The housekeeper made her way towards Don Felipe.
‘… My workers have been doing what?’ he said to his estate manager, his voice at once angry and incredulous. Aware of his housekeeper shuffling towards him like something brought back from the dead he broke off long enough to snap, ‘Orange juice – verandah,’ while shooing her back inside the house with his own inimitable wrist action.
‘Reading, you tell me!’ Don Felipe’s words rang in her head as Cecilia scuttled away. ‘But why, Guido? Why?’ he bleated with all the emotion of a man betrayed.
In the kitchen Cecilia squeezed, pummelled and beat the oranges, extracting every drop of juice from them that she could. She placed two glasses on one tray, a single glass on another, filled them to the top, then, as she went out onto the verandah, she told one of the house girls to go up to Dona Sofίa’s bedroom. By the time Cecilia had placed the tray down outside her unsettled thoughts had travelled down to her wrists, palms, tips of her fingers, causing her usually steady hands to buckle and shake. The orange juice cascaded over the rim of the glasses, spilt out over the tray, spread across the table, until finally trickling, drop by hard-pressed drop down onto the ground beneath. She watched the scene unfurl before her, and though she willed it to stop, she was powerless to stem the flow now that it had started.
‘Careful! Clumsy woman!’ The clumsy woman dashed off to fetch a cloth.
‘Names! Give me names!’ She felt Guido’s eyes burning into the back of her head as she retreated. They burned no less when she returned.
‘Perhaps Cecilia can help you,’ the sly fox said. ‘Speak, woman!’ Her employer’s words, pushing her to give an answer, shocked her like the point of a sharp knife. She looked at Guido, searching for help. She found none. What was she to do? She had to name someone. Seňor Suarez? No. That English boy? No. Then, before she knew what she’d done she blurted out ‘Maria!’ ‘Maria?’ Don Felipe echoed back at her. ‘Yes,’ Cecilia confirmed. ‘Maria. Maria Alvaro. The doctor’s daughter.’ She felt no guilt. Rules, after all, did not apply to Maria Alvaro.
It was the day after the landowners had returned to their estate and Don Felipe was having breakfast while scanning the paper looking for news. He put it down in frustration. ‘Still nothing in the papers about any coup, dear?’ Dona Sofίa asked. Her husband gave a loud shush, followed by a hasty glance at the door to make sure none of the servants were listening. ‘Oh, it’s not the coup I’m looking for. Though in view of the strikes all over the country,’ he said, jabbing his finger at some article, ‘it had better come soon.’
Pools of unrest had been bubbling beneath the surface right across Spain since the start of the decade. Tension. Civil unrest. A struggle for the heart and soul of Spain. Made all the worse by an international politics of extremism. The growth of fascism in Germany and Italy whispered to the Spanish masses that the ruling class would never give up its power without a fight. The victory of communism in Russia murmured in the ears of the ruling class that the workers would rise up if not kept down. A tug of war was being played out where right and left struggled for supremacy. Up until now an equilibrium of sorts had been maintained. Up until now Don Felipe had had to allow his workers to form unions, had had no choice but to approve of liberal absurdities such as reading programmes. But all that was about to change. Bullets were about to overcome ballot boxes and the landowner couldn’t wait. It was the reason for his return.
‘You’ll have to talk to her dear,’ his wife said.
‘I know,’ Don Felipe replied, picking up the pamphlet that Guido had handed to him the previous evening. ‘I don’t care if she is the doctor’s daughter!’
‘Oh, I’m not talking about the girl, silly!’ said Dona Sofίa, who, contrary to her show of interest, had little time for some child who wanted to play teacher to the workers. ‘No. I’m talking about Cecilia. It’s her arms. Did you not see them yesterday? They’re hideous. The lower classes have no sense of shame or modesty,’ she said, breathing heavily. She put down her magazine full of beautifully dressed young women and put a hand to her well-coiffed curls checking they were still in place. One had dropped. She closed her eyes and asked for strength. The ceiling fans simply moved hot air around and she couldn’t stand keeping the shutters closed. The heat combined with the sight of her housekeeper’s indecent arms was making Dona Sofίa irritable, as was her husband’s inability to grasp what was truly important. And now her hair was losing its shape. It was really too, too much.
‘Cecilia!’ Don Felipe called. The housekeeper rushed in, her fleshy arms wrapped round a heavy pile of freshly ironed sheets. ‘Why are you doing that?’ Dona Sofίa asked. ‘Put them away, then come back,’ she tutted.
When Cecilia came back in she rubbed her arms repeatedly with worry. She’d been worried about Manuel all night. What if Guido had given him away?
‘Cecilia, dear,’ Dona Sofίa said, a fixed smile nailed to her face. ‘We have something to say to you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Cecilia said, waiting for judgement. If only Luis was here. He had always been able to curb the worst of his parents’ excesses. ‘I promise that I will work hard to make amends.’ Cecilia wasn’t past begging to keep her son in employment.
‘Well, we do expect to be having some very important guests staying with us in the not too distant future,’ Dona Sofίa replied, frankly surprised at her housekeeper’s eagerness to accept responsibility and expressing regret at having let herself go. ‘And so your diligence and commitment will be much appreciated. Behind the scenes.’
Relief flooded Cecilia’s body from head to toe that Manuel’s name still hadn’t been mentioned but Dona Sofίa’s lipstick-coloured lips still moved up and down with unstoppable purpose.
‘I don’t want you serving … Best we keep you in the kitchen.’ She then nodded over to her husband. He coughed three times. ‘Yes. Play to your strengths,’ he said. ‘Cooking, cleaning, stuff like that.’ His wife pushed him on with her eyes and touched her upper arm, ‘Yes,’ he continued. ‘And we’d like you to wear sleeves from now on, old girl. More decent on a woman of your age, don’t you think?’ And with that he turned round and went to look for Guido. It was time to get to the bottom of that unpleasant reading nonsense.
Dona Sofίa gave the old girl, who was five years younger than herself, her most beneficent smile, full of pity. She lowered her eyelids in imitation of the Virgin Mary in her favourite painting by Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child with Two Angels that she’d seen in Florence.
‘How’s Manuel?’
Dona Sofίa clutched a letter to her chest not really caring to know about her housekeeper’s son one way or the other but the question put the fear of God in poor Cecilia. She needn’t have worried. Her employer’s interest in Manuel was the same as it had ever been – a flimsy pretext for talking about her own sweet boy, Luis. And he was a sweet boy.
‘He’ll be back soon. He has a fine mind. Reads philosophy … and the finest novels – in English, of course.’
That her employer boasted, Cecilia found tedious, but she was grateful for the opportunity to remember the child she’d loved so well. When he’d been first sent away to school he’d been so young. Such a gentle child. His parents weren’t the only people to miss him when he’d gone.
Luis and Manuel were the same age, possessed the same generous natures. Manuel was the only one of Cecilia’s children that had ever been allowed on the estate. Dona Sofίa had even allowed a friendship to blossom between the boys. They’d been inseparable.
Until