Golden Earrings (40 page)

‘What are you doing here?’ I was keen to get what I anticipated would be an awkward encounter over with so I could go talk to Mamie.

My father turned around, flinching at my hostile tone. ‘Paloma!’ He leaned forwards to kiss me but I backed away.

‘Do you want something?’ I asked.

He ran his hand through his hair, what was left of it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

What was he apologising for? If it was for betraying Mama and marrying Audrey, it was much too late.

‘I’ve come from the hospital and things don’t look good,’ he went on.

At first I wondered if he was re-enacting a conversation from when Mama was dying, but then the truth hit me. A sick feeling gnawed the pit of my stomach. ‘Mamie?’

Papa nodded. ‘She collapsed in one of her classes. The students called an ambulance.’

The whole world seemed to fall into slow motion. I hardly heard the rest of what Papa said as he guided me towards his car because the blood was humming so loudly in my ears.

‘Audrey is ringing the parents to let them know the classes are cancelled,’ he said, opening the passenger door to his Triumph sports car and helping me into its black interior. ‘She will find a teacher who can take over until we sort out what to do about the school.’

My father climbed into the driver’s seat and looked at me a moment before switching on the engine. ‘I’m sorry, Paloma,’ he said. ‘I know how much Mamie means to you.’

I turned my face to the window so that I wouldn’t have to talk to him. It was starting to rain. Droplets slid down the glass and disappeared into the window seals. ‘As long as I have you, Mamie, I can bear everything else,’ I’d told my grandmother that morning.

Mamie’s doctor met us in the corridor. He was a tall man with such pale skin that the fluorescent lights showed up the blue veins under it. ‘She’s out of intensive care,’ he said. ‘It was very serious for a while there, but she’s stabilised. We still have to assess what damage has been done to her heart.’

I was allowed see Mamie briefly. She was hooked up to oxygen and drips, and her face was grey. It was the first time I had ever seen my grandmother actually looking old. My legs trembled when I approached the bed. I stood beside her and stroked her arm lightly. Mamie opened her eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Mamie,’ I whispered. ‘It’s because I made you speak about Spain. I didn’t know you had a bad heart.’

‘It’s what gets us Montella women in the end,’ she said weakly. ‘Our hearts.’

I remembered her story of how her mother had passed away. I couldn’t bear to imagine life without Mamie. ‘Please get better,’ I begged her, my voice sounding small in the sterile room. ‘We won’t speak about Spain any more. We’ll talk only about the future.’

She gave me a nod and a slight smile. ‘Only the future,’ she repeated.

Papa and I drove back to the apartment in silence. It was only after he had pulled the car into the kerb that he turned to me. ‘Audrey says you should come and live with us while Mamie is in hospital.’

At a moment like this, I couldn’t stand him mentioning his new wife: the woman who had replaced Mama. ‘So we all do what Audrey says these days?’

My father ignored my comment. ‘When Mamie comes out of hospital, I’ll arrange a nurse for her. But for now you have to prepare for your examination. It’s better that you concentrate on that instead of fending for yourself.’

‘That would be nice,’ I said sarcastically, ‘if you hadn’t ruined my chances of getting into the Ballet!’

Papa looked at me incredulously. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Arielle Marineau hates me and I’ve finally worked out the reason why. You had an affair with her and then dumped her when you found out Mama was pregnant with me.’

Papa slapped his hand on the dashboard. I jumped. ‘Because that’s the sort of bastard I am, isn’t it, Paloma?’

I stared at him, rage building up inside me. I had told myself that my father no longer meant anything in my life. But it wasn’t true. He still had the power to hurt me.

‘Yes, you are a bastard!’ I screamed. ‘A bastard for cheating on Mama when she was dying, and a bastard for marrying Audrey before Mama’s body was cold in the grave!’

A change came over my father’s face. His jaw set and his nostrils flared, and he seemed to look straight through me. For a wild moment, I thought that he might hit me. But he didn’t. Instead he leaned across me and shoved open the door, letting in a sharp blast of winter air.

‘Get out, Paloma! Go fend for yourself if that’s what you want! Get out!’ he shouted.

I stepped out onto the pavement. Papa slammed the door shut. He glared at me for a moment before speeding away.

I watched his car turn the corner. It was the wrong time to have started an argument, but the anguish had been bottled up inside me ever since Mama died. My grandmother’s sudden illness was bringing up the memories of what it was like to lose someone I adored. I wanted the kind of father who would put me first. Who was honourable and who had never cheated on my mother. But it was too late for that: my father wasn’t that man and never would be.

At home, I took Diaghilev and the telephone to my bedroom and locked the door. The apartment felt empty without Mamie and the fight with my father had left me in tears. I lay
on the bed, exhausted but also scared that la Rusa might choose tonight to make another appearance.

I rang Carmen to tell her I couldn’t have a lesson and Jaime answered the telephone.

‘I’m coming to get you,’ he said when I told him about Mamie. ‘You’re not staying there on your own.’

Mamie had to have surgery and she remained in the hospital for over a month. Every morning I woke up with the dread that she might have passed away overnight, as had happened with Mama. Carmen rang the hospital for me early each morning before I left the apartment. When I heard the words from her: ‘The nurse says that your grandmother is fine’, I wanted to fall to my knees and thank God.

I kept up my training for the examination, but my visits to Mamie were a much more important part of my day. I sat with her while she ate breakfast before going off to my class with Mademoiselle Louvet and returned after dinner each evening to read her the papers.

‘You’re the granddaughter every woman wishes for,’ Mamie told me.

One evening, after she had started showing significant improvement, I brought Jaime to meet her.

‘So you’re the young man who’s been looking after Paloma?’ she said.

‘As much as she will allow me to,’ said Jaime with a dashing smile. He placed the roses he had brought on the beside table.

Mamie smiled. ‘She’s stubborn, that’s for sure.’

‘Are you two going to gang up on me?’ I asked them.

They shared a conspiratorial smile. Jaime sat down in the chair next to Mamie’s bed. ‘Where does Paloma get her stubbornness from?’ he asked. ‘Not from you, I am sure. Maybe from her grandfather?’

A strange look came over Mamie’s face. For a moment, I thought she might be feeling ill. But the expression passed and she smiled again. ‘You should know yourself, young man,’ she quipped. ‘That defiance is a Catalan characteristic and Paloma has Catalan blood in her veins.’

Afterwards, when Jaime went to search for a vase to put the flowers in, Mamie leaned towards me. ‘I like him,’ she said. ‘His family are Andalusians?’

I nodded.

She looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Well, he’s a gentleman anyway. Do your best to make each other happy. You never know what life might bring.’

My life became a whirlwind of intensive training, visiting Mamie in the hospital and staying with Jaime and his family.

It was an adjustment living in Carmen’s apartment. I was used to quiet and a lot more space, but I loved being part of a lively household. Sometimes Jaime, Carmen, Isabel and I would be up talking or singing and dancing until late at night — or until one of the neighbours complained. I found myself tapping out flamenco rhythms on the Métro, in the café when I waited for Gaby, on the tiles when I took a shower. Flamenco helped my spirits during an anxious time in my life.

Jaime had given his room over to me and made a temporary bed for himself on the sofa. ‘It’s good practice for touring,’ he said with a chivalrous smile.

I loved sleeping in Jaime’s room. Before I turned the light out each night, I’d look at all the flamenco paraphernalia and other objects that he’d collected that meant something to him. One night I noticed on his desk the pewter bat pendant I’d seen him wearing at the first flamenco class I’d attended. I picked it up and climbed down the stairs and went to the living room. Jaime was still up, playing a melody softly on his guitar.

I showed him the pendant. ‘I’m curious about this,’ I said. ‘Is it something from southern Spain?’

He shook his head, and moved his blanket aside so I could snuggle up to him on the sofa. ‘A friend of mine from the Conservatoire gave it to me. He believes in Native American symbolism and in that culture bats represent intuition, dreaming and vision. But they also give the ability to see through illusions or ambiguity.’

I leaned against Jaime and examined the pendant again. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I was fascinated by it.

‘Why don’t you wear it?’ Jaime suggested, taking the pendant from me. I lifted my hair so he could fasten the clasp at the back of my neck.

‘Thanks,’ I told him, pressing my cheek to his. ‘I do have the feeling I’m not seeing something clearly. Maybe the bat will help me.’

Although I was training several hours a day for my ballet examination, I still found the energy for lessons with Carmen. Maybe I will go to Spain with her one day, I thought. Maybe I will become a flamenco-ballet artist and start a new version of both arts. One thing was certain: I was going to grab any opportunity that came my way — whether it was to have lessons with a magnificent ballerina like Mademoiselle Louvet or to live with a family of flamenco artists. People had died terrible deaths in Spain and I lived in a country where free speech was considered a national characteristic. I had no excuse not to be making the most of my life.

One morning when I was visiting Mamie, she asked me about Papa. ‘When I collapsed, Madame Carré called your father. He came straight away. The first thing that he said to me was not to worry about you. He’d look after you. Well, where is he?’

Audrey had organised another teacher to keep Mamie’s studio going, but she didn’t make any further contact with me
and neither did Papa. After the way we had parted, I would have been surprised if Papa ever contacted me again.

‘I sent him away, Mamie. We don’t get along any more.’

Mamie looked into my eyes for a long while before saying, ‘Maybe you need to forgive him, Paloma. After all, he is your father.’

I thought about Mamie’s change of heart towards my father on my way to ballet class and wondered what had caused it. When I had first told her that he was seeing Audrey, she’d been as shocked as I was that he could be serious about a woman so soon after Mama’s death. I wondered what had caused her to feel differently about Papa now. Perhaps she was afraid that if she died, I’d be without a family of my own.

That evening, I found Feliu’s telephone number in her address book; he lived in Marseilles. He was family, wasn’t he? Yet I knew so little about him. He was in his late forties now. Was he married? Did he have children? Was he happy?

I listened to the phone ring, not sure if he would be home.

‘Hello.’

‘Feliu?’

‘Who’s this?’

I wanted to tell him I was his cousin. That Mamie had told me all about what had happened in Spain, and that I understood his pain now and wished there was some way I could help him. Instead I said, ‘It’s Paloma Batton. I wanted to let you know that Mamie is in hospital. She’s had heart surgery.’

Feliu was silent. At first I wondered if we had been disconnected.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said finally. ‘Which hospital is she in? I will send her some flowers.’

I gave him the address of the hospital with a sense of disappointment. I had hoped that he would say he was coming to Paris. There was so much that I wanted to ask him. From Mamie’s story, I had the impression that he had once been very
attached to her; that she had been more of a mother to him than Conchita.

I went to see Conchita on my way from the ballet school one day, to make sure she was still receiving her deliveries of food. I sat with her for a couple of hours to keep her company. I saw her in a different light now too. I surprised her with my warm embrace and told her that I loved her. She was no longer simply an eccentric, aging beauty, a friend of Mamie’s; she was family to me in a way she had never been before. I admired her because she had survived something terrible. I wanted to ask her how it was that she had come to think of Franco as a great man when her husband had been executed by his forces and she herself had been gaoled and exiled. I was aware that there were some liberal monarchists, not only fascists and Francoists, who would have a different perspective of the Spanish Republic’s weaknesses and their own stories of atrocities committed by the Republican army. But Conchita was even older than Mamie and much more fragile. I didn’t want to risk causing her the same agony of remembrance that had triggered Mamie’s heart attack.