‘What’s that you’re reading?’ she asked. Then wished she hadn’t.
‘La vida es sueño by Calderón de la Barca. It’s about free will and destiny. But then,’ Richard said, sizzling up once more, ‘you probably know that.’
Maria had heard of it. She smiled but did not reply. She hoped he would assume she’d read it.
‘What are you going to do when you grow up?’
Before she knew where it had come from it was out. She was playing the game she played with Paloma. She put her hand up and shook her head with embarrassment, a gesture to say, ‘What was I thinking of?’ But she needn’t have worried; this childish dreaming about the future provided safer, more fertile ground for the pair of them.
‘I am going to see the world, after Oxford. Travel around the rest of Europe, go to North America, South America, possibly India …’ Richard’s blushes evaporated, his thoughts of Calderón disappeared, while Maria feared her eyes might pop out if he went on listing places much longer. This English boy’s words were confident, his future assured. And that was the moment it happened. His answer, worlds apart from Paloma’s, worlds apart from her own, defined him. He knew that he would do things that Maria, even in her most extravagant of dreams, had never imagined possible. Because he could, and she couldn’t, not here, in Fuentes. It wasn’t even a question of her father stopping her. The freedoms her father spoke of, he believed in. But within the village Maria knew such freedoms would be hard won.
‘What about you? What would you like to do? When you grow up?’
‘Writer!’ Maria blurted out, throwing out the first thing that came to mind. Anyone could do that, she thought, even stuck in Fuentes. ‘Yes! When I grow up I’m going to be a writer!’
She looked to gauge Richard’s response but the sun was blinding. She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the light that was starting to make her squint. ‘Would you like to swap places with me?’ he asked her from his sheltered corner. She declined – she’d already spotted a heat rash on his neck now that his blushes had subsided.
A gust of warm air rustled the sun-dry leaves above Richard’s head. Maria lifted up her eyes, screwing them up tightly to see the precious movement, green against blue, and listen to the music of the rippling leaves. She went over the question in her head again: Would I like to swap places with him? Whether he’d intended it or not, Richard had opened up a world of possibilities to her. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
Richard went to get up. ‘Oh, no,’ Maria laughed, pushing him back down. He laughed in response without truly understanding why. ‘What are you reading, if not Calderón?’ he asked, fixing on something more tangible, with more than a hint of playful impertinence.
‘Oh, these?’ Maria cleared her throat, pointing to the heaps of pamphlets strewn across the table in front of her. ‘Seňor Suarez gave me these to look through. There are some pamphlets on workers’ rights and organisations, as well as extracts from Karl Marx. It’s part of a reading programme he started for the labourers in the area.’
‘Karl Marx?’
‘You must know of him. He’s very popular in Spain.’
Infamous in England was how Richard would have put it, but he said nothing. ‘Only eleven people turned up to his funeral … doesn’t surprise me that he got turned down for a job as a railway clerk because of his atrocious handwriting. So he said religion was the opium of the people. Well, don’t mind if I do …’ Peter Johnson’s rants about Karl Marx danced their spiky rhythm across the revolving surface of the wheel of memory that spun round in his son’s head. No, Karl Marx was not popular, not in his house.
‘… Workers of the world, unite!’ Maria read the rousing words.
‘Isn’t he a … communist?’
‘It’s not a dirty word.’ Maria laughed. ‘And yes, he is. Father is reading Das Kapital. In Spanish, of course. Promises he’ll pass it on to me when he finishes. Says it makes a lot of sense. There’s so much unfairness in this country. So many workers selling their labour at too low a price while rich, old families live lives of luxury on the backs of the profits. Um … capital is dead labour which, like a vampire, only exists by sucking the life out of living labour.’ Her eyes flickered downwards as if reading from one of the leaflets in front of her.
‘But aren’t you causing trouble by reading Karl Marx to them?’ Richard said, his father’s tirades still resounding in his head.
‘No. I wouldn’t say so. Last time there was a problem Seňor Suarez and my father had to help them out of it. It stands to reason that if we help them to read they will be able to help themselves next time. They’ll be able to write letters, read contracts, represent themselves. Things like that. Things that we both take for granted.’ She glanced at the slim volume he had in his hand, reminded of the fleeting ignominy she’d felt at not having read one of Spain’s finest writers.
Richard Johnson thought for a moment. ‘Can I take some of these leaflets? To look at them?’
‘Claro que si. You can take these,’ Maria said, offering him a handful. ‘As long as you get them back to me by next Thursday.’
‘Next Thursday?’
‘Yes. That’s when he’ll … I mean we’ll,’ she added, a look of bashful pride on her face, ‘be needing them. That’s when we’ll be using them.’
It struck Richard Johnson that this was something he could do.
‘If I read all of these and make sure I understand every word, could I help?’ His heart beat with a sense of purpose.
‘I’ve been thinking.’ Doctor Alvaro appeared out of nowhere and was now standing behind his daughter, looking down at his visitor. ‘I don’t really know how I’m going to be able to use your talents. But don’t worry,’ he said reassuringly, relieved not to see disappointment on Richard’s face. ‘I’ll ask around and see if I can find something else for you to do.’
‘No need, father. I think I’ve found just the job. Isn’t that so, comrade?’ Maria gave the English boy a knowing wink. Then she turned round and planted a calming kiss on her grateful father’s cheek.
‘No, she cannot. And you shouldn’t be doing it either!’ Cecilia shouted at Maria as the girl watched the large, hairy mole above her friend’s mother’s upper lip vibrate. Maria was on a mission to help Seňor Suarez recruit volunteers to teach some of the labourers up on the estate to read. She’d successfully enlisted Richard Johnson, thereby making her father a very relieved man as he no longer had to invent jobs for the hapless boy to do. And so, emboldened, she thought she might try her luck with Cecilia in the (what she saw now as foolish) hope that she would allow Paloma to help out too. Paloma was a good reader: Maria had made sure of that. Therefore it seemed reasonable that her friend should be allowed to pass on the skills she’d learnt by teaching others. ‘She’d make such a good teacher,’ Maria insisted. Contrary to appearances Cecilia had a soft spot for Maria and the girl knew it. She’d got round her friend’s mother many times before. Unfortunately, this was not going to be one of them. ‘The answer’s still no,’ the older woman insisted, her arms crossed defensively across an ample bosom.
‘And you can take this back,’ Cecilia said. And with that her friend’s mother thrust the pamphlet that she had given Paloma only hours before back into her hand. As clenched fist met unsuspecting palm, Maria felt Cecilia’s entire body bristle with anger. The gratefully oppressed, that’s how she regarded Cecilia, aggressively tenacious while holding onto the chains that enslaved her. She had no idea what the pamphlet said. But the older woman believed she didn’t need