The Poet's Wife (31 page)

Suddenly, I sit bolt upright and throw the cover violently away from me. I catch sight of myself in the mirror at the far end of the room and stare at my reflection. Ruffled hair, the imprint of the pillow against my cheek.
Deep breaths, deep breaths. Where am I? Morocco.
My reflection smiles, a grin of pure delight at the realisation that I’m in Africa
.

I fling my legs over the edge of the bed.
What
time is it?
I pull open the bedside drawer and bus ticket stubs and my hairbrush go flying as I search for my watch. Normally I’m meticulously organised and know exactly where everything is. But now I start to panic as I remember the way I felt the day before. The lightness of my step as I’d walked back to the riad from the café after Alberto and I had chatted – for how long? – over tea and delicious cakes made from almonds and sesame seeds. Eventually, finding my watch, I feel calmer. I still have another hour and a half until our meeting. I begin to look through all my clothes, deciding what to wear till eventually I make a face at myself in the mirror at the absurdity of it all and pick the first thing from the top of my pile.

Alberto is half an hour late. We arranged to meet at the Menara gardens beside the pavilion and I sit happily at first by the lakeside, watching the water gently changing colour in the delicate morning light and people strolling along the pathways with a calm, steady pace I haven’t yet witnessed in Morocco. But then I start to wonder whether he’s really going to show up and feel annoyed with myself for being quite so eager and trusting. Every thirty seconds or so I glance at my watch until I become thoroughly frustrated and take it off, stuffing it to the bottom of my bag. When half an hour comes and goes, I jump off the wall and, slinging my knapsack on my back, spin round and start walking back towards the garden entrance.

‘You’re not leaving, are you? I’ve only just got here.’

I look up to see Alberto standing directly in front of me, smiling at me through his beard, his dark eyes glinting in the sunlight.

‘Oh…
hola
.’

I feel awkward and frown. Alberto leans forward and kisses me on both cheeks then walks back towards the wall I’ve just left and sits down.

‘Isn’t it beautiful here?’

I smile. I can’t stand it when people are late. But he’s right. It
is
beautiful. Alberto has a brown paper bag in his hand and he brings out warm cinnamon rolls, small ginger cakes and almond filo pastries and lays them out. He looks up at me and his eyes smile. How can eyes smile like that? ‘Sorry I’m late. I went to buy some breakfast. I hope you haven’t eaten yet.’

I walk back towards the wall slowly, feeling my stomach lurch with delight and nerves.
Why is it
, I think to myself,
that this man I barely know is having this effect on me?

After eating breakfast, we spend the entire day together, wandering through the city, bartering at the bazaars and trying delicacies from silver trays piled mountain high in the souks. Towards the end of the day, Alberto and I wander around the Jemaa-I-Fna together, dodging whirling fire sticks and acrobats. I know I don’t have to leave. And I know I’m attracted to this man. But I’d planned to leave the following morning and when it comes to my itinerary, I’m fairly bloody-minded in sticking to it. There’s part of me that wants more than anything to stay, but strangely I don’t know how to. I don’t know a way to break free from the rigid schedule I’ve bound myself to.

We stand in front of great shanks of meat roasting on spits, listening to them fizz and hiss and I turn to Alberto.

‘I’m leaving for Essaouira tomorrow.’

He doesn’t react and again, I feel annoyed with myself that I’ve let myself believe that this could be something more.

‘Ah,’ he eventually says and shrugs, his kind brown eyes not leaving mine. ‘I suppose this is
adiós
then.’

It hurts to hear him say that. But I’m the one leaving after all. ‘
Sí
,’ I reply.

‘
Adiós
, Paloma.’ He leans towards me and kisses me on both cheeks and he smells of smoke and earth. He is smiling a questioning smile at me and I don’t know how to respond to it so feel myself going into automatic brisk and efficient Paloma-mode.

‘
Adiós
, Alberto.’ I turn to leave, but he catches me gently by the crook of one arm and pulls me back. His smile has faded.

‘Why don’t you stay?’ he asks quietly.

He’s staring at me intently and as I gaze back into his eyes I think of how much has happened in a single day. Before I’ve had a chance to even mull over his offer, I hear myself say ‘Why don’t you come?’

Our lips curl upwards simultaneously, both lost for words. Because I know he’ll come. I can read it in his eyes. And he knows that I know. He plants another kiss on my cheek, this time lingering as he does so. His beard brushes against me and he whispers into my ear ‘
Hasta mañana
.’

And so the following day, laden down with brightly coloured trinkets I bought from the market, I board a bus bound for the western coastal town of Essaouira. But I’m not travelling alone. I’m with a wild-haired, dark-eyed man whom a few days previously was a stranger to me. We sit at the back of a crowded bus filled with men in long, thickly woven capes with pointed hoods. Wide-eyed children press their mouths and noses to the windows and blow hot moons into the glass. Then suddenly we are picking our way over old mossy cannons behind the sea wall with a fierce wind, specs of sand whipping up in our faces, tawny eagles soaring overhead, glints of the dipping sun catching on the tips of their wings. Suddenly we are staying up for hours on end in cafés and restaurants, discussing our families and our pasts and what it is that attracted us to Morocco. And suddenly we shock ourselves and each other to find we have fallen irrevocably, profoundly in love.

I am the first to say the words; a girl who has just spent weeks on her own and has never felt the need to be in the company of another person for long periods of time, particularly not a man. With Alberto, I don’t feel the need to talk. Nor to impress or intrigue. I can continue being the person I’ve always been and he doesn’t ask for anything else from me. Making love to Alberto is not the fumbling lust I experienced as a teenager. Nor is it the indifferent acceptance that took place at university more out of mild interest than passion. No. Feeling my skin against Alberto’s – the cadence, scent and beat of his body makes more sense to me than anything I’ve ever known. I never imagined I could fall in love so hard or so quickly but it is what it is. Within weeks, I love everything about him: I love the slight flare of his nostrils when he’s talking about something important to him. I love the dark hairs on his strong arms that makes me feel both safe and needed. I love his quiet lilting voice and unassuming manner. And I love that he loves me.

Even when Alberto takes my photograph, he doesn’t disturb me or ask me to look his way as I sit on the beach sketching, searching for shells or plaiting my hair. And so I grow accustomed to the moments when he lovingly draws his heavy Olympus camera out of its case and plays around with the aperture and exposure until I hear that tiny click.

We spend more time discussing the civil war than anything else; how it’s affected our families as well as our mutual longing for democracy in Spain. Alberto comes from a small family in comparison to mine, yet one that has suffered enormously at the hands of the fascists.

‘The war ended so long ago,’ Alberto says as we sit on the beach and stare out to sea, ‘but still,
still
it hangs over us like a big black rain cloud.’ I lay my head on his shoulder and gaze at the colourful fishing boats being tossed about on the Atlantic.

‘We do seem to spend a lot of time talking about it,’ I agree. ‘It’s because we both know that as long as
el
cabrón
Franco lives and Spain exists under a dictatorship, our families can’t really move on from the war. Or its legacy.’

‘Yes,’ Alberto murmurs. ‘That’s it.’

I shiver as a cool gust of wind buffets around us and Alberto pulls me closer to him. ‘I had friends at university who shared my ideals, but with you…’ I break off and frown slightly ‘…with you, it’s so strange, but it feels like I’m holding a mirror up to what I believe in.’ Alberto turns his head and kisses me on the forehead, keeping his lips there.

‘It sounds like we were doing exactly the same thing at university, campaigning on the streets with hordes of other disaffected students.’ He pulls away and gazes at me. ‘I wish we’d met earlier.’

‘We wouldn’t have been ready for each other,’ I reply.

Alberto laughs quietly. ‘You’re probably right.’

We lie back on the sand and I nestle into his side, listening as the call to prayer begins and floats over the beach towards the waves. ‘When Spain’s a democracy again,’ I say as I run my hand up and down his brown T-shirt, ‘when that happens, I’m going to open up a café in Granada.’

Alberto takes my hand in his and kisses my fingertips. ‘You never told me that.’

I grin. ‘There’s a lot I haven’t told you yet.’

Alberto pauses. ‘What will you call it?’

I push my head back and stare up into his face as I smile at him. ‘
No lo sé
. What do you think?’

Alberto knits his eyebrows together in concentration as he lifts a hand up and twirls a few strands of my hair around his finger. ‘What about something you’ve always longed for over the years? Something you’ve hoped for?’

‘Maybe that’s it! Maybe that’s what I should call it…’

‘What?’

‘Hope.’

‘Hope,’ Alberto repeats quietly. ‘I like that.’ He places his head back into the sand and breathes it quietly, whispering the word again and again, ‘
Esperanza, Esperanza
’,
until it sounds at one with the waves and is carried gently away on the wind. And as the breeze catches the word, it plays with it and carries it like a torch of peace and optimism to a land over the seas.

O
ne month later
, I am sitting in the garden of Carmen de las Estrellas with Papá and Abuela, lying on my front as I sort through my sketches from Morocco into chronological order. I’ve been back in Spain for a whole fortnight, but for some reason can’t bring myself to tell my family about Alberto. As we parted, Alberto promised me that the minute he was back in Spain, he’d come straight to see me. ‘You believe me, don’t you?’ I had nodded vigorously, trying desperately to keep the tears from spilling down my cheeks. I believed him more than I’d ever believed anyone, but I was suddenly terrified at the prospect of him leaving. I wanted to fling my arms around his neck and never let him go.

And as I lie on the grass, squinting through the sunlight, I wish I could turn to Papá and Abuela, hand them the sketch and say ‘Look. Here is the man I’m in love with.’ It’s silly, but there’s a part of me that’s afraid that if I share him with anyone, he’ll evaporate like the morning dew. That if I open my heart and express I’ve met the man I believe I’ll be spending the rest of my life with, I’ll be tempting fate and something disastrous will happen to him in Algeria where he travelled to after I left. That the plug will be pulled away from his very being. That the texture and colour of his soul will drain slowly from him until he becomes a shapeless mass, a figment of my imagination.

I turn over onto my back and close my eyes. I feel sleep clawing at me as my senses become more attuned to the sounds around me: birdsong, a distant knocking at a door, the shuffle of feet, Papá clearing his throat and a tap dripping from somewhere, as steadily as a metronome. Alberto’s face from the sketch flashes beneath my closed eyelids. The sun distorts his memory into sepia negative images, transforming his thick dark hair into a white mass and his eyes into an eerie reflection as they stare strangely at me in their waxen transparency. I have no idea for how long I’ve dozed off, but moments later I feel an insect crawl over my hand and absently flick it off. It persists, creeping slowly up my wrist and further along my arm. Opening one eye, I notice a shadow bending over me and with a start open the other eye to see Abuela sitting beside me. She is working a thin blade of grass up and down my arm whilst her other hand clasps the sketch of Alberto. Groggily, I pull myself up on the rug.

‘So, are you ready to tell us about him yet, young lady?’

From his deckchair behind Abuela, I notice Papá lowering his newspaper ever so slightly. I sigh heavily and frown, scratching behind my ear.

‘He’s just someone I met in Morocco. Nobody special…’ My voice trails off weakly as Abuela gazes at me.

‘Nobody special, hmm?’

Abuela stands up and walks back to sit down again in the deckchair besides Papá.

‘Well, would you be so kind as to tell us what your not-very-special friend is doing standing at our front door right now?’

Thinking I’ve misheard her, I jerk my head up and stare at Abuela wide-eyed. ‘
¿Qué dices?
’

Papá has completely lowered his newspaper. He’s taken off his sunglasses and is looking in bewilderment at both of us.

‘You heard me,’ Abuela continues as she gestures with her head towards the courtyard. ‘
Tu amigo.
He is standing on our doorstep.’

I spring to my feet and tear across the grass towards the garden wall. Heaving myself up, I steady myself on the uneven, mossy surface and call out to Alberto. His face, dark from the sun, pokes out from beside the studded wooden door. Lowering myself down, I fling myself joyfully into his waiting arms. He holds my face gently on either side and kisses me deeply on my lips.

‘What are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting to see you for at least another few weeks!’

Alberto hugs me tightly and lowers his mouth to kiss my neck. ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. I tried to see out the time I’d intended in Algeria but… I failed miserably!’

I cling to him, breathing in his comforting, earthy scent and running my fingers through his long, unruly hair. After a few moments, Alberto takes hold of my arms and gently draws me away from him, holding both of my shoulders. ‘Is that your abuela who answered the door?’ I nod.