Never an Empire (7 page)

‘It was for my mother. She is ill and hungry.'

The law-abiding citizen, a bank clerk as it happened, was impatient of any conversation. A theft had taken place. The girl was a thief. It was a matter for the police.

The woman didn't see it that way.

‘The girl is hungry, can't you see that?'

No, he couldn't. All he could see was a crime and all he wanted was the thanks due to him. The woman begged to disagree: the child was sick and hungry, not really a thief, so the clerk let go of her arm and stormed off. What could any responsible citizen expect if the very victims of crimes, crimes committed in broad daylight on the street, fussed over the criminal instead of calling the police? The woman returned her attention to Maria who stood patiently awaiting whatever might befall her. She knew she had done wrong and would be punished, but she was so tired, so very tired.

‘Have you eaten today?'

Maria made the effort to reply.

‘No, but I am young and strong and my mother's need is greater.'

A lie, of course, she was indeed young, but not strong, which she immediately proved by fainting away on the spot, partly from shame perhaps, but mostly from hunger.

Maria came to lying on a sofa in a small but comfortably furnished room. The woman was sitting opposite and standing behind her was a young man. The young man was the woman's son, a bright, smiling youth of seventeen. The woman explained that her son was home from university and that she lived alone, her husband having died three years ago. Now that her son was away so much she felt lonely and would like a companion to live with her. Would Maria be interested? It was as if an angel of God had appeared and asked her if, by any chance, she would like to go to heaven. What could she say? Nothing. She put her head in her hands and cried. The woman took that for an acceptance and carried on talking. Slowly Maria surfaced. She was to come and live in this fine house and work, but not cleaning and cooking. She didn't quite understand but it seemed to her that she was to be a daughter to this woman, this angel from God. Daughter to an angel. And paid! The wages were carefully calculated so that Maria could give a small but sufficient amount each week to her family and still have enough left over to buy a few things for herself.

‘But of course you must ask permission from your mother.'

Maria nodded.

The woman nodded to her son who left the room and returned with a basket. It contained food. More food than Maria and her family had seen in weeks.

‘You must become strong.' The young man smiled at her. ‘The work will not be hard but even so, there must be more of you than there is at the moment if we are to pay you so much.'

The smile widened into a grin.

Maria smiled. He was making a joke.

The woman laughed.

‘It is settled then if your mother agrees.'

And of course her mother agreed, so Maria moved into the fine house and became the companion of Señora Lucia Clothilde Herrera.

Señora Herrera was not a wealthy woman but she was careful, industrious, and capable, and took great pleasure in passing on the domestic talents she had acquired to her new companion who proved a willing and apt student. As the result of a healthy diet and a civilised lifestyle Maria bloomed. A beautiful young woman slowly emerged from the frail waif who had been brought to the house. Was it a surprise to Señora Herrera that a relationship developed between Maria and her son, Alberto? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Either way he came home from university a little more often than before Maria's arrival; they became firm friends, then more than friends, and on his graduation from university they were married. The architect of the romance, Señora Herrera, could not have been more pleased. She was not rich, she could not buy a place for her son, nor had she influential friends who would see that he was made welcome in some suitably well-paid position. Her son would have to make his way in the world and to do this he needed a reliable, competent wife beside him, one who could manage things as they should be managed, as she would have managed them herself. So many young men fell for a pretty face and figure without thought of household management. In Maria, she knew from first-hand experience, he would have a wife who would serve him well.

Alberto Herrera was a civil engineer and had done well at university. A recommendation from that institution had secured for him an appointment to an official post. The man who interviewed him and confirmed his appointment was a senior official in a very junior state department responsible for the financing of minor works in the rural districts. The post allocated was in the small town of San Juan Bautista and Alberto was required to oversee all municipal works in the town itself and the surrounding district: an area of several thousand square kilometres. Here, after just over a year, Maria's daughter was born and the sorrow of her name began to return. The child contracted some sort of chest disease and despite the best medical attention San Juan Bautista had to offer, died just after her first birthday. From then on happiness faded fast. Maria's husband, a man of strong political convictions and a fierce nationalist, had been elected lodge leader of the local Katipunan, a secret society set up to work for Philippine independence which, when its existence was discovered and suppressed by the Spanish, translated itself into a revolutionary army. Maria's husband became an officer, the lodge members his soldiers, and they left San Juan to join forces with others to form the new Army of Independence. Her sorrow at departure of her husband was as nothing, however, when two months later she received the news of his death. He had been killed in his first engagement with Spanish troops. The fact that he had died bravely, leading his men on a charge of the Spanish position, comforted her not at all.

From then on her life became true to her name. She was a childless widow and soon just one of the many widows the war against Spain created. What sympathy and support had been initially forthcoming for these unfortunate women slowly dried up and then stopped. San Juan was not a rich place and there were just too may widows to look after: those with children had to take priority. Maria was left to fend for herself. It was the Church that finally came to Maria's aide. She was told that she could live in the empty priest's house on condition she kept it clean and looked after any priest who came to stay there. Also she must clean the church and see that it was unlocked and locked so that it could be used at appropriate times. There were no wages for these services but it was a roof over her head and, as an official of the Church, however humble, the town could not see her starve. A small but sufficient allowance of food was collected from the parish. Thus Maria survived for ten years.

Then Father Enrique arrived.

Young, enthusiastic, full of hope, he kept her on as housekeeper and gave her an allowance for all the domestic necessities which Maria considered almost sinfully extravagant but, with an effort, she managed to live with her new life of excess. Her social position also changed. With Father Enrique's arrival and her elevation to official housekeeper of the town's only priest she was a woman of importance. She no longer took charity but was even able to dispense it herself, on behalf of Father Enrique of course. After so many years of difficulty and sorrow Maria Dolores once more glimpsed happiness and she thanked God, but only after she had thanked in her heart and prayers Father Enrique.

Now she sat in the kitchen with this young woman, a stranger come from nowhere who had crept into Father Enrique's life and into his heart.

They sat facing each other across the kitchen table.

‘I did as you said. I told him he must decide.' Maria didn't say anything. She was thinking. The young woman waited a few minutes before she spoke again. ‘Will he send me away?'

Maria shook her head.

‘No. He is young and full of passion. Until now he has given all that passion to God and the Church but last night he found another way to give it. If he was going to send you away he would have done it when you got into his bed or this morning when he had thought over what he had done.'

‘So I can stay?'

‘We will see. These things must be properly managed.'

‘But you will help me?'

‘No. I will not help you.' The young woman looked shocked and disappointed. She thought this woman was on her side. ‘But I will help Father Enrique and I will help the people of the town.'

The young woman smiled. It was enough.

‘And I will stay?'

‘We will see. There is no shortage of pretty girls who need a home and someone to look after them. If Father Enrique is to have a woman it must be a woman I can trust, an obedient woman who will know how to do as she is told.'

The young woman looked down at her hands folded in her lap, trying to look meek and obedient.

‘I am trustworthy, I know how to do as I am told.' Then she looked up directly into Maria's eyes, all meekness gone. ‘If the person who tells me is herself trustworthy, someone who will look after me.'

Maria looked back at her for a moment then laughed.

‘Good. If you are to stay here you must also have some sense; now I see that you do. A pretty face and a desirable body are all very well, but in this world brains are also needed.'

‘But if I am to be obedient to you there is something you must do for me.'

‘Oh, and what might that be?'

‘There has not been a priest in our village for many, many years so there have been no weddings, no baptisms, and no one has been to Mass.' She paused. ‘We need a priest.'

Maria smiled. The woman really did have brains.

‘So, you got sent here as a present, a bribe. He gets you and in return your village gets him, is that it?'

The young woman bowed her head.

‘Yes.'

‘Well, I'll see what I can do.'

The door opened and Father Enrique came in.

‘I have decided.'

The young woman stood up and resumed her meek attitude as if she were awaiting some sort of sentencing, which in a way, she was.

Maria remained seated.

‘What is your decision, Father?'

‘It is too late for her to go back to her village. The position now is the same as last night so we will do the same as last night.'

‘She will stay?'

‘It will be the same tonight as it was last night. Do you both understand?'

The young woman raised her eyes, smiled and gave him a tender look.

‘I understand, Father.'

Maria also smiled, but the smile and the look were quite different.

‘Yes, Father, we both understand perfectly.'

Father Enrique stood for a second looking uncertain and embarrassed. Then he fixed a stern look on his face and tried to get some authority into his voice.

‘Good. That is my decision. Tomorrow morning I will decide what we will do, what will happen, er …'

Maria came to his aide as his voice faltered and the look of embarrassment returned.

‘Tomorrow morning you will make your final decision about what will be done in the future, Father.'

Father Enrique managed to pull himself together.

‘Yes. The future. A final decision tomorrow.' He looked at the young woman and his voice changed. It was as if he were asking for something and not sure that it would be granted. The voice of a shy young man speaking to a pretty young girl. ‘But for tonight things will be as they were last night.'

The young woman spoke quietly.

‘It will as you wish, Father.'

He coughed and his voice resumed a tone of authority.

‘Good. As I wish.'

And he turned, left, and closed the door behind him.

Chapter Nine

The next day Father Enrique returned from his usual morning round both pleased and troubled. She had come to him in the early hours of the morning. He had tried to stay awake and wait for her but sleep had defeated him and it was her naked body slipping into the bed that had woken him. Once more they had made love and it had been wonderful, wonderful and terrible. Wonderful because he had never known such passion and joy could exist, and it was terrible because he was wallowing in a carnal sin that had destroyed him as a priest.

But today was different because today he had brought all his years of seminary training to the situation. The first time she had come it had been a complete surprise: his actions therefore could be explained and understood. He was inexperienced in matters of the flesh and his reaction was made while the mists of sleep still held him. The woman had tempted him and had fallen before there was any chance of serious reflection. Had he been sure of what he was doing? Might he have thought, at first, it was no more than dream and discovered too late that it was all too real. To look at it that way removed much if not all of his blame from his shoulders. The woman had tempted and he fell, but he fell from inexperience and unreadiness, not from any clear will or intention. That there had been a sin was not in question, but it was the pleasure he had taken on remembering, not necessarily the act itself. The greater sin was the young woman's, not his. To look at it in such a clear and rational way, the way of his training, made his sin venial, not mortal; nothing more than impure thoughts, a temporary fall from grace, easily corrected by Confession or, if no other priest was available, by saying a sincere Act Of Contrition.

Unfortunately, he realised only too clearly that that interpretation would have solved his problem yesterday, had he thought of it, but couldn't be applied today. Last night he had waited for her, wanted her. When he went to bed he had lain on his back, happy, thinking of her coming to him, and his penis had stood rigid and he was glad, until tiredness overtook him and he fell asleep. But when she came he had woken and knew that she was real and no dream. An evil mind, he allowed, might put an uncharitable interpretation on his decision to let her stay. An evil mind might say that he had almost told her to come. But he rejected that. He had merely told her and Maria that she might stay the night because, as previously, it was too late to send her away. His problem today was that he had colluded wilfully, not simply given way to a sudden and unexpected temptation.