‘I’ve never seen yellow rice before,’ admitted Alexandra, glancing at the colourful dish in front of her.
‘It’s the saffron, an aromatic spice from the crocus flower,’ Ramón added, seeing her blank look. ‘Ah, so much to learn, Cousin. We use it a lot in Spanish cooking. Buen probecho, let’s eat,’ he encouraged with a wave of his hand and they both tucked into the food with gusto.
After a few moments, Ramón looked up at Alexandra mischievously. ‘So, mi primita. If you’re an expert on romance, is there a novio waiting for you in England?’
For a moment, the eyes of the stranger she had met at the port that afternoon swam before her and she remembered the spark of awareness between them.
‘No, Ramón. Ironic it may be, but I’m far too busy with my writing for that sort of thing. Though my Aunt Geraldine would have had me married off by now if she’d had her way.’ Alexandra didn’t add that she had always felt out of step with her peers. Many of them were beginning to marry and have babies but, while she herself was never short of admirers, the truth was that the men she came across, often young suitors paraded in front of her by her aunt and well-meaning friends, all seemed so dull and buttoned up. Besides, she had her dear childhood friend, Ashley, who had grown up with her in London and was a devoted companion, though he had always wanted to be more. She thought of his proposal of marriage, a month ago, that she had turned down, gently but firmly. It still flooded her with guilt and embarrassment.
Ramón nodded again and said through a mouthful of bread: ‘Yes, Uncle Alonso has mentioned your aunt. The daunting Englishwoman, terrifying all who cross her path.’
Alexandra laughed. ‘Well, maybe that’s how she used to be when I was a child. Aunt Geraldine has mellowed an awful lot since then. Except she can be rather set in her ways when it comes to marriage, I suppose.’
‘Rules and principles, eh?’ He shrugged. ‘La adicción de la edad, the addiction of the old.’
Alexandra grinned. ‘Perhaps. I know that she grew up in a different time but she doesn’t seem to realize that the world has changed since the war. Yes, there’s still food and petrol rationing in England and even clothes were only taken off the list last year because the black market made it so impossible to enforce.’
‘The war has taken its toll on us all,’ mused Ramón. He lowered his voice. ‘Though here we’ve been devastated by our own civil war, too.’ He fidgeted in his chair, keeping his voice down. ‘I shouldn’t be saying it but this self-sufficiency Franco is obsessed by is madness, it’ll never work. We’re an impoverished country that needs investment, raw materials, food even. Young people are feeling desperate and hopeless, they’re leaving Spain in droves.’ He lit a thin cigar and shrugged. ‘But at least it looks like relations with America are improving. Hopefully Spain won’t be a global outcast for long. But I didn’t know you were still going through such hard times in England.’
Alexandra nodded thoughtfully before taking a sip of wine. ‘People are still feeling the pinch of poverty everywhere. I think in a funny sort of way, though, my aunt misses the war. She was the first to join the volunteers ripping the railings down in London streets. There was a phrase we used during the war in England: “Make do and mend”. That was always Aunt Geraldine. And, of course, her husband, my Uncle Howard, was there during the war too. Life hasn’t been easy for her since he died a couple of years ago.’
‘But your life in London is comfortable? You like it there?’ Ramón sat back in his chair and studied her with curiosity.
‘Yes, of course … well, I mean, I’m one of the lucky ones. My Uncle Howard set up a trust fund for me, so I’m privileged enough to have money, and I have the royalties from my two books … But it’s rather suffocating at times. I can’t explain, it sounds so ungrateful. Then there’s always Aunt Geraldine’s expectations that I’ll give up my writing and settle down for the sake of security. I know she only wants what’s best for me but it’s different for women now.’ Alexandra looked up at her cousin, her face alight with hope. ‘I want more, Ramón.’ She surprised herself at how comfortable she already felt with him, so much so that she was able to voice those desires she would have hesitated to reveal to her London friends. ‘There are places I long to see. I don’t want to be dragged down some preordained path just because I’m twenty-five, a woman and unmarried. I need to follow where my writing takes me, that’s why I’m here.’
They talked briefly about the family. Alexandra sensed a reticence in her cousin, as though he did not consider himself one of the ‘clan’. He spoke of travelling and of emigrating to the United States, where he would start his own plantation.
‘Are you so desperate to leave Spain? You’re lucky to be part of a noble Spanish dynasty and a flourishing business,’ she pointed out.
‘Believe me, Cousin, being part of an aristocratic family in Spain is not necessarily a passport to an easy life,’ explained Ramón. ‘Under Franco a family’s mere survival can invoke suspicion and envy among surviving dissenters. The iron grip of El Generalissimo still prevails, and we de Fallas have always practised caution as a religion. It’s the one thing I admire our grandmother for: she’s never embraced Franco’s politics, even though our status as Spanish nobility and landowners should, by rights, have made us partisan with the nationalist cause. She trod a fine line and it paid off.’
Alexandra shook her head. ‘Back home, reports of Spain’s troubles were overshadowed by the war in Europe, I suppose. We don’t know about the Civil War and life in Spain from an insider’s perspective,’ she said softly.
‘We’re a nation of spies and victims,’ Ramón muttered, and drained his glass.
‘And that’s why you want to leave?’
‘Partly, yes.’
‘Would you not miss the family?’ After all that he had told her, Alexandra was still surprised that Ramón would cast himself adrift in the world.
‘Once you’ve acquainted yourself with them and have lived some time at El Pavón, you’ll understand my need to get away,’ was his reply.
Alexandra’s curiosity was sparked. She wondered if Ramón’s outsider status within the family, something she had sensed, was part of the reason why she felt so at ease with him. An outsider herself, she had always been fearful of the family, of the secret power the de Fallas seemed to hold over her soul. Although Ramón’s comments added to the uneasy sense of foreboding she could not shake off, her desire to get him to reveal more about the family was stronger.
‘I know that the family must be very strict and conventional. After all, they made my mother feel so unwelcome she had to come back to England,’ Alexandra persisted. ‘But you’re a de Falla by blood, why should you not feel comfortable here?’
Ramón hesitated before pouring himself a glass of wine. He lit another cigar, inhaled deeply and, leaning back, said: ‘Our grandmother rules the hacienda like a general over her troops: her word is law. Because of that, anyone who doesn’t see eye to eye with her risks her wrath and rejection, though I suppose it’s not difficult to see why she’s become that way.
‘She’s a formidable woman who’s led a formidable life … and that’s made her tough and determined. El Pavón was built up as a wine-making and horse-rearing business by Count Rodriguez Cervantes de Rueda, the Duquesa’s brother, whom she worshipped. First Rodriguez died and then her husband, Juan Raphael. Just imagine, as a young widow she was left to manage El Pavón until Luis María came of age, and he took over the control and management of the estate. And then he died too, of course.’
Ramón flicked the ash off his cigar. ‘Do you want me to go on?’ he asked with a faint smile.
Alexandra was fascinated, not least because the conversation with the old woman on the train had made her want to hear more. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Our family history has all the ingredients of a Greek tragedy. It’s so dramatic.’
‘It seems that drama is a de Falla speciality, mi primita. When Luis María died, El Pavón passed back to our grandmother
and she rebuilt her empire. From then on, she’s been determined to exert complete control over the de Fallas and fit us all into her plans and schemes … whatever the consequences.’ Ramón raised an eyebrow. ‘As you know, when both her sons thwarted her designs by marrying our mothers and tainting the de Falla name, she succeeded in driving them both away.’
‘Yes, I’ve always wondered what it must have been like for Mamá, an outcast in my father’s family.’
The prospect of meeting the formidable Duquesa was once again making Alexandra feel apprehensive; perhaps the old lady would judge her granddaughter also unworthy of the de Falla name. And yet she had sought Alexandra out …
‘I can understand how the loss of so many people close to her must have strengthened the Duquesa’s sense of family,’ she suggested.
‘Perhaps you’re right, mi primita.’ Ramón gave an ironic smile as he gulped down the last of his wine. ‘Though, knowing our grandmother, the loss of El Pavón to Luis María, for those few years, would have been a bigger blow.’
‘And what about you, Ramón?’ Alexandra asked. ‘Did you grow up at El Pavón?’
‘Yes, but when I was a teenager my father died. My mother couldn’t face remaining among the de Fallas without him and decided to go back to her family in Granada. I could have gone with her but she wanted me to make something of myself here.’ As if feeling the need to break the serious tone of the conversation, Ramón looked up at Alexandra and grinned. He picked an orange from the fruit bowl on the table, rolling it up his forearm to flick it high into the air, catching it with the other hand. ‘After all, who can blame her? You must have heard the shameful truth about my origins, Cousin.’
‘And what would that be?’ Alexandra mouth twitched in amusement. She was warming to him more and more.
Ramón stared at her in mock horror as he plucked another orange and began juggling them in one hand. ‘I’m half de Falla and half Circus.’
Alexandra giggled. ‘I’m shocked, of course.’
‘So you should be, a nice girl like you. But as you’re half-English and therefore technically an outcast too, I forgive your unkindness. The irony is that the circus would have suited me better than El Pavón, I think.’ He arched an eyebrow playfully and brought the spinning oranges to a stop. His fingers, which she did not doubt were strong, looked as delicate as those of a girl.
‘You mean clowns and that sort of thing?’
He fixed her with a mock-offended look again. ‘I prefer the term “bohemian”, mi primita. Anyhow, I’m certainly much more like my mother than I am my uptight, aristocratic father’s family.’
‘And what became of your mother?’
‘She remarried and has a good life back in Granada. I see her from time to time.’
‘So you must have grown up with our other cousins, Luis María’s children?’ She gazed at him quizzically, recalling what she had heard both from her father and the gossiping woman on the train, particularly about Salvador. Ramón suddenly looked restless.
‘It’s getting late. I think I’ll pay Pépé’s slate and tell you more on the way back.’
After protracted goodbyes to the ebullient Señor Pedro, they were on their way in Ramón’s old Fiat, leaving the town behind as the roads twisted uphill through the starry night. There was so much that Alexandra wanted to know that they hadn’t yet touched upon, particularly about her sister, Mercedes, the intriguing Salvador and her other cousin, Esmeralda, but perhaps she had asked Ramón too many questions already. There were some things she would simply have to discover for herself. For now, as they drove past dark clumps of trees studding the hillsides and the warm earthy fragrances of Andalucía surrounded her, she contented herself with listening to him continue his account of the family’s history.
What was left of Ramón’s tale was not much different from what he had already told her, and the bits and pieces she remembered her father recounting. Once more, tragedy had struck the de Falla family and sent fate on a new course. Luis María and his young wife Cecilia had died in a dreadful typhoid epidemic, leaving behind the adopted children, Esmeralda and Salvador, then aged five and eleven. After Luis María was gone and Alonso was widowed, the de Fallas were reunited at El Pavón. The Duquesa then reigned over the family with an iron fist.
‘Only one person has been able to weasel himself into the old dragon’s affections, and is safe from her demands and fits of rage: Salvador. And qué broma! what a joke, he doesn’t even have a drop of de Falla blood. In her eyes, her beloved heir can do no wrong, though that is as far from the truth as chickens are from angels, I can tell you. But that’s another story where, for now perhaps, la mejor palabra siempre es la que queda por decir, the best word is the one left unsaid.’
‘Our cousin sounds … complicated.’
Ramón glanced at her before continuing: ‘To say the least. Salvador is a mixture of the coldness and intransigence he learned from the Duquesa, the recklessness and impulsiveness of his adopted father, and the sensitivity and pride of his mother. A peculiar combination that inevitably brings tragedy in its wake.’
‘Wasn’t Salvador to be married?’ Alexandra had no idea why the question had suddenly popped into her head. Perhaps she pitied the woman who had found herself mixed up with this man.
Ramón shook his head slightly as he slowed the car in front of a pair of huge iron gates. ‘Yes, he was engaged once but even that was doomed from the start.’
Once again, the uneasiness that had gripped her earlier crept back. She wondered what Ramón had meant. Hadn’t the old woman on the train mentioned something about it? No matter. She was reluctant to hear more about Salvador at that moment. It was plain that Ramón was not overly fond of his so-called cousin but she must not let herself be influenced by prejudice at this stage.
‘You don’t like him much,’ she remarked.
‘No, not much,’ he sighed. ‘He’s too moody, too self-centred … you’ll see …’
* * *
El Pavón loomed darkly through the willow trees as they drove along the gravel drive and pulled up outside the main entrance to the hacienda. The soft glow from a pair of carriage lamps mounted on the front of the house gave just enough light to illuminate the few steps to the imposing wooden front door. So this was the place of her Spanish ancestors. Perhaps it was just the silence, the lack of moonlight and her fatigue but, to Alexandra, it seemed, in the blackness, like a giant, shadowy tomb, holding dangerous secrets to be discovered by those who dared penetrate its intimidating walls. For a moment, she wanted to run away, back to England, back to her comfortable life and forget this foreign venture altogether.
Everybody at the hacienda had gone to bed, except for José, the ageing but strong and wiry-looking manservant. No, Don Alonso had not yet returned, he explained. Yes, Doña Alexandra’s room was ready and there was plenty of hot water. Sarita, the maid, would bring a warm drink up to the señorita’s room in a few minutes and would help her prepare for bed, he announced.
Ramón accompanied Alexandra upstairs to check that everything was in order and she had all she needed, before bidding her goodnight.
Once alone, Alexandra looked round the huge room with its two tall windows opening on to a balcony. The impression of space was emphasized by the height of the ceiling and the whitewashed walls, bare of ornament except for a tapestry representing a pastoral scene, which hung over the canopied bed, a wooden crucifix on one wall and a magnificent mirror mounted above the dark oak dressing table.
Her gaze wandered from the delicate sparkling crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling, with its shining candle lights, to the heavy curtains of thick silk. Alexandra loved everything: the elegant winged chair in the left-hand corner of the room, the carved cabinet that lay between the window and the Louis XVI writing desk; the antique bronze lamp and leatherbound books on the bedside table.
She walked across the room to admire the vase of spring blossoms that formed a colourful display on a chest of drawers between th
e windows. This room was furnished with exquisite simplicity and impeccable taste. Someone had taken a good deal of care to create a welcoming atmosphere. Overwhelmed with gratitude, her previous doubts and foreboding melted away.
There was a knock at the door as Sarita, the young maid, came in carrying a cup of steaming hot tea. She then moved to the adjoining bathroom and started to run Alexandra’s bath in the cast-iron pedestal tub before rejoining her to ask if she would like her to unpack the cases. Alexandra was thankful for the offer, suddenly overcome by a wave of weariness to which she had refused to submit throughout her long and eventful journey.
Half an hour later, she slipped between the silky sheets of a bed that must have dated from the last century. As Alexandra stared into the darkness, her mind wandered back to the church and the stranger who had so disturbed her. She found herself imagining what he might have said, had they not been interrupted.
An unfamiliar heat crept through her body as she recalled his arresting gaze, which had struck an unusual chord in the depths of her heart. She lifted her hand to her throat, startled by the memory: so powerful that she could feel his eyes on her again. What was this curious, incredible sensation that inflamed her so she felt as though he had actually touched her? It made her aware of herself, her body, her womanhood, in a way she had never known before. In the last moments before exhaustion took over, she ruefully wished their paths might cross again but that was the stuff of fairytales, she thought, and sank into a deep sleep.
Alexandra dreamt of piercing eyes that reminded her of England’s grey wintry skies; steel eyes, cold as the waters of the North Sea; sad, desperate eyes that seemed to be following her. She knew she had seen them before.
Abruptly the scene changed. She found herself inside a marvellous cathedral. She was seven years old … it was her first communion. The organ was playing and someone was singing a hymn to the Virgin Mary. She was standing at the altar, dressed in white. Beside her stood a beautiful young woman, who also wore white. Alexandra looked up at her to recognize her mother. She reached out for her mother’s hand but already she was moving away.
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