your parents build up the library, or did they inherit it from the previous owners of the house? Your father mentioned that he and your mother only set up the business about six years ago and had a bit of a struggle to get it going.’
‘It wasn’t easy at first. Some of the Spanish and all the German books came with the house. The last owner was a German botanist. A lot of the books I’ve found on rastros or in the secondhand paperback libraries catering to foreigners. The prices are low because most people take them back for a half-price refund, but I usually keep them.’
‘You would enjoy the bookshops and book fairs in Madrid. Have you been to my home town?’
‘Once, when we were living in the south, we had to get to England in a hurry for a family funeral. We put the car on the train at Algeciras and got off in Paris, with a stop of some hours in Madrid en route. I wanted to see the Goya paintings in the Prado, but it was closed that day. Juanita, who is cooking for us because my mother is away, went to Madrid last spring on a coach with other pensionistas from the village. She had a wonderful time. Have you always lived there?’
‘No, I was born and grew up in the country. I enjoy Madrid, but—’ He broke off as the cat suddenly sprang from his arms to the ground and then jumped onto another part of the wall and peered over the outer edge of it.
‘He’s heard something moving about under our neighbour’s roof tiles,’ said Cally, as Mog vanished. ‘He fancies himself as an ace hunter, but I’ve never known him to catch anything. You were saying you enjoy Madrid, but…’
‘But I wouldn’t want to live in a city all the time. It’s exciting and stimulating, but it can get a bit frenetic. I like to escape now and then.’
Cally was struck yet again by the fluency of his English but hesitated to press him for the explanation he had promised ‘some other time.’
‘Your situation is the reverse of mine,’ he went on. ‘Don’t you ever feel bored with Valdecarrasca? Does it offer enough excitement and stimulus for you?’
She debated telling him that she didn’t live here on a permanent basis and in fact was only an occasional visitor. But she didn’t feel inclined to talk about herself while there seemed to be things about himself he preferred not to divulge.
She said, ‘Nowhere is dull or isolated now that we have all resources of the World Wide Web at our fingertips.’
‘Do you spend a lot of time on the Web?’
‘Quite a lot. How about you?’
‘I subscribe to a couple of forums and read certain online columnists. What sort of things do you do?’
Cally had the feeling they were fencing with each other, neither wishing to reveal themselves. Yet all the time she was conscious of how attractive he was. She liked the way his hair sprang from his broad high forehead, the clear definition of his chin, the way the moonlight accentuated the slant of his cheekbones under the taut dark skin.
In her late teens, when she had sometimes indulged in romantic daydreams, this was the kind of face she had visualised but never seen in real life. Her parents had been living in Tarragona province then, and the Catalan men in that area had not been remarkable for their looks.
‘Mostly I read the book reviews at online bookshops. Sometimes I look at what’s on offer at the auction houses. The great thing about the Web is that it’s all things to all men…and all women,’ she said, smiling. ‘Whatever you’re interested in, you can find stuff about it and people who share your enthusiasms.’
‘Some people even find partners, one hears.’
Cally shrugged. ‘So they say. Perhaps, if one’s looking for a partner, it’s a good place to find one. I’ve often thought that people who aren’t good-looking are at a huge disadvantage in the real world. They may have wonderful minds but they get written off because their faces aren’t pretty or handsome.’
The church clock struck a single note. It was one o’clock in the morning, she realised, and in five hours’ time her alarm clock would wake her so that she could have an hour on the Internet before it was time to shower and dress and fetch barras of freshly baked bread for the guests’ breakfast.
‘Would you like a packed lunch tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘Is that part of the service?’
‘When we have mountain walkers staying with us—yes. We charge for the ingredients but not for the preparation. If you have a flask, we’ll fill it with coffee or tea. What would you like in your bread? Jamón serrano…cold chicken…sheep’s cheese and lettuce…chorizo?’
‘Jamón serrano would be excellent. I’d like to leave about nine, if that’s convenient? What time is breakfast?’
Cally stood up. ‘Most people have it between eight and nine. But you can have it as soon as I get back from the baker’s at half-past seven, if you like.’
‘Let’s say quarter to eight.’
‘Okay…goodnight.’
As she moved towards the doorway, he stepped ahead of her and swept the curtain aside.
‘Thank you.’ She had to pass very close to him to go through the opening. As she did so, she found herself wondering what she would do if he put his hand on her waist and turned her to face him.
But he only said, ‘Buenas noches.’
As the curtain fell into place behind her, Nicolás wondered what she would have done if he had obeyed his impulse to kiss her goodnight.
All the time they had been talking, he had been conscious that under her modest dressing gown and long filmy nightgown she had been naked. For some reason, although there was nothing overtly sexy about her, in her presence he was always aware of how soft she would feel under his hands. While he had been stroking the cat, a part of his mind had been thinking about stroking Cally.
Looking over the wall, he saw that the cat had its nose close to the edge of a Roman tile and was quivering with frustration because it couldn’t reach whatever was lurking under the tile.
I know the feeling, amigo, thought Nicolás. Leaving the cat to its fruitless vigil, he left the terrace and, switching on the landing light, selected a couple of books he had noticed earlier to distract him from thinking about Douglas Haig’s tempting daughter.
When, next morning, Cally went downstairs, the first thing she did was to fill the kettle with font water that had also been filtered to remove some of the cal that quickly furred up the kettle. Her mother was always complaining about the hardness of the local water and the damage it did to her skin.
A little later she was walking back from the village bakery when to her surprise Nicolás came out of a sidestreet leading towards the vineyards. He was wearing a yellow singlet and black shorts and had obviously been for a run. He wasn’t out of breath but his skin was glistening with sweat and his black hair was damp, showing a tendency to curl at the nape of his neck.
‘How far have you run?’ she asked, as he fell into step beside her.
‘About five or six kilometres. The lanes through the vineyards are perfect…hardly any traffic.’
