A Forbidden Love

Chapter 4

‘No, she cannot. And you shouldn’t be doing it either!’ Cecilia shouted at Maria as the girl watched the large, hairy mole above her friend’s mother’s upper lip vibrate. Maria was on a mission to help Seňor Suarez recruit volunteers to teach some of the labourers up on the estate to read. She’d successfully enlisted Richard Johnson, thereby making her father a very relieved man as he no longer had to invent jobs for the hapless boy to do. And so, emboldened, she thought she might try her luck with Cecilia in the (what she saw now as foolish) hope that she would allow Paloma to help out too. Paloma was a good reader: Maria had made sure of that. Therefore it seemed reasonable that her friend should be allowed to pass on the skills she’d learnt by teaching others. ‘She’d make such a good teacher,’ Maria insisted. Contrary to appearances Cecilia had a soft spot for Maria and the girl knew it. She’d got round her friend’s mother many times before. Unfortunately, this was not going to be one of them. ‘The answer’s still no,’ the older woman insisted, her arms crossed defensively across an ample bosom.

‘And you can take this back,’ Cecilia said. And with that her friend’s mother thrust the pamphlet that she had given Paloma only hours before back into her hand. As clenched fist met unsuspecting palm, Maria felt Cecilia’s entire body bristle with anger. The gratefully oppressed, that’s how she regarded Cecilia, aggressively tenacious while holding onto the chains that enslaved her. She had no idea what the pamphlet said. But the older woman believed she didn’t need to. If that communist Seňor Suarez had anything to do with it (and he did) then it meant trouble. That was the point. Words, words and more words, probably written by that red troublemaker himself. They spelled out nothing but danger, Cecilia was sure of it. And she didn’t want her daughter to have any part in it. No, Maria would not be getting round her today. She folded her arms one way, then the other, as if to prove it.

In Cecilia’s small world, workers worked on the same estate – El Cortijo del Bosque. Her son Manuel had a labouring job there, her husband Fernando (God bless him) had died while working in its wheat fields, and she herself had gone from kitchen girl to housemaid to housekeeper, also cooking for the landowner and his family when the need arose: all on the same estate, all for the same family. Seňor Suarez and his talk of workers’ rights infuriated her. Divisive talk. She’d heard it all before. That teacher with all his false promises had given her Fernando hope – useless, backbreaking hope that one day he’d have his own plot of land to farm where he would at last enjoy the fruits of his own labours.

Something to do with government land reforms. Government land reforms: as insubstantial as dreams and as flammable as the paper they were written on. And it was that Seňor Suarez who’d sold it to Cecilia’s husband. But she knew, had always known, it was never going to happen. Don Felipe was a latifundista of the old school who believed in tradition, glory, church and the rightness of a social hierarchy where his boot had the God-given right to press down forcefully on the heads of men like her husband, keeping their noses well and truly snuffling in the soil. His soil. It was never going to be theirs. Don Felipe might pay them a few pesetas more, but give them his land? Never.

Fernando had been a fool. For listening to Suarez, for daring to raise his head and hope for something more. And the bitter memory stung like acid in Cecilia’s soul.

He’d got above himself. And look where it had got him. Dead and buried under the very land he’d wanted.

Well, nobody could ever accuse Cecilia of not knowing her place – it was right up there on the estate doing exactly what she was told to do. And she would do her damnedest to make sure her children followed in her footsteps.

It was the only security she knew.

‘There’s no need for any of Don Felipe’s workers to read,’ she said, wagging her finger in Maria’s face. ‘That terrible teacher. Getting the farm workers to bite the hand that feeds them.’ A guttural rattle vibrated at the back of the woman’s throat.

‘But Cecilia, because of him men can now provide for their families. Don’t you remember? Children were going hungry before.’

That was it.

‘Out! Out now!’ Cecilia shouted, pointing Maria towards the door. Maria knew when she was beaten. She didn’t mind that Cecilia had shouted at her. She wasn’t afraid of her friend’s mother, but she wouldn’t convince her, that much was sure. Her eyes squirmed away from the fury in Cecilia’s; she hoped she hadn’t earned a beating for her friend. An unusually subdued Maria went to leave as a tired and taciturn Manuel entered.

‘Maria.’ Manuel greeted her. He had been working all day and his young body was wet with perspiration. His skin, Maria couldn’t help but notice, was a deep, glistening, golden brown, and, his dark hair shone in its blackness, swept back as it was from his strong jawed face, with its dark brows and liquid brown eyes. His stomach was taut with hunger, his throat parched with thirst, while his heart, though she didn’t know it, was heavy. He was perfect. All apart from a small scar on his left cheek. The sight of him reminded Maria why she’d thought him beautiful not so very long ago: because he was.

‘Good evening Manuel.’ Maria forced her eyes to meet his. Cecilia looked on suspiciously. A coil of hair fell about his eyes. He swept it back with a large, strong hand. For a moment his beauty threatened to break through and touch Maria’s soul, but the moment passed quickly. She shook her head to stop it from catching on and commended herself on being made of more cerebral stuff. A smile of relief blew across her face.

Maria held out a pamphlet and offered it to him. ‘Oh no you don’t, my girl!’ said Cecilia, flinging her arm out and intercepting it as though it were a poisoned arrow.

‘It’s tomorrow. Up at the estate—’ But before she could say any more Maria found herself hastily turfed out onto the road.

She looked back at Cecilia, disappointed but not surprised, the faint smile on her lips that signalled superiority enough to push the poor woman into a rage.

‘And if you don’t want tongues to wag you’ll heed my words and not have anything to do with it either,’ the red-faced Cecilia called after her, loud enough to bring all the neighbours rushing to their windows. ‘And,’ she shouted, now to the back of the girl’s head, furious that Maria appeared disproportionately collected in the face of Cecilia’s own fast-burning fury, ‘you’ll ruin your chances of ever getting a husband if you carry on this way! I’ll be having words with your father about this.’

‘Oh, Cecilia!’ Maria said calmly as she walked away.

*

The designated meeting place for the lesson was in the courtyard of the estate. The estate manager, Guido, didn’t like it but the law was against him. Still, he’d done his best to warn the workers off. That was why, when Seňor Suarez turned up, the teacher had only found three boys up for the reading challenge. They looked a little beaten around but the smiles on their faces as they came closer soon blinded him to their bruises. He recognised Manuel, as well as Pedro and Raul, the Espinoza brothers. ‘We’ve come to read,’ poor Fernando’s son said, holding out Maria’s scrunched up pamphlet as proof. Disappointed not to see the girl who had given it to him, Manuel’s eyes searched all around. There, in the distance, he recognised the one known as ‘el inglés’, his hair as golden as the crops all around him, next to whom, Manuel realised with a heavy heart, was Maria. The pair seemed to be in no particular hurry. ‘Manuel? Manuel? Do you agree Manuel?’ The teacher’s words pierced the surface of the boy’s consciousness. ‘Manuel? Manuel? Did you hear me?’ The Espinoza brothers laughed. ‘A teacher each,’ Seňor Suarez repeated. He too had seen the English boy and Maria.

Cecilia was still in the kitchen. She was working later than usual and would be working well into the night. Guido had recently broken the news to her that the landowners, Don Felipe and his wife, Dona Sofίa, were planning to return soon. For good. Guido had said they were back to make Spain great again, but Cecilia hadn’t really been listening. All she knew was that Dona Sofίa in particular would be expecting to find everything in order. The larder would need to be stocked, the rooms opened back up, and every floor, surface and ornament would need to be scrubbed, cleaned and polished. Then there were the menus to plan. Guido could not tell her how soon soon would be, as he walked across her newly mopped kitchen floor in his dusty boots, so Cecilia had no choice but to assume that her employers’ return might be as early as the following week. She mopped the floor once more and went outside into the courtyard while she waited for it to dry.

That was when she saw Maria, walking past the farmhouse, her head, Cecilia noticed, held high like a haughty mare, laughing easily with the strange-looking foreigner by her side. ‘Such an arrogant child!’ Cecilia said to herself, the tinkling, confident sound of the girl’s happiness ringing like an insult inside the older woman’s head. Cecilia was still smarting from the youngster’s cheek the day before. ‘Look at her! With that boy! She’ll get a name for herself and then she really will have trouble finding a husband!’ But Cecilia knew that wasn’t true. The rules that applied to Cecilia and the rest of Fuentes did not apply to Maria. They never had. As Guido crossed the courtyard the girl thrust a pamphlet into his hand. Cecilia almost smiled. But then pulled herself back. Only Maria Alvaro could do something like that and not get punished for it.

Rules. Cecilia wore them round her neck like a hangman’s noose. And the very mention of her employers’ return pulled the rope tight once more around the ageing, hardworking Cecilia’s throat leaving her gasping for air and concerned for her children in a future that, if Guido was to be believed, her employers were intent on forging in the image of their once glorious past.

And so, as she stood in the kitchen doorway, Cecilia’s heart sank when she saw her son chewing his finger, watching Maria. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Maria didn’t even grace him with a glance. ‘Heartless girl!’ Careful what you wish for Cecilia – for no sooner were these words of judgement out of her mouth than the gods took pity on Cecilia’s love-struck son.

Maria beamed at him.

His mother now winced to see her son’s body burst into life at the light in the girl’s eyes. He rushed up to Maria, ran round her, a puppy desperate to please. Cecilia heard the girl’s laugh again. It cut across the courtyard and stabbed her in the heart. Manuel’s mother had seen enough. She went back inside and closed the kitchen door, wounded.

*

Mother and son cadged a lift home on the back of a cart two hours later. Cecilia had scrubbed as many floors as she could face for one day, and Manuel could no longer pick out the words on the page.

‘The great leveller. That’s what education is,’ Manuel said to his mother as he wiped his tired face with a rag, his hand shaking in time to the revolving of the cartwheels over bumpy ground. ‘Great leveller, my arse,’ she mumbled to herself, her voice rising and falling in time. ‘There’s no shame in it, you know, a good day’s work,’ his mother said, irritated to see her son had a book in his shaky hands and hope in his lilting voice. ‘All this talk of education, it will only lead to trouble. The likes of Don Felipe don’t like it, you know.’

‘The likes of Maria Alvaro will break your heart,’ was what she’d meant to say. But her beautiful boy glowed with happiness in the pink-purple twilight and she did not have the stomach to take it away from him. Maria would do that soon enough. Cecilia prayed that she would let her boy down gently, though, recalling how the girl had paraded round the courtyard like a queen earlier in the day, she doubted that she would.

Yet as Manuel talked about Don Felipe’s unfairness, some strike that had happened in Asturias in 1934, and the Russian Revolution (a load of nonsense he must have got from that teacher), it occurred to Cecilia that it wasn’t only Maria who had ignited a flame in his heart. As her eyes fixed on the book her son had clutched in his hands, she saw there were more dangerous fires still that her son had started to play with.

Chapter 5

No one saw it coming – not Paloma, not Manuel, not even the ever-vigilant Cecilia, and certainly not Maria. No one except Lola, and, of course, Richard, had any idea what was happening in full view of everyone.

Maria, Paloma and Richard were going on a picnic. It was Sunday morning and they were all setting off from their respective homes to meet up just outside the village when Cecilia followed Paloma to the door and took her youngest daughter brusquely by the arm. ‘You’re not going unless she can come too,’ she bellowed, nodding in the direction of a well-groomed Lola, dressed up and ready for anything but a picnic in the country. She had her best shoes on and the dress she wore to village parties and her dark wavy hair was gleaming. Paloma stopped in her tracks. No one could accuse Lola of being a shrinking violet, and no one would say she was a girl that was easily overlooked, left behind at home by a callous, selfish sister to hide her light under a bushel. And yet, here she was, standing next to her mother, eyes on the verge of tears, saying, ‘Don’t worry mother. If Paloma doesn’t want me to go with her, I understand.’

‘Oh no, my girl. You’re going. You both go or neither of you go. Those are my conditions. Now go and get whatever it is you need.’ Lola clattered up the stairs making a pretence of getting ready, thankful that her usually observant mother hadn’t noticed that she already was.

That Cecilia should allow her girls to skip church was unprecedented, and that she should allow them to go off into the country with a foreigner as strange-looking as el inglés equally surprising to people who knew her. Ever since she’d got wind of her employers’ return she’d been distracted, yet it was Guido’s latest piece of information that had really set the poor woman off like a whirling dervish: he expected the fine owners of El Cortijo del Bosque any time after lunch on Sunday. That was it. Even the devout Cecilia wouldn’t be attending church now, may the Lord God forgive her. She feared God, but she feared Don Felipe and Dona Sofίa more. Especially Dona Sofίa. There was still a mountain of work to do up at the house and Cecilia knew that if it didn’t get done there would be hell to pay. God would forgive her for not attending church this once, whereas Dona Sofίa on the other hand would not be so gracious if she didn’t make sure all the rooms were aired, all the beds made up, all the silver polished, all the floors scrubbed and, heaven forbid, if the larder was not well stocked. And as for the ugly English boy, Cecilia believed he was as interested in Maria as much as she was interested in him. And they would both be out of sight of her beautiful Manuel. Let that girl do what she wanted. She usually did. It was up to Doctor Alvaro to stop her, not Cecilia. And so when Paloma asked if she could go on a picnic with Maria, her mother screamed ‘A picnic?’ put a hand to her chest, collapsed on a chair, then said in a breathy whisper, ‘Perdoname, Dios mio,’ before saying emphatically, ‘Yes.’

‘I’m ready!’ Lola ran down the stairs, kissed her mother, then charged out. She was on her bike and nearly at the end of the road when she shouted: ‘Hurry up Paloma, you big lump, or we’ll be late!’

Maria was waiting at the stone water trough in full sun. Richard was waiting close by in the shade. At the sight of the sisters Maria gave a whistle to the English boy and set off ahead of them all, leading the way to their chosen picnic spot which was a thirty-minute ride out of the village. The girls cycled there in silence, the only sound coming from Richard as he puffed along in the heat. He struggled to keep up on his bike. A thirty-minute cycle ride hadn’t seemed so very testing when Maria had first suggested it to him. But then he hadn’t reckoned on the ferocity of the sun. As he passed shepherds’ huts he saw their walls perspire, while olive trees throbbed under pounding rays. As for Richard himself, he was starting to melt. Would there be anything left of him by the time he’d reached the destination? That the girls said nothing seemed perfectly reasonable to him. He had no idea that Paloma was sulking because Lola had hoodwinked their mother into letting her come. Nor that Maria was sulking because she thought Lola would spoil their day. The only one of the girls not to be sulking was Lola. She’d wanted to come along and here she was. She hadn’t come to talk to either Maria or Paloma and so the silence suited her perfectly. That the other girls radiated every kind of animosity towards her didn’t bother her in the slightest. They were going to have to try harder than direct bad thoughts at her if they wanted to put her off her stride. She’d come here for a reason and these two silly little girls weren’t going to stop her with their sour looks and huffy puffy ways. The hot air slipped around their bodies. It kept the girls cool, made Richard sticky and red. They cycled along dusty tracks, past fields of corn, olive groves, vineyards, passing the occasional donkey moving slowly under the weight of a heavy load. Richard had never experienced such peace. Nor such heat. He stopped for a while, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow, his neck, and his palms. It was quickly sodden. ‘How much further?’ he called out, but the girls were too far ahead to hear. As he rubbed his already wet palms, getting ready to set off again, he heard a car.

Toot. Toot, toot, toot. Toooooooot. The horn sounded. Insistent. Furious. It roused the boy’s flagging senses.

A deep voice, raised in anger, yelled out at him, sounding angrier the closer it got. The driver to whom the raging voice belonged was tooting the horn as if he were in heavy traffic in the middle of a city. He’d already encountered the girls and now he was furious. They’d made him slow down when he shouldn’t have to, least of all when he was driving along his own lanes, leading to his own estate.

For a brief moment a cloud in an otherwise cloudless sky blocked out the sun. Richard experienced a strange feeling of menace. He wheeled his bike as quickly as he could into the adjacent field to make way. The car hurtled towards him, the driver’s arms waving in wild accompaniment to the shouts that continued to whip him. The dusty vehicle sped by, its wheels throwing up a spray of small stones and grit in its wake that caught in the boy’s eyes. The driver’s foot pressed down hard on the accelerator. The furious tooting of the horn continued. Richard Johnson shuddered briefly. He rubbed his eyes and looked for the girls through the gravel haze. The car had gone one way, Richard and the girls another: the cloud above had passed. And there, through the settling dust, he saw a sunlit Lola, black hair glinting, white dress dazzling. She was standing next to her bike at the corner up ahead.

She was the only one who’d waited for him.

*

Maria was already at the picnic spot. She’d cycled away from the group. She’d beat Lola there if it killed her, she’d said to herself, Paloma too. Nothing would distract. Not even the car.

‘I’m hot now!’ Maria threw herself under the tree as she hurled her bike to the ground letting the back wheel spin round and round. She gasped as she leant against the trunk and looked on victorious as Paloma followed her, close behind.

Lola turned up ten minutes later.

Paloma watched her sister suspiciously. Lola had nothing more than a few delicate beads of perspiration across her forehead, though she pulled the straps of her dress down to expose her shoulders, fanning herself as if exhausted. She was about to say something to her big sister but bit her tongue, momentarily distracted by the shallow breathing of Richard following on close behind. All three girls looked at him. His face flushed brightly. He nodded, too hot and short of breath to say a word.

Paloma noticed her sister rub her bare shoulder in the way that she’d only ever seen her sister do, in a way that was somehow indecent though she couldn’t explain how. But Richard’s reaction, Paloma was relieved to see, wasn’t the one Lola was expecting. English men with pale skin weren’t made for cycling under an almost cloudless sky in the heat of the day. Richard Johnson let his bike drop to the ground. He let his body fall soon after, grateful that these sun-hardened Spanish girls had seen fit to set their picnic up under the shade of a tree.

‘Who were the people in the car?’ he asked when he’d eventually cooled down enough to speak. ‘Are they from here?’ Maria chose not to answer. The sisters shared a look of deep concern. ‘Owners of the estate, Don Felipe and Dona Sofίa.’ Lola was the first to break the silence. She gave her shoulder another rub as she looked the still panting Richard in the eye. But it was no use. Her heart was no longer in it. The thought of her mother’s employers had unsettled her. ‘Mother said she was expecting them soon,’ she said turning to Paloma and dragging Richard’s attention with her. He sat back and listened.

‘I couldn’t see the son with them.’

Maria pounced on Lola. ‘Disappointed? And anyway, I didn’t know they had one.’

‘You don’t know everything.’ The older girls’ antipathy towards one another was showing through. ‘And yes, it’s a pity he’s not with them. Mother says they’re better when he is.’

‘We’ve never seen him, but I know they sent him away,’ Paloma whispered, waiting for her friend’s questions. Not a single one came – Maria had no wish to expose her ignorance about the mysterious son any further in front of Richard Johnson. She imagined his eyes boring into her wondering what else she didn’t know. She would leave the stage to the sisters while the hole closed up. ‘Poor Cecilia!’

The sisters talked quickly, angrily, conjuring back up for him the image of the dusty black car, thundering its way furiously along the lanes to unleash the blackest of storms upon their mother …

‘They drive her like a slave.’ Lola pulled up her shoulder straps in a temper. Richard, touched by the intensity of feeling in her words, looked at her. She looked straight back and for a moment he was disarmed. The shock of her vulnerability passed through him. He looked away, afraid to relive the experience. Instead he fixed his gaze on the calm, self-assured face of Maria.

She was at the top of the pecking order once more. She smiled at him but in doing so she noticed the damp patches under the armpits of his shirt, observed how his breathing was still heavy, that his face looked like the skin of a blood orange. He didn’t look like much of a catch. Still, his eyes were upon her, not Lola.

She looked at the girl who was not her rival. Lola. Cool, strong, almost regal. Though Maria found her difficult she could not deny that Lola was indeed beautiful. With her dark, long eyelashes framing deep brown, sparkling eyes, glossy dark hair that shone in the light, and her flawless olive skin, she reminded Maria of Manuel. She looked back at Richard Johnson. She crinkled her nose with displeasure at the unwelcome comparison. He really was a rather unimpressive physical specimen, she thought again.

Maria stood up. She walked out into the sunshine, away from Richard in all his weak, disappointing reality in order to better preserve the perfect dream of him. ‘Coming?’ she asked, knowing Richard could not. He’d had enough full sun for one day. Paloma got up. Lola and Richard remained. They sat in silence, watching the two girls walk away, their bodies breaking up in ever-growing ripples of heat.