Golden Earrings (16 page)

‘With all the foreign influences in the city these days, and the jazz clubs, young people seem to be entertaining strange ideas about a second republic,’ Pare told don Carles. ‘But experience always wins out in the end.’

My father was famous for his self-assuredness; many would even go so far as to call him ‘smug’. But on this occasion, he was clenching and opening his fists behind his back as if he was uncertain of something. I had the impression that he was trying to defend Xavier.

At the door, the men shook each other’s hands. But there was an unmistakable chill in don Carles’s manner.

‘Your son isn’t some sort of libertine, free to say and do as he pleases,’ he told Pare before departing. ‘It is one thing to have opinions, don Leopold. It is quite another to voice them. I suggest that you speak to him.’

From the grave tone of don Carles’s voice, it was clear that he was not giving Pare a piece of advice: he was making a threat.

I felt compelled to warn Xavier about what don Carles had said. When Pare returned to the drawing room, I ran to the study and entered it just as Xavier was putting down the telephone. He turned when he heard me shut the door. The frown on his face softened and he smiled.

‘Xavier … be careful … don Carles is very angry.’

My brother nodded and waved his hand. ‘He’s only saying what most people think. God almighty, they go on about their churches being burned — and this, the country of the Inquisition! How many innocent people did the Church burn at the stake?’

I couldn’t get what don Carles had said about culling the street urchins out of my mind. ‘Do you really think that’s what people feel about the children on the street? I mean … Mama does a lot of charity work in the Church orphanages.’

Xavier’s shoulders relaxed. He stepped towards me and clasped my hand. ‘The rich families of Barcelona have the
power to end the starvation and suffering in the city and yet we do nothing but perpetuate it,’ he said. ‘How can we go to Mass every week and mouth prayers about God’s love for all humanity? I can’t stand being such a hypocrite!’

I looked into my brother’s eyes and saw how troubled he was. He had always hated injustice, but now I saw a deep unhappiness in his face that hadn’t been there before he’d married.

‘What worries don Carles,’ continued Xavier, ‘is that the way the Montella businesses are succeeding, we are eventually going to overtake the Güell and the López dynasties to become the most powerful family in Barcelona, and one day I am going to be head of the family. I promise you, Evelina, Barcelona will be a very different place then.’

Margarida had spoken the truth when she’d said that I would be making my social debut at the Liceu. Now, instead of being left alone to practise my ballet steps, I was called up for fittings in Conchita and Xavier’s apartment, where my sister-in-law and mother were busy arguing over dress styles.

‘No, not that one,’ said Conchita of a pattern for a silk charmeuse evening dress with gold metallic thread. ‘It will make her look too young.’

‘But I don’t want Evelina to appear too old either,’ Mama protested.

My mother was always elegantly dressed, but I was pleased Conchita had been given a say in the dress. She looked stunning in everything she wore, and was also able to tell at a glance whether a style would suit another person or not.

‘This one,’ she said, holding up a pattern for a silk dress with gold lamé across the bust and around the hem. The dress was exotic and sleek. A flurry of excitement ran through me. I imagined myself climbing the steps of the Liceu looking like an Egyptian goddess.

‘
You
could wear that,’ Mama told Conchita. ‘But Evelina is too shy. She needs something plainer.’

My spirits dropped. The exotic dress dissolved into a more conservative one: sleeveless, with a high V-neck and ruffled skirt. The kind of dress one found in a catalogue.

‘If you give her something beautiful and different to wear, she’ll feel less shy,’ argued Conchita.

‘Senyoras!’ pleaded the dressmaker, senyoreta Garrós. ‘You have only given me a short amount of time to have this dress ready. You must decide on the pattern today.’

While Mama and Conchita debated over my dress, I looked around the apartment. The rooms used to be filled entirely with eighteenth-century furniture and Sèvres porcelain, but Conchita had introduced some Modernista pieces, including a mahogany screen and the chairs with swan-motif upholstery and slender, bone-like legs that she and my mother were sitting on. With Conchita’s sense of panache, she and Xavier should have had much in common, but they did not have similar tastes at all. Conchita hated Gaudí’s architecture while Xavier revered it; she had insisted on walking out of a Stravinsky concert when Xavier had wanted to stay; and they no longer attended avant-garde art exhibitions together as they used to when they were engaged.

‘She likes fashion, not art,’ Margarida had said to me. ‘You watch, in another few years all that Modernista furniture will be replaced by whatever happens to be in mode then.’

But whatever aesthetic conflicts they had, when Xavier walked into the room that morning carrying Feliu, Conchita could not have looked more enamoured of her husband and child.

‘Ah,’ she said, holding out her arms and taking Feliu into her lap. ‘My little boy.’ She turned her cheek so Xavier could kiss her. ‘Can you stay with us a while?’ she asked him. ‘Or do you have to rush off somewhere? We are deciding on Evelina’s dress for opening night. And as your mother and I have such differing opinions, a male adjudicator would be helpful.’

‘I’m afraid Pare and I have a luncheon with the mayor today, but I can stay for a cup of coffee,’ Xavier said, sitting down next to his wife.

With Conchita’s dark beauty and even features, and Xavier’s tanned skin and perfect teeth, it was easy to see why they were considered Barcelona’s most attractive couple.

‘Why don’t you let Evelina decide on the dress?’ Xavier suggested. ‘After all, she’s the one who has to wear it.’

Conchita pinched his arm as if he had made an absurd suggestion. Xavier gave his opinion on some of the patterns the dressmaker showed him, while Conchita made cooing sounds to Feliu.

A maid entered and announced that Conchita’s mother had arrived for a visit. We all stood up as donya Elisa strode into the room. ‘Ah, Feliu!’ she said, paying no mind to us and heading straight towards her grandson. None of us was offended; we all took it as a given that Feliu should command everyone’s attention.

Mama instructed the maid to bring us more tea, which she served in black and white ceramic cups.

‘Don’t keep him too long,’ Conchita pleaded with her mother as she handed Feliu over to her. ‘I can’t bear to not have him with me. Even when the wet nurse takes him, I have to sit with her. You can never be sure that another woman will do everything correctly.’

Donya Elisa looked at her daughter in surprise. ‘But, darling, you have to be a bit tougher with boys or you’ll make Feliu a sissy.’

Mama patted Conchita’s arm. ‘We are all like that with our firstborn children, but you will calm down as the others come along. You will see that children can manage without us much better than we think.’

Conchita blinked at my mother. ‘But I have borne a male heir,’ she said. ‘I don’t see the need for
other
children.’

Mama and Xavier exchanged a glance.

‘Of course, giving birth makes you think you could never go through that again,’ said donya Elisa, brushing down her dress. ‘But you will want more children. They bring such joy into your life.’

A strange look passed over Conchita’s face. She pursed her lips.

Mama glanced doubtfully at Xavier again. The thin lines of a frown were scarring his forehead and his fingers thrummed on his knee, but if Conchita’s attitude troubled him, he shrugged it off.

‘It’s because Feliu looks so much like me that she thinks that way,’ he said with a laugh. ‘If he resembled her, she’d want a dozen more children.’

Donya Elisa, Mama and senyoreta Garrós chuckled. Xavier had saved the moment. Donya Elisa flashed him a grateful smile, but Conchita wouldn’t look at him. She and Xavier may have appeared like a perfect couple, but something was clearly wrong.

The Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona was not simply an opera house, it was an institution. Like many of the great opera houses of the time, the seating was in a horseshoe shape around the stage and tiered into five balconies. A family’s status in Barcelona society was reflected by where that family sat in the Liceu. The
planta noble
was reached by a grand marble staircase from the lobby and was the most prestigious tier on which to have a box. From there, the staircases became less decorative and narrower, up to the fourth floor where the boxes were owned by families of lesser importance and the seats by the middle-class families. The uppermost tier contained no boxes and could not be reached from the internal staircases but had to be accessed via an unadorned entrance in the side street. It was there that the students and factory workers sat. Many of them came simply to listen, as not every seat on the top floor afforded a view of the stage. While donya Esperanza referred to people who sat in the uppermost floors as ‘riffraff’, they were probably the only ones — along with
Xavier — who came to the opera to appreciate the performance. Everyone else was there to bolster their egos, reaffirm their alliances with Barcelona’s other powerful families, show off new evening dresses or catch up on gossip.

On the opening night of
Turandot
, we entered our box to find donya Esperanza already sitting there. ‘As Conchita isn’t coming tonight, I decided to keep Xavier company,’ she said. ‘As a representative of the de Figueroa family.’

Having recently had a baby, no one expected Conchita to appear at the opera until she had regained her figure. And, as matriarch of the de Figueroa family, donya Esperanza should really have been chaperoning Conchita’s younger sisters. But donya Esperanza’s age and standing in society put her beyond convention, so no one bothered arguing with her. And, of course, our box had a better view of the boxes opposite than the one owned by the de Figueroa family did. Donya Esperanza might have been in her nineties but there was nothing she enjoyed more than a chance to spy on others and to gossip.

I took my place next to her in the lower corner of the box. ‘That’s a beautiful gown, by the way,’ she said. ‘It suits your complexion perfectly. You look radiant.’

After all the disputes regarding what I should wear, we had finally found a design on which we had all agreed: a gold lace gown over a beige silk underdress with a bias-cut skirt. The capped sleeves and the pink rose at the centre of the neckline lent the dress the sense of feminine modesty my mother had been aiming for, while the fabric and cut gave the gown the glamour Conchita had championed. I was happy simply to be dressed like a young woman instead of an overgrown girl. Mama had lent me a gold peridot and pearl necklace from her collection.

I straightened my skirt and noticed Francesc Cerdà stealing a look at me from his family’s box on the opposite side of the tier. The expression of surprise on his face was so palpable it gave the impression that he had never seen me before, when
in fact he had gone to the same Jesuit school as Xavier and we had often seen each other at social occasions or in church. His interest in me pleased Mama. She nudged Pare so hard he jumped. The opera was Pare’s chance to catch up on sleep, and he’d perfected the art of resting his chin on his palm so that he gave the appearance of listening when, in fact, he was not.

Mama’s pleasure at my being noticed by the Cerdà family heir was well justified. They came from a long line of nobility. Francesc’s father was a
marqués
: a title Francesc, as the eldest son, would inherit one day.

Margarida leaned forwards from her seat behind me and whispered in my ear, ‘Ah, Francesc Cerdà! Very good-looking, rich and athletic — but as silly as a sole’s shoe.’

I turned around and scowled at her, but when she grinned back at me it was difficult not to laugh. Francesc was a blond, blue-eyed Catalan, and Xavier had said that whenever he stayed at the Cerdàs’ holiday home in S’Agaró, Francesc always seemed to be running around in a pair of shorts, pummelling a punching bag or performing somersaults. But it was also known that Francesc wasn’t the brightest male in the family, and his father, who was savvy, had manoeuvred Francesc’s youthful uncles into positions of management in the Cerdà properties so that Francesc would be nothing more than a figurehead, signing whatever documents were placed in front of him.

‘Still,’ whispered Margarida, ‘it would be fun to be a
marquesa
.’

I stifled a giggle. Despite the dress, the occasion and my age, I wasn’t taking things too seriously. Marriage was far from my mind. I had no intention of giving up my ballet lessons just yet.

‘Who is that young man next to Francesc Cerdà?’ asked donya Esperanza.

‘Don’t you recognise him?’ asked Margarida. ‘That’s Gaspar Olivero.’

I leaned forwards to see who they were talking about. Alongside Francesc sat another young man, maybe two or three years younger. He had reddish-brown hair, alert eyes and a sweet smile.

‘Oh,’ said Mama, ‘I didn’t expect to see him with the Cerdà family. Don’t the Oliveros live in Zaragoza now?’

‘Yes, terrible business,’ said donya Esperanza. ‘Fancy being born into such wealth only to have your irresponsible parents whittle it away on extravagant living. It was a scandal for the Marqués to have his sister fall so low. There were creditors’ notices in the newspaper and auctions … The shame!’

If there was one thing the ‘good families’ of Barcelona despised more than poor people, it was those who had been born rich but had been foolish enough to lose their fortune. I shifted in my seat; I didn’t like the way donya Esperanza spoke about Gaspar Olivero, as he seemed so kind and gentle. The way he looked around him with interest reminded me of a squirrel.

‘Well, it’s generous of the Marqués and Marquesa to take the young man into their care,’ Mama said, trying to give the conversation a positive direction. Perhaps she was worried that I’d be turned off Francesc if I thought his cousin’s family was irresponsible.