A Power to Charm by Frances Murray

Author:Frances Murray [Murray, Frances]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Rosemary Booth
Published: 2011-06-10T04:00:00+00:00

The news of the evictions was known in the village long before the envelopes were typed let alone posted. Juana Pan really knew very little about the village she regarded as 'hers'. Maria Mecano's mother, Caterina Comadrona, lived in one of those houses, which were due to become the site of an hotel. Caterina would have no truck with mobile telephones but the mother of her eldest grandchild was Siobhan Buenvenidos and she had a mobile. As soon as Juana Pan's back was turned Maria pulled out her own mobile and thumbed out Siobhan's number.

Siobhan was having her morning coffee and roll in Tomás las Tapas. Like her neighbours she got up before it was light, did all her chores in the cool of the morning and then treated herself to a leisurely breakfast. She heard the wailing of the mobile in her handbag and answered it with her mouth full of roll. At first she did not quite understand but Maria Mecano collected herself, calmed down and made it abundantly clear what was going to happen.

“They are all to go, all the people in those houses. She has given them four weeks to find other accommodation. Four weeks! What accommodation? Where? And my mother has lived there for fifty years, she was born there, I was born there and so was my brother Domingo. I suppose she might come to me but mine is such a small house and we do not agree, my mother and me, we never did. You agree with Mama better than I do.”

This was true.

When it first became known that her Domingo had fathered a child on Siobhan Buenvenidos Caterina Comadrona had denounced Siobhan for a whore and attacked Padi el Pene to his face for having raised a family of whores and fornicators (at which he had laughed very much and agreed with her). She had vowed to have nothing more to do with such a son, reprobate that he was. However, after the complicated birth of small Domingo to which she had been summoned by her successor Pina Partera she had changed her mind. Now Siobhan was more in her house than Domingo, the father, or Maria Meccano and small Domingo was spoiled to death and preferred to 'that whining brat' which had been produced by the sister of Maria-Luisa los Perros whom Domingo, under severe pressure from her family, had married shortly after the birth of small Domingo. In fact, Caterina had said at the wedding that Domingo would have done better to marry the mother of his son because Siobhan was an excellent mother and worth a dozen of Maria- Concepción los Perros who was all painted face and dyed hair. Which was true, on the whole if not especially tactful. However, by the time she said it Domingo had already married Maria-Concepción in order to father her child. He was now regretting it.

Siobhan had been unmoved by all this. Babies she adored but from close observation of her father's

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