‘The likes of Maria Alvaro will break your heart,’ was what she’d meant to say. But her beautiful boy glowed with happiness in the pink-purple twilight and she did not have the stomach to take it away from him. Maria would do that soon enough. Cecilia prayed that she would let her boy down gently, though, recalling how the girl had paraded round the courtyard like a queen earlier in the day, she doubted that she would.
Yet as Manuel talked about Don Felipe’s unfairness, some strike that had happened in Asturias in 1934, and the Russian Revolution (a load of nonsense he must have got from that teacher), it occurred to Cecilia that it wasn’t only Maria who had ignited a flame in his heart. As her eyes fixed on the book her son had clutched in his hands, she saw there were more dangerous fires still that her son had started to play with.
No one saw it coming – not Paloma, not Manuel, not even the ever-vigilant Cecilia, and certainly not Maria. No one except Lola, and, of course, Richard, had any idea what was happening in full view of everyone.
Maria, Paloma and Richard were going on a picnic. It was Sunday morning and they were all setting off from their respective homes to meet up just outside the village when Cecilia followed Paloma to the door and took her youngest daughter brusquely by the arm. ‘You’re not going unless she can come too,’ she bellowed, nodding in the direction of a well-groomed Lola, dressed up and ready for anything but a picnic in the country. She had her best shoes on and the dress she wore to village parties and her dark wavy hair was gleaming. Paloma stopped in her tracks. No one could accuse Lola of being a shrinking violet, and no one would say she was a girl that was easily overlooked, left behind at home by a callous, selfish sister to hide her light under a bushel. And yet, here she was, standing next to her mother, eyes on the verge of tears, saying, ‘Don’t worry mother. If Paloma doesn’t want me to go with her, I understand.’
‘Oh no, my girl. You’re going. You both go or neither of you go. Those are my conditions. Now go and get whatever it is you need.’ Lola clattered up the stairs making a pretence of getting ready, thankful that her usually observant mother hadn’t noticed that she already was.
That Cecilia should allow her girls to skip church was unprecedented, and that she should allow them to go off into the country with a foreigner as strange-looking as el inglés equally surprising to people who knew her. Ever since she’d got wind of her employers’ return she’d been distracted, yet it was Guido’s latest piece of information that had really set the poor woman off like a whirling dervish: he expected the fine owners of El Cortijo del Bosque any time after lunch on Sunday. That was it. Even the devout Cecilia wouldn’t be attending church now, may the Lord God forgive her. She feared God, but she feared Don Felipe and Dona Sofίa more. Especially Dona Sofίa. There was still a mountain of work to do up at the house and Cecilia knew that if it didn’t get done there would be hell to pay. God would forgive her for not attending church this once, whereas Dona Sofίa on the other hand would not be so gracious if she didn’t make sure all the rooms were aired, all the beds made up, all the silver polished, all the floors scrubbed and, heaven forbid, if the larder was not well stocked. And as for the ugly English boy, Cecilia believed he was as interested in Maria as much as she was interested in him. And they would both be out of sight of her beautiful Manuel. Let that girl do what she wanted. She usually did. It was up to Doctor Alvaro to stop her, not Cecilia. And so when Paloma asked if she could go on a picnic with Maria, her mother screamed ‘A picnic?’ put a hand to her chest, collapsed on a chair, then said in a breathy whisper, ‘Perdoname, Dios mio,’ before saying emphatically, ‘Yes.’
‘I’m ready!’ Lola ran down the stairs, kissed her mother, then charged out. She was on her bike and nearly at the end of the road when she shouted: ‘Hurry up Paloma, you big lump, or we’ll be late!’
Maria was waiting at the stone water trough in full sun. Richard was waiting close by in the shade. At the sight of the sisters Maria gave a whistle to the English boy and set off ahead of them all, leading the way to their chosen picnic spot which was a thirty-minute ride out of the village. The girls cycled there in silence, the only sound coming from Richard as he puffed along in the heat. He struggled to keep up on his bike. A thirty-minute cycle ride hadn’t seemed so very testing when Maria had first suggested it to him. But then he hadn’t reckoned on the ferocity of the sun. As he passed shepherds’ huts he saw their walls perspire, while olive trees throbbed under pounding rays. As for Richard himself, he was starting to melt. Would there be anything left of him by the time he’d reached the destination? That the girls said nothing seemed perfectly reasonable to him. He had no idea that Paloma was sulking because Lola had hoodwinked their mother into letting her come. Nor that Maria was sulking because she thought Lola would spoil their day. The only one of the girls not to be sulking was Lola. She’d wanted to come along and here she was. She hadn’t come to talk to either Maria or Paloma and so the silence suited her perfectly. That the other girls radiated every kind of animosity towards her didn’t bother her in the slightest. They were going to have to try harder than direct bad thoughts at her if they wanted to put her off her stride. She’d come here for a reason and these two silly little girls weren’t going to stop her with their sour looks and huffy puffy ways. The hot air slipped around their bodies. It kept the girls cool, made Richard sticky and red. They cycled along dusty tracks, past fields of corn, olive groves, vineyards, passing the occasional donkey moving slowly under the weight of a heavy load. Richard had never experienced such peace. Nor such heat. He stopped for a while, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow, his neck, and his palms. It was quickly sodden. ‘How much further?’ he called out, but the girls were too far ahead to hear. As he rubbed his already wet palms, getting ready to set off again, he heard a car.
Toot. Toot, toot, toot. Toooooooot. The horn sounded. Insistent. Furious. It roused the boy’s flagging senses.
A deep voice, raised in anger, yelled out at him, sounding angrier the closer it got. The driver to whom the raging voice belonged was tooting the horn as if he were in heavy traffic in the middle of a city. He’d already encountered the girls and now he was furious. They’d made him slow down when he shouldn’t have to, least of all when he was driving along his own lanes, leading to his own estate.
For a brief moment a cloud in an otherwise cloudless sky blocked out the sun. Richard experienced a strange feeling of menace. He wheeled his bike as quickly as he could into the adjacent field to make way. The car hurtled towards him, the driver’s arms waving in wild accompaniment to the shouts that continued to whip him. The dusty vehicle sped by, its wheels throwing up a spray of small stones and grit in its wake that caught in the boy’s eyes. The driver’s foot pressed down hard on the accelerator. The furious tooting of the horn continued. Richard Johnson shuddered briefly. He rubbed his eyes and looked for the girls through the gravel haze. The car had gone one way, Richard and the girls another: the cloud above had passed. And there, through the settling dust, he saw a sunlit Lola, black hair glinting, white dress dazzling. She was standing next to her bike at the corner up ahead.
She was the only one who’d waited for him.
*
Maria was already at the picnic spot. She’d cycled away from the group. She’d beat Lola there if it killed her, she’d said to herself, Paloma too. Nothing would distract. Not even the car.
‘I’m hot now!’ Maria threw herself under the tree as she hurled her bike to the ground letting the back wheel spin round and round. She gasped as she leant against the trunk and looked on victorious as Paloma followed her, close behind.
Lola