The Years That Followed Read online

  Señor Gómez’s hands, in contrast, are soft, white, almost hairless, with two gold rings on his slender fingers. Fingers just like Paco’s. Pilar catches herself staring and blushes. If he’s noticed, the man gives no indication.

  “Come with me,” he says. “Let us sit down in my office.”

  Pilar follows him obediently.

  Once seated, Señor Alfonso begins to relive his memories of Extremadura: rhapsodizes about his favorite wines there; praises, above all, his family’s pigs, the superior acorn-fed ham that they produce.

  Wonderful indeed, Pilar thinks sourly; such produce is a luxury only for those who can afford it. But she says nothing. Pilar wants to like this man for her mother’s sake. She finds herself carried along by his enthusiasm, the way he barely pauses to draw breath. By the time Señor Alfonso has finished, Pilar is at ease.

  “And you, my dear, you have settled in well? The hostel is to your liking?”

  Pilar is startled. She has not expected Señor Alfonso to be quite so up to date. “It’s fine,” she stumbles. “Really, it’s fine. And I have a job. At the laundry. The nuns got it for me.” It is work that will do for now. Although Pilar doesn’t know how long she’ll be able to stand the steaming vats of clothes, the unbearable heat of the pressing machines, the gimlet-eyed supervision of Sister María-Angeles.

  Señor Alfonso smiles. “I think we can do better than that.” He looks at her over the top of his half-moon glasses. “You are a well-­educated girl. A most presentable girl. We will find you something more . . . suitable for a young woman.” He waves one hand in the air, dismissing her current occupation as not worthy of her. “And if the nuns are not impressed by that, well, then, we will find you accommodation elsewhere.”

  “No, thank you,” Pilar says quickly. “I am happy to stay there. It is very cheap. And I want to save.” She waits for him to ask.

  “For something in particular?” Señor Alfonso looks at Pilar. His gaze is intent. She has the impression that he is measuring her.

  “Yes.” Pilar draws a deep breath. Memories of Santa Juanita, of the entire Meseta, come crowding. The cold flagstones of winter. The searing heat of summer. The always-present grief of not having and its twin sister, the force of longing. “I want to buy my own apartment someday. An apartment in a beautiful area, with proper heating and air-conditioning. And I want all my own things around me. My own front door to close and open as I like. I never want to be poor again.”

  Pilar sees herself the winter she was ten, on her knees on the kitchen’s freezing stone floor, picking the weevils out of the last sack of rotting potatoes. She can still remember the stench of decay. Despite Señor Alfonso’s comfortable office, she shivers.

  He nods, and Pilar feels the first stirrings of relief. He hasn’t laughed at her or dismissed her aspirations as ridiculous. It looks as though he understands, that he has taken her seriously.

  “And I can help you,” he says. “I can certainly help you with that. Madrid is an expensive city, but there are always bargains to be had, if you know where to look.”

  Pilar knows from the man’s tone that some of that kind of knowledge must certainly be his. She wonders for a moment whether such bargains are similar to those bargains that can be had in the villages around Santa Juanita from time to time: when someone’s bad luck or bad harvest or bad management becomes the source of their neighbor’s unexpected good fortune. The grief that those bargains cause, lasting for generations, like tribal memory. But Pilar can’t afford to worry about that. She has herself to look after now, her own life, separate from all those other diminishing lives in Santa Juanita.

  Señor Gómez pauses. “I understand, and we shall discuss such business again, at our next meeting.” He looks at Pilar. “You and I will be keeping in touch on a monthly basis, my dear. Should you need anything, anything at all in between, you must call the number your mother has given you. It is my private line, and I will always be available to you.” Something crosses his face: a shadow of memory, or sadness. Pilar can’t tell, but his voice when he speaks again is quieter. “May I ask if your family is well?”

  Pilar answers politely: she feels that politeness, rather than information, is all that is expected of her. My father works hard, she says, and my brothers, Paco in particular. Mamá has not been well for some time. The doctor is not optimistic.

  Señor Alfonso nods as he receives each piece of information. He says nothing, but Pilar feels as though she has passed some kind of test.

  When she leaves that day, Pilar feels older, wiser. And she has a plan. She will work at the laundry full-time for as long as she needs. Maybe Señor Alfonso will find her a weekend job, someplace that will pay her cash under the counter, make it really worth her while. He has contacts, lots of contacts. In the meantime, Pilar will show him how much money she is capable of saving, and he will help her secure her first loan. It is possible, he’s promised; everything is possible.

  Mamá was right: Alfonso Gómez is a man who can be trusted. The kind of father Pilar has never had. And besides, helping her will be, perhaps, a kind of atonement for his past sins. Father Ortiz was always very keen on atonement. Pilar has listened to his sermons in her village church more times than she cares to remember. But she has learned something after all from those long Sunday mornings. She will remember and use it to her own advantage.

  Señor Gómez owes Mamá, even if he doesn’t realize it.

  Pilar floats out of the lawyer’s office that day.

  Life has begun at last.

  calista

  Extremadura, 1989

  * * *

  This morning, Calista feels a strange new sense of serenity. She lies still and watches and waits as the tranquil world of Sunday begins to unpleat itself all around her, until the local farms come alive outside her window.

  Life in this part of Extremadura has a different rhythm on Sundays. Everything outside slows, becomes somehow muffled. Even the dogs bark more quietly. The landscape awaits the tolling of the church bell, the call to first Mass. Then the day begins.

  Calista has dreamed, again, of Alexandros, of that first time they’d met in Dublin, almost a quarter of a century ago. She cannot distinguish any longer between dreaming and remembering. Each bleeds into the other, laying down layer after layer of the sedimentary rock of memory. The day is clear in every detail.

  * * *

  That day in April 1966, Calista watches Maggie as she successfully negotiates her way through the fish course, the meat course, the dessert. Even her hollandaise is a triumph. Coffee is served in the drawing room, tiny cups filled with the sort of heady, fragrant bitterness that Calista has never learned to enjoy. She’s right about her father’s mood. He is celebrating some joint venture with Alexandros’s father, Petros, something that Calista will learn about later.

  As he says good-bye, Alexandros presses something into Calista’s palm, his urgent green eyes warning her not to react. She closes her fingers around it, making sure it remains hidden from view. María-Luisa has a particularly keen eye. Today, though, her mother’s gaze has lingered on Alexandros. Calista realizes that, despite herself, María-Luisa has for once been charmed.

  “A nice young man,” she says, once Maggie has closed the door behind him.

  Timothy rubs his hands together. “He’ll come in useful,” he says. “I wouldn’t say he’s the power behind the throne, but he’s a handy conduit to his father nonetheless. Petros Demitriades and I are going to be making a lot of money together.”

  María-Luisa links her arm in his and they walk together towards the drawing room. Timothy smiles fondly at his wife and pats her hand. Calista is struck by the new harmony that surrounds her parents today: an unusual ease with each other, as though they are walking together towards a better future. She begins to wonder just how wealthy Alexandros’s family is.

  “Glad that’s over,” Philip mutter
s, turning towards the stairs.

  But Calista gets there before him and races up to her bedroom. Once safely inside the door, she uncurls her hand. Alexandros has given her a business card, just like the ones her father uses. This one is cream in color, thick, with embossed blue-black writing in the center. “Alexandros Demitriades,” it reads. On the bottom left-hand corner, “Demitriades and Sons”; on the right, a scribbled phone number in blue pen. Calista turns the card over. On the back, simply, “Call me.”

  How different her life might have been had she not done as Alexandros asked. It does not occur to Calista not to do as he has asked. And not just because he has asked: already, this afternoon as she gazes at the card in her hand, Calista can feel the sweet swell of danger, a whole sea of exhilarating possibilities.

  She opens her wardrobe door and pulls out a cardboard shoebox. Inside, her transistor radio nestles under a wad of crumpled tissue paper. María-Luisa disapproves of the music that Calista loves. And Calista knows she would disapprove even more of the card Alexandros has just given her.

  Radio Luxembourg is Calista’s passion. She keeps the volume down low and listens late into the night. Her ear is always on the alert for one of her mother’s sudden, unannounced appearances at her bedroom door.

  Calista and Philip had both begged to be allowed to see the Beatles when they’d visited Dublin three years earlier. But María-Luisa would not be moved.

  “It’s not fair!” Calista had cried. “You dragged us out to see President Kennedy when we didn’t want to go! You’re just being mean!”

  And María-Luisa had looked at her fourteen-year-old daughter, her dark eyes flashing. “That is not the same thing. Not the same thing at all,” she’d said. “History was being made by the president’s visit. Not trashy music. Go to your room.”

  Calista had stamped up the stairs, Philip following in her furious wake.

  Now Calista slips Alexandros’s card underneath the tissue paper. She feels a renewed shiver of anticipation. Her shoe box of treasures contains yet another secret, and Calista is thrilled by its presence. She feels herself beginning to drown in the song of those green eyes. All the years that follow spring from that one, heedless phone call.

  * * *

  Calista rings Alexandros once the weekend is over. She spends a suffocating Sunday with her parents and Philip, her body taut with impatience. She uses a phone box down the road from school, early the following Monday morning. She doesn’t dare use the telephone at home: María-Luisa keeps far too close an eye on her for that. For the next week, Calista leaves the house every morning ten or fifteen minutes earlier than usual. In the afternoons, she arrives home from school only a little later than normal—careful, always careful not to arouse her mother’s suspicions.

  Each time Calista calls him, the words that Alexandros speaks so softly, so insistently, make the whole world tilt. Calista no longer recognizes herself. Sometimes she forgets where she is, forgets what Alexandros looks like. His voice is enough.

  Her mother thinks that she has had a change of heart about her exams, that this last-minute fever of seeming conscientiousness has been ignited by a sudden desire to do well. Calista feels no guilt about feeding this continuing deception; she feels only defiance, mixed with a sense of elation, that the term of her imprisonment at home is coming to an end. Freedom beckons. Freedom and Alexandros.

  “Meet me,” he says. He’s been urging Calista for days. Alexandros does not understand why she has not come to him, and Calista can sense his growing impatience. She is afraid—afraid that he will lose interest, that he will stop pursuing her unless she gives him something to pursue.

  “Saturday,” she says suddenly. “I can get away next Saturday, but it will have to be in the morning.”

  He laughs, that soft laugh that Calista will come to know so well. “As early as you like,” he said. “The time of day makes no difference.”

  “Where will we meet?”

  He gives her an address off Palmerston Road, right in the heart of the most fashionable part of Dublin.

  “Take a taxi,” he says. “That way, it’s more private.”

  “But I’ve no money,” she says, dismayed. Calista senses rather than hears his laughter this time. She is glad he can’t see her. Suddenly she feels very young; misgivings are tugging at her underneath the excited thumping of her heart.

  “Come for ten o’clock,” he says. “I’ll be waiting, and I’ll pay the taxi man.”

  “All right,” Calista says. Ten is good. María-Luisa plays tennis on Saturdays, leaving the house around nine.

  It is as though Alexandros senses her sudden doubt. “I can’t wait to see you,” he says. “I’ve thought of nothing else since I met you.”

  Calista hangs up as though the receiver has burned her. She is glad no one can see her face, that no one knows the reason for the sudden heat she feels, the flush that is only partly guilt.

  * * *

  María-Luisa takes forever to get ready on Saturday morning.

  “Won’t you be late?” Calista asks, taking the plate of scrambled eggs that Maggie is handing her. She is pleased that her voice sounds so calm: polite, not really all that interested.

  “Marilyn has telephoned to say she will be half an hour late today,” María-Luisa says. The disapproval in her voice is eloquent. Calista waits to hear her mother say all that she has said so many times before. That sometimes the Irish have no breeding. That punctuality is a virtue. That one must never make commitments one cannot see through. María-Luisa expects things to be as they should. She sees no reason why an external event should have an impact on anyone’s life. She turns to Maggie. “Have lunch ready for one thirty, Maggie, instead of one. There will just be the three of us: Mr. Timothy is at the office.”

  Calista seizes her opportunity. “I’m going to the library at school. They’re opening on Saturdays between now and the exams. Miss Holroyd is giving an extra class in essay writing.” She stops. Best not to over-egg the pudding.

  Her mother smiles. “Very well. Fluency of expression is impor­tant.” She nods. “Maggie will keep something for you if you are late. I think your brother is having a good effect on you.” She bends down, takes Calista’s chin in her hand, and kisses her daughter on the forehead. “A little learning is no burden for a woman to carry.”

  Calista watches as her mother’s Ford pulls out of the driveway. She leaps to her feet. Maggie is watching her from the doorway.

  “Library?” she says, grinning. She is wiping her hands on her ever-­present, ever-grubby pinny. Another bone of contention between her and María-Luisa. But Maggie is sly enough not to invite confrontation: each time she serves at table, she dons a new, spotless apron, its stiff, square folds still visible from having been recently ironed.

  “Excuse me, Maggie,” Calista says, annoyed. “Can you please get out of my way?” She leaves the dining room, taking the stairs two at a time.

  When she reaches the landing, Maggie’s Longford voice rings clear and true from the hallway below: “Library me arse,” she calls.

  * * *

  He is waiting. Alexandros is waiting. Calista is filled with an anticipation that energizes her, makes her feel alert and awake and alive.

  He is very proper as he helps her out of the taxi. “Thank you,” he says to the driver. “You are right on time. It is good to know that my sister has been in such good hands,” and he tips the taxi man generously.

  Calista steals a sideways glance at him as he leans through the window of the car, one arm carelessly resting on the roof. It is true: they could be brother and sister. The same dark coloring, the height, even the elegance. Alexandros’s clothes are right up to the minute: his dark trousers, white shirt, narrow tie. Calista can see his powerful shoulders, muscles rippling beneath the white fabric. “Tennis,” he’d said that day at lunch, in answer to María-Luisa’s question. �
��I like to play tennis in my spare time.” And the laughter when he’d spread his hands wide, indicating innocence. “I have no vices,” he said. “I am a good Cypriot boy.”

  “Boy?” boomed Timothy. “You call yourself a boy at thirty?”

  And Alexandros had shrugged, the smile never leaving his eyes. “I am the boy of my family, sir—with three brothers older than I, I am simply the apprentice.”

  That day, María-Luisa’s eyes had lit up as Alexandros described the reach and extent of his family business: Petros’s shipping company was tightening its embrace around Europe, conquering smaller enterprises, swallowing them whole as it advanced. And all the while, Alexandros’s knee was pressed against Calista’s, and she tried to keep the white heat of his flesh from showing on her face.

  Alexandros leads Calista up the stone steps now towards the entrance to the building. He pushes the door open and flourishes Calista into the hallway with one hand. My territory, he seems to be saying. Welcome to my territory.

  His first kiss bruises her. His hand, grasping its way under her blouse, makes Calista push him away at first. “Stop!” she says. The strength of her own voice startles her.

  Suddenly, he understands. “You’ve never been with a man before,” he says. It is not a question.

  Calista looks at him, indignant. “I’m only seventeen,” she says. “Of course I have not been with a man before. What kind of girl do you think I am?”

  Alexandros kisses the inside of her wrist, gently. “That is nice,” he says. “I am glad that you have chosen me for your first time.” He murmurs endearments she can barely hear over the singing of her blood. His green eyes are brimming. “It is an honor.”

  Has she chosen him? Is that what this is? Is this how people make choices? Calista begins to panic. All at once, she is not sure that she wants to happen whatever it is that is already happening. Alexandros is tugging impatiently at her clothes. Alexandros is silencing her with his kisses. And it seems that Alexandros is the one to have chosen her, and that she is somehow powerless to resist.