Kelsey had already given Blythe her Christmas present, the book of Webster plays, and Blythe had kissed her forehead in thanks and it sat now on the kitchen table by the teapot still on its white tissue paper. Kelsey had poured the tea while Blythe was rummaging in a black lacquer box on the oak dresser looking for a photograph.
‘Thisis the father of my child,’ she said, presenting the photo to Kelsey, and taking a slow seat at the table. ‘My one true love, my Laureano.’
The picture could not have been more different to the images of Wagstaff Kelsey had worried herself over. The man smiling into the camera was slender-waisted, broad-shouldered, svelte and deeply pretty.
‘This was taken at our little olive garden at Valladolid, nineteen seventy-two. He’s beautiful, isn’t he?’
‘He is!’
‘He was born in that little house you can just see in the background. It’s a wonderful place, though I haven’t been there for years now. The whole province was famed for itscorrida de toros.’
Kelsey jutted her bottom lip, confused.
‘Bull-fighting, dear. That’s how Laureano got his first taste of applause; when he was a trainee matador. He was so handsome running with the young bulls, the women would throw their fans to him in the ring and then they’d faint with the heat watching him.’ Blythe reached absentmindedly for the tissue wrapping paper that had covered her book and she folded and unfolded it now in her hands as she spoke.
‘In the days before I met him, Laureano was being prepared for his first fight by the master of the bulls and he was shocked to learn he was expected to combat the most acclaimed bull in the province – a great proud beast, it was. It had gored two matadors and thrown another over its back that very season. Laureano was scared half out of his wits at the prospect. The master of the bulls was a powerful man in the town and he stood to make a lot of money from the fight. He told Laureano he was not only to defeat the bull but he was to wipe its nose with the blood of its own severed tail. The greedy old fool wanted to make his bullring – and his beautiful new bullfighter – the talk of Spain. The man could smell the money to be made from a debut toreador with a pretty face and a cruel heart.
‘But Laureano refused to fight, horrified by the very suggestion. Who would do such a thing? But the master threatened him. He knew a secret about Laureano’s father, you see? A business matter had gone awry some years before and his father had skipped town and was hiding out in the mountains. Laureano was protecting him, taking him food every Sunday evening. To stop his father being arrested he agreed to the fight. He prepared himself to throw down his sword and dagger and let the bull gore him to death, but on the day of thecorridawhen the creature was released into the ring, Laureano’s heart broke in his chest. The poor thing hadn’t been fed or watered for days. It had been freshly branded on its back and the blood was still running. Its eyes were dull. The beast barely had any fight in it. Laureano took one look at the poor bull and fell to his knees. The crowd turned upon him, hungry to see him defeat the animal. So he ran for it, gathered together everything he owned – which wasn’t much, he was so poor – and he dashed for the coast with his father on one of the bullring’s horses. He sold that horse at the port in exchange for passage and he brought his father here to England that very day. They had nothing except Laureano’s matador costume and his beauty to live off.’
‘Wow!’ Kelsey couldn’t help but smile in awe.
‘He was a bit wow, yes!’ Blythe smiled too, still folding and twisting the tissue paper in her hands.
‘They made do, scrounging odd jobs, living hand to mouth, but that summer the RSC were auditioning in London for a Cervantes play. It was the sixties, the dawn of the package holiday; England was Spain-mad. Laureano auditioned for a background part in a fiesta scene, all clichéd castanets and swishing capes. Well, the director took one look at him and snapped him up as his protégé. He had the looks and the physique and he could project his voice across a bullring; all he had to do was learn better English.
‘I was already a star by then, always hanging about at the theatre during the day, so I helped him a little with his vocabulary and soon we were in love.’ Blythe’s eyes glinted as she chuckled at the memory.
‘We were cast together as leads soon after. People liked the look of us side by side, we were both so dainty and so powerful… and you know the rest.’
‘He loved you.’
‘Oh yes, very much. Laureano’s father was very old by then, he passed away before the baby was born, never met little Lorcan, our boy. Then when it became clear the bosses were determined to starve me out of work, Laureano suggested we go back to Spain, live a simple life, and so we did. We spent a few happy years together, although I missed the life of the stage terribly. I couldn’t do much at Valladolid with this hip, but I could shake an olive tree and work the presses and we made a very small living.’ A shadow fell over Blythe’s face. ‘But my Laureano was far too beautiful for this world and he passed shortly after Lorcan’s seventh birthday. Misfortune often brings yet more sadness in its wake, and my father passed soon after that as well. Daddy’s will left me everything – I was an only child after all – but the stipulation was that I return to England and raise my son a little English boy. I had no money and I had no choice, so I came back.’
‘You raised Lorcan here?’
‘Yes, but he had his papa’s Spanish heart in him. He missed the heat, dreamt of the sun and the dust and the sea. School holidays back at the old house weren’t enough for him and he moved back there as soon as he could. He was eighteen when he left for good. He’s still there now, with his new English wife. He works in Granada for an animal charity, got a little flat near the Alhambra, and they spend the weekends at Valladolid in the olive garden. They’re happy.’
‘I thought your lover abandoned you.’ Kelsey squinted, trying to make sense of the conclusions she’d jumped to.
‘No.Laureano just couldn’t stay. Aging together wasn’t to be part of our story. I have lived far, far longer without him in my life than the brief time I spent with him.’
‘And you never married, or met anyone else?’
‘Oh no, as Shakespeare said, love is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. I love him still to this day.’ Blythe lifted the tissue paper to show Kelsey a perfect white paper rose which she twirled between her fingertips. ‘Don’t worry, Kelsey dear. You and Jonathan are facing your first tempest. He’ll be back when the storm’s blown over, and you mustn’t wither away in the meantime, you hear me? We women must continue to bloom, even in the wintertime. You’ve got work to do here. Don’t make the mistake I did of walking away from my occupation. I was the Duchess of Malfi once! And I let them push me out when I should have stayed and fought. Yes, I was in agony with my hip, but Laureano and I should have stayed here. He could have wowed the crowds for years and I could have fought for parts, even if I was only playing to a handful of people in the smallest of places.’ Blythe smiled away the regret. ‘This isyourchance.’ She slipped the paper rose behind Kelsey’s ear. ‘Beautiful. Now finish your tea. You’ve got a lot to do.’
‘But what about Jonathan? How do you know he’ll come round?’ said Kelsey.
Blythe smiled, lifting the old photograph of Laureano to gaze at it once more. ‘Love works both ways; otherwise it isn’t love.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
‘Our wooing doth not end like an old play
Jack hath not Jill’
(Love’s Labour’s Lost)
The winter dawn hadn’t yet broken as Kelsey tramped over the frosted grass, the silvered blades giving way beneath her boots like crunching glass. Over her shoulders she hauled tote bags stuffed with provisions – bacon rolls and jam donuts – and she had two piping hot takeaway coffees in her hands.
