The Paper Marriage

by Flora Kidd

  The plane tilted and straightened again, then began to descend bumpily over sunlit hills scattered with sparse vegetation. She could see quite clearly giant cactus plants thrusting numerous finger-like branches upwards and small thin leaved bushes straggling over the ground. Another valley opened up, a fertile green gash in the hills. At one end a village of white houses glinted. Houses were scattered here and there over the terraced slopes, shaded by clustering trees.

  The plane flew lower. The roof of a house flashed beneath it, then the grey tarmac of a short runway appeared. Brooke’s hands went to her ears as they popped when the plane lost height. Then suddenly the plane was bumping along the runway, the brakes were squealing and it came to a stop not far from the house. The engine was stopped and in the sudden silence she turned to Miguel and said,

  “And now perhaps you’ll tell me where we are.”

  His smile was both mischievous and admiring.

  “Once again I admire your coolness, your lack of agitation,” he remarked. Most women I know would be having hysterics by now.” “Well, I’m assuming there’s some reasonable explanation of why we are here and not at Ciudad Bolivar,” she retorted, and his smile widened.

  “Oh, there is an explanation, but I am not sure whether you will think it is reasonable when you hear it. Meanwhile may I welcome you very warmly to the Perez Hacienda, my family’s ancestral home,” he said.

  “But why have we come here?”

  “I have kidnapped you.”

  “Kidnapped me! Why?”

  “I am afraid I am guilty of using your desire to visit your father in Ciudad Bolivar for my own ends, and I hope you will forgive me,” he said charmingly. “I think I told you I was desperate.”

  “Do you really intend to keep me here?” she gasped.

  “Si, until someone comes to rescue you.”

  “But this is ridiculous,” she exclaimed. “Kidnapping is medieval!”

  “Like revenge,” he added with a smile. “But then perhaps we are still a little medieval in this country. I have often wondered what it would be like to kidnap a woman, and now I have done it. In olden days the romantic hero used to carry the woman he loved on horseback before him, galloping through the night to his hideaway in the mountains. These days we use light aeroplanes.”

  “It’s all very well for you to weave romances, Miguel, but I am not the woman you love and you can’t keep me here,” said Brooke practically. “You must take me to either to Caracas or to Ciudad Bolivar at once.

  “I agree you are not the woman I love, although I would not find it difficult to love you, but I can keep you here and I am not taking you back to Caracas or anywhere else until I am ready,” he retorted. “You can’t walk from here to Caracas and you can’t fly a plane yourself. I shall make quite sure that no car is available to you and that you won’t be able to creep out in the night and get to the village.”

  “But why? What do you hope to achieve?” demanded Brooke.

  It was hot in the plane and her head was beginning to ache. She could see that the heat in the valley was beginning to create mirages, so that in the distance trees seemed to be floating above the ground.

  By way of answer Miguel opened the door of the cockpit.

  “Let us go into the house. It will be cool and comfortable there and I shall tell you,” he murmured.

  He jumped down to the ground. Discarding any idea of refusing to go with him, feeling perspiration beginning to trickle down her back as the heat grew greater, Brooke allowed him to help her down from the plane. Immediately she was aware of movement disturbing the hot still silence of the valley. Someone was running towards them, a small figure dressed in white, almost extinguished by a big wide-brimmed straw hat.

  Under the brim of the hat big brown eyes set in a dark round face blinked shyly at Miguel.

  “This is Felipe,” explained Miguel after greeting the boy. “He is the son of Antonia who looks after the house for me. Antonia is the wife of one of the farmers. Most of the land which once belonged to the Perez Hacienda has been divided up between peasant farmers under the directorship of the Agrarian Institute, which is a government agency. Before then eighty per cent of the land was owned by five per cent of the population and the peasants were very poor. Now we hope to increase production as more land is farmed properly.”

  Hand under her elbow, he urged her forward towards the stone building of the house. All around the land simmered in the heat of midday and Brooke could see that the slopes of the hills were extensively cultivated.

  “We go in for mixed farming here,” Miguel explained in answer to her interested question. “Coffee, cacao, corn, cotton, a little sugar cane and some cattle raising. You see there is a wide variety owing to the differences in rainfall and climate according to how high up in the hills you are or even according to which side of a valley your fields are.”

  The house was traditional in design, built round a central courtyard or patio. Its walls were of rough undressed stone and very thick to keep out the heat of the day so that the narrowed shuttered windows had deep embrasures. At the front there was the usual verandah which overlooked the valley. From the verandah they entered a dim cool entrance hall with a shining stone floor on which were set huge earthenware pots filled with flowering plants.

  A big buxom woman, whose wide smile showed her relationship to the skinny Felipe and who wore a brightly coloured cotton skirt topped by a white blouse, came bustling into the hallway to greet them. She was still wearing a wide-brimmed black felt hat over a head-scarf which was tied beneath her chin. Miguel spoke to her in Spanish, introduced her to Brooke and then she hurried away into the back of the house while Miguel led Brooke into a long low room.

  “I have told Antonia that we’ll be staying for a few days,” said Miguel. Sunlight shafting in through the three narrow windows picked out the bright reds and oranges of the rugs on the stone floor and painted the rough whitewashed walls with golden colour.

  “Miguel, you can’t do this! I can’t stay here a few days. What will Owen think?”

  He swung round to face her, tall and slim, casually dressed for once, in a checked cotton shirt and navy blue cotton pants. His arching intelligent eyebrows were raised high above his glinting black eyes as he smiled and said smoothly,

  “But that is the whole point of this little adventure, amada. I do not want Owen to think, I want him to act. Please sit down - it is very hot to-day. I shall go and make us both a long cool drink which we shall have while Antonia is preparing lunch, and I shall explain my plan to you. Then I do not think you will object to having been kidnapped. Excuse me, porfavor.”

  Left alone, Brooke wandered around the room admiring the comfortable simplicity of its furnishings and examining some strangely-shaped pieces of rough pottery which were set out on shelves running the full length of one wall. And all the time her

  mind was busy with the implications of Miguel’s latest move.

  She had been kidnapped! If she had not been so worried she would have laughed about it. It was the sort of romantic escapade she might have dreamt about during her adolescence, being kidnapped by a handsome South American Don Juan and whisked away to his hacienda in the hills where he would make passionate love to her and end up asking her to marry him. But she had never believed that it could have happened in reality to a person like herself who was sensible, calm and competent and whom Owen had married because she did not panic.

  Miguel came back into the room carrying a tray on which there were two tall glasses containing an iced fruit drink.

  “I see that you’re admiring Manuela’ s collection of pottery,” he remarked as he brought her glass to her. “These are genuine archaeological finds. She is, as you know, passionately interested in the history of our country. We can’t boast any Incas like Peru, or Aztecs like Mexico, but some of those pieces have been dated as early as 1500 B.C.” He pointed to some crude stone and quartzite axe heads. “This,” he continued, pointing to a figurine which
had short legs, an undefined body, rectangular head, coffee-bean eyes and an incised line decoration round its head, “this is typical of the pottery found in the Valencia region and dates from pre-Columbian times. And those smoother, more elegant pieces over there, painted black and white, belong to the Tierroid culture which was centred around the Barquisimento region, north of here, and dates from about 1000 A.D.”

  Which was all very interesting, thought Brooke as she sipped her drink and looked at the pottery, but it did not explain what Miguel expected Owen would do.

  “How do you expect Owen to act?” she asked.

  “Hope he’ll act, not expect,” he corrected her gently. “If Eva is right about him and if my own reading of his character is correct, I hope that when he realizes you are here in the hills with me he will act very quickly.”

  “You’re talking in riddles. I don’t understand. What has Eva to do with your kidnapping of me?” she demanded.

  “Come and sit down on this sofa. That’s better. Now I shall try to explain. You know that I love Stella and that Owen stole her from me.”

  “He did it unwittingly. He didn’t intend to hurt you. He told me that,” she said quickly, rising to Owen’s defence.

  “Unwittingly or not, she fell in love with him and has no time for me,” he remarked wryly. “Last night at the party I asked her to marry me, and once more she turned me down. She knows that his marriage to you is one of convenience. She hopes that you will leave him and then the way will be clear for her. Nothing I could say last night would convince her otherwise. But, and this is important to me, she did say that if I could prove that Owen cared more for you than for her, she would give him up and consider my proposal.”

  “Oh, Miguel! How can you prove something which is not true? Owen doesn’t care for me.”

  “How do you know? Has he told you that he doesn’t?” he asked sharply.

  “No, but he hasn’t told me that he does either,” retorted Brooke.

  “Perhaps because he does not know it himself yet, perhaps in doing what we are doing we shall help him to understand himself, but what is important too, is that you care for him. No, do not deny it, querida. You do. You cannot see how your eyes shine when you mention his name or how wistful you look when you say that he has gone away, and you must be prevented from leaving him. You were planning to leave him, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “His stepmother suggested it would be for his greater happiness if I did.”

  “Bah! My match-making aunt! If her husband knew what she has been doing he would rap her knuckles hard,” scoffed Miguel. “Eva told me as much. She also scolded me for baiting Owen by meeting you and causing gossip which she was convinced was upsetting him. ‘Up to your old bull-baiting tricks, Matador,’ she said to me, and it was then that the idea came to me. I have been baiting Owen a little, but only a little gentle twisting of his tail as we do in the coleado del toro, the small provincial bullfights which take place out here in the country at our local festivals. What I have done has not been sufficient to make him angry and react violently, perhaps because of his rather strange relationship with you.”

  “What do you mean by strange?”

  “He lets you behave as his equal, to be independent of him. It is strange to me.”

  “But I am his equal,” protested Brooke.

  “In some ways, yes, but not in all,” he said condescendingly.

  “No woman can be the equal of a man in all things. But that is something on which you and I would never agree because we come from different backgrounds and cultures. If you were my wife I would have taught you by now who is your master,” he added mockingly, and laughed when she tilted her chin at him.

  “You still haven’t told me what you hope Owen will do,” she reminded him.

  “I thought that if I could do something to irritate him enough he would take action as he used to do in the old days when we played at bullfighting and his action would prove to Stella once and for all that he cares more for you than for her. So I kidnapped you.”

  Brooke could not help laughing.

  “Oh, Miguel, you’re so naive! This is the twentieth century and Owen might have reacted violently as a boy to your baiting, but he isn’t going to set off to rescue me. Why, he won’t even know where I am. He’ll think I’m with my father.”

  “No, he won’t, because Manuela will tell him I have kidnapped you and brought you here, and if he knows me as well as I know him he will be worried.”

  “Why?”

  “He will imagine I am making love to you.”

  “I see. What will lead him to think that?”

  “When he and I were young and gay we used to come up here for week-ends and bring our girl-friends. He knows also that I have brought other women here in the past. Now, being a possessive man who does not like others taking what he considers to be his, I think he will come after us. Even if he does not love you, you are his wife before the law and he has a way of holding on to his own.”

  “How long will we have to wait for him to come?” she asked, remembering with a little quiver of fear that Owen had once warned her that he did not like anyone trespassing on his preserves. It was just possible that he would come and that there would be a violent scene between him and Miguel.

  “If he does not come by Friday he will not come,” said Miguel confidently, “and then you and I shall return to Caracas.”

  “What about my father?”

  “By then he should be in Caracas too. Do not be too angry, Brooke. Think of staying here as a little holiday. It is pleasant here in the hills. And now I think lunch will be ready. I am hungry even if you are not. After siesta, I will show you round the small part of the estate which my family have retained. We keep it as a place to come to when we need to rest from the bustle of city life.”

  Although she was disappointed because she would not be seeing her father that day, Brooke decided to make the most of the situation and do as Miguel suggested. After a good lunch and a quiet and peaceful siesta in a simple bedroom furnished with a big double bed and little else, she went with Miguel on a tour of the estate, where she watched with interest the peons working in the fields of coffee plants.

  “To-morrow being the third of May they will all be on holiday,” said Miguel. “It is a feast day to celebrate the Holy Cross and there will be a procession in the village. It could be said that Venezuela is a country in which not a week goes by without a procession being held.”

  “Will there be any other form of celebration?”

  “Oh yes. The procession will be followed by novenas in private houses. During this time people from anywhere can enter any house, eat with the householder and join in the singing and dancing. Now that I’ve been seen I expect the word will go round the district that there is someone in residence here and we shall have the usual invasion to-morrow. Which reminds me I must warn Antonia to have plenty of food ready.”

  “Perhaps I can help her to prepare it,” offered Brooke, and he turned to smile at her.

  “I am sure she would like that,” he murmured. “You have decided to accept your present situation then?”

  “There isn’t much else I can do, is there?” she replied.

  He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips. This time the gesture was one of tribute rather than passion.

  “Once more I admire you, Brooke. Owen is a very lucky man. I only hope he realizes it,” he said sincerely.

  “Well, by Friday we shall know, won’t we?” she said with an attempt to be lighthearted, although privately she was sure that Owen would not come.

  Next morning she helped Antonia and, in spite of a language problem, they had an interesting and happy time together. The woman was much more approachable than Pilar and showed Brooke how to prepare various Venezuelan dishes including the corn bread known as arepa which they used to wrap around savoury fillings.

  As Miguel had predicted, many people called on them during that day - squat dar
k-skinned farmers in their best white suits accompanied by their wives, some of whom carried young children in shawls on their backs, gay young men bringing with them cuatros, maracas, concertinas and drums to provide the music for the dancing in which everyone joined in the courtyard.

  It was a happy day and Brooke was glad of the diversions because they helped to keep her mind off Owen. As far as she could tell no one questioned her presence at the house, but everyone stared at her bright hair.

  “They probably thought you were a goddess from the north,” said Miguel jokingly after everyone had gone and they were alone on the verandah sitting in the velvet darkness, watching the lights twinkling from the scattered houses. There was a new moon high above the shoulder of a hill, a sickle of silver in the purple-black sky. The valley was quiet and peaceful and soon the sound of a cuatro could be heard playing a passionate romantic melody.

  At once Brooke was reminded of the time she had sat with Owen, Eva and Diego on the verandah at the Francisco hacienda.

  Then as now the music stirred her senses and aroused dormant desires. She wished suddenly that Owen was there with her on the verandah instead of Miguel. If he had been there she would not have risen to her feet, excused herself and gone to her room as she had that other time and as she was doing now. She would have stayed to sit with him, at his feet, hoping to feel his fingers in her hair, hoping that he would make love to her.

  She slept badly, dreaming of a bullfight. The arena was a circle of glittering white sand. The matador, in a richly embroidered jacket, performed dangerous feats, swirling his red-lined cape, tantalizing the bull until the creature charged at him in a frenzy. Somehow Brooke found herself kneeling on the bright sand beneath the glare of the hot sun pleading at the feet of the matador for the life of the bull. He loomed over her threateningly and when she looked up she saw that he was not Miguel, as she had at first thought, but Owen. And as she pleaded once more for the bull he said quite clearly “No”, and turned his back on her.