Читать книгу A Forbidden Love: An atmospheric historical romance you don't want to miss! - Kerry Postle - Страница 13

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.

Richard was the first to speak. ‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ he said to a subdued Lola. She said nothing. She had wanted to flirt with the English boy. That was why she’d put her best clothes on. But now concern for her mother had quashed all lighter thoughts. Confusion filled her mind forcing genuine tears to well up in her eyes. She wiped them away with the back of her hand and apologised. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me!’ she laughed. He offered his handkerchief and touched her tenderly on the shoulder.

‘Oh, don’t be kind to me,’ Lola said, fighting back the tears.

‘Let’s play a game,’ Richard said. ‘Take your mind off it.’

Instinctively, he pushed Lola’s cascading hair away from her eyes, and cupped her face in his hands. ‘I’ll look after you,’ he said, not really knowing what he was saying nor why he was saying it. The words came of their own accord. Easier to utter for being in a language that wasn’t his own, perhaps. Yet no sooner were they out than he let his hands drop down. His eyes plummeted to the ground.

A small brown hand with pretty pink-tipped nails squeezed his still pale hand gently in response. She didn’t touch him for long but it was enough. The shock he’d felt earlier when he’d looked into her eyes surged through him once more.

Flustered, Richard looked around. What could he speak to her about? English. Yes, he could teach her some English. ‘Say a word, any word. Ask me anything! What would you like to know?’

She looked at him, put her lips to his ear and whispered ‘Qué pasa?’ He cupped his hand around her ear in response. ‘What’s happening?’ he whispered, tickling her neck with his warm breath. An hour slipped past, lips getting ever closer, shoulders rubbing, heads getting thrown back by the strength of the laughter that grew more assured the more comfortable they felt in each other’s company. Lola’s fingers worked their way bit by bit over the back of his hand, along his arm, around his shoulder, until by the time they came to rest on the back of his neck they felt as if they’d always been there. She brushed the fine hair at the nape of his neck lightly. It made him tingle inside. ‘Te quiero.’ Whispered words wove themselves magically around his heart, pulling his lips towards hers.

The sound of Maria’s laughter as she finally decided to grace them with her presence once more shattered the spell. Richard stiffened. Both he and Lola moved as far away from each other as they could. They looked at the ground. A joint expression of guilt. Maria mistook it for boredom. She sat herself down between them as if filling the conversational void she assumed must have occurred in her absence.

‘I’m hungry,’ Maria said as she rummaged through the picnic basket she’d packed. She now knew as much as Paloma did about the landowners’ son having pumped her friend full of questions on their walk: and it wasn’t very much. She couldn’t even tell Maria what he looked like, having seen him only a handful of occasions herself many years ago. All Paloma could remember was that Cecilia had said that he was a ‘good boy’. Maria recalled that Cecilia had also said Dona Sofίa and Don Felipe were ‘good employers’ and so that was no recommendation. She smiled at Richard. ‘You must be hungry too,’ she said, as she handed him some bread and ham. She sighed as she looked into the distance, satisfied that she’d restored him to his rightful place in her heart.

Paloma’s eyes settled a little closer to home. The look on her big sister’s face unsettled her. The more familiar expressions of defiance and self-satisfaction had been replaced by something more reflective and humble. She shot a glance at Richard. There was something different about him too, though she couldn’t identify what it was. But it was clear to her, from the way he repeatedly ran his fingers around the back of his collar and the way he dropped his gaze to the ground each time she caught his eye, that he was feeling more than a little uncomfortable about something.

For the remainder of the picnic Paloma watched Lola and Richard’s every move. She found it uneasy viewing.

‘Oh, I would love to travel,’ Maria chatted on happily, still transfixed by the infinite possibilities she read in the sky as she got up to have a better look. She was oblivious to the fact that Richard was moving, little by little, ever closer to Lola, while on the blank, blue canvas up ahead her imagination was delighting in the creation of a fiction of her life that drew little on reality. There she saw her future as it stretched itself out, on a path as unbroken as the familiar cloudless sky along which she would travel. She could envisage no impediment to her personal plans. Not even a summer shower.

She was of an age at which life is taken for granted and a happy-ever-after assumed.

As for love, she believed that it was something that she could choose. She had no idea that, when the time came, it would choose her, whether she wanted it or not.

And if she only had eyes to see she would have noticed that it had the English boy Richard Johnson in its grip.

‘Excuse me while I break myself some bread.’ ‘Oh, would you pass the ham?’ ‘Oh, would you mind passing me the knife?’ Richard was drawn to Lola like a magnet, her touch as she passed bread, ham, knife to him sending an electric current that brought an altogether different part of him to life. It was true that Lola was not as intellectual as Maria, her conversation not as witty or engaging, that the only English she spoke were the few words he’d given her that afternoon, but when she pushed herself against him it made his eyes gleam and his body melt in the most delicious of ways. He’d told himself only the day before that the warmth he felt for Maria was love. If that was so, then what was the name of the passion that had now taken him over body and soul?

By the time they cycled home together everything had changed for Richard Johnson. And even though Maria did not cycle away from him – she slowed down, kept pace – it made no difference. Lola had awoken something deep within him and he within her.

‘Spain has been a Republic ever since the start of the 1930s, when King Alonso XIII was deposed. The Popular Front, in power since February of this year, is a coalition … left-wing. The right-wing tried to upset ballots with bullets in Madrid and Barcelona but failed. The labourers who work these fields went on strike just after the last election. Don Felipe the landowner had no choice but to pay them more. He wasn’t happy. Oh look! I can see Guido in the field over there. He manages the estate …’ Richard tried to follow what Maria was telling him – about politics, the running of the estate, how far Cordoba was with its beautiful mezquita, that the mezquita had once been a mosque before it was turned into a Cathedral after 1236, that the Moors had ruled southern Spain before that, about the Alhambra in Granada and the gardens of Seville. Did he know that Seňor Suarez had family in Seville, as well as Madrid? … Maria. She was a mine of information if only he cared to listen. But he did not. Instead his mind, heart and eyes were pulled along by a laughing Lola, who, bored by the bombardment of information that was detonating within her head, decided to break away to let off some fireworks of her own.

He let out a complicit laugh as he watched Lola whizz by. Her skirt was pulled up high, exposing her thighs. As she cycled into the warm air, a gentle breeze blew through her hair. Maria was tempted to race her. She resisted the urge. She was ashamed of herself for cycling away from Richard earlier on, felt guilty that she’d recoiled at his inability to cope with the heat. He was cerebral. So was she. And she would prove it. The life she longed for was that of the mind. Bodies were an encumbrance. And so, she chatted on, skating over the history of Spain and around Spanish literature, skilfully encompassing Don Quixote with a figure of eight … And Richard nodded his head as if listening, though his eyes and thoughts were taken up with the vision of Lola, beautifully seductive, cycling into the deepening blue of the late afternoon sky.

The lane widened. Paloma, up until now stuck behind Maria and Richard, manoeuvred around the pair.

‘I’m telling on you,’ she hissed at her sister, when she’d caught up with her. ‘I have no idea what you mean!’ Lola answered, her laugh extending across the summer fields.