The Summer of the Spanish Woman by Gaskin Catherine

Author:Gaskin, Catherine [Gaskin, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: rags to riches, Spanish Civil War, family saga, romance, historical fiction, sherry making, Spain
Publisher: Corazon Books (Historical/Saga)
Published: 2015-06-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

I

Spring came, as it does in Andalucia, with a blanket of wild flowers that grew in all the places which during the heat of the summer seemed to be a desert. Along the sides of the roads and in the fields they grew, the small purple iris, the scarlet poppy, the sun flower; the violet flowers of the periwinkle appeared shyly in odd places. A white magnolia bloomed in our courtyard, the Judas trees displayed their pink against the soft blue sky, the jacaranda dropped its petals into the stable-yard, jasmine appeared against old walls and scented the night air. The vines began to put out shoots.

‘It is heaven,’ Edwin Fletcher said. He was forever stopping to bend and smell some blossom. ‘Things smell different here.’ It was as if he was trying to overcome the lingering smell of the gas that had nearly destroyed his lungs. He might revel in it all, but his health seemed little improved. He was still unnaturally thin, and fits of coughing still shook him. ‘You should drink more sherry,’ Maria Luisa advised. ‘This town is full of healthy old people who’ve taken their copitas all their lives as they have taken their religion.’ Edwin had enough regard for Maria Luisa’s intelligence to be able to laugh at her ambiguity. So we moved a table into the courtyard where the sun would be warmest in the half-hour before lunch; we sat and drank our copitas and Edwin talked with the children, as the Marquesa had bidden him, but he did not talk of going home. Martin had now become his pupil for a few hours each day. Books suitable for their ages kept arriving from London. In spite of his efforts to remain true to his promise to the Marquesa, Edwin was learning Spanish. It was impossible not to. When he received the primers in reading from England, he went to Seville to secure similar ones in Spanish. ‘I’m no schoolmaster,’ he confessed. ‘I don’t know how to teach them to read in one language and not in their own.’ It was strange to see this man who had that unusual double first from Cambridge sitting in the sun-warmed courtyard studying the primers with the large type-face and the childish pictures. He made his own vocabulary list, and studied it each day. It amused Juan to give him tests in spelling ‒ Juan not realising that he himself was learning the English translations of the words at the same time.

When we were alone, out of hearing of my mother, Edwin and I discussed the events of that spring in Ireland. The Easter Rebellion had sent a wave of shock and fear through England. The story of Roger Casement landing by German submarine had re-awakened the old fear of invasion through Ireland. There was public clamour for the execution of the leaders of the rebellion. ‘They will make martyrs for Ireland,’ Edwin said, ‘and the Irish have always loved and fought for their saints. This insurrection has been put down, but I think it has not ended this phase of the Irish struggle.

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