‘Good evening. Would you like a drink? The bar is open,’ she told them, as Juanita bustled away to start preparing the menu they had agreed on earlier.
Sometimes, when all the guests were reserved types, it was necessary to do some ice-breaking to encourage them to socialise. Tonight, however, they were all outgoing personalities and were soon talking nineteen to the dozen, the men discussing golf courses and the women comparing notes about children and grandchildren.
To her surprise, while pre-dinner drinks were still in progress, Señor Llorca appeared. This was unexpected. Even in country areas the Spanish had their evening meal much later than most of the foreigners, and in the big cities they dined very late indeed.
Her father had joined the golfing-talk group, and Cally was behind the bar, reading El Mundo, a Spanish paper she had bought that morning but hadn’t had time to look at. As the Spaniard approached the bar, Juanita came to the hatch that connected the bar with the kitchen and asked a question.
Cally answered her, then turned back to face the Spaniard. ‘Another San Miguel?’ she asked.
‘No, I’ll have a glass of wine—red, please.’ He sat down on one of the bar stools, which reduced his height slightly but still kept his eyes on a level well above hers.
‘The house wine is “on the house”, but if you’d prefer something better we have quite a good cellar.’ She handed him their wine list.
As he scanned it, she studied his face, taking in the details that combined to give it as powerful an impact as the lean and authoritative features of the Moor who had once ruled this region and whose followers, by intermarrying with the indigenous people of Spain, had bequeathed their dark eyes and proud profiles through many generations to people living today.
In this man the evidence of his lineage was particularly striking. His cheekbones, the cut of his jaw, the blade-like bridge of his nose and, above all, his dark-olive skin and black eyebrows and hair, combined to give him the air of having stepped down from a painting of a time in Spanish history that had always strongly appealed to her.
He gave the list back to her. ‘I’ll try your house wine.’
Perhaps he couldn’t afford the expensive wines, she thought, as she filled a glass for him. Though he didn’t give the impression of being hard up. Lightweight, slimline computers, such as the one he had been using in the office, were usually a lot more expensive than bulkier laptops.
‘You speak Valenciano,’ he said, referring to her brief exchange with Juanita. ‘Were you born in this village?’
Cally shook her head. ‘I was born in Andalucia. I’ve lived in several parts of Spain. Which reminds me, I forgot to ask for your identity card when you arrived. We have to keep a record of our visitors. If you don’t have it on you, later will do.’
‘I have it.’ He reached into his back pocket and produced a wallet. His identity card was slotted into one of the pockets designed for credit cards, of which he had an impressive array, she noticed.
‘Thank you.’ After making a note of the details, she handed it back, noticing, as he took it, the elegant length of his fingers and the absence of a wedding ring.
‘Is there room at the table for me to eat with the rest of your visitors?’ he asked.
‘Certainly. We can seat twenty people. If we don’t have a full house, the proprietor and I eat with the guests. But I ought to warn you that, although the others all live in Spain, they’re unlikely to speak more than a few words of Spanish. They come from the expat communities on the coast where they don’t need to be fluent, or even to speak Spanish at all.’
For the first time, he smiled at her. The effect of it startled Cally. Even when younger, she had never been as susceptible to masculine charm as most of her girlfriends. Now, at twenty-seven, she was almost immune to it. Yet when this man flashed his white teeth at her, she felt almost as powerful a reaction as if he had leaned across the bar and kissed her.
‘I have some English,’ he said. ‘Enough to make polite conversation. But they’ll be too busy talking to each other to pay much attention to me. If it’s possible, I’d like to sit where I can talk to you…about this village and the valley,’ he added. ‘Or, if you will be busy keeping an eye on the guests, perhaps I can talk to the proprietor. Does he speak Spanish?’
‘Not very much,’ said Cally. ‘Señora Haig has a better command, but she’s away at the moment. I expect I can tell you whatever you want to know.’
‘How long have you worked for them?’
Before she could explain that she didn’t work for them, one of the guests came to the bar to have his glass refilled. ‘Same again, please, love,’ he said to Cally, and then, to the Spaniard, ‘Buenas tardes, señor. Hace bueno hoy.’
His Spanish accent was terrible, but his intentions were good, and the younger man smiled as he answered, in English, ‘Good evening. Yes, it’s been a very nice day and the forecast for tomorrow is the same. But then Spain’s excellent weather is what brought you to this country, I expect.’
‘You’re right there, chum,’ said the Englishman, visibly relieved that he wasn’t going to have to stretch what was probably a very limited repertoire of Spanish phrases.
Cally was adjusting to the discovery that Nicolás Llorca spoke English with no trace of a Spanish accent. To speak it so perfectly, he must have learnt it very early in life and use it as frequently as she used his language.
She felt slightly annoyed that he hadn’t made that clear to her. To tell her he had ‘some English’ had been deliberately misleading. Clearly, the man was bilingual and should have said so.
She wondered if he had minded being addressed as ‘chum’. The Englishman hadn’t intended to be offensive, in fact had been trying to be friendly. The trouble with the British was that they lacked an instinctive sensitivity to the manners and customs of other nationalities. Americans tended to be the same. They both assumed that the kind of easy familiarity they took for granted was acceptable everywhere. But sometimes it wasn’t.
‘No need to sit by yourself. Come and meet the rest of us,’ said the Englishman, with a gesture at the other foreigners.
The Spaniard rose from his stool. ‘Would you excuse me?’ he said to Cally.
‘Of course.’ His courtesy pleased her. It would have annoyed her if he had just walked away, as if a general factotum in a casa rural was not entitled to be treated like a lady. It would have shown he was no gentleman.
She watched him being introduced, or rather introducing himself to the older people: shaking hands with the men, kissing the hands of the women with an easy gallantry that suggested he was at home in circles where the gesture was commonplace.
When Cally announced that dinner was ready if they would like to take their places at the table, the foreign guests formed pairs and chose seats side by side, leaving the chair at the head of the table to be taken by her father while she and Nicolás Llorca sat at the opposite end.
Again his sophisticated manners came into play when he drew out a chair for her before seating himself. None of the other men present had done it for their companions.
‘Thank you, but why don’t you sit next to Peggy? Then you’ll have someone to talk to when I’m helping Juanita,’ she suggested.
‘Yes, come and sit beside me, dear,’ said Peggy, patting the seat of the chair he had been holding for Cally and giving him a skittish look. She was old enough to be his mother but was refusing to surrender to late middle-age.