by Anne Weale
Her fingers trembled against the stem of her wineglass. ‘Perhaps you don’t really want me.’
Before he could answer, the waiter came to enquire if they wished for a pudding, and afterwards Cal ignored her last remark and Antonia did not repeat it.
By the time they rose from the table, it was time to set out. During the drive to Valencia Cal resumed his earlier manner of talking lightly and casually as if nothing untoward was happening. The lull of midafternoon still hung over the city when they reached it, and the shuttered windows and balconies shaded by the more old-fashioned slatted blinds added to the illusion of a city drowsing in the heat, although in fact in most of the houses and flats few but the very old and the very young would be taking the traditional siesta. Where the family was not still gathered round the lunch table, women would be washing up, men watching television.
Cal knew the city well enough to need no further directions when Antonia had told him where to drop her. He had sometimes made mildly caustic remarks about the way many Spanish drivers left their engines running while they went inside shops or left their cars parked for considerably more than a few seconds. This time, although there was no traffic following them through the narrow street, he left his engine on while he walked round to open the door for her.
‘Well ... I’ll see you later,’ she said uncertainly, as she stepped on to the pavement.
He closed the door and straightened, looking down at her troubled face with a frown between his own eyebrows.
‘I hope so.’ He stepped into the street and was about to get back in the car when he checked and, looking at her across its roof, said, ‘I want your happiness more than anything, Antonia, and if you still love Benitez then I’ll make it as easy as possible for you to have him. You say he means nothing to you, and soon you’ll find out if that’s true. But only come back to me if you’re ready, if not to love me, at least to accept my love for you.’
He ducked his tall head and disappeared inside the car. Before she could collect her wits and bang on the offside window, he had put it in motion and shot away with an uncharacteristically violent acceleration. She sprang into the roadway, waving to him to stop, but Cal did not glance in his rear view mirror, and a moment later the car swung out of sight round a bend.
... my love for you ... my love for you ...
His last words rang in her ears and she knew, without doubt, that if he had once loved Diana, he did so no longer. He was not a man to say anything he did not mean, and certainly nothing as serious as a statement of love.
She debated finding a taxi and chasing after him, and then she remembered Paco waiting in Santa Catalina, and she knew she must spend at least five minutes with him.
He was there before her, wearing a light summer suit which was just a fraction too dapper, and he was exerting his charm on one of the waitresses. Antonia’s immediate reaction was one of relief that Cal was not with her to see what a flashy young man she had once thought the love of her life.
When Paco saw her, he switched off the charm and began to look uneasy. He did not get up as she joined him, and said, ‘Hello, Paco. How are you?’
‘I’m well. And you?’ He moved to make room for her to sit beside him on the banquette as she had in the past.
But Antonia took one of the chairs on the other side of the marble-topped table. There she could look directly at him, and also see the rest of the room reflected in one of the large, old mirrors which were the principal decoration.
‘Very well, thank you. You must be looking forward to seeing your family. I won’t keep you long—I haven’t much time to spare myself. Oh, no—not for me, thank you’—this as an older waitress who had served them in the past brought a dish of hot sweet-smelling churros, two small pots of thick chocolate, and two glasses of water to refresh the palate between mouthfuls of crisply fried churro dipped in the rich hot chocolate.
‘I didn’t order them either, but leave them here since you’ve brought them,’ said Paco, with a shrug. As the waitress moved away, he said to Antonia, ‘You say you’re in a hurry, but I thought I was sent for because you wanted to see me.’
She said, choosing her words, ‘All this time—until yesterday—I thought you were dead. It was my husband who told me the truth, and who felt I should see you. How could you be a party to such a cruel deception, Paco? I shouldn’t have believed it of you.’
He looked embarrassed and sulky. ‘It didn’t take you long to get over me. I saw photographs of your wedding to the Englishman in Hola. He’s a very rich man, it seems. I could never have given you a ring like that’—with a nod at the large glittering stones of her engagement ring.
‘A woman doesn’t need rings and riches to make her happy. She needs a man—but he must be truly a man. I’ve fallen in love with my husband because he is all a man should be, and this time my love will last. You could have broken my heart, Paco. But in fact you only bruised it, because what we felt for each other was merely a chemical reaction between two immature people. I’m sorry you’ve been brought here unnecessarily, but at least your mother will enjoy having you at home for some hours. Goodbye.’
She did not offer him her hand. It amazed her that she could ever have wanted to be touched by his soft, narrow-knuckled hands with their over-long nails. Now the only hand she wanted to caress her was sunburned and sinewy, with well-scrubbed nails pared to match the square tips of the long, strong fingers.
It didn’t take her long to pick up a taxi and tell the driver to take her back to the parador. But although the distance was less than ten kilometres, it seemed to take ages, such was her impatience to fling herself into Cal’s arms and tell him that not only was she ready to accept his love, but eager to give the fullest expression to her own.
But when the taxi reached its destination, there was no sign of her husband’s car among those in the parking bays.
‘No, Senor Barnard has not returned yet, senora,’ said the porter, handing her the key to their bedroom.
Where has he gone? How long will he be? Antonia thought impatiently, as she ran upstairs. Perhaps he has gone to see Tio Joaquin. Oh, why isn’t he here? Where are you, Cal darling? Where are you?
An hour passed slowly. Once there was a tap at the door which sent her flying to open it, only to find it was a chambermaid who had come to turn down the beds. Twin beds, Antonia noticed with disappointment instead of the relief which she would have felt a month ago. They would have to push them together. One bed would be too narrow for the two of them; or perhaps not, if they spent the night locked in each other’s arms as she hoped and expected they would.
From time to time the chilling possibility that Cal might have had an accident rose to the surface of her mind. But her common sense told her it was much more probable that, not wanting to spend time restlessly pacing the room as she was doing, he had driven to one of the coastal resorts and was killing time in a sea-front bar.
At last, unable to bear being cooped up in the bedroom a moment longer, she went downstairs and left the building, intending to contain her almost desperate impatience by walking up and down the drive until he returned.
She was on the steps outside the entrance when she saw his car and began to run joyously to meet him.
‘I thought you were never coming back. Where have you been?’ she exclaimed, when he had parked it between two other cars and was getting out.
‘Sitting by the lake,’ he said, meaning the great Albufera lagoon between the coastal strip and the fertile inland plains. ‘I didn’t expect you back so soon.’
‘I’ve been back for ages.’
As he locked the driver’s door and pocketed the keys, she moved into the space between their car and the one next to it. ‘Please tell me again what you said just before you left me ... that you love me.’ Without waiting for his reply, she flung herself at him. ‘Oh, Cal, kiss me ... hold me tight.’
The first real embrace of their marriage might have gone on indefinitely had not someone nearby cleare
d his throat and said in fluent but strongly-accented Spanish, ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, but my car has a right-hand drive and the other car is parked too close for me to get in by that door.’
While the man was speaking, Cal had released his hold on her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, in English. ‘We didn’t realise we were holding you up.’
‘Not to worry. You’re on your honeymoon, I imagine?’ the middle-aged man said, smiling at them.
‘Yes,’ said Cal. He looked down at Antonia’s flushed, happy face. ‘Yes, I do believe—finally—we are.’ And leaving the other man to make what he might of this somewhat cryptic answer, he walked with her into the hotel.
‘I have our key,’ she said, when he would have paused at the desk.
The lift was at the ground floor. They stepped into it. As it began to glide upwards, Cal resumed their interrupted kiss, pressing his mouth over hers not fiercely and roughly, as he had yesterday at the finca, but softly and warmly so that, before the lift came to a standstill, she had begun to feel a strange new languor stealing through her and knew that, even if there had been some reason for her to resist him, she would not have had the will to do it.
But if he loved her, if Diana no longer mattered to him, there was nothing to spoil the surrender for which she had longed since the morning he rang up to tell her the hijack was over and he had come through it unharmed.
In their room Cal locked the door, and left the key in the lock.
Safe now from further interruption, Antonia turned to him, and said frankly, ‘I’ve been so unhappy, thinking you still loved Diana, and would never love me.’
He frowned. ‘Diana?—You mean Diana Webster?’
‘Yes.’
‘She means nothing to me. Whose malicious tongue put that idea into your head?’
‘It was you who gave me the idea. When you introduced us at Glyndebourne, I knew she was—or had once been—more than a casual acquaintance. Later on, your sister mentioned that you had wanted to marry her. Laura didn’t say it maliciously.’
‘Perhaps not, but ill-informed gossip nearly always does harm, as it has in this case by making you overrate the importance of a phase of my past life which was actually quite unimportant. At no time did I consider making Diana my wife. To use a contemporary idiom, we “had sex”—and nothing more.’
‘Perhaps she took the relationship more seriously than you did. The night we met at that reception, it seemed to me that she was telling you she had changed her mind about marriage, and would like to be your wife if you still wanted her.’
‘In the presence of my existing wife?—my bride of barely eight weeks? Diana’s an audacious woman, but I don’t think even she would go to those lengths. You allowed your fancy to run away with you.’
‘People’s fancies do run away when they’re not quite sure where they stand. After all, you had made it clear that our marriage wasn’t a love match, and—’
‘Had I? When?’ he interrupted.
‘Always. I never had any other impression.’
‘Then you were mistaken,’ he said quietly. ‘I fell in love with you as desperately as a boy of twenty. The past two months have been hell: thinking my touch was repugnant to you, and wanting to hold you in my arms more than I’ve ever wanted anything.’
‘Oh, Cal—do you mean that?’ she whispered.
‘I can show you better than I can tell you.’
The first time she woke up in the morning to find her head on Cal’s shoulder, his arm round her waist, and their legs intertwined, Antonia felt like a butterfly which has at last struggled out of its confining chrysalis, dried its wings, and is free to fly into the sunlight.
He was still asleep. She did not disturb him but lay quietly in the circle of his arms, savouring her happiness and the knowledge that, at long last, she was a woman and truly his wife.
Cal had brought about this changed status with infinite tenderness and skill so that, long before there had been any pain, she had been in a daze of pleasure which had made one brief spasm of agony seem a trifling price for what had preceded and followed it. He had ravished her, not in the brutal but in the best sense. Afterwards they had both fallen asleep, coming to life in good time to shower and change for dinner downstairs.
On their second return to their room, he had made love to her a second time; and then they had sat by the window, drinking champagne and talking, and sometimes just holding hands and watching the moonlight on the sea.
Now, as he stirred and woke up, she felt sure it would not be long before she experienced again those extraordinary tremors of bliss which, like the ripples on a pool, seemed to creep along every nerve to the tips of her fingers and toes, even to her scalp.
Watching his eyes open, she saw the slightly surprised delight with which he registered her presence and remembered the previous evening.
‘Good morning. How did you sleep?’ Now the vivid blue eyes held amusement.
‘On cloud seven.’
He stretched and sprang out of bed. ‘Let’s have a shower.’
‘Together?’ she asked in surprise, as he held out his hand to her.
‘Why not? Marriage is the ultimate form of togetherness.’
An hour later, taking her seat at their breakfast table in the dining-room, filled with the ineffable glow of contentment and secret sense of superiority of a woman fresh from the arms of her lover who is also her husband, Antonia said, ‘Do you know the Spanish expression for the love of one’s life, or Mr. Right?’
Cal smiled and shook his head. ‘Tell me.’
‘La media naranja.’
‘The other half of your orange.’ He lifted a quizzical eyebrow. ‘And do you feel now that you’ve found it?’
Returning the intent blue gaze which had so often seemed unreadable, but in which now she saw quite clearly his love and tenderness for her, she answered softly, ‘I know I have.’
