A power to charm, p.6
A Power to Charm, page 6
Meanwhile, in the house of Juan-José there was tranquillity. Agnes-Maria was growing at a great pace and at Nuevo Año she made a sound, which might have been 'papa'. On the day of the Three Kings she pulled herself up by Maria Perno's apron and stood upon her feet for full seven seconds and said, quite distinctly,'ab-ab' which taken for an attempt at abuela (grandma). A day later, overtaken by events when strapped in her pram she yelled for 'mama!!' and there could be no mistaking that. Agnes had also been overtaken by events, if not in the same fashion, because she discovered that in August there was going to be a brother or a sister for Agnes-Maria. Juan-José was delighted and called the adorable new grey filly foal, which his favourite mare had just thrown, Agnes-Belleza in his wife's honour. Maria Perno knew it would be a brother but as usual she said nothing. Prophets may have honour even in their own country when they are right but when they are wrong they derided. It was enough, Maria thought, to know.
However, the matter of the road widening had to be considered. There could be no doubt that life in Juan-José's house was much more tranquil with the road outside diminished to a precarious footpath. They did not lack for company because people came to ask for things, such as the loan of Trompetero to carry up a new mattress for Katerina Seix Gatas in the Calle Alta. One of the six cats had kittened on her old mattress and she would not have her shifted. Trompetero also took up a new chair for Pedro Gordo who had eaten so much at the feast of the Three Kings that his old wicker chair had collapsed under him. Others came for Maria Perno's well-known remedies and some just for a visit and a gossip. The door into the Caminete de las Cabreras was opened more during that time than for years past.
While the petitioners were there they discussed, first the stench of Manuelo’s manure heap which they had nosed as they came and then the latest iniquities of Juana Pan. What else? People after the festival came to ask Maria Perno for her remedy for an upset stomach. Maria Perno had a number of such remedies and while the younger people went to Pablo Laxante at the farmacìa for their medicines their elders still thought Maria Perno's were better, if nastier. And even if they were nasty they were free. Maria never charged for such things though it was considered courteous to bring a small gift, a bunch of radishes, a few eggs from one's hens. Such people always had the news of the day and by the end of January it was being said that the road-builders would be starting in the last week of February. Also, they were from the coast where dates seemed to signify more than they did in the campo, so this might well happen. The news cast a gloom over the household.
Juan-José, Maria Perno, Agnes and Juan-Luis Jardinero went down to the lower gate of the stable-yard to consider the unpleasing possibilities. Juan-José because it was his land which was to be thieved, Luis because he had worked with a road-gang until a mishap with a wheelbarrow and a grader had left him lame of a leg but with a small pension. Maria Perno and Agnes were there because Agnes-Maria had wanted to go with Papa and it was almost her bedtime. Carrabas also made one of the party as he suspected there was a new rat in the hay-loft but he kept his distance so that no one would think he was consorting with humans.
“Now I come to think of it seriously,” said Luis, “I cannot understand why anyone should want to make a road to come this way.”
“The road has always been here,” said Maria Perno. “Time out of mind people came to the village this way. The north road was built in Juan-José's great grandfather's father's time because by then people were building houses further down the slope. That is the oldest part of the village.”
She pointed to the Calle Alta and the trees above it, which hid the ancient building where Agnes and her son had celebrated their wedding.
“It began up there.”
Maria Perno not only foresaw the future but she knew about the past for, as she knew, the future grows out of the past so that no one can know the future without understanding what has passed already.
“An easy place to defend,” said Luis, looking where she pointed.
“They say the Romans were here and built a camp,” said Agnes who had read the elderly brochure about the village which lay in yellowing heaps about the Town Hall, a memorial to a go-ahead Alcalde in the 1950s.
“Why?” asked Luis.
“Who knows?” said Juan-José, “The Romans made camps and built roads. The Americans build MacDonald’s, the Romans built camps. Anyway, what has that to do with the road?”
“After the Romans are gone the people built a church,” said his mother. “How would the stone be carried but on muleback? Then when the Moros came they built a cistern. They must have used very many bricks, which must be carried on muleback to the spring at the top of the hill. The stone would come from there....”
She pointed to the north where the old stone quarries were.
“...and the bricks would have been made there.”
She pointed to the claypits and the derelict brickworks by the river which was hidden by Andreas Arcilla's new windbreak of bamboo.
“This road would be the nearest way for laden mules,” she said.
“The Moros built the cistern?” asked Luis.
Maria Perno nodded.
“It is well known that the Moros used more water than Christians,” observed Luis. “Even today I can think of some Christians who should use more water.”
Maria Perno was quite right. The upper village, the Pueblo Alto still used water from the Moros' cistern. The Pueblo Bajo, the lower village, used what they called. 'street-water’ from the water-company on the coast and the older folk who lived down there were those who came most often for Maria Perno's cure for the runs. It was mostly raw garlic-juice but it worked.
“It is certain the Romans did not build this road,” said Juan-José.
“Why is that?” asked his wife.
“Because it winds like a snake. The Romans made straight roads. I remember that from school. No, no my mother is right, this road was a mulepath. Behold!”
They all considered the road winding downhill towards the junction.
“Loaded mules pick their own way up a slope and it is always the easiest way. In time it becomes a path, easy to follow and others use it.”
“And then,” said Luis, “fools build a road for motor cars over it.”
They looked gloomily at the road until Agnes said suddenly.
“There must be a road somewhere that the Romans made. They would not build a camp without a way to reach it.”
“Men could not be marched up this hill,” agreed Luis. “They would get giddy and fall down the slope. Also, even I can remember when it was no more than a metre wide. And if I remember my schoolbooks, the Romans used chariots and mulecarts, not just packmules.”
“Where then?” asked Maria Perno.
They all looked at Luis, the roadmaker. He looked about him and finally raised his hand and pointed at the far boundary of Juan Cabreras' pasture.
“If I were a Roman road-builder and choosing a place for a road to reach the village it would run thus....”
He indicated with a gnarled brown finger.
“...see? I would leave the main road at old Juan's gate, follow those bushes up the slope where it is not so steep and turn a little to the right where the stone hut stands and follow that ledge under the hill. See? It might have been graded for a road already.”
Juan-José nodded.
“That makes sense,” he said. “It would join the Calle Ancha if Juan Cabreras' shed was not in the way and so to the Plaza.”
“The Calle Ancha,” Agnes remarked thoughtfully, “is quite different to all the other Calles. It is wider and the paving is much better. The others have cobbles and mule-steps. Calle Ancha has smooth slabs.”
“So?” asked Juan-José. “It is level, not like the other Calles. They are steep even for mules.”
“I spent eight years in a school,” Agnes reminded him, “while I taught arithmetic and mathematics but one cannot but learn from other teachers and I have seen pictures of Roman roads. Calle Ancha looks like those pictures.”
Maria Perno nodded and the others fell silent.
“Roman,” said Luis suddenly. “Roman? I remember when I was working with a gang near Sevilla, resurfacing a road and widening it and that summer we were halted for many weeks.”
“The money ran out?” suggested Juan-José.
“No. No, there was money in plenty from Europe. It was that they found things under the road. Roman things, they said. A cemetery with Roman bones. For weeks we were halted. And we had to wheel barrow loads of soil back and forth while scholars from the university dug with paint-brushes to release the bones.”
“Paint-brushes!” exclaimed Juan-José. “How may one dig with a paint-brush?”
“Very slowly,” said Luis.
“How was it they were able to stop the roadwork?” asked Agnes.
Luis shrugged.
“Who knows? All I recall is that the work was stopped. There was a paper and we were told either we might help with the digging or we might have leave to go home. I chose to help. I needed the money, paltry as it was.”
“Nowadays,” remarked Agnes, “such things are much valued. It is for the knowledge of the past that they provide, is it not, Maria?”
“That and for tourism,” said Maria Perno and nodded her head. “Nowadays they let nothing pass. This I know because when Roberto el Inglese was digging out the foundations for his new kitchen, pots were found and coins and other matters and he took them away and hid them for he did not want the work held up. Paco Hormigón told me. Roberto told him that if the Junta heard about the pots they would have all building stopped until everything that was to be found was found and they might undo much that was already done. They were very ordinary, he said, and nothing of great importance and when he was dead they might dig all they liked.”
“He said they would dig up my garden,” said Luis, “and even then it was a very fine garden, that, and I had no wish to do the work all over again, so I agreed that nothing would be said.”
“And then his new kitchen roof leaked, poor man,” Maria Perno said, “and one wall fell down so that much of the work had to be done again anyway. Paco Albanil's ears burned for a month.”
The four of them stood in thought while Agnes-Maria chuckled in her mother's arms. Then the four of them turned as if pulled by a single string and looked up at the jumble of white-washed walls and red-tiled roofs and walled garden plots which made the east side of the Calle Ancha.
“Which is his house?” asked Agnes.
She had met Roberto el Inglese but she had kept her distance because she did not much like the other English who lived in the village. Also she knew that he had said very often in the café that if one came to Spain one should live with the Spanish and not cling to the other English. He spoke good Spanish, it was said, but it was the Spanish of Castile and not that of Andalucia and many of his friends in the café found him hard to understand. However, people liked him and so they nodded and agreed and laughed with him so that he would think they understood. However, he knew very well and after five years in the village he could understand the Andaluz, which they spoke though he rarely spoke it himself. He enjoyed their 'asides', humbling as they often were.
“It is that big one right on the corner of the Calle and the Plaza,” said Maria Perno, pointing, “and Luisa Vieja told me yesterday in Anna Maria Comestibles that he has told Maria Barriga Dolor that she need not come back, that he could clean the house better than she could.”
“And she is a cook of the very worst,” said Luis. “For a time after my wife died she came to me. But I learned to clean for myself and I have neighbours who were very kind to me at that bad time and who are the best cooks in all Andaluz. Behold, I suffer no longer. It is to be hoped that Roberto can cook.”
“That I doubt,” said Maria Perno, “or why should he have endured the messes of Maria Barriga Dolor for so long? He buys bicarbonato sodicó each week at Pedro Laxante.”
“Poor man,” Juan-José said and put his arm round Ages's shoulders. “I think, my jewel, that tomorrow you should make one of your succulent English 'karris' which we have come to enjoy so much and I will go to his house and invite Roberto el Inglese to share it. I am told that English find it hard to resist a good 'karri'. Is that not so?”
CHAPTER SIX
Agnes cooks a curry
Roberto el Inglese accepted the invitation with pleasure and relief. He had been surviving on Paco's pizzas and they made monotonous eating. He arrived at the patio steps just as the light began to fade, clutching a bottle of red wine and an armful of English magazines and newspapers, which he thrust at Agnes, saying, in Spanish,
“Don't suppose you want these, but even so they light the fire.”
He was dressed in paint-stained flannel trousers, a shirt which was clean but unironed and lacking three buttons. On his bare feet were sodden leather sandals. Skin, he said, dried more quickly than wool. He carried a massive umbrella, which he left to drip on the patio. Juan-José drew him into the kitchen and set him in the huge wooden armchair that his grandfather had contrived from the wreck of a governess-cart. He sank on to the worn leather cushions with a sigh of appreciation. Maria Perno supplied him with a tumbler of the Montilla-Montes that was his preference. He sniffed appreciatively at the curry smells and took a great swig of the wine.
“Well,” he said. “Oh, very well indeed. What is on your mind, my friend?”
“First,” said Juan-José, “we will eat. My Agnes's 'karri' is far too good to spoil with any serious discussion.”
“And it is far too long since I ate a good curry.”
Agnes had been taught to make curry by an Indian friend she had met at the university. From her she had learned what spices to buy and how to store them, to make up her own spice pastes and powders and also to provide the side-dishes and breads and vegetables without which curry is no more than a mouth-burning yellow stew. Her father, who enjoyed a curry, had presented her at birthdays and Christmas with Madhur Jaffrey and other writers on eastern cuisine, which she had studied. His rare presents were usually chosen for such selfish reasons; he was that sort of man. It had surprised her when Juan-José and his mother had taken to these spicy exotic dishes with such enthusiasm. However, a better acquaintance with Spanish cuisine suggested to her that a change, any change, was, in the old phrase, as good as a feast. At all events there was rarely any left over. Tonight was no exception.
Roberto el Inglese was not, in fact, named Robert. His forename was Lachlan, which has its pronunciation problems for the English, let alone the Spanish. Nor was he English, he was a Scot, to be more exact he was an islander from the Isle of Lewis. His surname MacRobert had provided his bye-name in the village. He knew what they called him but made no objection. He was proud of being a Scot, prouder still of being an Islesman but if his adopted people found it hard to understand his origins he was content to settle for El Inglese. It might not be accurate but it was considerably better than some of the bye-names that were used for other estranjeros. These may have been more accurate but were often unrepeatable.
Take, for example, the Irishman who had bought the Old Presbytery in the Calle de Jimena in the Pueblo Alto some twelve years earlier. He proved to be an artist of some repute. The village considered his paintings to be crap but appreciated his domestic arrangements. While he, himself, was no youngster he had fathered two boys by two different girls in the first year after he came and in the second year the woman who cleaned the Old Presbytery gave birth to twin girls and his current wife to another daughter. Moreover, he had brought with him to the village four randy sons and three nubile daughters by four different mothers (of which his present wife was not one) and they had made it their care and their pleasure to ensure that he had a swarm of grandchildren, ten in all (twins ran in the family) none of whom had been born in wedlock, though all were acknowledged and welcomed in the Presbytery (which he had to enlarge twice). His activities were curtailed by a cancer, which showed itself after his third year in the village and the birth of a fine son to the girl who had taken the place of the twins' mother.
He had died of his cancer and had been followed to the cemetery (which was at the very top of the village) by a very long cortège, much of which was, so to say, self-generated. In the New Church there had been a whole row of chairs occupied by those entitled to claim him as ‘suegro’, which might be interpreted as son-in-law though son-out-law might be more appropriate. His bye-name had been Padi el Pene. However, there were, as we shall see, bynames just as well-deserved and just as apt as his. Roberto el Inglese was content with his.
Though it was not known in the village, Lachlan MacRobert was a notable academic. There had been a time, not all that long ago, when no television symposium was complete without his lantern jaws, pent-house eyebrows and dry delivery. His subject was Classical Literature but he was capable of deliberating ad lib. on any subject at all, being very well read and extremely articulate. Inevitably after prolonged exposure in the newspapers and on television he was made Chancellor of a university. It was not an ancient foundation, nor yet a respectable redbrick: he described it as a Concrete-Glass-and-Potted-Palm-Post-War-Sausage-Machine. He was, himself, a graduate of St Andrew's.
He had just become Chancellor and was looking forward to a peaceful sojourn in Academe, writing his long-planned book on Terence (a Roman playwright) with occasional administrative interludes when he discovered that a whole list of new subjects was infiltrating the universities' curricula.
Chancellors who wished to figure well on the current political scene publicly welcomed these as a broadening of the narrow and intellectually restrictive bounds of too-long-accepted and outworn useless academic studies (such as Classical Literature). To people like Lachlan MacRobert who did not give a damn for politicians of any persuasion they were an intolerable dilution of academic standards for the sake of social engineering. Mind you, he was not wholly unreceptive. He accepted, even welcomed, an addition to the History Department's curriculum, a course dealing with the contribution of women to history. He was a just man and accepted that in the male-dominated society of previous centuries the role of women might have been unjustly ignored and belittled and that it was time to redress the balance. However, Peace Studies, Media Studies and a course entitled Sport and Society (which concentrated upon the game of football as a social phenomenon) left him grinding his teeth and when it was proposed that he institute a course to study the role of the homosexual in ancient and modern society and that his much-reduced and hotly defended Classics Department should house this abortion, he resigned. He resigned in a flurry of newspaper articles, radio polemics and one fondly remembered television programme in which he confronted the originators of such additions and left them without a leg to stand upon or a word to say. He left the university, he left the UK and established himself in Spain where he had spent holidays since he was a boy and could speak the language fluently. Like many Scots, he loved his country but preferred to live somewhere warmer and love her from afar.
