‘Hola!’ Eduardo bowed slightly and took his place at the top of the table, relishing the familiar surge of authority which comforted him that, in his career, at least, he was in control and all was satisfactory and as it should be.
Why am I so consumed with anger and resentment? Why are all these unwelcome emotions swirling around me? I feel as though I’m in a washing machine being spun and tossed, completely out of control . . . I have never been so unsettled in my life . . . and yet . . . there are times I am exhilarated.
Consuela paused and lifted her head from the red embossed notebook in which she’d taken to writing a daily journal. It was late and she was tired but she was reluctant to join her husband in their large mahogany bed. They had rowed yet again after dinner. Eduardo had been cold and stern as they sat together eating the cocido madrileño she’d prepared for their meal.
She’d not been inclined to instigate conversation or to try and coax him out of his bad humour, as she would once have done. Why should I have to pander to him? she’d thought indignantly, pushing some chickpeas and pork belly around her plate, her appetite waning as her resentment increased.
‘Madre sent me a text. She wanted to know should she come and visit Beatriz.’ Eduardo dipped some crusty bread into his gravy and ate it absentmindedly.
Ah! thought his wife. No wonder he was annoyed. Contact with his mother and a missed trip to La Joya explained his extra sour visage. ‘What did you say?’ Consuela kept her tone neutral.
‘I told her there was no need. I told her that I would let her know if I felt it was necessary for her to visit.’
‘Perhaps you should consult with Beatriz. She might like to see her sister. She did have a nasty dose and she isn’t getting any younger,’ Consuela pointed out.
‘There’s no need. She’s on the road to recovery.’ Her husband glared at her and resumed eating.
‘Suit yourself,’ she said and noted the look of surprise that crossed Eduardo’s face at her unaccustomed riposte. The meal had dragged on in strained silence. ‘Will you be collecting Beatriz before or after lunch tomorrow?’ she’d asked finally, planning the next day’s evening meal in her head. She would cook escudella barrejada. Tía Beatriz was particularly partial to the pasta and soup dish.
‘I’ve not decided yet.’ Eduardo wiped his lips primly with his napkin.
‘I’d like to be able to plan my day.’ Consuela pushed her plate away.
‘We all make plans and God laughs! I was supposed to be on my way to Malaga right now,’ he retorted petulantly.
‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Eduardo! Stop trying to make me feel guilty about not collecting Tía Beatriz. She’s your aunt, not mine. And I explained my reasons to you. You can be so unreasonable at times. I’m sick of it!’ It had erupted out of her, a surging, unstoppable outburst. She’d felt like a bloody naughty schoolgirl sitting in silence at the table. Her resentment was like bile in her throat.
‘And I’m sick of you and your moods. You never used to be like this. That cousin of yours is a bad influence on you with her weird ideas and outlandish practices. She has you under her spell. You were always a supportive wife. Now you’re . . . you’re . . . una musaraña irracional.’ He’d flung his napkin on the table and stormed out of the room.
Consuela chewed her pen, remembering her husband’s bitter words. He’d never insulted her before, never called her names. Was she the irrational shrew he’d accused her of being? And as for her being influenced by her cousin Catalina . . . well that she could not deny, especially in this last year when they had grown even closer than ever before.
Consuela flipped through the pages of the diary her cousin had encouraged her to keep.
To beautiful Consuela.
A transformational journal of evolving, to find the Goddess within, Catalina had written in her elegant cursive on the flyleaf of the richly embossed red notebook she’d gifted Consuela with at Christmas.
‘What does that mean?’ Eduardo had sneered after he’d picked the book up from the side table where she’d laid it and read the inscription. ‘ “Goddess within”, such drivel that Catalina comes out with. No wonder her husband left her.’
‘She actually left him, Eduardo, because he did not respect her, or her beliefs, or her right to become her own person. And I would ask you in future, to respect what is mine, and to ask my permission to read personal things that have nothing to do with you!’ Consuela had felt a now familiar blaze of fury at her husband’s condescension and had snatched the diary from his hands, much to his astonishment.
She gave a sardonic smile at the memory. If Eduardo thought the goddess within was nonsense, wait until he heard she was going to attend a seminar with her cousin, in Seville, on The Emergence of the Divine Feminine and the Letting Go of the Patriarchy.
A thought struck her. ‘How interesting,’ she murmured, taking down a dictionary and flipping the pages to find the definition of patriarchy:
Patriarchy is a social system in which males hold primary power, predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property; in the domain of the family, fathers or father-figures hold authority over women and children.
Eduardo, her husband, the man she’d left her father’s house for, was the very essence of the patriarchy, as had been her father. Both carrying an energy of which she was now choosing to break free. No wonder Eduardo was tetchy and calling her names. Their relationship was evolving from an authority-based one, with him holding the power, to one of equality, where she, after years of playing the subservient wife – which Consuela had to admit had been her choice – was finally emerging into her own power to become his equal. Catalina had told her that in many unequal partnerships, the strain of unwelcome change often brought the relationship to breaking point, as had happened with Catalina’s own marriage.
Consuela’s dark eyes gleamed with anticipation and she picked up her pen.
In spite of the whirlpool of emotions that rage within me, I am excited by this new knowledge that is coming my way. My world has opened up immeasurably. The books I am reading, the conversations I am having with enlightened women resonate deeply with my spirit. I look forward to releasing the past and all the old ways that no longer serve me or who I am. I look forward to emerging into my own power and finding and being my true self at last. I am remembering!
Consuela could understand her husband’s discomfiture. She must try hard not to make this evolution of hers a battle between them, she decided, switching off the light and heading for the bedroom. She undressed in their ensuite and padded silently to her side of the bed. She knew Eduardo was awake.
‘Buenas noches, mi querido,’ she murmured as she always did. She felt her husband tense, knew he was struggling with himself to accept her olive branch. If he didn’t, it was not her fault, it was his choice, she reminded herself.
‘Buenas noches,’ Eduardo muttered, not very graciously, Consuela had to admit. There was no endearment, but still it was better than frigid silence. He was a good husband, as good as he knew how. If this ‘personality change’ of hers was an unanticipated and unexpected roller coaster for her, no wonder he was unsettled. If it were the other way around, and the roles were reversed, she would be just as thrown, she reasoned.
She slid her fingers into Eduardo’s and was glad his own tightened around hers, and they lay together in a silence that was no longer hostile until both of them drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JUTTA
‘Slow down, daughter,’ Oskar Sauer urged as he limped and puffed his way from Terminal 1 at Frankfurt airport to the S-Bahn.
‘Sorry, Papa.’ Jutta stopped and let her father catch his breath. There was a train departing from Platform 4 to Frankfurt Main in five minutes and she wanted to be on it so they would be in plenty of time to make their homeward-bound connection. She’d suggested a wheelchair at the airport but her father wouldn’t hear of it. ‘I’m not getting in one of those. I
’m not an invalid yet!’ he’d puffed and wheezed, and she’d thought he was going to expire there and then. That’s what you think, she’d thought crossly as they’d made slow progress from Terminal 3 in Malaga to the security check-in.
Oskar had spent the three weeks since Christmas with her and Felipe, and she was spending a week in Germany to settle her father back home after his travels. She felt very sorry for herself. Her sisters, Anka and Inga, had told her in no uncertain terms that she had to share in the minding of their father and give them some respite. They had decided that she would take him for three weeks every January and three weeks in June. Her brother, Friedrich, visited from Strasbourg once every six weeks or so and seemed to think that that was his duty done.
Jutta understood why her sisters would need a complete break from Oskar. He was a demanding father, with old-fashioned views of family and the place of women in society. He felt entitled to their care. The fact that they had lives of their own to live was not a consideration for him.
‘Anyway January is a good time for him to go to Spain. It’s much warmer than Germany down south, it will be good for his arthritis,’ Anka had remarked on the phone to her when she’d called to tell Jutta that their father had been delivered to Frankfurt airport and checked in and would be with her in five hours time.
‘I won’t be able to spend all day with him while he’s here. I work. You realize that. I have a business,’ Jutta explained.
‘January must be very quiet, it’s not the holiday season.’ Anka was dismissive.
‘Actually it’s very busy, with Germans and Scandinavians escaping winter weather. All the apartments on our books are let, Anka.’ Jutta tried to keep the sharpness out of her tone. Anka was a stay-at-home wife and mother and she and her husband and three teenage children were going skiing in the French Alps the following day, and had another trip planned in March. Felipe and Jutta hadn’t had a holiday in almost a year, and had no plans for one in the foreseeable future.
‘Well at least you don’t have kids. You’re a free agent,’ Anka sniffed. ‘I’d better go. We have to pack. Don’t forget to give Papa his water tablets in the morning; if he takes them too late he will be up and down peeing all night and won’t sleep and that will make him cranky.’
‘Crankier than normal you mean,’ Jutta muttered and Anka laughed. ‘Bear up, you only have him for two months a year. Inga and I have him the rest of the time.’ Anka was not at all sorry for her and Jutta supposed that if she were in her sister’s shoes, she wouldn’t be either.
The problem was that she didn’t like her father very much. She didn’t like his racist views, his right-wing politics, and his authoritarian attitude. Oskar was of a generation and a mindset that was utterly foreign to hers. Spain was the furthest he’d travelled, and as far as he was concerned, the Costa del Sol was a haven for criminals, drug lords and shady characters from Africa and the Middle East.
‘Don’t waste your time arguing with him,’ Felipe had advised when she’d rowed with Oskar over his rudeness to a young Moroccan who was selling his wares at one of the beach restaurants where they were having dinner.
‘Get to hell away from here, you layabout, with your fake Rolex watches, and go and pay taxes like the rest of us have to, to keep ourselves and our nations out of debt,’ he’d muttered irritably in German, waving him away.
‘Papa, that’s very rude! You can’t talk like—’
‘I can speak to whom I like and I don’t want any of those hoojiii hoojiii sellers annoying me when I’m eating my meal. They shouldn’t be allowed to bother diners.’ Oskar glared at her.
Fortunately the young man did not understand German, and good-naturedly smiled at Jutta before moving to the next table. Felipe had had to hide his amusement behind his napkin. ‘Hoojiii hoojiiis, I love it,’ he whispered that night when they were in bed and he was sliding his hand up under her nightshirt.
Jutta hated making love knowing that her father was in the next bedroom, although fortunately his deafness prevented him from hearing her muffled groans. His rumbling snores echoed along the hallway. He would tell her the following morning, as he did most days, that he’d ‘hardly slept a wink’.
He would wake up early, long before the winter sunrise, and she would feel obliged to leave the comfort of her bed and her husband’s warm body and make Oskar coffee and serve him croissants and a selection of ham and cheese for his breakfast.
But later, when she came home to check on him in the afternoon, and saw him napping on the balcony with his face raised to the sun, as was his custom, Jutta would soften and chide herself for her meanness of spirit. He’d provided well for his family. Now it was time for his family to step up to the plate and take care of him in his declining years.
As the January days turned into weeks, Jutta had struggled to maintain her equilibrium. Having someone else in the apartment was stressful; having her aged parent doubly so. She couldn’t walk around in her underwear, or nightwear, and lie with her head in Felipe’s lap watching TV in the evening. She couldn’t curse, or be impatient and irritable with her PMT and she seemed to be constantly serving coffee and cookies. She had to resort to keeping a bottle of wine in the bedroom because Oskar didn’t like to see her drink more than a glass with her evening meal and would lecture her if she had a refill. She felt she was fifteen years old again.
The morning of his departure from Spain finally arrived, and Jutta had breathed a deep sigh of relief when the door of the Lufthansa Airbus had been shut and the aircraft had rolled away from the terminal building on the first stage of their journey home.
Only a week more to go, she comforted herself several hours later, having negotiated the concourse at Frankfurt airport and helping Oskar onto the commuter train that would take about eleven minutes to Frankfurt Main. She’d booked the ICE fast train to Limburg Süd and after another change, Anka would be at Frickhofen station to meet them. Oskar had dozed as the countryside flashed by and Jutta would like to have dozed herself, exhausted from the stress of travelling with him. The next time she journeyed with him her father would use a wheelchair. She would insist on it and to hell with his pride.
No! The next time she would not travel back to Germany; she would put him on the plane and tell Friedrich to collect him from the airport and bring him home. Her lazy lump of a brother got away with murder. Jutta scowled, rooting in her purse to buy two cups of coffee from the snack trolley. It was a short journey and she hoped the coffee would restore her.
‘It’s nice to come home on a day when the weather is good. Although I’ll miss the heat.’ Oskar had perked up drinking his beverage and demolishing the biscuits she gave him in two mouthfuls. The fields were dusted with powdery snow. The sky was clear and piercingly blue and the dark green fir trees, in the forests that covered the slopes of the hills, were so different to the prickly green pine trees of her adoptive country. She’d shivered walking from the warmth of the Airbus into the air bridge and wrapped her scarf up around her neck and ears. They had left 20 degrees in Malaga and arrived to minus 3 in Frankfurt.
‘Back to the cold and civilization,’ Oskar remarked, but his eyes held a glimmer of amusement and she laughed.
‘I hope you enjoyed your holiday, Papa,’ she’d said, welcoming the warmth of the train.
‘I did, daughter, it was a change and the heat was good for me, and good for my bones but it’s nice to be home. I want to visit Klara’s grave. And I’m sure you’ll be glad to have the apartment to yourself again.’
‘I never said that, Papa,’ she said defensively.
‘No, you didn’t and you were kind, you didn’t make me feel like a nuisance the way the other two do.’ Oskar’s rheumy blue eyes looked sad and she felt an uncharacteristic pang of sympathy for him.
‘Don’t say that, Papa,’ she murmured.
‘Well they do,’ he said grumpily. ‘I know they have children and busy lives but I was a good father too, and I looked after my parents without complaining.’
‘You look very well, Papa, tanned and healthy,’ Anka declared when they walked down the platform to greet them at Frickhofen. She didn’t embrace her father. She hefted Oskar’s case into her Volvo estate. ‘You should go to Spain more often.’
‘Jutta and Felipe looked after me very well. And made me feel most welcome,’ Oskar added pointedly.
‘I should hope so,’ Anka remarked, proffering her cheek for Jutta to kiss. ‘Love the highlights, or is that from the sun?’ She studied her younger sister critically.
‘Thanks. Both. I got it styled and highlighted at Christmas.’ Jutta helped her father into the front seat of the car.
‘You probably need highlights now, I thought you’d gone quite mousy the last time I saw you,’ Anka remarked, putting the key into the ignition and waiting for Oskar to fasten his seat belt.
‘Well I suppose mousy is better than outright grey the way you went,’ Jutta riposted smartly. Her oldest sister could be quite the bitch. She’d be in a bad humour now because their father was back home and her freedom was curtailed.
She should stop letting them make her feel guilty, Jutta reflected as they drove towards Dornburg in the deepening dusk. They had made their choices, she made hers; her sisters could just deal with it.
In fairness, Anka had the log fire burning and their father’s house was warm and welcoming when the weary travellers finally put the key in the door. The fridge was full, and a big casserole of Tüffel un Plum, his favourite stew of smoked ham, prunes and potatoes, was simmering in the oven. The familiar scent of cloves and bay leaves made Jutta’s mouth water and she realized she was starving after all the travelling.
Orange Blossom Days Page 16
