Golden Earrings (29 page)

The doors to the dressing rooms flew open when people heard my angry voice and the corridor soon filled with entertainers and chorus girls in sequined gowns.

‘Are you all right, senyoreta?’ asked Pepe, the Italian mime artist. ‘Is this scoundrel bothering you?’ He hadn’t had time to clean off his white face make-up and the stars around his eyes. He pulled himself to his full height of five feet and puffed out his chest. ‘Do you want me to get rid of him?’

I turned to Xavier. ‘Yes, you were only a boy when that happened, I understand! But your car, your house, your education, your sisters’ nice clothes and ballet lessons were all paid for with my brother’s blood! And when you are head of your household, if Morocco should flare up again you will send more poor young men like Anastasio to their deaths so that you can go to the opera and keep a country villa!’

A troubled expression came to Xavier’s face. He was breathing hard and his mouth moved as if he intended to say something but couldn’t find the words.

‘Now,’ I told him, stepping back towards the performers who were waiting to swarm protectively around me, ‘have the good sense to leave me alone!’

I strode back to the safety of my dressing room. Before I reached it, Xavier shouted at me: ‘You are wrong, Celestina Sánchez! Everything you say and think about me is wrong!’

I did not see Xavier Montella for a long time after that night at the Samovar Club, but the memory of his distressed face continued to haunt me.

El Ruso took me on a tour of Spain, where I sensed restlessness amongst the people of Madrid, Valencia and Seville. The monarchist dictatorship of Primo de Rivera was becoming increasingly unpopular. While Spain’s lack of integration into the global economy had softened some of the worst aftershocks of the Great Depression, unemployment was rife and some important public works were grinding to a halt.

While we were staying in Madrid, the owner of the theatre where I was performing, señor Sáinz, took me and el Ruso out
to lunch in a restaurant on the Gran Vía. The wide boulevard with its ornate buildings and elaborately decorated shop windows was my favourite part of the city. El Ruso had bought me a Marin Chiclana flamenco doll there that morning and I placed her as a centrepiece on the table, where the waiters admired her frilly yellow and black lace dress and the rose she wore in her hair. As a child, I had never owned a doll and even though I was a grown woman, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

Señor Sáinz watched me savour a spoonful of the cool and refreshing gazpacho before asking, ‘How do you find Madrid?’

‘I always love coming here,’ I told him. ‘The people appreciate flamenco much more than they do in Barcelona.’

‘That is true,’ he agreed. ‘The best of the best flamenco artists always gravitate here.’

As lunch went on and we worked our way through
cocido madrileño
and
tortilla de patatas
, the conversation turned to politics.

‘I’m thinking of moving to Paris,’ el Ruso told señor Sáinz. ‘There is something happening in Spain … it’s the same sort of disturbed energy that one felt in Russia before the Revolution. I sense that at any moment all order could break down into anarchy.’

Señor Sáinz nodded. ‘It’s the same tension one feels in the atmosphere before a storm. While I think Primo de Rivera made some good decisions, he let this dictatorship go on too long. He should have moved the country towards a stable constitutional monarchy long before this.’

‘The divisions in Spanish society between the rich and the poor, the army and the Church, are so great that the country is a giant fermenting vat which is about to explode,’ said el Ruso.

The waiter brought our dessert of fruit flan and
tocino de cielo
.

‘You know, the other problem is that things are never black and white,’ señor Sáinz said with a thoughtful expression on
his face. ‘It’s not always easy to guess who is your friend and who is your foe. Let me tell you a story about a gentleman I once knew. His name was Félix Gómez and his parents sent him to a seminary as it was the only way their son was going to get a proper education. Father Gómez was given a role as a teacher in an orphanage here in Madrid, and he was brilliant at it. He gave the poorest boys a better quality education than was offered in the most exclusive schools. He was not interested in indoctrinating them, but in encouraging them to use all their faculties. Even without patronage, several of the boys managed to succeed in the civil service and the army. Then Father Gómez made the mistake of asking a priest in a wealthier parish if he would sell some of his church’s paintings to fund a school where Father Gómez’s teaching method, which was proving so successful, could be taught to other priests. Father Gómez was summoned by the Archbishop, who accused him of being a socialist and dismissed him from the Church.’

The story hardly surprised me. I had seen from my own childhood that the institution of the Church had little to do with the Christian philosophy of loving and helping each other.

‘The story does not end there,’ said señor Sáinz, pushing aside his plate. ‘During the recent riots, some revolutionaries, believing my friend to still be a priest who was disguising himself in plain clothes, bludgeoned him to death!’

I shifted in my seat. Señor Sáinz’s story illustrated the worst of human stupidity. The revolutionaries had killed someone who had been an excellent educator and could have improved many people’s lives. Furthermore, Father Gómez had not only been willing to help the poor but was passionate about doing so. But they’d killed him simply because they’d associated him with an oppressive institution.

I thought of Xavier Montella, and wondered if I was so dissimilar from those foolish revolutionaries.

A
fter I awoke on Sunday morning and finished my barre and floorwork, I expected Mamie to begin telling her story again. But as we ate parsnip soup in the kitchen together for lunch, she barely glanced at me. Her introverted manner gave me the impression that she was either mulling over something before continuing, or that she was hesitating about finishing the story altogether.

I hung around the apartment, waiting for Mamie to say something. I moved Diaghilev’s cage to the studio, and let him fly around while I cleaned his perches and food dishes. I sorted the cutlery drawer so that I wouldn’t be too far away from Mamie, who was reading the newspaper at the kitchen table. But still she said nothing.

I carried the telephone to my bedroom and called Jaime. The sound of his voice made me happy in a way I had never felt before. It was as if I’d received some wonderful news, it lifted my spirits so much.

‘Is everything all right?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Mamie and I made up. She spoke a lot about Spain last night.’

‘I’m glad,’ he said. ‘I have to complete an assignment this afternoon but would you like to see a film with me during the week?’

Again that feeling that something amazing was happening to me tingled in my toes.

‘
L’Important c’est d’aimer
is showing or there is an American movie,
Jaws
,’ he said.

‘
Les Dents de la mer
,’ I told him. ‘That’s the French title.’

‘Only the French could give a horror film such a romantic-sounding title,’ Jaime laughed.

I laughed too. ‘If the film was released in Spain the title would be twenty words long and give away the plot!’

‘That’s true,’ said Jaime, still laughing. ‘Maybe with everything that is going on we should see a comedy — to lighten things a bit. I’ve heard
Le Sauvage
with Catherine Deneuve and Yves Montand is good. I’ll find out where it’s screening.’

I told Jaime that I would like to see the film of la Rusa that he had mentioned as well. Then we talked for a while longer before Carmen needed to use the telephone.

‘I’ll let you know about the la Rusa film,’ Jaime promised, before he hung up.

After returning the telephone to the hallway, I went back to the kitchen where Mamie was still reading the paper. She looked up at me. ‘Who were you talking to on the telephone?’

‘The nephew of my flamenco teacher. Jaime.’

Mamie studied me for a moment and then smiled. ‘You were laughing a lot. Do you like him?’

I nodded.

Mamie indicated that I should sit down at the table. I took the seat opposite her. ‘It’s good to be in love,’ she said, a thoughtful expression coming to her face. ‘But it’s complicated too.’

I sighed with relief. So she was going to tell me more about Spain after all.

When Francesc wrote to his parents that he was intending to stay yet another month in England, Mama decided matters had got out of hand.

‘Does he think our Evelina is a wallflower who is going to wait for him all summer?’ she said to Pare. ‘As there has been no formal engagement, I am going to let it be known that we are happy for Evelina to be introduced to sons of other families.’

While my courtship with Francesc had been taken for granted, I had been given some reprieve from the rounds of afternoon teas, supper parties and balls the other debutantes had to attend. Now that Mama was on a mission to find me alternative fiancés, I appeared at social events with greater frequency: the Liceu, the de Figueroa family’s summer ball, the Manzano family’s garden party, tennis and croquet matches. I was everywhere except where I most wanted to be: with Gaspar.

When the Marqués and Marquesa learned that my parents were no longer considering Francesc exclusively, they must have panicked and written him a letter demanding that he return as soon as possible. Margarida and I were invited by Penélope Cerdà to spend a few weeks at the family’s summer residence at S’Agaró on the Costa Brava.

‘Please, Mama,’ complained Margarida, ‘don’t sentence me to spending time with the aristocratic bores who hang around S’Agaró. They are so pretentious!’

‘You should be pleased,’ scolded Mama. ‘The Marqués and Marquesa are spiriting Evelina away because they don’t want to lose her as a future daughter-in-law.’

Margarida sighed. ‘At least you can be happy, Mama, that your scare tactics are so effective!’

The Cerdà family’s summer residence was a bougainvillea-covered villa perched on a headland overlooking the Mediterranean. Most mornings, Margarida hid herself away somewhere in the formal garden to read, while Penélope and I went to the beach to sunbathe and to swim in the calm bay. We were watched over by the gardener’s stocky wife, who peeled potatoes sitting under an umbrella while Penélope and I spread
our beach mats out near the rocks and turned our faces to the sun. Tans were fashionable that year.

‘I was surprised when I saw you at the Samovar Club,’ Penélope told me, looking around to check that there weren’t any fishermen on the beach before slipping the straps of her swimming costume off her shoulders.

‘You won’t tell your parents, will you?’ I begged her. ‘I snuck out of the house.’

‘So did I!’ She laughed, tossing back her head. She had a long sleek neck, slender legs and the Nordic looks of her parents. I was grateful that she had lent me one of her fashionable thigh-length swimming costumes so I didn’t have to wear the hideous knee-length tank suit my mother had packed for me.

‘What did you think of la Rusa?’ I asked. ‘She was amazing, wasn’t she?’

‘Indeed she was!’ agreed Penélope. ‘What about those eyes of hers? They were the eyes of a woman who has
seen
things!’

‘Her dancing was brilliant. I hope I will see her perform again soon.’

Penélope sat up and brushed the sand from her legs. ‘Well, luckily for you Francesc likes to go out, so I’m sure you will have an exciting nightlife when you are married. I’m to be engaged to Felip Manzano, who rises at dawn to ride his horses. We are going to be in bed by ten o’clock! Still, he is very good-looking, so our children are sure to be beautiful.’

‘How many children do you want?’ I asked her.

She squinted in the direction of the water. ‘Four: two boys and two girls. And you?’

I thought of cute Feliu with his button nose. ‘As many as I can,’ I replied.

We both laughed.

‘Well, you’ll be able to start a family soon,’ said Penélope. ‘Francesc has promised to return no later than the fifteenth of next month. I know for a fact that my grandmother’s
engagement ring has been sent to the jewellers to be cleaned and refitted. I have a sneaking suspicion that’s for you because my mother asked your mother for your ring size.’

My heart sank. Another girl might have been thrilled that she was marrying the attractive son of a noble family, but I was despondent. All my fantasies of how Gaspar and I could be together had come to naught and the reality of what my future was going to be was starting to hit me. I lay back and turned my head, shading it with my hat as if I were protecting it from the sun when what I was really doing was hiding the tears that were welling in my eyes. Luckily for me, Penélope assumed I’d fallen asleep.

A few days later, I was playing in the garden with the Cerdàs’ two sheepdogs, Fiesta and Torero, when I heard excited voices coming from the house. One voice in particular caught my attention.

‘I’ve been staying with some artist friends in Cadaqués,’ Gaspar was saying. ‘I thought I’d drop by and see how everyone is.’

‘Well, Margarida and Evelina Montella are staying with us. Why don’t you join us for dinner this evening?’

I didn’t hear the conversation after that, but a few moments later, everyone burst out of the house and headed towards me. Gaspar was wearing a blue blazer and white pants. His copper-coloured hair blew in the breeze. A playful glint danced in his eyes. I thought he was the most beautiful man alive. I realised that while I liked Francesc, I would never experience with him what I felt when I saw Gaspar: the thrills and butterflies of falling in love.

Margarida was called from the gazebo. ‘Look who’s here!’ said Penélope, wrapping her arm around Gaspar. ‘My long-lost cousin!’

‘Why don’t you young people go for a walk on the beach?’ suggested the Marquesa. ‘Gaspar’s been working at nights. He could do with a bit of sun.’

The afternoon light was bright on the golden sand. The rocks beneath the clear water made the bay look like a map of the world. Margarida and Penélope found a common subject in the poetry of Lorca and walked on ahead of us, with the dogs leaping and prancing about them.

Gaspar lingered behind with me. ‘You’re more quiet than usual today, Evelina.’

My first instinct was to look away. I was so awed to be with him, I didn’t know what to say.

‘I hear Francesc is on his way back from England earlier than expected?’ Gaspar stared at the water and sighed before turning back to me. ‘He’s a lucky man. I wish he’d appreciate it more.’

And then I knew. I could see it in Gaspar’s eyes. He felt the same way about me as I did about him. But how could we even begin to broach this subject?

‘I am lucky too that Francesc wants to marry me,’ I said. ‘But not lucky enough that …’ I couldn’t finish the sentence. I wasn’t bold enough.

‘That what?’ asked Gaspar, looking at me with interest.

I had a lump in my throat. My tongue felt rough and I was afraid that if I tried to speak I’d only stutter. Once I said what was on my mind there would be no going back. If I was mistaken and Gaspar didn’t feel the same way, he would never be comfortable around me again. Could I live with that? Wasn’t it better to at least have him nearby even if I was married to Francesc? But I knew I could never be at peace unless I opened up to him.

‘I’m not lucky enough to be marrying the man I really love,’ I said.

Our eyes met. An expression flashed across Gaspar’s face that was both elated and troubled. He’d understood my meaning perfectly.

‘Maybe I should have done something,’ he said, pursing his lips. ‘Maybe I should have acted sooner.’ He shook his head. ‘I
thought by going away … well, I didn’t understand how you felt. I tried to forget you.’

‘Gaspar …’ But I couldn’t say what I wanted to say. My heart was too full.

He glanced cautiously at the others, but they were busy throwing sticks for the dogs. I didn’t care if they noticed or not. All I cared about was that Gaspar loved me.

‘My life is not only music,’ he said. ‘Every country I visited, I wished you were there so you could see everything with me. I imagined you dancing in the streets with me for the Carnivale Rio, or drinking cocktails with me at the Park View Hotel in Havana.’

My heart leapt with joy. Every day that I had been thinking of Gaspar, he had been thinking of me. But he was sad.

‘Francesc has everything I can’t give you: a title, a family heritage, a fortune. Your father would never give me your hand even if I asked him.’

A pain stabbed my heart. If Pare had been so indulgent of Margarida, why couldn’t he allow me to live the life I wanted too?

‘Then we’ll elope!’ I said.

Gaspar shook his head. ‘I would never put you through a scandal. It’s not only about being happy now, but about being contented in ten, twenty, thirty years from now. Could you be happy with me if I made you desert your family? Think of the shame it would bring on them.’

I tried to fight my tears. It was awful being a Montella. We weren’t a family: we were an institution. We didn’t have individual rights to happiness.

‘Evelina,’ Gaspar said gently, ‘don’t give up hope. I’ll ask Xavier. Perhaps he’s guessed our feelings, I don’t know. Maybe he will speak on my behalf to your father. I will work like a slave for you, Evelina. I will never leave you wanting for anything. But if I take the risk of asking for your hand and your parents
don’t approve, they may prevent me from seeing you again. Are you prepared for that? To gamble everything?’

‘Yes!’ I told him. ‘Yes, I am prepared to lose everything on the chance I could win you!’

It was impossible to get through dinner calmly that evening, my stomach was so churned with excitement and anxiety. On the one hand, I liked being at the same table with Gaspar. I was blissful in the knowledge that our feelings were mutual. On the other hand, I felt deceitful. The Cerdà family had invited me and Margarida as guests with the expectation that I was soon to be their daughter-in-law. They would feel betrayed if I married Gaspar instead of Francesc. I tried to calm myself, but my mind was crammed with competing thoughts and my heart with confused feelings.

‘Are you all right, Evelina?’ the Marquesa asked me. ‘You’re quite pale.’

‘It’s that squid we ate for lunch,’ said the Marqués. ‘It certainly didn’t agree with me. I’ll have to speak to the cook.’

‘Have faith,’ Gaspar told me before he left that evening. ‘Be strong for me, Evelina.’

I didn’t fall asleep until late that night. I tossed and turned, and when I rose in the morning, I was burning with a fever. Margarida took advantage of my ill appearance to suggest that we return to Barcelona.

‘She misses Mama too much,’ she told our hosts.

‘That’s understandable,’ said the Marquesa, smiling at me indulgently before whispering to her husband, loud enough for me to hear, ‘I was the same on the eve of my engagement.’

I wasn’t any calmer in Barcelona than I had been in S’Agaró. When would Gaspar speak to Xavier? What would Xavier say? If he agreed, when would he ask my father? And every day, Francesc’s return grew closer. I lost several kilos in weight from worry.

One day, after my ballet lesson, Xavier asked to see me in the study. His face was solemn, but he was my brother and loved me so I tried not to worry.

‘I guess you know that Gaspar has spoken with me?’ he said.

I nodded. My throat felt dry. Why did Xavier sound so grave?

He looked at me with those eyes that matched mine perfectly in colour, then he stared at his hands for a moment before saying, ‘As you can see, Conchita and I are not happy together. If I could wish you anything, Evelina, it would be a marriage that brings you joy as well as security. Francesc is a good-hearted fellow but he is not Gaspar.’ He paused and smiled. ‘I can fully understand why you have fallen in love with Gaspar. If I had been born a woman, I would have fallen in love with him too!’