They spelled out nothing but danger, Cecilia was sure of it. And she didn’t want her daughter to have any part in it. No, Maria would not be getting round her today. She folded her arms one way, then the other, as if to prove it.
In Cecilia’s small world, workers worked on the same estate – El Cortijo del Bosque. Her son Manuel had a labouring job there, her husband Fernando (God bless him) had died while working in its wheat fields, and she herself had gone from kitchen girl to housemaid to housekeeper, also cooking for the landowner and his family when the need arose: all on the same estate, all for the same family. Seňor Suarez and his talk of workers’ rights infuriated her. Divisive talk. She’d heard it all before. That teacher with all his false promises had given her Fernando hope – useless, backbreaking hope that one day he’d have his own plot of land to farm where he would at last enjoy the fruits of his own labours.
Something to do with government land reforms. Government land reforms: as insubstantial as dreams and as flammable as the paper they were written on. And it was that Seňor Suarez who’d sold it to Cecilia’s husband. But she knew, had always known, it was never going to happen. Don Felipe was a latifundista of the old school who believed in tradition, glory, church and the rightness of a social hierarchy where his boot had the God-given right to press down forcefully on the heads of men like her husband, keeping their noses well and truly snuffling in the soil. His soil. It was never going to be theirs. Don Felipe might pay them a few pesetas more, but give them his land? Never.
Fernando had been a fool. For listening to Suarez, for daring to raise his head and hope for something more. And the bitter memory stung like acid in Cecilia’s soul.
He’d got above himself. And look where it had got him. Dead and buried under the very land he’d wanted.
Well, nobody could ever accuse Cecilia of not knowing her place – it was right up there on the estate doing exactly what she was told to do. And she would do her damnedest to make sure her children followed in her footsteps.
It was the only security she knew.
‘There’s no need for any of Don Felipe’s workers to read,’ she said, wagging her finger in Maria’s face. ‘That terrible teacher. Getting the farm workers to bite the hand that feeds them.’ A guttural rattle vibrated at the back of the woman’s throat.
‘But Cecilia, because of him men can now provide for their families. Don’t you remember? Children were going hungry before.’
That was it.
‘Out! Out now!’ Cecilia shouted, pointing Maria towards the door. Maria knew when she was beaten. She didn’t mind that Cecilia had shouted at her. She wasn’t afraid of her friend’s mother, but she wouldn’t convince her, that much was sure. Her eyes squirmed away from the fury in Cecilia’s; she hoped she hadn’t earned a beating for her friend. An unusually subdued Maria went to leave as a tired and taciturn Manuel entered.
‘Maria.’ Manuel greeted her. He had been working all day and his young body was wet with perspiration. His skin, Maria couldn’t help but notice, was a deep, glistening, golden brown, and, his dark hair shone in its blackness, swept back as it was from his strong jawed face, with its dark brows and liquid brown eyes. His stomach was taut with hunger, his throat parched with thirst, while his heart, though she didn’t know it, was heavy. He was perfect. All apart from a small scar on his left cheek. The sight of him reminded Maria why she’d thought him beautiful not so very long ago: because he was.
‘Good evening Manuel.’ Maria forced her eyes to meet his. Cecilia looked on suspiciously. A coil of hair fell about his eyes. He swept it back with a large, strong hand. For a moment his beauty threatened to break through and touch Maria’s soul, but the moment passed quickly. She shook her head to stop it from catching on and commended herself on being made of more cerebral stuff. A smile of relief blew across her face.
Maria held out a pamphlet and offered it to him. ‘Oh no you don’t, my girl!’ said Cecilia, flinging her arm out and intercepting it as though it were a poisoned arrow.
‘It’s tomorrow. Up at the estate—’ But before she could say any more Maria found herself hastily turfed out onto the road.
She looked back at Cecilia, disappointed but not surprised, the faint smile on her lips that signalled superiority enough to push the poor woman into a rage.
‘And if you don’t want tongues to wag you’ll heed my words and not have anything to do with it either,’ the red-faced Cecilia called after her, loud enough to bring all the neighbours rushing to their windows. ‘And,’ she shouted, now to the back of the girl’s head, furious that Maria appeared disproportionately collected in the face of Cecilia’s own fast-burning fury, ‘you’ll ruin your chances of ever getting a husband if you carry on this way! I’ll be having words with your father about this.’
‘Oh, Cecilia!’ Maria said calmly as she walked away.
*
The designated meeting place for the lesson was in the courtyard of the estate. The estate manager, Guido, didn’t like it but the law was against him. Still, he’d done his best to warn the workers off. That was why, when Seňor Suarez turned up, the teacher had only found three boys up for the reading challenge. They looked a little beaten around but the smiles on their faces as they came closer soon blinded him to their bruises. He recognised Manuel, as well as Pedro and Raul, the Espinoza brothers. ‘We’ve come to read,’ poor Fernando’s son said, holding out Maria’s scrunched up pamphlet as proof. Disappointed not to see the girl who had given it to him, Manuel’s eyes searched all around. There, in the distance, he recognised the one known as ‘el inglés’, his hair as golden as the crops all around him, next to whom, Manuel realised with a heavy heart, was Maria. The pair seemed to be in no particular hurry. ‘Manuel? Manuel? Do you agree Manuel?’ The teacher’s words pierced the surface of the boy’s consciousness. ‘Manuel? Manuel? Did you hear me?’ The Espinoza brothers laughed. ‘A teacher each,’ Seňor Suarez repeated. He too had seen the English boy and Maria.
Cecilia was still in the kitchen. She was working later than usual and would be working well into the night. Guido had recently broken the news to her that the landowners, Don Felipe and his wife, Dona Sofίa, were planning to return soon. For good. Guido had said they were back to make Spain great again, but Cecilia hadn’t really been listening. All she knew was that Dona Sofίa in particular would be expecting to find everything in order. The larder would need to be stocked, the rooms opened back up, and every floor, surface and ornament would need to be scrubbed, cleaned and polished. Then there were the menus to plan. Guido could not tell her how soon soon would be, as he walked across her newly mopped kitchen floor in his dusty boots, so Cecilia had no choice but to assume that her employers’ return might be as early as the following week. She mopped the floor once more and went outside into the courtyard while she waited for it to dry.
That was when she saw Maria, walking past the farmhouse, her head, Cecilia noticed, held high like a haughty mare, laughing easily with the strange-looking foreigner by her side. ‘Such an arrogant child!’ Cecilia said to herself, the tinkling, confident sound of the girl’s happiness ringing like an insult inside the older woman’s head. Cecilia was still smarting from the youngster’s cheek the day before. ‘Look at her! With that boy! She’ll get a name for herself and then she really will have trouble finding a husband!’ But Cecilia knew that wasn’t true. The rules that applied to Cecilia and the rest of Fuentes did not apply to Maria. They never had. As Guido crossed the courtyard the girl thrust a pamphlet into his hand. Cecilia almost smiled. But then pulled herself back. Only Maria Alvaro could do something like that and not get punished for it.
Rules. Cecilia wore them round her neck like a hangman’s noose. And the very mention of her employers’ return pulled the rope tight once more around the ageing, hardworking Cecilia’s throat leaving her gasping for air and concerned for her children in a future that, if Guido was to be believed, her employers were intent on forging in the image of their once glorious past.
And so, as she stood in the kitchen doorway, Cecilia’s heart sank when she saw her son chewing his finger, watching