Three girls away on holiday together worked out better than two, especially when one was disappearing off all the time as Millie was. In the beginning her friends Carol and Sandy put it down to being away from home and parental supervision but were soon attributing it instead to the magical atmosphere of the Spanish place they were staying in, to the languid impulses inspired by the hot Andelusian sun. Both had to admit its power was working on them too, at times making them act in an uninhibited, even irresponsible fashion so very different to their usual more moderate behaviour.
And then one morning, after a hectic night disco dancing, Sandy found herself rudely shaken awake and, struggling up through the layers of paralyzing sleep, opened her eyes to find Carol leaning over her with a worried expression. “Please, please wake up, Sandy,” she was begging. “Millie didn’t come home last night. Look! Her bed hasn’t been slept in.”
Sandy reared up to peer blearily at Millie’s bed and then at the clock, before collapsing back on the pillow. “For heaven’s sake!” she groaned. “It’s not yet seven.” desiring nothing more than to be allowed go back to sleep. But Carol insisted she sit up and discuss the situation, not relenting until Sandy had put her legs over the side of the bed, and only then going into the tiny kitchenette to make them coffee.
‘This is serious,” Carol said solemnly. “Anything could have happened to her.”
Sandy did not take such a gloomy view but as the hours passed and there was still no sign of the returning Millie she began to be worried too. By ten o’clock they were both of them in the panics.
“Nothing for it but to go to the police,” Carol decided, pulling on her shorts and running a comb through her unruly hair. “Get a move on, San, no time to be lost.”
Ready at last, they were about to go below when they heard the street door banging and Millie came slowly, tiredly up the stairs, merely waving a languid hand at them before going on into the apartment.
At once, the others rushed after her crying, “Millie, we were so worried about you. Are you all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Falling on to the bed, Millie was asleep before they could put any more questions to her.
Twice more that week Millie stayed away from the apartment all night, not returning until the sun was high in the sky and the lizards running over the terra-cotta tiles. “What’s this? The Spanish Inquisition,” she demanded, when they fussed over her, anxious for some sort of explanation. Where had she been, what had she been doing?
“Honestly, the pair of you are worse than my mother,” she exploded, pulling the sheet irritably over her head and lying still, wanting only to catch up on her sleep.
“Isn’t she the limit?” Carol sighed in frustration, and Sandy threw up her eyes to heaven, grabbed her sunhat and towel and headed for the beach, determined not to miss any more of the glorious sunshine.
The truth of it was that since the evening Millie had wandered into his disco in the arcade, José Luis had been giving her a big rush. Earlier in the holiday she had fallen hard for Pierre, a muscular life-guard she had met on the Burriana Beach, but the nightclub owner had quickly replaced him in her affections and now Spain was clearly winning hands down over France.
The Spaniard was the perfect foil for Millie’s fair prettiness, a robust young man with fine dark eyes, a mop of lustrous black curls and a permanent five o’clock shadow on his thrusting chin. A truly masculine, hirsute man. “One really hot guy,” agreed Sandy and Carol when they eventually met him, instantly charmed by his courteous manners, his flattering habit of kissing their hands and murmuring “¡Bellisima!” which naturally pleased them. So this was the guy monopolising all their friend’s waking hours, they mused, admiring and envious by turn.
It was the girls’ first time to Spain, indeed their first time abroad. All three were art students and eager to fraternise with the olive-skinned youths they encountered in the discos, or lounging about the cafes in the town square; Millie, perhaps the most eager of all. From the beginning she made no secret of the fact that she was susceptible to the Mediterranean male and might even marry one some day; if she met the right one, she airily stipulated, but without any real intention of giving up her freedom for a very long time yet.
The others, her bosom friends since kindergarten, were familiar with Millie’s often expressed pre-nuptial ambitions which ranged from climbing the Pyrenees and painting them at first light, to learning Japanese calligraphy, and perhaps the most challenging of all (and which they were most in sympathy), of seeing her paintings hanging in the Royal Hibernian Academy.
The trio were sojourning for the month of August in the Costa del Sol by courtesy of their indulgent parents. They had chosen Nerja, or to be precise Millie had, her fancy captured by all that she had ever read about El Balcon de Europa as well as the many pictures she had pored over, infatuated by its sweeping coastline and panoramic views. It sounded ideal, the other two agreed. And so it turned out to be.
From the first moment of setting foot on Iberian soil Millie had been their natural spokeswoman, confidently bargaining (in atrocious Spanish) with the conserja of Los Patios Apartamentos for a better rate, exerting her charm (which was considerable) on the woman’s husband and sons so that they would more readily carry the easels and other bulky paraphernalia up the narrow stone stairs to the apartment.
On settling in and getting to know their immediate neighbours, a Chinese businessman who kept everyone awake into the small hours playing honky-tonk music and two serious-looking Spanish youths who worked in a local Cambio, Millie led them confidently through the town in search of amusement, much as she had done during their first months at the art college when she had rapidly become the leading light of all the student parties and rags.
That first week they had roamed the town, absorbing the foreign scents and sounds, and pausing often in the open-air cafes over coffees and sketch-pads to capture the pulsing life about them. Millie’s talent lay in portraiture and she made dramatic use of charcoal and pastels, inspiring one doting senora to offer payment for an enchanting sketch of her little daughter.
“¡Ole! This will put Vino on the table,” Millie gloated, anticipating the generous fee coming her way. Good as her word, she returned to the apartment triumphantly brandishing a bottle.
When, after a few days, the girls changed location to the Burriana Beach, Millie’s brief romance with Pierre blossomed and died, Sandy enjoyed a fling with an American engineering student travelling through Nerja on a college grant, and Carol survived a traumatic two-day relationship with a Swedish poet who, at the end of it, took her gold watch along with her virginity.
Despite such distractions they worked dedicatedly, even with flair, and at the start of their second week took time off to make the hot and dusty bus journey some fifty kilometres distant to the capital of Malaga and there, to see their first bullfight.
“I don’t think I want to see this,” Sandy shuddered when the first bull came charging into the arena but stayed, nevertheless, fascinated to the end, peeping fearfully through her fingers until with a final showy flourish the last bull was dispatched.
As was to be expected it was a dramatic and gory spectacle – six bulls in toto were killed that day – and after it, (though they could not know it) they had produced their best work of the entire holiday while still under the wildly disturbing influence of the corrida. From every corner and sill of their apartment proud matadors in their suits of blue and silver bravely unfurled magenta and yellow muletas, causing the conserja when she called with her hot-eyed sons in attendance, to vigorously applaud their efforts.
“¡Espléndido!’’ she exclaimed over the vivid paintings.
“¡Ayee! Espléndido!” softly repeated the sons, gazing calf-eyed at the girls.
Their feverish burst of creativity left them exhausted and for a time the girls downed brushes, themselves too, and lay dizzy and lethargic in the blossom-scented courtyard. During this recharging period Millie met her Spanish Waterloo in the shape of José Luis, and fell instantly under his spell, causing her friends to marvel at how quickly she had forgotten Pierre, and to wonder just how long this particular infatuation would last.
But Millie was untroubled by such unromantic considerations. She was enjoying herself far too much, bubbling over with irrepressible good spirits which male adoration inevitably produced in her, and by the same token when suffering the lack of it, the grim opposite was true. This Sandy and Carol could readily attest to, having more than once been at the butt-end of her capricious humour.
So now they suffered her raptures glad at least that she was no longer behaving so secretively, knowing they would not have to endure her euphoria for too long, not if the past was anything to go by. Inevitably, José Luis would be given his walking papers, like all the others; the thought causing them a certain amount of regret for he was one really nice guy, they both agreed, Millie’s best so far.
“Not only hot but decent and sincere,” Sandy approved. “Lovely manners too.”
Carol nodded, having learned from her disillusioning experience with the poet that such virtues were to be rated higher than honeyed words. “Oh, yes!” she agreed enthusiastically. “José Luis is a gentleman.”
He was indeed, and according to Millie much more besides. So she told her friends at every opportunity, when she wasn’t busily telling him. Not only was he muy simpatico but he was also affectionate, witty, generous to a fault, and what was even more striking (considering the language barrier) intuitively tuned in to what she was about to say, even before she knew it herself.
“Truly miraculous,” they indulgently agreed, and began again regretfully speculating on how many more days it could possibly last...three, four? Even less, as it turned out.
After one more blissful day and night Millie and José Luis were estranged. Being Millie she involved them at once in the broken romance, storming into the apartment that evening at half-past ten (an unusually early hour for one more used to coming back at dawn) and made her announcement as dramatically as she knew how.
“It’s over! Caput! Finished! Don’t ever mention his name to me again!”
What it was all about neither Sandy nor Carol could make out, merely that the lovers had foundered on the rock of Millie’s obstinacy, but which rock she was never to make clear. To be honest, Millie wasn’t absolutely sure herself.
It seemed that one minute they had been kissing, the next in the middle of a row, frightening in its intensity and apparently sparked off by something she had said about spending the night (which was half-over anyway) in his apartment. “It is most improper for you to be here at all,” he had told her with a severe primness which at first drew her laughter and then her anger, all the more since it had never seemed to bother him before. But when she reminded him of this he refused to listen, marching up and down the room, (looking so broodingly romantic that Millie was temporarily diverted into reaching for her sketch-pad) and saying with terrible scowling emphases.
“No one, but no one, must point the finger at my novia.”
It was the only clue the girls had. It seemed that Millie, like Caesar’s wife, must be above reproach. Amusing, they agreed, but rather sweet too. After all, it showed that he respected her and, more importantly still, had honourable intentions. But Millie railed against what she saw as the Spaniard’s presumption, his overriding possessiveness, his manipulative and chauvinist manner. The list was endless.
“But Millie, surely you’re going to give him another chance,” Sandy implored in distress. Even Carol fully supported this view although usually prosaic in such matters, stoutly maintaining if a fling was over it was over! At the same time Carol had often wondered if the Swede had not stolen her gold watch whether she would have given him up so easily. But now it was Millie, not herself, on trial so she said firmly, “Sandy’s right. You must give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“Not on your life” Millie frowned. “He had his chance and he blew it!”
Nothing either of them said could change her mind. José Luis had been judged and found wanting. For hours the girls sat up fortifying themselves on Spanish brandy and curiously mulling over the Spanish temperament which could blow so hot and then so cold. No longer was José Luis seen to be simpatico but two-faced and conniving. All those chicken paellas and champagne and shrimp suppers he had bought her were merely a ploy to worm his way into her affections. Even his intuitive powers, so widely praised in the beginning, were now scornfully discounted.
And so the subject was hashed and rehashed until the other two, initially all sympathetic attention, began smothering yawns and wistfully eyeing their beds.
“Oh, hang José,” Millie cried, sensing their slackening interest. “Wouldn’t he be smug if he could see us now?” She heaved herself off the bed and began restlessly prowling the floor, brandy glass lopsidedly held aloft. “My poor little ring,” she suddenly whispered, gazing forlornly at her bare finger. This was the slim gold band José had given her on their second date, placing it tenderly on her finger while whispering passionately “Mi preciosa, mi princesa.” All week she had been calling it her engagement ring but when he had escorted her back to the apartment that night she had dramatically thrown it back at him in the courtyard, affecting not to care whether it had gone into the fountain or landed in some other murky, perhaps, irretrievable spot.
“We could go down now and search for it,” Sandy suggested, feeling sorry for her. “I’m sure we could find it even in the dark.”
“Yes, let’s go!” Carol agreed, resigned to no sleep that night.
At once, Millie brightened and the three girls rushed to the courtyard where they darted about like so many cabbage butterflies in their pale night clothes, scrabbling along the ledges of the ground floor apartments and poking their fingers in the gritty soil about the palm trees. Until Sandy’s cry of triumph signalled success.
“Eureka!” she cried, holding it out. “I knew we’d find it.”
“Brilliant! Oh, thank you, thank you, dear Sandy,” Millie cried humbly, slipping it lovingly back on her finger. “You’re a real friend!” And then she was off back upstairs to celebrate its return with the last of the brandy. Kneeling on the bed she tenderly proposed a toast in much of her old besotted manner, “To Spanish men, and to one in particular - José Luis.”
“To Spanish men!” echoed Carol and Sandy, exchanging meaningful looks. ‘Oho! Maybe Millie is really serious about this one,’ they mused, in bed at last. ‘He may even be the one!’
However, if Millie had forgiven José Luis it seemed that he had not forgiven her. The next day came and went without even a glimpse of him. Millie’s mood, which had bordered on the wildly confident, gradually became brittle and don’t-carish. Endless post-mortems took place and there were replays of conversations in which she told him exactly what she thought of him and went through the charade all over again of taking off his ring and flinging it back in his face.
A happy, sunny Millie with everything going her way could at times be hard to bear. An edgy, slighted Millie, while undeniably more humble and inclined to tolerance, was virtually no less difficult to live with. Her friends sighed and exchanged long-suffering looks as they trailed her in and out of the discos, firmly discouraging the advances of the muscular young Spaniards eagerly following in their wake. Better not add any more complications to their lives, they had wearily decided beforehand, generously prepared to put their own love life on hold. “Well, at least,” they amended, “until Millie no longer has need of our support.” After all, it was no big deal. Merely what friends did for each other.
And then, as suddenly as it had flared up, the quarrel was over. José Luis was waiting for them when they got back to the apartment that night full of abject apologies and involved explanations about some family bereavement in Cadiz which had prevented him from calling these past two days on his “preciosa Millee.”
“¡Mi querida! I have missed you. Mucho tiempo,” he whispered, after a polite bow in the girls’ direction, always so courteous. Tactfully, they went on upstairs leaving Millie to him, wondering if she would soon follow or whether she would give José Luis the second chance they had urged.
Thankfully, Millie opted for magnanimity and, after an initial show of coolness, she allowed herself be wooed back to the happy, frivolous Millie of before, José’s name ever on her lips. And now, a day later, she was telling the girls how he was bringing her home to meet his mother, an amazing revelation invoking cries of surprise, quickly turning to envy. Oh lucky, lucky Millie!
Yet, for a girl so favoured, Millie was showing none of the joy associated with so thrilling an event. Even the announcement itself came almost reluctantly from her lips, “He says he wants me to meet his mother,” uttered doubtfully, without any of the usual coy complacency with which she was in the habit of revealing proofs of José Luis’s devotion. And following it with another that was equally out of character. “She’ll probably hate me.”
Not like Millie to denigrate herself. The others smiled in uneasy sympathy.
“Nonsense!’’ they protested. “She’ll adore you.” How could she not! The sight of the dark good-looking Spaniard beside the elegant golden ripeness that was Millie’s could only cause a lump in the throat of any Spanish matron possessing a modicum of sympathy with the desires of her darling son.
“Do you really think so?” Millie seemed in need of reassurance as she listlessly turned her attention to what she would wear. All at once the light-hearted holiday romance begun with only one object in mind, to prove to herself that Pierre was not the only man on her beach, had suddenly taken a turn she had never, except in fun, predicted. For the first time in her confident young life Millie was unsure. The prospect of actually committing herself to a promise of marriage, serious at the best of times and in Spain attended by all the rigid taboos and ancient customs of a patriarchal society, was beginning to daunt her.
What am I letting myself in for, she wondered, as well she might.
They don’t understand, was her next thought, as she regarded her friends’ elated faces with something like hate. All they could see were diamond rings and bridal veils. Admittedly, Millie had already spent quite a considerable amount of time envisaging such things herself. But now, practical rather than romantic aspects of a foreign marriage burdening her spirits, she would have given anything just then to be one of them again, with nothing more challenging planned for that afternoon than a stroll through the town. I’m too young, she thought in panic. I have so many wonderful things to achieve, so many marvellous places yet to see.
“I’ll never be ready.” Now Millie was in a panic over her looks. For some reason she had taken it into her head to wash her already perfect hair. Why, she didn’t quite understand except that she was nervous and to do so always soothed her. Only this time it was not doing its usual magic. Her head was wet for nothing and would never be dry before he came. It’s so unfair, she thought. I should be the happiest girl in the world. But I am really, she silently protested. Or will be when I get more used to the idea. If only José Luis had given me more notice, she fretted, but he hadn’t said a word until that morning when she had met him for their usual coffee and pastry brunch. Oh, but how carefree I was then, mourned Millie, willing back the clock.
“I’ll never be ready,” she said again in despair.
It’s as if she doesn’t want to be ready, the other two thought, uncertain how to react to this strange Millie, so nervy and unsure.
“Put something on for the love of Mike,” Carol, ever practical, instructed. “I’ll lend you my hairdryer.” She went to rummage in her case, emerging a moment later with it in her hand.
“It’s no good, it won’t fit,” Millie groaned, as she tried in vain to push the three-pin plug into the two-pin wall socket, which like everything electrical in the apartment hung by a frayed wire. The others saw that she was right but it was not something any of them had been concerned about until then. Always before, they had allowed the sun to do the work for them.
“What we need is a screwdriver,” Carol said, realizing that the plugs from the table lamp and the hairdryer were interchangeable. She delved in her handbag and, having found what she sought, wiggled ineffectually at the screws with her nail file.
“It’s all hopeless,” cried Millie in tragic accents. She might have been decrying something other than a non-functioning hairdryer.
“José’s here,” warned Sandy, keeping watch on the stair.
“Look, it’s no use,” Millie declared. “I’m not going.”
“But you must!” Sandy was shocked. “His mother’s expecting you.”
“Oh, hang his mother.” Uncharacteristically, Millie burst into tears.
Sandy turned back in embarrassment to block the Spaniard’s way as he arrived in the doorway, reproach in his velvet glance. Almost certainly he had heard.
“Is Millee ill?” José Luis asked in alarm, trying to see beyond into the room.
“I don’t think you should go in,” Sandy weakly advised, remembering how Millie had looked only minutes before, half-naked, water dripping on her neck. But when she put her head round the door she found to her relief that Millie was decently attired in a blue gingham dress and apparently quite recovered from her hysteria.
José brushed impatiently past. “Millee,” he cried. “Mi preciosa, what on earth is the matter?”
Wordlessly, Millie pointed to the hairdryer.
The Spaniard looked from her to it in astonishment.
“My hair is wet,” she told him, as though imparting some great truth. “I was afraid I wouldn’t be ready in time.”
“Is that all?” José Luis was nonplussed. “¡Madre di Dios! I thought it was a serious matter.” He took a penknife from his pocket and, in seconds, had the hairdryer gently buzzing. “My mother is not a gorgon, you know,” he murmured gently, but with a gleam of understanding in his brown eyes. “She will not turn us to stone if we are a minute late.” Reverently, he directed the heat at Millie’s dark gold tresses.
“Oh, you know how it is,” Millie said vaguely, and gave an exaggerated shudder as the hot air blew on her neck. “Ooh, you’re scorching me. Here, let me have that.” With something of her old self-possession she took the dryer out of his hand and firmly pushed him towards the door leading to the balcony.
“Go sit in the sun,” she bossed. “Go on! I’ll be ready in a minute.”
Obediently, the Spaniard allowed himself to be evicted. The other two eyed each other. “Crises over!” whispered Carol in relief, and Sandy nodded tremulously, only glad Millie was herself again.
The Millie who swept out of the apartment on José Luis’s arm some time later, with her gleaming tresses falling silkily to her shoulders, was very much herself again, in control of the situation and her emotions. Her friends warmly waved her off, not unlike parents overseeing the departure of their beloved only child on her very first trip abroad without them. Proud and anxious by turns, wanting only for her safety and happiness. And then, as one, they rushed onto the balcony to watch Millie emerging into the courtyard, and leaning precariously far over the rail to chart her progress up the street with the adoring José Luis in tow. Wistfully, they watched the closely entwined figures until they were out of sight, and then wandered back inside unable to settle to anything, overcome by a sense of anti-climax.
As the afternoon and evening slowly passed they whiled away the hours wandering through the town and nibbling tapas in their favourite bars, all the time wondering how Millie was getting on with José Luis’s mother and speculating on how soon it would be before they heard all about it. “Or how long,” said Sandy, dolefully expressing what was in their minds. “Perhaps she won’t come back at all tonight.”
But they need not have had any fears on that score for the visit had gone very well – fantastically well - and Millie had every intention of returning to the apartment while the memory of her triumph was still fresh, to give them a blow by blow account.
Before that could happen, though, Millie needed to be alone with José Luis and to tell him a few things he was longing to hear. And while she did, the Nerja moon rode the high heavens and cast its luminous light over them as they stood close-pressed together on a promontory overlooking the sea.
What an incredible moon, thought Millie dreamily, nowhere else in all her travels had she ever seen anything to match its brilliance. It was only equalled by the glow she felt in her heart for this tall young Spaniard in whose arms she rested and whose ruby and pearl betrothal ring she now wore proudly on her finger. For since the first approving smile from his mother, the friendly “Holas!” from his sisters and admiring “Guapas!” from his brothers, all of whom subsequently revealed hitherto unsuspected artistic and musical talent, Millie had felt so thoroughly at home with her lover’s family it was as though she had known them all her life; indeed, she was not a little awed by the similarity of their aims and ambitions to her own. And to think she had not realised that her José Luis was an artist in his own right.
‘Come with me, Bella,’ begged his doting mother when Millie had finished sipping the delicious limonada put before her, and leading the way into the sun-lit studio adjoining the patio. There she showed Millie the proofs of her son’s artistry, pointing out the Andalusian pottery on display, the hand-painted ceramics of striking and unusual design and murmuring proudly. “¡Que talento tiene mi hijo!”
And now beside her the talented one, in turn, was murmuring, “Tengo mucha suerte!” acknowledging his good luck in having met her, the love of his life, and Millie, passionately returning his kiss, had to admit in her heart that she too, was lucky in so many ways, not least being given the opportunity of settling down with him in this wonderful inspiring country. No need to regret the Pyrenees, she told herself joyously, when not too far off there was the magnificent Sierra Blanca to feast her eyes upon, or to the north ‘the Snowy Mountains’ ranging between Granada and the sea, and all the exquisite examples of Moorish art and architecture just waiting to be captured on canvas. With new insight she wondered how it was she had ever entertained such foolish fears that to marry and settle in Spain would mean the death knell to her artistic dreams and aspirations when, in actual truth, it was the key to an exciting new creativity. Filled with optimism she saw herself producing her greatest artistic work yet for she was convinced now that all along the spirit of this unusual country had been powerfully working in her, and on her behalf, since her first moment of setting foot in Nerja.
This exhilarating viewpoint was warmly shared by her friends later that evening when she danced into the apartment to show off her ring and fill them in on the exciting events of the afternoon. “We have felt its power too,” Sandy admitted in awe. “To be honest I don’t think any of us will be quite the same ever again.” And even Carol, who was the least fanciful of the three, confessed under the intoxicating influence of the celebratory Babycham (for want of the real thing) and which she’d had the foresight to buy earlier, her own earnest belief in the mystical quality of the amazing place.
Sprawled comfortably on the balcony in the fragrantly scented night air, gazing at the same brilliant Spanish moon that had earlier prompted Millie to envision her future with her Spanish lover in a totally new and exciting way, they toasted the absent José Luis “the Spaniard who had achieved the impossible” and succeeded in bringing about Millie’s amazing volte-face; something that in her case none of her friends would have believed possible. Certainly not when they recalled the career-minded, headstrong Millie whose dream of an altogether different life she had so firmly mapped out since childhood.
And when the last drop of the fizzy stuff had been carefully and fairly shared out between their glasses it was Sandy who dreamily put into words the irrefutable truth, “It could only have happened in Nerja!”
***