A Spanish Lover (42 page)

The room itself was scrupulously new, bare and clean, white walls, white floor, white bed, white bedside cupboard, white basin, pale-green slatted blinds. On the bedside cupboard stood a vase of yellow roses with a tiny card propped beside it. ‘From Ana,' the card said, ‘with very best wishes.' There were no other flowers, no other card. The little room was more impersonal than any room Frances had ever entered, yet it still held an unmistakable air of adventure, a sense that it was a blank sheet waiting to be scribbled on, that it was there, anonymously, noiselessly, just to serve some great purpose.

Frances sat down on the white plastic chair by the window. She would undress when she was told to, get
into
bed when she was told to, but not before. A nurse had said she would be with her in five minutes, and Frances believed her. For five minutes, she would sit dociley on her chair, timing herself, and peer out through the slats of the blind at the old man in the gardens watering the empty earth. Perhaps he was going to plant something. Should you plant anything in December, even in Seville, even on a soft day like today which might so easily turn into a piercing day, like Frances's first day in Seville almost two years ago, when Luis had followed her fleeing taxi to the airport and had then sat there, for hours, attempting to persuade her to stay?

She hadn't stayed; she'd been adamant about not staying, and now look at her, pregnant by him in a Spanish hospital. The last few months had been so peculiar, so disorientating, that she could hardly remember the feel of that other Frances, the Frances she had always been before. And in a short time, she would be yet another Frances, a mother Frances, and a lifetime's journey would have begun.

The last few weeks, since her arrival in Seville, had been spent in Ana's apartment. Luis had been perfectly happy with the prospect of Frances remaining in his flat in the hotel – he would himself, he made it plain, retreat to Madrid – but there had been a problem in this arrangement in the form of José. José was outraged at Frances's pregnancy. He had liked Frances, trusted her, admired her, and now she had appalled him. For his father to have a girlfriend was fine by José; for his father to have an English girlfriend was initially not so fine by José but he had grown to accept it, but for that girlfriend to become pregnant by his father and then declare she would have the baby in Seville, in the city where José lived, where his mother and grandmothers lived, where the Gómez Morenos were known, were respected, was not only not at all fine, it was intolerable.
It
was also intolerable, almost to the point beyond bearing, for José to think that his father would soon have another child. Even though that child would initially only be a baby, it would still threaten José's lifelong position as Luis's only child and heir. José could not bring himself to think that this situation was in any way his father's fault. That was out of the question! It was all Frances's fault, she was wholly to blame. José would not see her. He would not speak to her on the telephone. When appealed to by Frances, Luis said that there was nothing he could do.

‘You knew all this,' he said gravely to Frances. He was never angry with her now, only kind and quiet, telephoning faithfully every day to ask after her health, deflecting all talk of feeling. ‘You know how my family is, how Spain is. If you make decisions, you must accept the consequences, and you have made the decisions, for you and for me.'

‘I thought José was my friend—'

‘He feels betrayed,' Luis said.

‘But Ana—'

‘Ana is different. Ana is more modern than José, even though she is his aunt. But why am I saying this? Why am I troubling? You
knew
it all, Frances, you knew it, you knew it, I hid nothing from you, I told you everything just as it is. Why do you imagine that, just because you have changed, everyone else must change to suit you?'

‘Because', Frances said, ‘what is happening seems to me so utterly natural that I can't—'

‘Please, don't go on,' he said. ‘Please stop.'

Frances bent now and picked two letters out of her bag, one from Barbara, one from Sam. They were both about houses, about the new places they were living in or about to live in. Frances had read them several times and was amazed at the comfort they gave her, the feeling of support. Barbara said her flat was quite high
up
, in a tall house off Lansdown, and it had a balcony and a view and plenty of sunshine. She said the stairs were a nuisance, but that the landlord was planning to install a lift, which would be an asset when Frances came to stay with the baby. She said William came to see her a lot, bringing books and flowers and pieces of interesting cheese.

‘I think he is still going up to see Juliet too, so I suppose very little has changed for him, in essence, but then, he would be the first to admit he has always fought change tooth and nail. You are about to face a lot of change on the other hand, and I hope you won't be dismayed. It's perfectly possible, in life, to choose something that is absolutely right for you, but not subsequently find the results of the choice either easy or always likeable. But we can't go against our natures, especially if we only discover the truth of them rather late in the day. I think about you.'

It was signed, ‘Love from Mum.' Barbara had, long ago, hated being called ‘Mum', she had wanted to be called ‘Mother', but Lizzie and Frances called her ‘Mum' because that was the word everyone else at school used, ‘my mum', ‘Lynne's mum', ‘Sally's mum'. It was an odd name in any case, for Barbara, who would never have sprung to anyone's mind as a shining example of motherliness. But that was a good letter, a heartening letter, a better letter in all sorts of ways than William's more openly loving, anxious, unhappy ones, brimming with his own apprehensions for her. William's letters did not permit Frances the dignity of her own choices, and of living by the consequences of them, they were too full of fear for her, for that.

Sam's, on the other hand, was blithe. He had had to write a letter, he explained, as part of his English homework so he thought he might as well write to her. He said their new house was going to be pretty superb
because
it backed on to the recreation ground and he could have his bed in a sort of attic thing at the top with a funny roof. Grandpa was going to live in some rooms stuck on the side and Mum was going to have a studio in the garage. He said he had new football boots with red laces (pretty superb also) and that Davy was learning the violin and practised all day and all night and it sounded like a cat being strangled. Harriet had had all her hair cut off, Dad had a cold and Alistair was in love with the new school-dinner lady. Sam hoped Frances knew that oranges came from Seville but that they had a rotten football team, nothing like as brilliant as Madrid or Bilbao. Then he wrote, ‘Phew, 150 words, end of prep, I can stop. Have a nice baby. Love from Sam.'

There was nothing from Lizzie, even though she had addressed the envelope, not even a quick little message at the end of Sam's smudged sheet. It was no good feeling anything about that because to be left alone was what she had asked for. Or rather, demanded. Count your blessings, she'd said to Lizzie, make plans, stop
talking
. Well, now Lizzie had a plan involving one of that row of sturdy semi-detached Edwardian villas Frances remembered along one side of Langworth's recreation ground, villas decorated with patches of half-timbering and stucco. There was a row of lime trees between their back gardens and the football pitches, and their small front gardens had low double-gates with latches, giving on to the road. They could all walk to school from one of those houses, to the Gallery, and the bowling club which William said he had joined, as a joke, to annoy Juliet and which he had then discovered he liked. ‘I also discover,' he wrote, ‘that I have a certain aptitude. It is not a heroic sport but it's subtler than you think.'

A vision rose before Frances, a domestic, English small-town vision of a front garden strewn with
bicycles
, of banging doors and running children, of bus routes and neighbourly disapproval of washing hung out on Sundays, of music practice and bowling practice and meals eaten round the kitchen table without a single mouthful of what was being eaten being discussed as a matter of serious concern, of rain and shrub roses and Cornflakes mewing at the window to be let in. It seemed, all at once, to be as familiar as the back of her own hand, and as distant as the moon.

The door of her room opened. A nurse came in, a neat little dark-haired nurse, her white shoes silent on the white floor.

‘Señora Shore?'

‘Yes,' Frances said.

‘Are you timing your contractions?'

‘About every five minutes,' Frances said. She stooped and slid the letters back into her bag. They were England, and then. This was Spain, and now.

‘Frances?'

She opened her eyes. Luis was bending over her, dressed in a business suit and holding a long paper cone of flowers.

‘Hello.'

‘Are you all right? Was it all right?'

‘Yes,' she said, pulling herself up into a sitting position. ‘It was. It was quite easy. Perhaps it's one of the few things I'll turn out to be good at.'

He laid the flowers on the foot of the bed. He did not seem quite composed.

‘I came as quickly as I could—'

‘Thank you,' she said politely.

He looked down at her for a few seconds, and then he bent and kissed her.

‘It did not hurt too much?'

‘Oh, of course it hurt, it's bound to hurt, but Dr Ramírez was wonderful and anyway, it's a different
kind
of pain to any other pain because it's constructive. Aren't you going to look at him?'

Luis took her hand in both his.

‘Yes, yes, of course—'

Frances glanced at the foot of the bed where a clear plastic cradle was neatly parked on its rubber wheels.

‘Usually, he's beside me, so I can gaze voluptuously at him, but when I go to sleep, for some reason they always wheel him down there. Go and see.'

‘Yes,' Luis said, not moving. ‘A boy.'

‘Yes. A little boy. A little fair-haired, dark-eyed boy. Where could he have come from?'

‘You sound so happy!'

‘Of
course
I do!' she almost shouted. ‘I'm ecstatic, I've never achieved anything like this in my life! I'm due to start crying tomorrow, apparently people always do, but today I could rule the world—'

He gave her hand a little squeeze and dropped it. Then he went to the end of the bed and looked down into the cradle, standing almost to attention above it as if apprehensive of what he was about to see.

‘Pick him up,' Frances said.

He made a helpless kind of gesture, half-laughing.

‘Shall I? How shall I?'

‘Use your wits, Luis!' Frances cried. ‘Just do what's natural! Just put your hands under him and pick him up!'

He stooped. He put his hands into the cradle. His face was suffused with a sudden dark colour as it sometimes was when he was furious. Heavens, Frances thought, watching, is he going to cry? Luis slowly lifted the sleeping baby and put him against his shoulder and he instantly curved himself into Luis, relaxed and comfortable. Luis gave Frances a look almost of anguish and then shook his head, as if trying to understand something quite impossible. Then he walked slowly over to the window, and stood there
with
his back to the bed, holding the baby.

Frances sat upright in bed and waited. She considered saying that she had chosen a name for the baby, and that Ana had been to see her, and that there was a possibility of a nice-sounding flat, near the river, about a quarter of a mile from the Maestranza Bullring. All these were factual things she could say as a substitute, for the time being, for all the nonfactual things she longed to ask, and they might provoke him into saying something in reply instead of just standing there, with his back to her and the baby's head tucked into the side of his neck, thinking thoughts that she would, at this moment, have given her soul to know.

‘Luis?'

He didn't reply. He didn't move. He simply stood there and she could see neither of their faces. She leaned sideways in the bed, towards them, gripping the edge of the thin mattress in its clean stiff layers of rubber and cotton.

‘Luis? Luis, what are you thinking?'

He turned round. His cheeks were wet with tears, shining as if they had been varnished.

‘Luis?'

‘I – I don't know what to say to you—'

‘Are you happy?' she demanded, joyfully. ‘Aren't you happy now?'

‘Happy,' he said scornfully, ‘such a silly little word—' He turned his head and kissed the baby. Then he moved one hand to hold him more securely, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, and blew his nose thunderously. The baby didn't stir. Frances, watching them, thought she might faint. She looked down at the floor past her gripping knuckles. Wasn't this it, wasn't this what she had hoped and hoped for, this moment when all the natural elements came together and she could actually see Luis, unable to help himself, adoringly kissing their baby?

‘He is perfect,' Luis said. ‘He is beautiful.'

‘I know.'

‘He looks so intelligent—'

‘Of course.'

‘He looks like you.'

‘And you.'

‘Yes,' he said delightedly, ‘he does, doesn't he, he looks like me!'

Frances let go of the mattress edge and inched herself backwards across the bed to her pillows.

She said, ‘He's called Antonio.'

‘Is he? Why is he? There is no Antonio in my family.'

‘Nor in mine—'

‘Then why?'

‘Because I like it, because it's easy to say in English too. Because—' She stopped.

‘Because what? Because he can be, you think, Anthony Shore, if he chooses?'