Chapter One – First Impressions
The old bus picked up speed as we left the busy city of Cordoba and headed south on the motorway. The engine roared defiantly as more modern cars and lorries whizzed by. I tried not to imagine hubcaps, bolts, and screws clanking onto the tarmac behind us and turned to enjoying the countryside through the dusty window. The fields stretched away towards the horizon, like rusty red, yellow ochre and chestnut brown velvet pincushions strewn over an undulating divan and gleaming in the autumn sun. It was warm in the bus and the noisy vibrations had soon sent Andy to sleep with his head on my lap.
It had been a long journey from Granada for a small boy. We had set out early in the morning and it was now well after midday. The excitement of a new experience and an unknown future had kept me alert but now my eyelids were getting heavy, too, and I was sinking into a doze.
Images of Granada filled my mind and touched my heart. I had so many memories of that city, the old university where I had spent half a year as part of my degree in Modern Languages in 1969, the party where I saw my husband for the first time, the streets and bars and especially the Alhambra palace where we had walked and talked for hours. Then I had gone back to England to finish my degree, returned and got married. I still had a rather idealized impression of Spain as the land of Spanish guitars and “duende”, which might be understood as the spirit behind the creative temperament that had produced so much art and music. This had fascinated me as a student and now, although I had also studied the political situation, I had little more than a vague awareness of being in a country under a dictatorship.
Compared with England which was bubbling with new ideas, new looks and new sounds, Spain seemed old-fashioned and rather dull, no Mary Quant, no Mersey-sound, no billboards, but it was saved by the bright sun, new hotels to attract tourists and the romantic tinge of the Mediterranean lifestyle.
“Are you going to Guadalcazar?” The shrill squawk jolted me awake. I looked round to see a small middle-aged woman staring at me inquisitively. It was an odd question as the bus did not go anywhere else but I suppose it was as good a way as any to start a conversation when your curiosity got the better of you and discretion was not one of your virtues.
The shrill squawk jolted me awake. I looked round to see a small middle-aged woman staring at me inquisitively. It was an odd question as the bus did not go anywhere else but I suppose it was as good a way as any to start a conversation when your curiosity got the better of you and discretion was not one of your virtues.
“Yes, I’m joining my husband there”.
A look of incredulous confusion continued as she tried to think of somebody whose wife she had lost track of.
“He’s gone there as a doctor”, I said to help her out.
Her face lit up as her curiosity found satisfaction.
“Hey, Maria! This is the new doctor’s wife”, she shouted down the bus triumphantly.
Suddenly, everyone in the bus looked round and stared at me. These were Fernando’s patients so I had better make a good impression. I smiled back, stupidly, while they all started talking, and I realized they all knew each other.
Then, it was my turn to size them up. There were homely-looking women clutching shopping bags, men with black berets and white shirts and a young girl with a flowery dress. The situation seemed to have brought the bus to life. No wonder the woman behind me had been puzzled to see an unfamiliar face.
“What a lovely little boy! How old is he?”
“Two and a half”
“Guadalcazar is not very big”. She seemed to apologize.
She did not realize I was not Spanish because, if she had, she would have been sure to ask me where I was from. Perhaps her mind was assimilating me as a stranger but could not even imagine I was a foreigner.
“Do you like ‘perdices’?”, she asked.
I had no idea what they were. My Spanish was good but I had never come across that word.
“I’ll take you some ‘perdices’. There are a lot round here”
I thanked her, thinking whatever they were they could not be bad.
With a sudden jerk, the bus swung off the motorway and hared along a narrow minor road, bumping over the potholes at a frightening pace.
“Guadalcazar is over there”, she pointed vaguely.
I strained my neck but I could not see a village.
“You can’t see it ‘cos it’s in a hollow”.
She could have said that before, I thought to myself. In fact, a wave of expectancy and excitement was coming over me.
“Look! Now you can see the church on the hill to the left and that’s your house next to the church”.
I really could not distinguish anything in particular as a mass of white buildings came into view.
The bus braked to a halt at the edge of the village, panting fumes. I woke Andy, picked up my luggage and made my way down the bus with some difficulty. My talkative travel companion came up behind me.
“Let me help you. I’ll take you to Lola’s house if you like. That’s where you are staying. Give me that bag”.
She grabbed a big bag and started off down the hill. I followed her, obediently, with Andy in one arm and carrying a suitcase. There was no sign of my husband but evidently, there were no secrets in this village and everybody knew better than I did where I had to go.
The houses on each side were long terraces and each white-washed house had a double wooden door which opened straight onto the pavement and was flanked by two big windows protected by black iron railings. We passed a bar on a corner on the left and a little further down my self-appointed guide turned into a doorway on the right, put down the bag and shouted with all her might “Loooolaaaa!”.
Lola appeared from the back of the house. She was a stocky little woman with an astute but kindly face, wearing a skirt below her knees and socks. She greeted me in a matter-of-fact sort of way while my guide said goodbye in a hurry and disappeared. Lola told me my husband was in the square so I left my luggage in the hall and set off downhill again to find him.
The village square was not square at all but a roundabout with a cross in the middle and narrow roads leading off in several directions. As it came into sight I saw Fernando, on a corner, talking enthusiastically to a very smartly-dressed young man. My long fair hair, fair skin and short skirt and Fernando’s long black wavy hair, beard, bell-bottomed jeans and corduroy jacket, quite common in any city in the early seventies, stood out in the middle of a country village, but we also made a vivid contrast with his friend’s impeccable suit. None of us seemed to belong.
There was no traffic, as a matter of fact, there was practically nobody in sight, as it was lunchtime. I set Andy down and let him run over to his father. Fernando was nervously excited. It was not surprising, as he had only finished his studies a few months before, and this was his first job.
He introduced me to Ricardo, who was the chemist, and behind them, an open door led down a couple of steps to a narrow shop, lined with shelves, full of bottles of medicine and packets of pills.
“Come on, I’ll show you the house”, said Fernando impatiently.
I was really tired and hungry, but I was also eager to see the house. Fernando arranged to see Ricardo later and started off up some wide shallow steps of earth and stones all overgrown with weeds. I looked up and saw they led to the church. I picked up Andy again and followed expectantly behind.
At the top, on the right, a large house came into sight. It was bigger than most of the houses in the village, and really too big for us. The outside was quite neglected. The whitewash was peeling off and the iron railings were painted with a dull grass-green paint. Why on earth did they paint them that colour? I thought to myself, but that was the least of the surprises that were awaiting me.
There was a porch with two ghastly-green doors. Fernando opened the main one and I ventured tentatively inside.
“Go right in. It’s all ours”, I was urged.
I found myself in a large room with a yellowish tiled floor and a high ceiling. The walls were painted light yellow, the colour of thin custard, with the bottom part painted glossy battle-grey. There were quite a few Formica chairs, which looked like kitchen chairs, in various colours, mostly yellow, blue and green, and in different states of repair, some had the back rest missing or hanging loosely. In the centre, a solitary light bulb hung from the ceiling, on the end of two feet of electric wire.
“This is the waiting-room”, said Fernando eagerly. “The office is at the back”.
The office was smaller but empty, except for a small white Formica table piled with prescription pads, sample medicines, and brochures. A door led off into a large room, with two large windows, and another door lead back to the waiting room. This was the surgery. I stared incredulously at the once-white metal cabinet with dusty glass shelves displaying a lot of rusty instruments, a small trolley, a small washbasin and, most impressive of all, a narrow bed obviously designed for examining patients but its brown covering was split in several places and yellow stuffing was bulging unhygienically out. The sight was depressing but more depressing still was the thought that I was probably responsible for making it all look acceptably decent. Fernando did not seem unduly surprised. He said something about having to buy new instruments but, as the house was the property of the local council, I think he did not feel it his responsibility to improve conditions.
As we went back into the waiting room, and towards the part which was going to be our home, I secretly wished for a pleasant surprise, but none came. The front door led straight into a large room with a large window on the left, a door at the back and a staircase leading up. It was too big to be a hall but too open to be a lounge. To my horror, the thin custard and battle-grey continued.
At the back, there was quite a large room, which was obviously meant to be the kitchen, judging by several electrical sockets and the water pipes jutting out in the middle of the white tiled wall, where taps might be. It was also absolutely empty. The previous occupants had taken everything that could be moved including the kitchen sink! One good thing was a big larder, which could be useful.
Up a few steps, there was a door which led out to a huge yard with an outhouse, cages and a chicken run, and also a covered part for a car, as it had two big doors which opened onto the side street.
We went back into the “lounge” and climbed the cold grey stairs. By this time, I was totally overwhelmed, and only too conscious of the fact that we had nothing to fill so much empty space. When we got married, Fernando was still studying and we rented a furnished flat, so we did not have even the basic things- no furniture, no cutlery, no crockery, nothing but clothes, sheets, and a small T.V. set. The situation was alarming, to say the least.
Fernando did not seem to share my fears and carried on upstairs commenting on what was to be seen, like a tourist guide showing me around a palace. Upstairs, on the right, was a bedroom which I, immediately, decided would be ours. It had a big window and a fitted cupboard designed for shelves which had disappeared! On the left, there was a small room, which I thought might be suitable for Andy, although it was painted in glossy paint with big hand-painted flowers. That was very strange! Fernando said he thought they might have used it as a second kitchen, but I was not so sure. Next to it was a bathroom. The toilet and the bath were still there, but maybe because the black mark in the bottom of the bath, where the enamel was worn away, made it an undesirable object. Two bigger rooms with double glass doors led out onto a large terrace which was completely surrounded by a high green net.
“I think they had a lot of children,” explained Fernando.
The view from the top of the house was quite impressive because we could see all the village houses spread out down the hillside to the square and beyond. In the distance, the open countryside stretched undulating and bare towards the horizon and the clear blue sky. One might imagine hoards of Arabs on magnificent steeds defending their fortress from the inspired Christian knights-in-armour as they galloped down the wide valley. However, my tummy was now rumbling and I was not in the mood to contemplate the scenery.
“Let’s go and have something to eat,” I suggested. “Lola is expecting us,”
We hurried out of the house, back down the hill and up the road to Lola’s house.
“Well,” I panted, supportively, quite exhausted by the journey from Granada, the sightseeing and carrying Andy, “You seem to have made a good start”.
“Not so good”, replied Fernando, mysteriously, as we turned into Lola’s doorway, “I’ll tell you about that later”.