterella their spirits climbed a little. No one could have looked down that main avenue of mimosa and fig leading into the small city and not feel a lightness.

  There were so many people around, too. Men in wide-brimmed hats and women with lace squares on their heads. Cathedral-going children, the girls in white frocks and the boys in suits with small gold epaulettes.

  Pink houses clustered on the hills above Esterella, and in the faintly blue air of early evening it made a soft cyclamen effect, but it was not the houses they had come to see, it was the city life.

  And a bright life it proved. Literally everyone must have been out shop-crawling. If they did not cluster outside the displays, they gathered on the plazay found sidewalk cafes and sat down to sip and watch the passing parade.

  Mule-carriages went by. Fountains played. Zoe counted at least four bands. They peered into the little boutiques, Zoe wishing she Had money for the really exquisite embroidery, for a watercolour of that ochreous land she had crossed from San Sebastian, the Spanish touch of brilliance this time in a flaming sun.

  She bought novelties for the three children, though, and reluctantly left it at that.

  But not Diana and Miguel. They stood before the small canopied boutique of a modista ... a dressmaker ... and it did not take any sleuthing to see what they were looking at. A bridal frock, and as lovely as Zoe ... and Diana and Miguel? ... had set eyes on. Zoe saw their hands meet and felt her own eyes prick with sympathetic tears. Love even when it ran smoothly was a painful thing ..;

  However, Zoe noted, it was not the white gown that Di bought when she went into the boutique but a sensible day dress of fine wool. Too fine really for everyday wear. Distinctly suitable for something more important and formal.

  Like a wedding in a city office?

  She said quickly, ‘Let’s sit at one of the sidewalk cafes, it should be fun.’ She found she did not want to think.

  They had coffee with brazo de gitano, which meant gipsy’s arm, and was like an English swiss roll, and cafe con leche, a long glass of coffee milk.

  But the mood of lightness they had achieved on entering Esterella had deserted them again. They were like Diana’s parcel, thought Zoe, sensible and serviceable only. She was sure the passers-by considered the tourists very dull fare, that they secretly pitied Miguel who had the entertainment of them on his hands.

  At last the refreshment was finished and no one seemed inclined to start the rounds again, so they came home, rather in the same mood that they had set out, Zoe preoccupied, David moody, Diana and Miguel a little too obvious in their joy to be convincing.

  ‘Early bed for everyone,’ directed Diana. ‘We leave before daybreak for the corrida ... the bullfight. Is that right, Miguel?’

  ‘Si.’

  ‘I won’t go!’ protested Zoe yet again.

  ‘No, Zoe, you said so. We’ll leave you outside the plaza de toros ... the ring. Right again, Miguel?’

  ‘Si.’

  ‘Then buenas noches, everyone.’

  ‘Buenos noches,’ they returned.

  Zoe was
already waiting when the car pulled up at the hostel in the morning. She could not have helped being early, she thought ruefully, she had barely slept.

  However .David, coming out from his ‘barn’, looked at once quite absurdly happy. Celestina was in the car.

  Diana and Miguel, too, seemed more settled than last night—almost as though they had come to a decision. A decision? What decision?

  ‘Zoe, this is an outing, not a wake,’ Di scolded.

  ‘Wake?’ puzzled Miguel, who still had not a full command of English. ‘Are we not all awake? I hope so for myself, anyway, for I am driving. Now you are laughing at me. What have I said?’

  ‘Enough to make Zoe giggle, and that’s all I ask.’ Di leaned across to Zoe and ruffled her hair affectionately.

  They drove through cornfields barely buttered by the first pale fingers of dawn. Zoe, who had become used to the serene beauty of England, felt her throat contract. The rather rough turf, the sky now losing its shadow and promising to blazon out like a fanfare of trumpets in the overabundant way that Australia chose to herald a new morning caught at her.

  Miguel’s car ate up the miles, for it was a fiesta day at Bordola, a public holiday, and there was a need to be early at the arena.

  Zoe was still determined not to attend, and she was relieved when, after looking over the rather unspectacular Bordola, its only novelty ... for Zoe ... the barrows selling octopuses, red peppers and yellow melons, the only beauty the indigo shade of the olive trees on the white walls, the others did not argue with her. Instead they fortified her with chocolate and citronade and left glossy magazines that she would not need to try to decipher; the pictures would suffice.