A Spanish Lover (15 page)

Frances took off her shoes, stepping from the cool shadowed spaces of the floor on to the warm sunlit ones.

‘I will be in the garden,' Luis said. ‘We will have tortillas in the garden when you are ready. There is no hurry, there is never a hurry here.'

She crossed the room and held the sun-warmed wood of the balustrade. Below her lay the garden, fashioned, like the fields outside the village, from several tiny terraces, their edges and the several sets of steps punctuated with amphorae, jars and pots in earthenware, cascading flowers and variegated leaves. There were trees too, another acacia, several eucalyptuses waving their greeny-grey branches in swooping arcs across the sky, and in their shade were garden chairs, made of white wrought iron. Below the garden,
the
tilting roofs of the village fell headlong down the slope towards the valley, the rush only halted here and there by the occasional level roof terrace across which strings of washing blew, bright and orderly.

It was almost silent. From faraway down the valley came the faintest sound of bells – those goats? – and from the hotel kitchen, sleepy in mid-afternoon peace, came the distant clatter of a tortilla pan. Frances closed her eyes. Sometimes in life, just sometimes, she thought, there comes a moment of happiness that is close to rapture because it is so innocent, so natural, so right, a moment when you feel that everything's in tune, when …

‘Frances?'

She opened her eyes again and looked down. Luis was standing on the middle terrace below her.

‘Everything is all right for you?'

‘Yes, oh yes—'

‘Then come and eat,' he said. ‘I am waiting for you.'

8

IT WAS RAINING
, not hard but with the soft, slightly sticky rain of early summer. Bath's tourists – now all year round – had put up umbrellas and were drifting along the greasy pavements in exasperating, aimless hordes, the dangerous ends of their umbrella ribs exactly, Robert thought crossly, at his eye level. Every year, the tourists in Bath, despite the comforting amount they spent, annoyed him more. Did it ever occur to them, he wondered, that other people used Bath too, to try and get their shoes mended, and their teeth seen to, and as a place to buy washing powder and rashers of bacon, and that these weary people were being tried to the limit by the sheer numbers of visitors in persistent pursuit of Jane Austen and Beau Nash and King Bladud and glasses of revolting spa water? You could hardly, even on a wet Wednesday in May, get up Gay Street in comfort, for the press of neat polyester rainwear coming down, Royal Crescent and the Assembly Rooms behind them, the Roman Baths and the Abbey ahead. They were decent people, these tourists, well-behaved and obedient, trotting in and out of their coaches like good schoolchildren, but even their decency seemed aggravating to Robert, a symptom of fundamentally incurious minds and passionless hearts.

He gave up the pavement, and stepped into the street. To be truthful, anything and everything was likely to aggravate him that afternoon, and it was unfair to take his feelings out on inoffensive women
protecting
their holiday perms under plaid umbrellas. Lizzie had known Robert was coming in to Bath to see their accountant, indeed she had suggested that they go together, as they often did, but Robert had said no, don't bother, it's just a routine visit to tidy things up after the end of the financial year. Lizzie hadn't pressed the point, had seemed, in fact, rather grateful to be let off. She was busy thinking about autumn stock, she said; did he mind?

‘No,' said Robert. ‘Just don't order anything until I get back. Not finally, that is.'

‘I won't,' she said, but she wasn't really listening. She was looking at some samples of silk-screen printing an art student had brought in, chalky pastels and black in abstract designs, faintly reminiscent of the work of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. ‘Five years ago, I'd have snapped this up, but now I don't know, looks a bit
passé
—'

Robert kissed her. ‘I'll be back before five. Anything you want from Bath?'

She shook her head. He had paused for a fraction of a second, wondering whether to change his mind and insist she come – there was no reason to, only an instinct which might well have simply been his preference for having her with him – and then he had gone.

Now, two hours later, he was on his way up Gay Street back to the car which he had left in a little street somewhere behind the Circus. The meeting with the accountant had begun by being what he had anticipated – a final review of the last year's accounts – and had then turned into something else, something more unpleasant. The accountant had pointed out that if the Gallery business did not pick up significantly and quickly, Robert and Lizzie would be in trouble over mortgage repayments on the Grange.

‘You have borrowed', the accountant said, ‘a hundred and fifty thousand pounds in the last five years.'

‘Secured against the Gallery.'

‘Indeed. But against a profitable Gallery. In the current conditions, it's a lot to ask of a business like the Gallery to support itself, all of you,
and
a borrowing of that size.'

‘Then you think that the last six months' dip in trade wasn't just a one-off, and that things will get worse?'

‘Correct.'

Why hadn't he said, I'm afraid so, Robert thought, flattening himself against a parked car to avoid a passing one. Why didn't he reply at least in a human way instead of snapping out ‘Correct' like some heartless robot? Of course, it was his professional duty to point out to Robert that, for the first time in seventeen years of trading, things were not getting better, but worse, and that the steady, happy pace up the path of prosperity was unmistakably giving way to a slide down into something altogether more alarming and uncertain, but why couldn't he have tried to soften the blow, even a little?

I'm frightened, Robert thought.

The rain was getting heavier. He reached the top of Gay Street, turned his collar up, and ran across the circle of green in the middle of the Circus, through the clump of huge lime trees, which were the only living things about looking grateful for the rain, and made for Circus Place. A boy and a girl went past him huddled together and giggling under an old supermarket bag they were attempting to use as an umbrella and it struck Robert with a pang that they were as young and waywardly dressed as he and Lizzie had been seventeen years ago, with all the world before them and nothing to be responsible for.

When he reached the Gallery, it was ten minutes before closing time, and Jenny Hardacre, who had been their
invaluable
chief assistant for seven years, was beginning on the process of locking up. Jenny, who had a sweet face and prematurely grey hair held back off her face with combs, had been widowed soon after her only child, now a resolute little boy the same age as Davy, was born.

Usually, going into the Gallery soothed whatever sore feelings Robert might be afflicted with. The polished floor, the pools of carefully angled light, the racks and piles and shelves of seductive merchandise, the smell of seagrass and wood and pot-pourri were all not just lovely in themselves, but solid proof of achievement. This evening, however, their solidity seemed to have evaporated and instead an air of miserable vulnerability hung over everything as if the bailiffs were poised to march in and seize the pictures and rugs and lamps and bear them away mercilessly, like helpless victims of rape and pillage. Robert gave himself a shake; he was getting horribly emotional. He needed to talk to Lizzie.

Jenny looked up from the till and smiled.

‘OK?'

‘Not very,' he said.

Her face became instantly sympathetic. ‘Oh dear—'

‘Is Lizzie in the office?'

‘Yes. She's got the boys with her. They got dropped here after school.'

The office at the Gallery was on the first floor, at the back, looking out on to the decayed tangle of a few of Langworth's very minor industries, now defunct. Knowing that he would have to spend a lot of time there, Robert had designed the office to be the kind of studio he had always wanted and now felt he would never have, with high desks for drawing at, and wonderful lighting and plenty of wall space for pinning up things. As he came in Lizzie, who was on the telephone, turned and gave him a wave, and Sam
and
Davy, who had been engaged in drawing spaceships all over Davy's bare knees with a felt-tipped pen, launched themselves at him and clamped him strenuously about the calves.

‘Get off,' Robert said.

‘I tell you what,' Lizzie said into the telephone, ‘make me half a dozen and we'll see how they go. No, sale or return, that's how I operate with individual craftsmen because this is a gallery as well as a shop. All right? Yes, different woods would be lovely but they must be English woods.'

‘Sam,' Robert said. ‘Let go.'

‘Your shoes are sopping—'

‘It was raining in Bath. Let
go
, Davy.'

‘I don't have to till Sam—'

‘You do have to,' Robert said furiously. ‘I've had a bloody awful afternoon and I'm in no mood for bloody awful children.'

Lizzie put the telephone down.

‘Was it awful?'

‘Yes,' Robert said. He had an ominous feeling that he was losing his sense of proportion entirely. Trying to free at least one leg, he lashed out with one imprisoned foot far harder than he meant to and caught Davy a blow on the chin. Davy, never far from tears at the jolliest of times, dissolved at once, clutching his chin with his hands.

‘Now look,' said Sam pleasedly. ‘I expect you've broken all his teeth and he'll only be able to eat yoghurt and yuk like that. For ever.'

Rob stooped and picked up the sobbing Davy.

‘I'm so sorry, darling, I never meant to hurt you—'

‘I hate yoghurt,' Davy wailed through his muffling hands.

‘Let me look. Take your hands away and let me look at your mouth—'

Lizzie said, from where she still sat by the telephone,
‘What
was so awful, Rob? Don't worry about Davy, he'll be fine, you know how he carries on.'

Davy opened his mouth hugely wide and Robert peered inside.

‘All there, thank goodness—'

‘I expect, though,' Sam said from where he still lay on the floor, ‘that you've cracked his jaw.'

Davy gasped, eyes widening.

‘Don't be daft.'

‘What was so awful?' Lizzie said again. ‘I mean, you knew the figures before you went, you knew we'd had the worst half-year ever—'

‘Things won't pick up,' Robert said. He stooped again and set Davy on his feet. Davy was trying to arrange his hands like cups to support his cracked jaw.

‘What d'you mean?'

‘I expect your jaw will just dangle about like some dopey old ape—'

‘Sullivan said that there is no sign as yet of a general economic recovery and that we, like all small businesses, will not find trade picking up in the foreseeable future. As he put it so charmingly, shopping in a shop like ours is the kind of luxury people will give up first.'

‘Don't let go!' Sam hissed at Davy, ‘or it'll start dangling.'

Lizzie got up and came across to Robert.

‘I wish I'd come with you.'

‘So do I, but it wouldn't have made any difference to the facts. The thing is, the turnover's not at all bad considering the conditions, but the profit simply isn't enough to meet our outgoings.'

Davy leaned against Lizzie and gave a subdued howl. Lizzie bent and firmly took his hands away from his chin. His eyes grew wide with terror, waiting for his lower jaw to flop downwards like a broken shutter. It didn't.

‘See?' Lizzie said. ‘You are very silly and Sam's a bully.'

‘What's a bully?' Sam said hopefully.

‘Somebody,' Robert said, looking down at him, ‘who takes pleasure in being horrible to the weak. It's a form of weakness in fact, to bully. Bullies are always cowards inside.'

Sam got up and went over to the nearest desk which he began to kick gently, with his back to them. Lizzie stepped forward and leaned her cheek on Robert's chest.

‘I didn't order anything this afternoon, in the end. That was a nice young man who makes pot-pourri boxes, turned wooden ones with latticed lids—'

‘I expect the Indians make them cheaper—'

She lifted her head.

‘Shall we talk about all this later?'

‘Yes.'

‘Mummy,' Davy said. ‘Can I have for supper what Sam has?'

‘You always have what Sam has!'

‘I don't want yoghurt—'

Lizzie looked at Robert, smiling almost in despair. ‘We wanted this, didn't we, we wanted this rich, busy life full of work and children, with everything muddled up together, it's what we meant to have, isn't it?'

He moved away and began circling the room, straightening papers, turning off machines and lights. Lizzie watched him, waiting for his reply, and at last he said, from the far side of the office, bolting the window with its patent safety catch, ‘Of course it is. It's just life itself that deals you a nasty when you aren't looking, it's life that keeps moving the goalposts. We haven't changed, Lizzie, it's just the things around us that have.'

‘So we'll have to learn to?'

‘I suppose so,' he said, and she had seldom heard him sound so sad, ‘I suppose we'll have to.'

* * *

The evening passed, as so many evenings seemed to, in a crowd of incidents which made up the necessary, repetitive process of getting everybody fed, home-worked, music practised, bathed, off the telephone, away from the television, and into bed. Lizzie had always intended that, as each child reached twelve, they should have supper with her and Rob, instead of an earlier and more babyish children's supper, but two things had arisen to frustrate this intention. The first was that neither Harriet nor Alistair ever seemed to show the slightest inclination to eat with their parents, professing not to be hungry, or not hungry then, or not having finished their essay, or their French vocabulary, or being too tired or too deep in a book, which last Lizzie had learned to interpret as too deep in an episode on television of
LA Law
or
Inspector Morse
. The second reason was that Lizzie discovered that, by eight-thirty on an average evening, she and Robert had simply
had
the children. At first she had felt guilty about this – she had intended to have at least four, after all, she was proud and pleased to have a large family, just as she was proud and pleased at the children's intelligence and strength of character – but then it had occurred to her that she was as much Robert's wife as the children's mother and even, if there was time to consider it, her own self, Lizzie Middleton, and that, if she didn't have a little adult time at the end of a busy day, she would go raving bonkers. So now she cooked pasta, or mince in some form, or sausages, at six-thirty, and two hours later, Robert repeated the exercise, more or less, for himself and Lizzie.