CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Enemy

 

 

TWO DAYS LATER, just before Mateo was going to London, I got another shock when my mother turned up virtually unannounced.

‘I’m in Malaga visiting a friend of Sandy’s about a new line of accessories,’ she explained on the phone. ‘I can be there in a couple of hours. I rented a car from Sixt, it’s a ridiculous little thing – why do Spaniards all have to be so short? – and I have to go almost right past your front door, apparently.’

I found it hard to imagine that Anne had even the vaguest idea of where we lived, but no doubt her rental was equipped with GPS. I knew that my mother would have a host of reasons that would prevent her from staying the night, but I offered anyway. ‘God no, darling, but bless you. I have to dash back, but I’ll stay for a spot of lunch. Can you manage that? Don’t go to any trouble, a bit of salad will be fine. Is Mateo with you?’

‘He’s going to be at a winery until about five,’ I said. ‘But if you stay you’ll see him, and Bobbie’s here.’

‘Oh dear, I suppose it’s always just the two of you during the day. Isn’t that lonely?’

‘Not really, there’s her tutor and the housekeeper, and the gardener.’

‘Heavens, quite the lady of the house. How times have changed. Are you managing? Not too much for you? Don’t tell me now, save all the news for when I see you. Won’t be long, ciao.’

I could feel myself becoming annoyed already. Anne knew which buttons to push and worked them mercilessly. You can afford to be gracious, I told myself, she’s lonely and bitter and won’t stay for more than a few hours. You can survive her for that long. But I called Mateo at the vineyard to warn him that she might still be here when he returned.

I spoke to Rosita and we hatched a plan for a summer salad with ham and chicken, the sort of bland non-Spanish food Anne secretly favoured, although Rosita insisted on adding padron peppers. The house was flower-bedecked and looked beautiful. My mother turned up just after noon in a canary-coloured Seat. She was dressed in a lacy, impractical white frock designed for someone considerably younger.

‘What a strange-looking house!’ she said, coming in and kissing the air in front of me. ‘With the cliff right at the back like that, and the funny little glass turret in the centre. But the planting’s lovely. I’d have thought it would all dry out around here. It must take an awful lot of upkeep.’

I took her on a truncated tour of the house, carefully avoiding the locked servants’ quarters, lingering instead on the furniture and paintings. I could tell she was pricing everything up as she walked about. I wanted Anne to be pleased for me, but knew that she was too selfish for that.

‘I hardly passed a single other car on the road,’ she said, feigning a fit of exhaustion. ‘It’s all so terribly barren and desolate. What on earth made Mateo pick such a lonely spot?’

‘Actually it was me who chose it,’ I said defensively, ‘It’s not very far from the coast, and there’s a village nearby. I’ve already made friends there.’

‘But Calico darling, there’s no culture. I mean what on earth do people do of an evening? How’s my darling little girl?’

Bobbie was staying back in a corner of the drawing room, and had to be drawn forward to accept a branding kiss. ‘Look at you,’ Anne cooed, ‘so big and grown-up, and that colouring, so very Spanish, with the dark eyes and such severe hair.’ Bobbie was on her best behaviour, but was visibly anxious to get away. Rosita served lunch, but she and Julieta wisely left to eat in the peace and seclusion of the atrium, the invisible lines of class making themselves felt.

‘I was thinking that perhaps Roberta would like to come and stay with me in Somerset,’ said Anne as we finished our salads. ‘You’d love it, there are horses and lots of other little girls like you. And as you’re not at a proper school you could come whenever you like.’ It wasn’t the right thing to say, or the right way to say it. Bobbie remained silent.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ I replied. ‘Bobbie’s being tutored here for now, but she’s about to start school at the coast. And anyway, Mateo wouldn’t like it.’

‘He wouldn’t or you wouldn’t? Why would you want to deny me the pleasure of having a little visit? It’s not as if you’re going to have any children of your own, is it?’ She topped up her glass for the third time.

‘Bobbie, why don’t you see if Senora Delgadillo has left some chocolate cake in the kitchen?’ I said. The girl slipped gratefully from her chair and ran off. ‘Why did you have to say that?’ I asked.

Anne’s eyes widened in mock-innocence. ‘I was only stating a fact, darling. You remember what the doctor said. After that terrible termination and all those complications, it’s hardly likely you’ll ever be able to conceive. We all have to make choices in our lives. You always did make the wrong ones.’

‘I just wanted to be happy. That meant getting away from you.’

‘Hm. I suppose you probably regret having had the termination, and now you like to think of Roberta as your own daughter. That’s only natural. Oh.’ Her stare held an ill-concealed look of triumph. ‘Mateo doesn’t know, does he? Of course, you wouldn’t have told him. Surely there are no secrets between the two of you?’

‘He mustn’t ever know,’ I said quietly, staring down at my plate.

‘Because he’s a Catholic, I suppose. I thought they were more modern these days. Particularly after all those skeletons have fallen out of their own cupboards. I mean, they could hardly be critical of anyone else, could they? Well don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.’

No it’s not, I thought, it can never be. Not if it gives you some power over me.

‘Speaking of which, are you still on your meds? You know how you get if you stop taking them. You always had an overactive imagination.’

‘It wasn’t my imagination, and you know it, mother.’ I had been determined to say nothing about the past, but it was a matter of self-defence now.

Anne raised a hand to stop me. ‘Please don’t start all that again. We’ve been over it a hundred times.’

‘And yet you still won’t admit the truth, even to yourself.’

She turned and held my eyes. ‘Your father left because he knew he was ill, and he wanted to spare us the pain of watching him die.’

‘And why do you think I stopped eating before he left? Why do you think I cut myself?’

She sighed. ‘You chose to do it. You entertained these – fantasies –’

‘I wanted to make myself ugly. I wanted to be so unbearable to look at that he would never try to touch me again.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard all this many times before. I thought perhaps that now the poor man was in his grave you could finally let it rest.’

‘Why did you always believe him over me? I’m your daughter –’

‘And he was my husband. For Heaven’s sake can’t we speak of something else? It’s a lovely sunny day.’ She drained her glass of rosé and refilled it.

‘As you wish.’ I let silence fall between us.

‘You’re happy here?’

‘Yes, very much so.’

Anne looked longingly at the garden and made a show of checking her watch. ‘Perhaps I could stay for a while, if Mateo’s back at five. It would be nice to see that deliciously handsome profile again.’

In that instant I knew what she was up to. ‘You’re not having Bobbie come to stay,’ I said. ‘You’re just playing your usual games.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling, why would I do that?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps you just want to get back at me –’

‘For what? For doing drugs and getting pregnant and falling down the stairs at some drunken party? For trying to kill yourself?’

‘For accusing my father –’

‘Why is it that all little girls accuse their fathers these days? They’ve read about it in the papers and create false memories to blackmail their parents –’

‘– and for denying you grandchildren.’

‘I wish you could hear yourself, Calico. All this dreadful pop-psychology. I only wanted what was best for you. If only you hadn’t spent so much time trying to hurt me. You were always your father’s girl.’

‘And the only way he could get away from you was by dying.’

‘That’s an evil thing to say. Poor Mateo, I don’t suppose he had an inkling of what he was getting himself into, thinking he was marrying a blushing English rose.’

‘I think it’s time you left,’ I said, rising from the table. ‘I don’t need you trying to poison my husband against me.’

Anne had one last weapon to use. ‘I don’t suppose,’ she said imperiously, ‘that you told him you were sectioned.’

‘I got sick because you refused to admit what was happening right under your nose.’

‘No, Calico, you made yourself sick because you simply couldn’t handle the real world.’

‘Well I’m married now and I have a step-daughter, and I’m handling this world perfectly well,’ I said. ‘I have friends and a life and people who treat me with honesty and respect, which is more than you ever gave me.’

I think Anne’s slap came as a shock to both of us. She stepped back from the table, looking at her open right palm.

I rose and moved away, my hand to my burning cheek. A plate slid off the dining room dresser behind me and split in two on the boards. Moments later my mother had put on her coat and was leaving in a display of theatrical temper, and as I watched her rush out to her car I was just glad that it was over once and for all.

After all the years of pretending that there were still ties between us, there was no more need for us to try and behave like mother and daughter. We were enemies.

I went to the door, expecting to hear the car crunch gears and speed away, then returned to the dining room. My hands shook violently as I cleared up the broken plate and binned the pieces. To calm myself, I went to sit in the glass atrium. When Bobbie finally came back and woke me an hour later, it was evident that she had not heard our argument, and all was right once more.

I decided that if I spoke to Anne again – and I would, because in a month or so she would pretend we had never fought and would Skype me to chat about her work – I would always keep a wide, cold ocean between us.