Mantequero (2 page)

****

The holiday went really well. She stayed in a tiny house at the top of a little mountain village. The house had very small windows to keep out the sun and very thick walls to keep out the heat. Priorities were different in Spain. It was cold at night, but there was a little wood stove that burned sticks, and the house was so small that it was enough. It was cosy in the little house, and she felt at home.

The people in the village greeted her cheerily and were keen to talk to her, the foreigner who spoke their language. She soon fell into a routine. She went to the shop every day to buy bread and meat and wonderful fresh vegetables and fruit. She went to the little bar in the Plaza for her morning coffee. At lunchtime she would make herself something to eat or sometimes go back to the bar and have the
menu del día
, a ridiculously cheap three course meal. The only good thing, in her opinion, that Franco had ever done was to decree that every bar should serve a proper three course meal, including wine, that a working man could afford. In the evening she sat outside and drank
tinto de verano—
red wine with lemonade, not the appalling
sangria
stuffed with fruit, so beloved of the tourists - and chatted to the villagers who passed by.

She went for long, leisurely walks early in the morning or late afternoon when the sun was low in the sky. It was the first time ever that she had had a holiday when she only had herself to think of. Every so often she had a moment of panic, convinced she should have students in tow and had somehow mislaid them, but after a few days it hardly ever happened, and after she met Ignacio it never happened at all.

****

Meeting Ignacio was like a fairy tale. It was towards the end of her first week, nearly half-way through her holiday.

Christmas had come and gone, and she had scarcely noticed it. They didn't make such a big thing of it here in Spain. She had thought about it just once, at lunchtime on Christmas day. The village shop had opened as usual in the morning and the people were going about their business just like on any other day. Many of them stopped to chat with her as she sat outside the bar in the village square, drinking her morning coffee and exulting in the sunshine. The weather was idyllic – sunny, and warm enough to sit outside without a coat, but not so hot that you had to stay in the shade. She suddenly thought of her sisters and wondered how they were dealing with Mother. She had always stayed with her mother at Christmas, coming home when she was studying at university, and later, when she got her own flat near the school, she had continued to do so. Nothing had ever been said, but it was always assumed that she would be there every year. Well this year would be different.
How had they dealt with it?
she wondered. One of them, probably Rose, who had the biggest house, would surely have invited Mother over for Christmas dinner. June could only imagine how annoyed she would be about that. Mother would like it, though, spending Christmas day with the children. June didn't actually know what arrangements had been made because nobody had spoken to her since the party. She smiled over her coffee, clutching the glass in her hand, and started to plan what she would have for her own Christmas dinner. Salad, probably.

She had visited the Alhambra a couple of days after Christmas. Ana-María, the village shopkeeper had been very impressed. “It is a long way to go on your own, Señora,” she said, “but they say it is very beautiful.”

“You have not been yourself, then?”

“Goodness me, no, Señora. I have no time to go visiting such places. And who would look after the shop?”

June suspected that it was more a matter of being comfortable where she was and not wanting to disturb herself with visions of a different world. She could understand that. Hadn't she been doing just that herself for the last fifteen years?

Now she felt all her horizons opening up. Her sisters had done her a favour.

****

The Palace was everything she imagined and more. She had read books about it and seen photographs, but no photograph could convey the splendour and magnificence of the arches and the carvings. And as for the ceilings, with their amazing stalactite decoration....The sheer beauty of the place made her gasp.

Yes, she would certainly return to Spain. Perhaps at Easter when they had the huge processions through the streets of the city, the men dressed up in silken robes and pointed headdresses reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan, statues of the Virgin carried on enormous platforms, so heavy it took twenty men to lift them.

Now, in her second week, she felt the holiday was going too fast. She was afraid her new-found freedom would slip away from her. She would forget and allow her suffocating existence as an undervalued teacher and despised unmarried sister to resume.

This evening she had gone walking rather further than usual and had ended up at the top of a magnificent gorge, thousands of feet above the river below, gazing down dreamily, mesmerised by the beauty. She teetered on the brink, imagining how it would feel to fly, when suddenly the young man had pulled her back.

“
Hola, Guapa
,” he had said.
Hello, Beautiful
.

She had almost looked round to see who else was there. Surely he wasn’t addressing
her.
Nobody had ever called her beautiful before.

There was no-one else.

He stepped forward and, sweeping off his hat, made a flamboyant, courtly bow, bending over so far that his nose almost touched the ground.

“Ignacio,” he said, by way of greeting. Then he took her hand and pressed it to his lips. His kiss on her skin made her shudder with pleasure. It was accompanied by a slight sucking of his lips which was at once disquieting and rather sexy. She felt a little thrill of desire as she looked up into his face and replied, “June.”

He attempted to repeat it, but struggled with the J sound.

“Like
junio
,” she said. “The month.”

“Or Juno,” he smiled a slow smile, “the goddess.” 

He proffered his arm in an old-fashioned gesture and said, “May I have the honour of escorting the beautiful goddess home?”

It was then she realised the sudden dusk in the mountains had caught her out. One minute the sun had been bright in the sky, the next it had disappeared behind a ridge and the light was dying. She knew how treacherous the mountains could be. The guide books all said you should never go without food, water, warm clothing and a mobile phone. She had brought none of those things because she hadn’t expected to go very far. Now she realised she had come quite a way and the little village was completely out of sight. With a slight shiver, she turned back to the young man and offered him her arm.

This couldn’t actually be happening. She felt she must have conjured him up somehow out of her fantasies. As they walked down the mountain, she kept glancing sideways at him.

He was dressed in a very old-fashioned style, even for a mountain villager, in knee britches and a waistcoat, with a wide-brimmed hat shading his eyes, and carrying a large leather bag.  He was a very handsome man, as many Spaniards were, with fine-chiselled features and the typical dark hair and eyes. Only his skin was paler than most, and she didn’t find that unattractive. No, not unattractive at all.

When they reached the little house at the top of the village, she turned to him and said, “This is where I live, Ignacio.”

He bowed his head courteously, letting go of her arm.

She felt a terrible disappointment at the loss of his touch, and she thought,
This is it, my one chance. 

She smiled up at him. “Would you like to come in, Ignacio?”

His face lit up in a broad smile. “You mean it? You are inviting me in?”

She nodded, and turned her back on him to insert the key in the lock, her heart thudding so loud she thought he must surely hear it.

As they stepped through the door, he took her into his arms, and, pushing the door closed with his foot, began to kiss her passionately. “Oh, my beautiful goddess,” he murmured between kisses. “You are SO beautiful, SO beautiful.” And then, without quite knowing how it had happened, she found herself in bed with him, her clothes abandoned, and he was kissing her all over with that strange,
exciting,
sucking kiss. And she felt an ecstasy she had never known before.

****

The next morning, when she woke up, he had gone.

She lay in the aftermath of bliss, reliving the memory and relishing it. She knew she would never see him again, of course. It was a one-off, never to be repeated experience. And how she had loved it. She felt exhausted, fulfilled and husked-out, lighter somehow. She rolled over and went back to sleep. She didn’t have to get up. She was on holiday.

When she finally did get up, in the late afternoon, and drifted off to get a shower, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she went past and thought,
I actually LOOK lighter
.
Must be the heat and the continental diet, and maybe the unwonted exercise of last night.
With a blissful sigh, she stepped into the shower stall.

Later, she decided to go for a walk to the same spot. She strolled along the goat-tracks until she got to the place where she had been the previous day. There she sat in a reverie and waited for the sun to go down.

He appeared at dusk, just as he had the previous day, and said, “Hello, Beautiful.” 

As he bowed, his leather bag slipped off his shoulder and he caught it skilfully as he straightened up.

Without a word, she proffered her arm and they walked slowly back down the mountain to the village, gazing into each other's eyes as they went.

A dream,
she thought.
It's all a dream. I shall wake up in the morning and none of this will have happened.

****

The next day she slept till early evening and woke exhausted, but ecstatic. She scarcely glanced at herself as she passed the mirror and so did not notice how much thinner she had become.

He came to her the next night and the night after and she lost track of the days, only aware of how happy she was in this extraordinary new relationship. She never spoke to him, just lay and received his attentions and listened to his words of love...
Beautiful, SO beautiful...

****

One afternoon she woke up ravenous and realised she had hardly eaten anything for days. Everything in the fridge was several days old and none of it looked very appetizing. She went to get dressed to go to the shop and this time she did notice how much thinner she had become. Her clothes hung loosely on her. She looked down and saw her feet. She hadn’t seen her feet for years.
Dear God,
she thought,
I look like I’ve been on a VERY radical diet.
She examined herself more closely. Her skin looked crêpey and hung in loose folds. She drew back from the mirror, shocked.
High time I ate something,
she thought.

****

Ana-María, the shopkeeper, was bending down behind the counter as June entered the shop. She stood up, her hands at the small of her back, and gave a little sigh, then turned to see who had come in. For a moment she had no idea who this strange woman was. She looked a little like the Englishwoman who had come in every day for a week but, now she thought of it, had not been in for some time. Could it be? This woman seemed so much thinner.

“Señora?” she said. “Is that you?

June smiled at her. “Indeed it is, Ana-María. Have you any bread left?”

“But, Señora, you have lost so much weight. Are you ill?”

“Not at all,” said June. “I have never felt better in my life.”

“But, Señora, it is not good to lose so much weight. In the olden days we would have said you had been visited by the Mantequero.”

June frowned slightly. She had never heard the word before.

“The Mantequero,” Ana-María went on, “the Sacamantecas, the one who carries the bag.”

June was reminded suddenly of the leather bag Ignacio always carried.

“He comes at sunset,” said Ana-María, “and he sucks the fat from your bones and puts it in his bag.” Then, seeing the look of alarm on June’s face, she added hurriedly, “But it is just a story, Señora. A fairy tale to frighten children. And anyway,” she went on, “he cannot come to you unless you invite him in.”

She remembered how delighted Ignacio had been when she invited him in…and how surprised.

****

Later, she stood naked in front of the mirror and examined herself dispassionately. Virtually all the surplus flesh she had carried with her all these years had vanished. She was slim, almost thin, and, if it weren’t for the wrinkling of her skin, she would have said she looked better than she ever had in her life.
Maybe the wrinkles will smooth out in time,
she thought.
People in England would pay a fortune for this kind of treatment.
Then, with a wry smile, It
gives liposuction a whole new meaning.