The Poet's Wife (22 page)

Looking around at the faces of the crowd, charged with emotion, I allow myself to imagine, for just an instant, how much greater the joy would be if the war were over and we had won it. And how much greater my happiness would be if Henry weren’t leaving by ship the following day. I force myself to push those thoughts aside and concentrate on the scene before me. I can see both the Republican President and the Prime Minister on the stage as well as billboards of Communist leaders from the Soviet Union displayed around the plaza where the procession ends. People are throwing flowers onto the marching soldiers and the scent of wild rose petals is overwhelming.

After the Republican leaders have finished expressing thanks to the International Brigades, I watch as a small-framed woman makes her way slowly onto the platform. The atmosphere changes immediately as the entire crowd falls silent. Everything is so still I barely want to breathe. This is ‘
La Pasionaria
’, the passionflower, and she has earned her name through her ability to evoke emotion in the most hard-hearted of listeners. I have longed to see this woman in person. Not only has she broken the acceptable mould by becoming an important political figure in a male-dominated government, but she’s also spent the good part of her life campaigning for social justice, particularly for women and the underprivileged. She is dressed entirely in black and her hair is pulled back from her face in a tight bun, but she looks elegant rather than severe and her face is noble.

I’ll never forget her words. Though they aren’t addressed to me, I don’t think a single person present that day is left unaffected. She tells the Brigades that they must be proud of the role they have played in Spain and that they are history; they are legend. At the end of her speech, she invites them to come back once democracy has returned to our land and a roar like the swell of waves rises up from the crowds as fists punch the air. I see men openly weeping, some of them falling to their knees on the hard ground as they sob into their hands.

By that point, the brigades have left the plaza and re-joined the crowd and I look around for Henry. Yet he finds me first and as I feel his arms wrapping themselves around my waist, I squeeze my eyes tightly shut to stop the flood of tears welling up inside me. ‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ he is breathing again and again with his lips against my ear and I hold him tightly against me.

Later that afternoon we book into a cheap
pensión
near the city centre. The window shutters are broken and it smells musty, probably because of the scrawny chickens that the landlady keeps on the balconies. The same evening, whilst I bathe as best I can behind a screen with a jug of tepid water and a bar of soap, Henry tells me he needs to go out for a short while. He returns an hour or so later, grinning from ear to ear like a schoolboy as he grasps a bottle of wine. I have hurriedly dressed but my hair is dripping wet and I leave a trail of water gleaming behind me as I walk across the dusty wooden floorboards towards him.

‘Where did you get that from?’ I laugh, prising the bottle from his hands and turning it over as though it is a precious gem.

‘Ah, well I
know
people, you see,’ he replies with a wink as he produces a corkscrew and two metal tumblers from his bag. He has thought of everything. As he hands one of the tumblers to me he shrugs. ‘Not very romantic, I’m sorry, but it was all I could find.’

I shake my head in disagreement, watching as he expertly works the corkscrew. We both know what the other is thinking: that after tonight, we have no idea when we shall see one another again. But neither of us can bring ourselves to discuss it. It is better that way. We are both still feeling energised from the parade and as we sip the wine and let it slip slowly down our throats, I recognise that words would only spoil the moment.

I’ve never lived a sensation so intensely in all my life, for I feel both desperately miserable and happy at the same time. I know what it is to be in love, and how it feels now that the man sitting in front of me with his kind, intelligent eyes has, quite literally, turned my world on its head. Yet tomorrow morning he’ll be gone. I don’t doubt for an instant the integrity of his promise that he’ll return, but I know realistically that it won’t be in just a few months.

I never want to forget this night; the small details: watching him shave in front of the lopsided mirror, the pale hair on his long fingers catching the fading light from the open window; the way he props himself up against the wooden bedpost with a pillow, his top button undone as he cradles the wine in his large, warm hands; the way he reaches out and touches the damp strands of my hair; how he empties the last drops of wine into my tumbler before leaning back and smiling at me. How I should like to bottle that smile, the blueness of his irises almost vanishing as his eyes turn into fine slits and the fullness of his lips, stained a deeper red in one secret corner by the rioja.

The wine goes straight to my head. I know my cheeks are flushed and when he asks me if I’d like to dance, I smile at him and drain my glass. He rises from the bed and puts his hand out to me, smiling playfully. As he takes me in his arms, we dance around the wooden floorboards to an imaginary tune as the evening light streams in through the broken shutters. I lay my head on his shoulder and close my eyes. We are not in Barcelona. We are not in the middle of a war. We are in London, dancing at a ball in a grand hotel on a fine summer’s evening. My hair is curled and I am wearing a little rouge on my cheeks and I have a silk stole around my shoulders and…

‘Isabel…’

Abruptly, I am pulled out of my dream. Opening my eyes, I look directly at Henry. He appears nervous and as we stop dancing he clasps my hands and smiles awkwardly. I continue to gaze at him questioningly, and as I do so he reaches into his pocket and pulls something out, mumbling as he does so.

‘Believe me, I tried searching in so many different places but I can’t tell you how difficult this kind of thing is to come by these days. I even went out to—’

‘Henry.’ I put my finger to his lips. ‘What are you talking about?’

Before I know what is happening, he reaches down and lightly clasps the ring finger of my left hand as he silently winds a single length of purple thread around it and ties a firm knot.

‘Isabel, will you marry me?’

My eyes flicker between the purple thread and his blue eyes, barely able to grasp what is happening. Henry Stevens is proposing to me. He is asking me to marry him. I don’t think I even say the word ‘yes’, I just fling my arms around his neck and hold him. But I don’t need to – he knows my answer. As he draws me away from him, he places both hands gently on either side of my face and gazes at me hard. How can someone I’ve known for such a short time seem so familiar? I place my hands on his forearms.

‘I love you,’ he says slowly, not taking his eyes from me.

‘
Te quiero
,’ I whisper back and he brings his lips to mine and kisses me with a deep strength. Is it possible to taste love? If so, I taste his love for me in that kiss, and I never want it to end. My hands come up behind his head and play with the golden roughness of his hair; the hair that I will never stop marvelling at. It is thick and unkempt and I even find myself wondering, if we have children together, will they have this hair, the colour of sand?

Henry’s lips travel down my neck, slow, soft kisses that feel like the wings of butterflies beating against my skin. His fingers tremble as he unbuttons my blouse and pushes it back off my shoulders. A shadow of self-consciousness darts through me but it doesn’t last long. For I want this. I am eighteen years old. This is my first real taste of a man beyond the briefest of kisses I’ve shared with Henry. But I don’t want it to end here. I want everything. Henry removes his shirt and I see for the first time the freckles on his chest, the light hair around his navel, the small scar on his right shoulder.

‘How did you get that?’ I whisper as I run my fingers over it.

‘Stan pushed me out of a tree when we were small. He was fed up with me always telling him how much stronger I was.’ When he mentions his brother this time, there is no pain in his eyes. This time I know that I am the only person he is thinking about.

The light is fading in the room and he holds a hand out and leads me to the bed. We kick off our shoes and I unzip my skirt and let it fall to a loose heap on the floor. Henry kisses me again and, our bodies closer together, I feel something stirring in me that I’ve never really felt before, the unmistakable stirring of desire.

Before I know it, we are crawling backwards up the length of the bed, and his hands are pulling up my camisole. I stretch my arms above my head and let him tug it free over my body and fling it to the floor. I turn my head slightly and look at the creamy material against the dark wooden floorboards and I think
Is this me? Is it me this is happening to?
I turn back and look at Henry, his eyes boring into me. Without taking his eyes from mine, he begins to gently stroke my arm, my belly and my inner thigh, slow deliberate movements that send tiny ripples of delight shooting through my body. I can feel my toes curling in pleasure and as his hands stop on my underwear, working their way with gentle pressure in small circles, my back arches.

‘Henry…’ I breathe, and my hand tightens around his arm as I pull him towards me. Fumbling, I take off my underwear and tug at the shorts he is wearing. He is smiling, I think I am smiling too, laughing even though I don’t know why but I feel so happy to be in love and to be able to feel his body against mine and to be able to speak to one another in this way without words. Finally free of clothes, he pulls back and strokes my cheek. ‘God, you’re beautiful.’

Nobody has ever said that to me before. I have never thought of myself as beautiful. María, my sister, now she is beautiful. And Sara is beautiful. But me? Well, I am just me.

‘Are you nervous?’ Henry’s eyes gleam in that same charming, mischievous way they did on the day I first spoke to him outside the hospital.

‘No,’ I answer truthfully.

He smiles at me tenderly and then runs his fingers over my breasts, caressing my nipples and making me stir again with longing. I pull his head down towards mine and we kiss deeply whilst Henry moves on top of me and I feel a burning, pulsing, exhilarating sensation between my legs. My hands push down on his buttocks as he arches his back up and straightens his elbows on either side of my body.

‘Are you alright?’ he manages to say, and I nod, urging him on, wanting him more. I pull him down to my body, needing the closeness of him against me and he moans softly as he buries his face in my hair. Our bodies sway together, slowly at first, and then faster. I can hear myself gasping with pain and with pleasure at the same time until finally, Henry pulls me into him with one gentle but strong movement and we cling to one another as he breathes and whispers into my neck.

I don’t know how long we stay like that for, but darkness has fallen and I slip from the bed and clean myself in the bathroom. When I come back, Henry is sleeping and, suddenly cold, I nestle in behind him and pull a blanket over us both. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut and cannot stop the smile that has spread out across my face. Henry, Henry, Henry, I say to myself, over and over again, and his name is suddenly the most beautiful word I have ever heard.

The next morning at dawn, as he slips quietly from the bed and dresses, I watch him in the dimness of the dusty room. I know that he is leaving now, and there is nothing more we can say to one another that can help. When he is ready, he sits by the bed as he holds my hand in his and pushes away the hair from my eyes.

‘I’ll come back as soon as I can,’ he whispers before bending down and kissing me slowly on my lips. Standing up, he slings his khaki backpack on and walks to the door. He turns briefly, murmurs that he loves me and, with that, he is gone. I close my eyes as I listen to his footsteps clattering down the staircase and the thud of the front door as he leaves the
pensión
. It is morning, a new day. I am eighteen years old with my whole life stretching ahead of me, but how am I to live my life now, now that the man to whom I have given my heart and soul has gone?

I have never been the type to feel weak with pessimism or lethargy, but I find the days that follow almost impossible to bear. I feel too despondent to even call my parents to share with them the happy news of my engagement. Instead, I find myself wandering the streets of Barcelona, staring at the destruction of the buildings and the glaring poverty that screams out at me from every side.

The city has changed so much since my last time here. Many of the gothic buildings that spiral majestically skywards have been damaged by bomb blasts and it seems that almost half of the shops and public buildings have been boarded up. Huge convents have been converted into refugee colonies and I gaze up as pigeons swoop in and out of the towering arches. I even go to the zoo two days after Henry’s departure, as I am so astonished to discover it still open. As soon as I’ve been there a mere fifteen minutes, however, I leave, wishing I’d never gone, for the only animals I see are a desperate, emaciated polar bear and a pained-looking kangaroo munching on dead leaves.

After the first few days I start to wonder if I should go home as Henry’s absence makes me ache for the company of my family. I am still staying in that desolate
pensión
run by an expressionless middle-aged woman who walks about with a dirty, runny-nosed child that hides in the folds of her skirt. I think about going somewhere a little more cheerful as I still have some money left. Yet I stay, for this is where Henry and I have been together.

A steady rain has set in for the day and I walk through it towards a street-corner bakery that I know will have bread if I get there early enough. Half-dead-looking chickens scratch about on window balconies above me and the mild November sunshine we welcomed just the week before at the parade almost feels like a figment of my imagination. It is truly wintry and I pull my collar up around my ears and hurry over the slippery cobblestones.