In their all-girls school, academic work absorbed little of their energy. Feuds, discos and boyfriends were their main preoccupations, and confessions and confidences were the oxygen of friendship. When Sonia’s mother was finally beaten by the multiple sclerosis that had been slowly destroying her for years, Maggie was the person Sonia cried with. Maggie more or less moved in with her and both Sonia and her father appreciated her presence. She lifted the terrible gloom of their grief. This happened in the girls’ lower sixth. In the following year, Maggie had her own crisis. She became pregnant. Her parents took the news badly and for the second time Maggie went to live with Sonia for a few weeks until they got used to the idea.
In spite of this closeness, they went very separate ways when they left school. Maggie’s baby was born not long after - no one ever knew the name of the father, perhaps not even Maggie herself - and eventually she supported herself by teaching pottery part time in a couple of colleges and at night classes. Her daughter, Candy, was now seventeen, and had just started at art school. In a good light, with their big hoop earrings and quasi-bohemian style of dress, they could easily be mistaken for sisters. In a harsher one, some would look at Maggie and wonder why a woman her age was still dressing in Topshop. Though her long dark curls were almost identical to her daughter’s, years of smoking had indented her sun-tanned face with lines that revealed her true age. They lived together on the borders of Clapham and Brixton, close to a row of pound shops and the best Indian vegetarian restaurants this side of Delhi.
Sonia’s lifestyle, a career in PR, an expensively upholstered home, and James were all very alien to Maggie, who had never hidden her concerns about her friend marrying such a ‘stuffed shirt’.
Their lives might have gone in very different directions, but geographically they had remained close, their south of the river homes being only a few miles apart. For nearly twenty years they had diligently remembered each other’s birthdays and nourished their friendship with lengthy evenings over a few bottles of wine, when they told each other every detail of their lives until it was closing time, and then parted, not to be in touch again for weeks or even months.
For the first half of her introductory salsa class in Clapham, Maggie sat out and watched. All the time she was tapping out the beat with her foot and rocking gently on her hips, never for a moment taking her eyes off the instructors’ feet as they demonstrated that night’s steps. Juan Carlos had the music turned up loud that night, and the insistent beat seemed to make the floorboards themselves vibrate. After the five-minute break, when everyone sipped water from their bottles and Sonia introduced her old friend to the other dancers, Maggie was ready to try the steps. A few of the regulars were sceptical that someone who had not been to the class before could join halfway through a term and expect to catch up; they feared that their own progress would be delayed.
The Cuban took Maggie’s hand and, in front of the mirror, led her through the dance. The rest of the class watched, several of them hoping that she would flounder. Her brow might have been furrowed with concentration but Maggie remembered every move and half-turn that they had been working on that night and was step-perfect.There was a ripple of applause as the dance finished.
Sonia was impressed. It had taken her weeks to get as far as Maggie had in half an hour.
‘How did you manage that?’ she asked Maggie over a glass of Rioja in the wine bar afterwards.
She admitted that some years ago she had done some salsa on a trip to Spain and had not forgotten the basic technique. ‘It’s like riding a bike,’ she said nonchalantly,‘once learned, never forgotten.’
Within a few sessions, her enthusiasm surpassed even Sonia’s and, with few other commitments in her life, Maggie began going to a salsa club, dancing in the darkness with hundreds of others until five in the morning.
In a few weeks it was to be Maggie’s thirty-fifth birthday.
‘We’re going dancing in Spain,’ she announced.
‘That sounds fun,’ said Sonia. ‘With Candy?’
‘No, with you. I’ve got the tickets. Forty pounds return to Granada. It’s done. And I’ve booked us some dance classes while we’re there.’
Sonia could imagine exactly how badly this would go down with James, but there was no question of refusing Maggie. She knew for sure that her friend would have little sympathy for any kind of vacillation. Maggie was a free spirit and never understood how anyone could give up their liberty to come and go as they pleased. But most importantly for Sonia, she did not want to refuse. Dance already seemed like a driving force in her life and she was addicted to the sense of release it gave.
‘How fantastic!’ she said. ‘When exactly?’
The trip was in three weeks’ time, to tie in with the day of Maggie’s birthday.
James’s
froideur
was no surprise. If James had disliked his wife’s new interest in dancing, his antagonism intensified when she had announced this trip to Granada.
‘Sounds like a hen party,’ he had said dismissively. ‘Bit old for that kind of thing, aren’t you?’
‘Well, Maggie did miss out on the whole wedding thing, so perhaps that’s why she’s making such a celebration of a big birthday.’
‘
Maggie . . .
’As ever, James’s contempt for Maggie was ill concealed. ‘Why didn’t she ever get
married
? Like everyone else?’
He could see what Sonia saw in her university friends, her colleagues and the various acquaintances she had made within sugar-borrowing distance of their home, but his attitude to Maggie was different. As well as being part of his wife’s dim and distant schooldays, Maggie did not fit into any boxes and he could not begin to see why Sonia kept in touch with her.
Far away from her husband, under the sympathetic gaze of a cheaply reproduced Virgin Mary in the breakfast room of the Hotel Santa Ana, Sonia realised that she had ceased to care what James thought of her unconventional friend.
Maggie appeared, bleary-eyed at the doorway.
‘Hi, sorry I’m late. Have I got time for coffee?’
‘No, not if we’re going to get there for the start of the class. We’d better go straight away,’ instructed Sonia, keen to obstruct any further procrastination that Maggie might be dreaming up. In the daytime, Sonia felt she was in charge. At night, she knew they would swap roles. It had never been any different.
They went out into the street and were taken aback by the sharp air. There were few people about: a handful of elderly folk with small dogs on leads, and the rest sitting in cafés. Most shop fronts were still hidden behind metal grilles, with only bakeries and cafés showing signs of life, the alluring fragrance of sweet pastries and
churros
scenting the air. Many of the cafés were already densely fogged with the steam of coffee machines and cigarette smoke. Most of the city would only really stir itself in another hour. Until then, early risers like Sonia and Maggie would have the narrow streets almost to themselves.
Sonia hardly looked up from her map, following the twists and turns of the alleyways and passageways to steer them to their destination. Every step of the way was guided by the blue lettering of the ceramic street signs, the musical charm of the names - Escuelas, Mirasol, Jardines - taking them closer. They crossed a recently hosed-down square, sloshing through puddles of water, and passing by a glorious flower stall that was set up between two cafés, its huge fragranced blooms luminous. The smooth slabs of the marble pavement were soft underfoot and the fifteen-minute walk seemed like five.
‘We’re here,’ announced Sonia triumphantly, folding the map into her pocket. ‘La Zapata. This is it.’
It was a tatty building. Layers of small posters had built up over the years on the walls of its façade, one after the other stuck over the brickwork advertising flamenco, tango, rumba and salsa evenings taking place all over the city. Every phone box, lamppost and bus-shelter in the city seemed to have been used in the same way, informing passers-by of forthcoming
espectáculos
, one flyer plastered over another often before it had even taken place. It was a chaotic kind of collage but it represented the spirit of this city and the profusion of dance and music that was its lifeblood.
The inside of La Zapata was as scruffy as the exterior. There was nothing glamorous about it.This was not a place for performance but for practice and rehearsal.
Four doors led from the hallway. Two were open, two shut. From behind one closed door could be heard the sound of thunderous stamping. A herd of bulls charging down a street would not have made more noise. It stopped abruptly and was followed by the sound of rhythmic clapping, like the patter of raindrops after a thunderstorm.
A woman bustled purposefully past them and down an unlit corridor. Steel heel- and toecaps clip-clopped on the stone floor and music burst through a briefly opened door.
The two Englishwomen stood reading the framed posters advertising performances that had taken place decades earlier, slightly unsure what they should do. Eventually Maggie got the attention of a skeletally thin and tired-looking woman of about fifty, who seemed to run the place from a dark cubbyhole within the reception area.
‘Salsa?’ said Maggie, hopefully.
With a perfunctory nod, the woman acknowledged their presence. ‘
Felipe y Corazón
-
allí
,’ she said, pointing emphatically to one of the open doors.
They were the first in the studio. They put their bags in the corner and changed their shoes.
‘I wonder how many of us there will be,’ mused Maggie, doing up her buckles. Her statement required no response.
A mirror ran across one end of the room and a wooden bar ran down another. It was a clinical space with high windows that overlooked a narrow street, and even if the glass had not been opaque with dirt, little daylight would have entered the room. A strong smell of polish seeped from the dark wooden floor worn smooth by years of wear.
Sonia loved the slightly musty smell of age and usage that emanated from the walls of this room, the way that the cracks between the boards had filled with dust, grime and wax. She noticed the way fluff had mounted up between the segments of the ancient old radiators and saw silvery cobweb threads wafting gently from the ceiling. In each layer of dust there was another decade of the place’s history.
Half a dozen other people drifted into the studio. There was a group of Norwegian students (mostly girls) all doing Spanish Studies at university, and then a few additional men in their early twenties appeared, all of them locals.
‘They must be what are called “taxi dancers”,’ Maggie whispered to Sonia. ‘It said in the brochure that they hire them in to balance up the numbers.’
Eventually, their instructors appeared. Felipe and Corazón were both raven-haired and as lean as young calves, but their weathered skin betrayed that they were well into their sixties. Corazón had evenly spaced rows of deep lines on her bony face, not etched there just by the passing of time, but through expressiveness and the unashamed exaggeration of her emotions.Whenever she smiled, laughed and grimaced it took its toll on her skin. Both were dressed in black, which accentuated their slimness, and against the whiteness of the room, they stood out like silhouettes.
The group of twelve had spread themselves out, all of them facing their instructors.
‘
Hola!
’ they said in unison, smiling broadly at the group lined up expectantly in front of them.
‘
Hola!
’ chorused the group, like a class of well-disciplined six year olds.
Felipe carried a CD player, which he set down on the floor. He pressed ‘play’ and the space they shared was transformed. The joyful sound of a trumpet introduction pierced the air. The class automatically mirrored Corazón’s movements. It did not take a word from her, it was simply obvious that this was her intention. For a while the class warmed up gently, turning wrists and ankles, flexing heels, stretching necks and shoulders, and rotating hips. All the while they kept their eyes fixed on their teachers, fascinated by their pipe-cleaner bodies.
Though they had grown up in the flamenco tradition, Felipe and Corazón had seen which way the wind was blowing. In teaching terms, the Cuban-originated dance of salsa was more commercial and would appeal to an audience who might not be drawn to the dramatic intensity of flamenco. Some dancers of their age still performed, but Felipe and Corazón knew that they could not make a decent living out of doing so. Their strategy had worked. They had mastered salsa and created new choreographies, attracting many Granadinos as well as foreigners to their classes. They liked salsa; it was more superficial, less emotionally draining than their true passion, like a light Jerez next to a full-bodied Rioja.