The Years That Followed Page 6

  Calista cries out when he pushes his way inside her at last. Alexandros thinks it is with pleasure. Calista feels his weight, the way his body pins hers to the bed. She watches the play of sunlight on his black hair.

  “Ah, my love,” Alexandros says. And Calista feels that the pain is worth it.

  pilar

  Madrid, 1965

  * * *

  Pilar is exultant. She can’t help it.

  Señor Gómez called her to his office last night. Pilar had been startled when Conchita, the surly housemaid, banged on the door of her tiny bedroom at around eight o’clock. “Teléfono,” she growled. Pilar had sped downstairs to the hall, where the hostel’s payphone was located. Bad news, she kept thinking. Bad news from home. Her one thought acquired a pulsebeat that set the blood pounding in her ears. I don’t want to go home. I cannot go home.

  “Yes?” she said. “This is Pilar.” Her voice stumbled across the sharpness of the pebbles that had gathered at the base of her throat.

  “I need to speak to you urgently. Can you come?”

  Relief washed over her. Pilar struggled to reply. Señor Gómez had never asked to see her like this before—all of their meetings were in the mornings, early, by prior arrangement.

  “Of course,” she managed at last, breathless. She sped back upstairs, grabbed her jacket and her handbag, and ran back down again. Only then did Pilar realize that she had not asked Señor Gómez the reason for his urgent summons. No matter; she’d find out soon enough.

  After eight years of monthly meetings, Pilar trusted this man with her life. And so she kept on running, ignoring Sister María-Angeles’s insistent, irritated calling of her name. If she fled now, without stopping, she had a fighting chance of making it back before curfew. Sister and her irritation would just have to wait.

  “Pilar,” Señor Gómez greeted her at the outer door of his office, delight spreading across his kindly features. “Come inside. I have some splendid news. Our bid on the apartment building in Calle de las Huertas has been accepted.”

  At first, Pilar couldn’t take it in. And then, Señor Gómez’s smile, his steady pumping of her hand, her own sudden tears made her realize: she had done it. After eight long years, she had finally done it. She had left her old life behind. She was now, at last, a grown-up at twenty-six years of age. She was an independent woman, properly in charge of her own present, her own future. She needed to answer to no man.

  Señor Gómez was, of course, the majority shareholder, but Pilar owned twenty percent of the building, with an option to buy out her business partner over the next ten years.

  Pilar loved how those words sounded: she kept repeating them to herself, silently, over and over, feeling the shape of them on her tongue. They made her want to hug someone, although probably not polite, proper Señor Gómez. Even better, it was as though a million kilometers, a million years, now separated her from the village of her birth. Gracias, Mamá, she thought. You made it all possible.

  “You must be discreet,” Señor Gómez warned her. A client of his, he said, approaching the rocky shores of bankruptcy. The building was something he needed to offload quickly, unobtrusively, before it became too big a bargain for one of his many business rivals. “You must not tell anyone.”

  Pilar almost laughed. Who, she wanted to ask, would she tell?

  “You must promise me, Pilar,” Señor Gómez insisted. “No whisperings to your young man, or your best friend: this must fly completely below the radar.”

  Pilar had been surprised at Señor Gómez’s assumption that she had a best friend. Even more so that she had a young man. Why on earth would she want a young man? Pilar remembered Gonzalo, his breath hot on her neck, his fingers blunt and awkward, painful and fumbling. That, followed by a baby every year until she was forty, even older than forty?

  No, thanks.

  “I promise,” she said. “Besides, I don’t have a young man. I don’t want one.”

  Señor Gómez had laughed at that. “Well, perhaps not just now,” he said. “I think you have other fish to fry.”

  There were already tenants in the building, he told her. For now, it would be the most practical solution for Pilar to move into the living quarters that came with the portería: a kitchen, a bathroom, a living area, and one large bedroom, located in one of the most fashionable areas of Madrid. That would mean, of course, that Pilar would also take over the portera’s duties—the present incumbent was due to retire. Señor Gómez paused. She could see him weighing up the odds that always remained invisible to her.

  So. What did Pilar think?

  Pilar didn’t need to think. Of course she could do it. The duties that Señor Gómez outlined were as nothing compared to the constraints of a life surrounded by dozens of bickering girls, the demands of the nuns at the laundry, the stress of waiting tables at Señor Roberto’s restaurant every weekend. Not to mention the night shift at the neighborhood launderette, endlessly loading the washing machines, folding other people’s sheets. She could be a portera, of course she could. She could run errands, manage money, take in people’s deliveries. Pilar remembered her mother’s words: that she was never to clean floors that belonged to other people.

  No, Mamá, Pilar thought: if I ever clean floors again, they will belong to me.

  She watched the customary slow smile spread once again across Señor Gómez’s face. He nodded his approval. Later, he added hastily, Pilar would, of course, want more space, a better job, a different lifestyle. But this would do for now, he said; this was killing lots of birds with one stone. Take things slowly, he counseled. Cut your cloth to suit your measure.

  Little by little.

  * * *

  A month later, Pilar packs her things and leaves the nuns’ hostel. Sister María-Angeles is less than pleased. “It is customary to give notice,” she says. “So that I can find your replacement.” She fingers the heavy rosary beads that gird her habit, cutting her in the middle like one of the copper hoops that encircle the vats in the laundry.

  Pilar looks at her steadily. “A replacement?” she says. “Your hostel is already full of replacements, Sister. Many of them fallen women. What better replacements could you get?”

  Pilar is conscious that Sister Florencia has appeared in the hallway, her slight figure partly concealed by the late-creeping shadows of the January afternoon. She regrets that; Sister Florencia has been kind to her, always, and to all the other girls who work in the laundry. Pilar would have preferred her not to witness her departure, not like this.

  Sister María-Angeles cannot contain her anger. “You ungrateful girl,” she says. “We took you in out of the goodness of our hearts.”

  “Really?” Pilar takes a step closer. “I think I’ve paid very dearly for the goodness of your hearts. I’ve slaved away for you, one way or another, for far too long. All of us here, we’re all badly paid, badly treated, badly fed.” Pilar can see that some of the other girls are leaning over the banister, peering down into the hallway. Their faces are terrified with listening.

  Good. What Mamá once did for her, perhaps she can now do for some of them. There are times when it is necessary to be frightened, Pilar believes. Necessary to feel the fear of imprisonment in order to grasp for freedom. She raises her voice. “If that is what you call the goodness of your heart, you can all keep it. I’ll wash your clothes and your floors no longer.”

  Pilar has the satisfaction of watching a pall of silence gather around Sister María-Angeles. It is almost visible: another wimple that shadows her broad, pale features. Shock makes her outrage impotent.

  Then Pilar turns on her heel and leaves, dragging her one suitcase behind her. As she steps outside, she can feel the eyes of Sister Florencia upon her.

  She hopes that the young nun will understand. She hopes that she can forgive her. Pilar decides that she will visit her, soon, in the clinic where Sister Florencia hel
ps out three days a week. She deserves an explanation. She deserves to have all her kindnesses acknowledged.

  * * *

  And now it is Sunday morning, and Pilar is in El Rastro. Here, in Madrid’s biggest flea market, there is everything she could possibly want: an Aladdin’s cave of furniture, bedding, ceramics, paintings, crockery, cutlery. Not all of it is rubbish, and Pilar has discovered that the past few years of looking and not buying have helped her develop a discerning eye. The stallholders have gotten to know her, and now they shout over to her, all of them vying for her attention.

  She knows that she looks purposeful this morning; she also knows she looks pretty. She’s had her hair done—a French plait with interwoven scarlet ribbons. And she wears a new skirt and blouse, both bargains from last week’s shopping. She stands out from the pressing crowd of tired middle-aged women. They look down at heel, those women, with their disappointed faces and their sharp-tongued observations. They poke about the fabrics, turning tablecloths over with disdainful, grubby fingers, rummaging through the stallholders’ careful arrangement of goods. Pilar wonders how these patient men and women keep their sense of humor.

  “Look here, señorita, and look no further! Quality you will find nowhere else! Come, come, look and linger—no charge for that.”

  And Pilar does look. She looks and she lingers and she drives bargains that please her. She loves the busyness of the market and goes there week after week. And week after week, she transforms her portería.

  She buys rugs, wall hangings, pretty sheets, lacy tablecloths and napkins. She spends from her substantial savings as she has never spent before.

  And then, just as suddenly, she stops.

  Mamá taught her that, too. Decide your budget. Stick to it. Don’t be wasteful.

  Pilar has already been to a proper shop, though, somewhere that sells real antiques, not the bric-a-brac of a Sunday flea market. A few weeks back, she’d put on her best dress and shoes, along with her most confident air, and she’d pushed open the door of Alcocer Anticuarios on Calle Santa Catalina.

  If the quiet, suited man who greeted her had been surprised at her youth, or at the unusually good quality of her footwear, he gave no sign. He was courtesy itself. He showed Pilar the ceramics she asked to see, and the nineteenth-century furniture she had read about in the library, and the pieces of sculpture she ached to touch. He had even handed her some of the pieces, as though he’d already intuited her need. Her fingers had trembled as she’d touched them. She knew it must be vulgar to ask “How much?” as there were no prices displayed anywhere, not on the gleaming furniture or the jewelry or the paintings. Just a discreet white ticket, tied on with fine string, with the year, the city of provenance, and some symbols that Pilar did not yet understand.

  “May I show you anything else, señorita?”

  Pilar took this as a polite signal that it was time for her to leave.

  “Not today, thank you,” she said. “But I appreciate your kindness. And I shall be back.”

  The man smiled at her. “Somehow, I have no doubt of that,” he said. “I look forward to it.”

  Pilar is as good as her word.

  For the next twenty-five years, the shop on Calle Santa Catalina provides her with all that she needs. Pilar loves the scents of the interior, the quiet intimations of luxury, of wealth. The hush that descends as soon as she opens the door, its small bell jangling.

  But what she loves most of all is that this is about as far from Santa Juanita as it is possible to get.

  calista

  Extremadura, 1989

  * * *

  Monday morning.

  Calista glances at her watch once more: it is eleven o’clock on July 17. The previous three nights have been a fever of imagining, the days an increasing agitation of waiting.

  When will her son call? When will she know for sure?

  The transaction was completed on Friday. Calista knows she has not imagined that telephone message. It is over. Everything is now over. So why has Omiros not been in touch?

  She paces the living room floor, her steps measuring its length all over again. Calista keeps her back to the portraits on the chimney breast. The sight of her son’s young, smiling face makes Calista grieve all over again. She knows she has lost him, too, and somehow, his loss feels more final than ever.

  Calista stumbles against the side of the armchair. She looks up and can no longer avoid the child’s bright gaze. She sits, facing his portrait, and the day unfolds before her once more.

  * * *

  They are in the swimming pool together: she, Alexandros, Imogen, and one-year-old Omiros. It is the summer of 1973, and they are in Petros and Maroulla’s house in Platres. The early morning mountain air is pleasantly fresh. The pool is empty at this hour, and Calista loves having the children to herself before the squabbling cousins descend and the morning’s activities begin in earnest.

  It is one of those times when Calista can pretend that her days are almost like other people’s. Almost normal.

  “Look,” Alexandros calls, “a real water-baby!”

  Alexandros is holding on to his son, one large hand placed lightly under the baby’s tummy. Omiros is grinning, his small hands slapping the surface of the water, his chubby legs kicking. But it is clear to Calista even then that his movements have purpose. He is propelling himself forward, little by little, until he seems suddenly to remember that he cannot swim and begins to falter. Alexandros scoops him up then, laughing, and Omiros shrieks with delight.

  “He is swimming. Did you see? Look, Imogen, your baby brother is swimming!”

  Imogen and Calista both cheer and clap, and Alexandros tosses Omiros’s small, sturdy body into the air and catches him again easily as he falls, swooping him towards the water and away again like a small, strange human bird.

  “Look at me, Papa!” Imogen calls. She swims towards her father, managing almost the full length of the pool before she tires.

  “Yes, very good, Imogen,” Alexandros says. He places Omiros on his shoulders, and the child grasps his father’s hair. His expression veers from delight to terror as Alexandros jumps, weightless, up and down, up and down, in the shimmering blue water of the pool. His powerful legs look foreshortened, distorted in the waves he makes.

  “Be careful, Alexandros,” Calista calls. “Don’t frighten him.”

  But Alexandros ignores her. Calista sees where Imogen waits for her father to turn around, her small face a study in disappointment.

  “That’s wonderful, Imogen,” Calista calls. “You’ve gotten even farther than yesterday. Now try to swim back to me.”

  Crestfallen, Imogen obeys. Calista feels the ripples of her own irritation as the child makes her way back to her. Alexandros is here only at weekends. He and Petros arrive together on Friday evening; they leave at dawn on Monday. Saturdays and Sundays are spent in the large family grouping that always converges on the house in Platres in August. Calista has asked Alexandros, tentatively, to make sure that he pays some attention to Imogen; but he always seems to forget until he is reminded again.

  “Well done, sweetheart,” Calista says as Imogen reaches her. She kisses her daughter’s cheek, scoops her up into her arms.

  Alexandros approaches them. He lifts Omiros from his shoulders and hands him to Calista. He holds both hands out to Imogen. “Come,” he says. “You and I will have a swim together before the cousins come.”

  Imogen brightens at once. Omiros begins to cry as soon as Alexandros moves away from him, Imogen clinging to his back, squealing as they both rise and fall like a dolphin.

  Calista tries to comfort her son, but he wriggles and frets and will not be soothed. “Come,” she says at last. “Let’s go find Papa.” She holds him close, happy that he is not struggling against her any longer. Together, they follow Alexandros to the other end of the pool.

  Afterwards,
watching Alexandros and Omiros together, Calista understands that this is how it will always be. Six-year-old Imogen sits on her knees, content; Omiros’s eyes follow his father everywhere. With one of those peculiar flashes of future, of illumination, that Calista can never explain, she understands that she will always have to fight for her son’s affection. The child’s expression even now is serious, intent, as he watches his father towel himself dry.

  It is as though he, too, understands how things will always be between them.

  * * *

  Calista presses the heels of her palms firmly to her eyes. They feel sandy, gritty, watery, as though she has suddenly been transported bodily back from that long-ago swimming pool in the mountains. She tries to breathe deeply. It is as though even the room is waiting for Omiros to call. Calista cannot stay here any longer, imprisoned by all these memories. And she cannot keep waiting for the phone to ring. Inertia has never suited her. She needs to do something now, at once.

  It is a few days since she has visited Rosa. She should go, or Rosa will be anxious, worried that something is amiss. It is, of course; but nothing that Calista can tell her about. She decides to go this morning, immediately, before Rosa makes her way to her, her red moped a busy insect along the winding streets that lead from Torre de Santa Juanita to the house on the top of the hill.

  Calista, above all, wants to avoid Rosa’s coming here. Somehow, she feels that in this house, surrounded by all the family photographs, the truth will force its way out of her mouth and into the horrified air between herself and the young woman she has grown to care for. Calista cannot allow that to happen.

  She makes her way down the stairs and picks up her car keys from the table in the hall. She hesitates, just in case, and glances back over her shoulder towards the answering machine. No red light winks; no further message awaits. Not that she had really expected anything, but still. She needs to be alert to all possibilities.