The Return Read online

  ‘Was it a good night?’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ she replied, smiling. ‘I went dancing.’

  ‘You liked that? You found some duende, perhaps?’

  Sonia was unfamiliar with the word. It sounded rather like ‘duet’, so perhaps he was asking if she had found a partner. For the first time in the last twenty-four hours, her thoughts turned to James. How would he have liked it here? Would he have appreciated the jaded décor of the dance school? The relentless exertion of the dancing lessons? The decibel level in the nightclub? The answer to all of these questions was ‘no’. Perhaps he might have enjoyed the grandeur of the architecture, she thought as she glanced at the upper storeys of the strong, rather magnificent buildings that comprised even this unimportant square. A spark of guilt passed through her when she realised that she had not even thought to ring James, but, on the other hand, he had not rung her either. He would be frantically involved in some deal at the bank, she was fairly certain of that, and would not be missing her.

  ‘I had a fantastic time,’ she answered simply. ‘Fantástico.’

  ‘Bueno, bueno,’ he said, as though he got some personal satisfaction from the fact that his customer had had a good night out. ‘People will always dance. Even when we were living under a tyrannical regime, people continued to dance. For many of us, the priests had destroyed our religion, but many people simply had another one ready-made. Dancing became a new religion for a few people, a way of rebelling.’

  ‘It was for dance classes that I came here, really,’ said Sonia. ‘I just enjoy it, but I don’t really see it becoming my religion,’ she added, laughing.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose it will. But things are different today. Granada is full of dance now and people do it freely.’

  As on the previous day, the café owner seemed to have more time on his hands than customers to fill it, though Sonia could imagine that in the high season this would not be the case. She was in no hurry either, and this smiling elderly Spaniard clearly wanted to make conversation with her.

  ‘Do you dance?’ asked Sonia.

  ‘Me? No,’ he replied.

  ‘So how long have you had this café?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, for years now,’ he replied. ‘I took over in the mid nineteen fifties.’

  ‘And you’ve been here all that time?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ he said quietly.

  To stay in one place, in one job, for all those decades was almost beyond the reach of Sonia’s imagination. How could anyone tolerate the sheer tedium of such stubborn continuity?

  ‘Things were still in a state of upheaval then. It was all to do with the Civil War. It changed everything.’

  Sonia was embarrassed by her ignorance of Spanish history but she felt she had to give an adequate response.

  ‘It must have been awful for—’

  The man cut her off. She saw that he suddenly had no wish to pursue this line of conversation.

  ‘But you really don’t want to hear about it. It’s such a long story and you’ve got dancing to do.’

  He was right. There had not been any other customers since her arrival, so he was still in no hurry for her to leave, but she did have a dance class to go to. Even though she loved sitting here passing the hours in this café with its kind owner, she could not miss her dancing. She glanced at her watch and was amazed to realise how much time had passed - it was one thirty in the afternoon. The lesson was at two o’clock.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Sonia. ‘I have to leave soon.’

  ‘Tell me before you go - did you go to Lorca’s house?’

  ‘I did. I saw what you meant about it being cold. It’s hard to put your finger on it, isn’t it? But somehow you can sense that it all ended badly there and that’s the reason that no one has lived in it for all those years.’

  ‘Did you like the park?’

  He genuinely wanted her views and was interested in what she had to say.

  ‘It was a bit formal for my taste. It’s quite hard to make a garden gloomy, but they had managed.’

  Sonia felt she had been inadvertently rude about this man’s city and was relieved by his reaction.

  ‘I completely agree with you. It’s not a nice place. Lorca himself would have hated it. I know he would. It’s just the kind of stiffness and lack of imagination that he was opposed to.’

  The elderly man was suddenly aroused from his gentle state into one of ire. She could not help contrasting him with her father, in whom gentleness and patience was the entire man. Nothing budged Jack Haynes from his mood of quiet acceptance. The café owner, however, was different. She caught a glimpse of something steely in his look, a glint that suggested he was not a gentle old man through and through. There was another side to him. It made her reflect that the stereotype of the fiery Spanish personality had something in it after all. That hard look was very different from the kindness she had associated with him until now. It was a hint of anger, not with her, but with something that had gone through his mind.The creases around his mouth had hardened and his eyes had ceased to twinkle with the warm smile that she had already grown to recognise.

  ‘I really must go,’ she said. ‘Thanks for my breakfast. Or was it lunch? I don’t know really, but thank you.’

  ‘I have enjoyed talking to you. Enjoy your dancing.’

  ‘I’m not going home until the day after tomorrow,’ she said. ‘So I might come back for breakfast if you’re open.’

  ‘Of course I’ll be open. Except for the occasional day off, I have been open every day since I can remember.’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then,’ said Sonia brightly.

  Sonia smiled, partly at the prospect of seeing him again, but also at the evident pride he took in this café, which was clearly his life’s work. There appeared to be no one else involved. No wife. No son to follow in his footsteps. She slung her bag over her shoulder and got up to leave. It was less than five minutes until the start of her dance lesson.

  She arrived at the dance school slightly late, and walked into the studio where Felipe and Corazón were already in mid-demonstration. It was not salsa. The Norwegian girls had gone to one of the shows in the Sacromonte the night before and were keener than ever on learning some for themselves. Maggie had voiced no objections and the men in the class would go along with the plan as long as they could revert to salsa in the second half of the lesson. For the second time in as many days they could show this class what, in their view, was the greatest dance of all.

  As soon as it ended, with a fired, machine-gun rattle of feet, Corazón cried out to her pupils: ‘OK, this is how we start with flamenco.’

  The music they now danced to was very different from the brash salsa sound whose beat had become almost second nature to them all. It was much harder for the ear to grasp or to find its way into the pulse; it nevertheless had a regular time signature, though confusingly it seemed to depart from it often. Along with the sound of a guitar could be heard clapping and counter-clapping, pulses that weaved in and out of each other with impossible complexity, but occasionally resolved and met in unison, ending on a final single beat. Sonia strained to hear the pattern.

  By now Corazón had her hands held high. Her supple wrists allowed her hands to create perfect circles as her fingers splayed in and out, in time with the beat. Her loose hips swayed easily to the rhythm, and from time to time she accentuated the beat with a click of her tongue.

  Soon, the women in the class were copying, some with a greater degree of success than others.

  They warmed up like this for ten or fifteen minutes, feeling their way into the rhythm and occasionally Corazón would disturb their semi-hypnotised state with an exhortation.

  ‘Listen! Can you hear?’ she said, finding no difficulty speaking and swaying at once.‘The sound of the anvil? The beating of metal?’

  The class looked at her blankly. She responded to their stupidity with a withering look and persisted with the comparison.

  ‘Come o
n,’ she cried, with increasing impatience.‘Listen! Ting! - Ting! - Ting! - Ting! Have you not walked into the Albaicín? Have you not noticed all that wrought iron? Do you not hear the sound of men working that metal? Can you not still hear it in those narrow streets?’

  Someone sniggered but as far as Corazón was concerned, their inability to understand was their loss. She had run out of time and patience trying to explain.

  Sonia began to hear the echo of the ironworkers’ craft and even that brief pause between the beats made her think of the swing of the hammer before it struck metal. Corazón was not insane after all. She clapped and swayed to illustrate her point and those with imagination could hear the sound of the blacksmiths.

  ‘Now! Follow me. Do this!’

  Corazón seemed in her element, issuing instructions like a martinet. Salsa was a sideshow for her; it was clear that this was where her heart lay.

  She tightened her fists, then slowly unfurled the fingers one by one, starting with the smallest and progressing to the thumb, repeating the movement, then with variations, starting with the forefinger and working towards the smallest, all the while twisting the wrists round and round, back and forward.

  Sonia’s wrists felt almost bruised with this unfamiliar movement and her arms ached. Simultaneously with the hands, Corazón wound her arms up and down like serpents, one minute above her head, the other down by her side. In a shambolic way, the class attempted to keep up.

  ‘Mira! Mira!’ she cried, with a mixture of frustration and boundless enthusiasm. ‘Watch!’

  Corazón knew that they could do much better, but it might take time. So far they had only worked on the upper half of the body and there was much more to come.

  ‘OK, OK. Muy bien. Take a break.’

  Gratefully, the class relaxed. It was not for long, though. Felipe, who had been sitting observing, leaped to his feet. It was his turn to be centre stage.

  The class formed a horseshoe around him and watched.

  ‘This is the basic footwork,’ he said. One leg extended to the front, the knee slightly bent, he stamped down on the ball of his foot and then onto the heel. He did this several times and then speeded up to show how this simple movement formed the basis for the spectacular pattern of foot stamping that people associated with flamenco. They all tried it. There was nothing particularly complex about doing this in slow motion.

  ‘Planta! ’ he shouted as he slammed his foot on the ground.

  There was something perfectly onomatopoeic about the next word he shouted as the sharp sound of his heel drove down into the floor. ‘Tacón! Ta-CON! ’ he repeated.

  For a while they practised the basic movement and then Felipe began to complicate things, moving from heel to toe in different sequences. Some of the pupils could keep up. Others who were less co-ordinated began to flounder. It was all proving to be so much harder than it had looked. Felipe was undeterred. He was so serious about flamenco that he did not even notice that some of the dancers were no longer with him.

  ‘You must listen to the rhythms created by your feet,’ he said. ‘You are making your own music with them. Have nothing in your heads, but much in your ears.’

  It almost makes sense, thought Sonia, concentrating intensely but trying to put into practice the idea that she should be doing this with her ear rather than her mind. She caught Maggie’s eye and saw that for once her friend looked mildly bored.

  Now it was Corazón’s turn again.

  ‘The most important thing of all I have left until last,’ she said dramatically. ‘And that is the very beginning.’

  By now, most of the class stood sipping water from plastic bottles. It was all becoming more demanding than any of them had expected.

  ‘ActiTUD! ’ she said, and in the very manner of delivering the word, she demonstrated what was expected. Her chin up, her nose pointing to the ceiling and with an arrogance of posture that reminded Sonia of the flamenco dancers they had gone to see three nights ago, they watched as Corazón showed them how they had to ‘announce’ themselves at the beginning of a dance.

  ‘The entrance is the most important moment of all,’ she told them. ‘You can’t come in quietly. You have to tell everyone you are here - with the language of your body. Tell people that you are now the most important person in the room.’

  Corazón was the sort of woman who made herself noticeable by simply walking through a door. She had been born with presence. It had not occurred to Sonia that this was something that could be acquired and she had always assumed it had to come naturally. Twenty minutes later, though, when she caught sight of a woman in the mirror who was striking a convincing pose and realised it was herself, she decided that it was not beyond her reach. One arm stretched towards the ceiling, her fingers splayed, her body twisted at the waist and her other arm curved in front of her, she looked almost authentically flamenco.

  With a sharp, double-clap of her hands, Corazón brought this section of the class to an end.

  ‘Bueno, bueno. We will have you dancing in the Sacromonte by tomorrow,’ she said, smilingly. ‘Take a break and then we will get back to salsa.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ muttered Maggie in Sonia’s direction. ‘I’m not sure that flamenco is really my bag.’

  ‘But you seemed so keen a couple of days ago,’ answered Sonia, trying to hide a slight note of ‘I told you so’ from her voice. ‘Was it harder than you’d thought?’

  Maggie threw her head back, sweeping her mane of hair away from her face.‘It’s all so melodramatic, isn’t it? So egocentric. Such a performance.’

  ‘But isn’t all dancing a performance?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. At least, not when you’re dancing with a partner. And if it is, then it’s just a performance for that one other person.’

  For the first time Sonia realised something about her friend: that for her, dancing had to be about another person. It was part of her search for the elusive perfect man. It was Maggie’s life’s quest.

  ‘Two minutes, everyone!’ shouted Corazón. ‘Two minutes.’ Sonia slipped out of the room to go to the cloakroom.Through the main glass doors, she could see two of the Norweigian girls and all of the taxi dancers clustered outside on the pavement, a cloud of cigarette smoke swirling around them. Her attention was then caught by a sound coming through a slightly open door on the other side of the entrance hall. Feeling like a spy, she peered through the crack.What she saw transfixed her.A group of perhaps a dozen people sat around the edge of the room listening to a guitarist. They were all scruffy, pale with tiredness, hair straggly and unkempt, mostly in jeans, and T-shirts with long-since faded motifs.The oldest-looking man, his wavy, tar-black hair in a pony-tail, was picking out a tune of such sweet soulfulness that Sonia felt a lump rising to her throat. It was this and the gentle clapping that accompanied him that had drawn her. No one made eye contact; their rhythms required the concentration that could only be sustained by staring into the void.

  One girl, willowy, hollow-eyed, in black Lycra dance trousers and scoop-necked top, stood up. In one hand she held a voluminous froth of dark green fabric and she now stepped into it, for a moment struggling with a broken zip. She seemed in no particular hurry.Then she fastened the buckles on her shoes.They were pale with dust. Finally, she removed the clip that held the hair away from her face and ringlets fell around her shoulders. She refastened it, ensuring that all the strands were now firmly caught. The guitarist continued and the clapped accompaniment went on. The pattern made by these sounds was like hand-made lace. It was hard to see how individual groups of stitches were going to fit in with the whole but after a while they formed the most astonishing and symmetrical pattern.

  The young woman was ready now. She began to join the clapping, as though tuning herself into the rhythm. Her hands held high, she moved seamlessly into a series of sensuous hand-movements, her hips swaying in counterpoint to the gestures of her arms. She danced in front of the guitarist, and he held her in an unerring gaze, readin
g every nuance of her dance, scrutinising every subtle flicker of her body and responding in rhythms and notes. One moment his fingers would caress the strings, another they would pluck them sharply to pick out a melody, anticipating rather than dictating. She leaned backwards, limbo-like, twisting her torso as she turned. It was a feat that was accomplished with gravity-defying balance. Sonia could not imagine how she had achieved this without falling to the ground, but the woman repeated the movement four, five, even six times to prove that it had been anything but a fluke, and each time her body curved itself into an even more impossible arc.

  Now upright again, she performed a series of deft pirouettes, flicking her body round at such speed that Sonia wondered if she had actually turned at all. One blink, and the spectator might have missed these breathtaking spins entirely. All the while, her feet were hammering out angry patterns on the floor. Every limb, every sinew of her body was engaged in this display, even her facial muscles, which at times contorted her beautiful features into a gargoyle-like grimace.