A Forbidden Love

by Kerry Postle

  The hands of the clock spun round quickly. In the kitchen Cecilia chopped, basted, stirred and seasoned. In the dining room Lola lit the candles and positioned the napkins. In the bedroom Don Felipe tried out a cigar and tasted the wine. In the dressing room Dona Sofίa changed her lipstick and made a few last-minute adjustments to her hair. And in the darkest corner of the larder Manuel crouched by his sack of food, and waited.

  The wheels of` a car pulled up in front of the house, its headlights illuminating the beautiful façade. Don Felipe looked down from the upstairs window. It was Seňor Gonzalez and his wife, always first to arrive at any gathering. Don Felipe gave a heavy sigh as he saw them climb out of their car.

  Seňor Gonzalez was a short, dark haired man of about forty-five with a fast expanding middle. His wife, tall, slim and beautiful, all the things her husband was not, stopped to survey the grounds of the estate. Her eye line skimmed the top of her husband’s head, careful not to let it fall lower as otherwise she would have to contemplate the pot-bellied gargoyle he was fast becoming. He was a good husband – well-connected and rich – and she allowed him the occasional public show of affection to show others that she was a loving wife. Catching Dona Sofίa who had now joined her husband up at the window, she judged now might be a good time for one such display. ‘You look beautiful,’ Seňor Gonzalez whispered to his wife as he stretched his neck up to kiss her cheek. She smiled and whispered an exaggerated thank you for all to see.

  ‘Welcome,’ Dona Sofίa said with gushing insincerity, slightly breathless having rushed down the stairs. The sound of heavy wheels on the long gravel drive saved her from having to say more. Two further cars made their way towards the house.

  In the kitchen Cecilia shouted, ‘Go, go, go! Lola, do the drinks!’

  ‘But I’ve not finished adding the garnish to this …’

  ‘I can do that,’ Cecilia hissed. ‘Now go, or she’ll be furious.’

  Doctor Alvaro and his daughter had arrived too but still hadn’t joined the party. They’d arrived by cart and so had gone round to the back of the house where the stables were.

  It had struck Maria on the way there that her father was preoccupied. But she didn’t think a great deal about it as she was too. Yet whereas her mind was full of gaiety and laughter, and her face alight as she imagined the pleasurable sounds, smells, tastes and sights of the coming evening as she bumped up and down the stony lanes, her father’s was focused on less intoxicating, more vital matters. He’d planned to tell his daughter that Seňor Suarez was gone, and safe. The journey to the estate seemed a perfect opportunity. But he couldn’t tear his mind away from what he had to do at the dinner tonight. It was serious. Lives depended upon it. He could not fail in his duty and it was all he could think about on the way there. And so the pair sat in silence, their minds distracted by the loud voices in their heads.

  When the doctor and his daughter got down from the cart, Alvaro insisted on leading the horse to the stables himself. He’d made a note, as they’d passed the front of the house, that there was one guard posted there. He then made his way to the stables situated at the back, where he saw that another solitary guard was quite sensibly posted. His heart sank at the sight of them. His daughter’s lifted. She turned her sunflower pendant round and round between her fingers, willing one of them to be the soldier she’d met in the village, the one with the book and the unusual eyes that she hadn’t been able to fathom. ‘Wait here,’ her father had said, leaving Maria outside the kitchen, the door of which faced onto the courtyard at the back and was adjacent to the stables across the way. She stood there, hopeful, still turning her pendant around in the fingers of one hand while pulling down on her lemon dress with the other.

  By the time she’d followed her father inside the house she felt flat. She’d raised her eyes to meet those of the young men on guard outside and now the dazzling beauty awaiting her inside the house could do nothing to make up for the fact that neither of them was the soldier she’d been looking for. She gave herself a stiff talking to. It wasn’t as if she knew him. It wasn’t working. She still felt empty. Remember how silly – and wrong – you were about Richard. And you knew him. But none of it made any difference.

  She was surprised and cheered to see Lola serving drinks.

  The guests were still milling round in the drawing room and as Maria milled around with them she couldn’t help but be disappointed. The snippets of conversation she was party to were dull. A conversation about the power of someone’s car here, the size of the hosts’ estate there. Maria hadn’t known what to expect coming here this evening, but it certainly wasn’t this. A smile of shared acknowledgement that the social world of adults was boring passed between the two girls. Maria watched Lola disappear towards the kitchen with something akin to envy. At least she could get away.

  Maria let her eyes wander around the room. They were drawn to the Captain’s pistol glinting in the light, nestling in its holster, captivated by the diamond necklace around Dona Sofίa’s neck, dazzled by the glass drops of a chandelier sparkling overhead. That was it. Her eyes had been dazzled enough. She looked at the portraits and stifled a laugh. The artist was better at necklaces, she said to herself, than he was at people. She eventually let her eyes rest on a vase of simple, wild flowers, positioned in front of a wall covered with family photographs. She went up to them to take a better look and as she did so, her eyes strayed to look through the window to the side. A soldier turned up on a military motorbike and made his way round the back of the house unnoticed by everyone apart from Maria. He looked familiar. She looked at the photos. The boy in them looked remarkably like her soldier with the book. She squinted then opened her eyes up as wide as they would go to refocus. She looked again. He still looked exactly like him. She turned away to look outside and caught sight of the military motorcyclist as he walked in front of the window. He looked like her soldier too. Maria rubbed her eyes. She looked out again. He was gone.

  Don Felipe joined Maria and picked up a photograph. He bent over and whispered conspiratorially, ‘I do believe Luis intends to surprise his mother!’ Maria stood silent. How did he know her soldier was called Luis? Before Maria could say a word Don Felipe was already whispering in his wife’s ear. ‘It’s time to go through, darling.’

  ‘But Luis is not here yet,’ she sighed. ‘Shall we go through?’ she said to her guests, struggling to conceal her disappointment. ‘After you, please,’ she said, a fixed beam on her face, hand open and showing her guests where to go. ‘The girl will guide you to your chair,’ she said, waving a finger airily in Lola's direction. Her guests dutifully shuffled out, Seňor and Seňora Gonzalez at the front, Maria, Doctor Alvaro and Father Anselmo at the back with Dona Sofίa.

  Maria watched her hostess as she went back to the window and looked outside. Though making a pretence of waiting for the bottleneck of people in the doorway to subside, the doctor’s daughter thought she saw an unexpected vulnerability in the woman’s face as hope and despair flitted repeatedly across her features.

  Her father pulled her to him to make way for a young soldier who had just entered the room. The boy crept past them, throwing his hands around Dona Sofίa’s carefully made-up eyes. Recognition and confusion erupted within Maria’s breast causing her to gasp in time with the older woman’s cries of joy.

  It was Maria’s soldier with the dark hair, skin like alabaster and eyes that once looked into had revealed his soul to her and hers to him. It was her Luis.

  ‘Mother!’

  ‘Luis! My boy!’

  That he was also the landowners’ son was a revelation Maria hadn’t anticipated. She watched as father and son embraced. That her soldier should be theirs perturbed her. Could they really be the same person? The way he made her feel as he winked at her while he embraced Don Felipe gave her the answer.

  Dona Sofίa had arranged the seating so as to have her son close to her. Maria was sat at the other end of the table next to her father who smiled, delighted to
see Lola. But as his eyes scanned the guests the life drained out of them as he observed the hosts’ son exchanging meaningful glances with his daughter. Doctor Alvaro, usually so kindly and indulgent, tapped her on the arm. He gave her a withering glance. It disturbed her deeply. It was meant to. Flustered, Maria looked around for Lola, smiled at the priest, then settled for listening to Don Felipe as he had the deepest voice of all those assembled, anything other than risk having her father intercept the secret communication passing between her and her soldier.

  ‘If we can be of service to you and your men in any way,’ the host boomed to the Captain, ‘you have only to ask. Any one of us, I am confident that I speak for everyone around this table, will do all in our power to help you in any way you think fit to help you secure the village and surrounding areas.’ Maria’s eyes inspected the Captain’s face. His head nodded but it was clear from his satisfied expression, that he was elsewhere, and judging by where his gaze was fixed, he was elsewhere with Seňora Gonzalez. That one could tell so much about a person simply by observing them made her self-conscious and more determined than ever that her father should not see her looking at Luis.

  Maria looked at the woman that was Seňora Gonzalez, seeing her through the Captain’s eyes and conceded that she was a glittering vision to behold. But, Maria knew, this dazzling façade concealed a heart of the thickest, dullest, heaviest stone.

  Her own eyes strayed back to Luis, flickering in the direction of her distracted father on the way, only to be distracted herself, seconds later, by the ringing, metallic sound as Lola dropped a knife onto the tiled floor. Instantly she noticed the look of sympathy on Luis’ face as Lola struggled to pick it up while balancing a pile of dirty plates with one hand. He rushed to help her. Had Maria’s father witnessed this instinctive act of kindness that had quelled the ire that would surely have erupted from Dona Sofίa if it had not been her son who had acted with such gallantry? Maria hoped so.

  But the doctor was too busy performing his own act of kindness to be impressed with that of his hosts’ son. ‘Please, have mine,’ Doctor Alvaro said, offering Seňor Gonzalez a napkin with which to wipe away the food that was currently dribbling down his chin.

  ‘Who’s on your list, doctor?’ Seňora Gonzalez piped up from the other side of the table, hoping to dilute the embarrassment that was her husband. Doctor Alvaro did not reply, though that he nodded at her with a polite smile made it clear that he’d heard her. He turned away and looked at the clock then the door. And waited.

  Conversations broke out all around the table. Seňora Gonzalez and her talk of lists had alarmed the doctor but she had clearly excited others. Maria could make out a few familiar names bandied about by some of the guests but she thought little of it. Her father had told her that tonight would be a chance for some to indulge their love of tittle-tattle and try to settle old scores. Not a pleasant thing, she agreed, but it didn’t cross her mind for an instant that a person could be punished on hearsay.

  The priest, Father Anselmo, had been quiet most of the evening but the wine was beginning to have its effect. He’d already spotted a comfy chair that he would soon be making his way towards, but first he had to put Seňora Gonzalez right on very nearly everything she was saying. By the sour look on her face as she talked with him it was clear that she’d had quite enough moral instruction for one evening. But the alcohol had loosened the priest’s tongue and he wasn’t going to stop just yet. Though a delicious post-prandial nap was calling him he would carry on administering to the morally bankrupt and spiritually needy until his eyelids gave way. The time for talking niceties was fast drawing to an end for Seňora Gonzalez and the priest.

  Seňora Gonzalez (‘I’m a generous benefactress’) gave a small amount of her husband’s money, in regular instalments, to the church. All she asked for in return was a little absolution – as well as a little tacit agreement this evening. A slight nodding of Father Anselmo’s head about who should be punished in this civil war of theirs – was that too much to ask?

  She’d started with the Republicans. Depraved vermin. Unhappily, the holy recipient of her husband’s largesse had seemed less than keen to agree, so she was now forced to move quickly on to the Communists – safer ground with a man of the cloth. ‘We patriots should rid our country of them, shouldn’t we? They are, after all, godless. And I see it says in the papers that they are damaging our churches, burning our statues.’ The priest smiled benevolently at her as he drained his glass of red wine. Mistakenly taking the priest’s actions for assent, Seňora Gonzalez relaxed back into her chair and fluttered her eyelashes in the direction of the Captain on the other side of the table. She waited for the priest’s response. Her ears opened themselves up, wide and trusting, as flowers to a bee.

  She didn’t expect it to sting her.

  ‘A church can be repaired, a statue replaced, Seňora Gonzalez. But if a husband or son is killed, communist or no, he cannot. In times such as these we need to remember that.’

  If anyone could get away with being holier than thou it was a priest, and the fact annoyed Seňora Gonzalez greatly. She wished she could add the priest’s name to her list. Instead, she reached out to more attentive ears ready and waiting across the table. The person to whom they belonged was all too willing for an opportunity to rescue her and apply some soothing balm to her heaving bosom.

  ‘Captain,’ she cried out, ‘communism?’

  ‘A threat to our Christian values and social order. Damaging our churches, destroying our statues,’ he boomed back. Seňora Gonzalez beamed. ‘Thank the Lord,’ she said.

  ‘A Satanic scourge that seeks to contaminate pure Spanish blood, isn’t that so, Father?’ he continued. But before Father Anselmo could mark himself out as the only priest the Captain had ever come across whose principles were dictated by his conscience and not the amount of gold bestowed upon him by the Don Felipes of this world, Lola rushed to save him from himself. She topped up the good man’s glass, deliberately spilling a small amount of wine on his sleeve. The scene that ensued, worthy of a farce, put the Captain off the priest’s scent. By the time the priest had allowed Lola to lead him to the comfy chair for a little rest, the tragedy had been well and truly averted.

  The doctor, nervous at the altercation between priest and soldier, breathed a sigh of relief that it had come to an end. He smiled as he saw his holy friend’s head nodding to the side, his eyes closing.

  Seňora Gonzalez was relieved to be rid of Anselmo, but her scales had been rubbed up most definitely the wrong way. She sat quietly for a while concentrating on maintaining a smile on her lips if not in her heart. Couldn’t she reasonably add the now quietly snoring Father Anselmo to her list?

  She thought not, for now. She looked around the table for a dog to whip.

  ‘Didn’t I see you visiting the Espinoza brothers this morning, Doctor Alvaro?’ Her voice, freshly shrill, provoked a civil nod of the head. ‘But they’re not people like us, are they?’ she said, a sly smile on her face. ‘Why were you there?’ she cried. Alvaro smiled back but did not reply. ‘Well?’ she repeated, so loud that the rest of the table fell silent. A challenge had been issued. It was Maria who took it up.

  ‘Because my father is a doctor, Seňora Gonzalez,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, we all know that, my dear girl. But the Espinoza brothers!’ the older woman cried out with a snort of derision. ‘They conspire against you,’ she said to the Captain. ‘That’s why they’re on my list,’ she added as an aside, her laugh tinkling in the light and ricocheting from glass to glass as several of the more kind-hearted guests raised them to their lips to hide their discomfort.

  Maria looked at her, then at the people gathered together at the dinner. Doctor Alvaro nudged his daughter’s foot with his, but to no effect. ‘My father has a duty of care to the community, a duty to heal everyone,’ Maria said with fierce pride. Luis sat back in his chair to wonder at her spirit. He put his glass down. It was time to help this girl.

  ‘Ye
s,’ he said. ‘Surely you’ve heard of the juramento hipocratico Seňora Gonzalez?’ But before she could answer Maria quipped, ‘Not to be confused with the juramento hipicritico. Ow!’ Her father kicked her hard under the table. Maria had said enough for now.

  ‘Another drink?’ Lola asked the Captain.

  Chapter 20

  Maria sat in silence, in semi-disgrace. But her audacious interjections had aroused similar expressions of dissent around the table. One that aroused the girl’s particular interest was taking place at the far end of the table between Dona Sofίa and her son.

  ‘But mother,’ she heard Luis roar. ‘How can you say that?’ She observed the look of guilt that passed across Dona Sofίa’s face. ‘Nudists, vegetarians, philanthropists, enthusiasts of Esperanto, oh, of course, and Marxists, yes Marxists, are worse,’ she added in a desperate bid to shake her son off her tail, trying to recall groups considered a threat to Spain by the newspaper ABC. She would have added Jews to the list but remembered that an English woman had taken her to task about this some months back in Biarritz. She’d taken exception to the inclusion of philanthropists too, if her memory served her well. It had probably been foolish to buy an English education for her son, she thought to herself, but it was too late now. Luis’ face registered confusion. ‘Since when has teaching someone to read been a crime? I read. I imagine you don’t have a problem with that?’ Maria noted that Luis’ mother said nothing in reply, managing only the weak smile of a rebuked child. Maria longed to join in but as a rebuked child herself (she had the sore ankle to prove it), she resisted the urge.