Swansong

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She was angry at life. She painted, sometimes as if to blot out the rage. Her fury was visible in the vigorous strokes of her brushwork.

To be seventy three years old was in itself enough reason for anger; and now winter was here and it was cold in the mountains. She stayed in bed most mornings, rose late, ate a frugal meal of rice or beans, drank a glass of red wine, followed by strong coffee, then went up slowly to her studio at the top of the old house.

Today she had not been in the mood for painting. Out of a yellowish winter sky, a few snowflakes had fallen, covering the skylight of the icy room, an unusual thing in this part of Andalusia. Yet she had remained in the studio, seated in an armchair until night had fallen. She was wrapped in her alpaca cloak, with the Peruvian Indian knitted hat pulled low over her grey hair.

All afternoon she wondered if she would be able to bear the exquisite agony of another spring. Yesterday she had made a fool of herself over the man with the beautiful eyes, and now she was despondent. Yet perhaps her spirits would soar dangerously once more after this leaden gloom. She would move back out of the village to the little farmhouse down the long track. She would once more, perhaps, make an undignified fool of herself over some young man…at seventy! At least she hoped she would. She laughed. Silly old fool, not in years had she contrived to combine sexual fulfilment with a marriage of minds. There had been one or two grapplings with old drunken bachelor peasants, the lame ducks of the village, addicted to marihuana or drink. The scene had to be prepared carefully. These encounters were only admissible in moments of despair, and then only aesthetically possible in the Breughelian gloom of the basement bakehouse. On a wooden bench in the dim warm glow of the old bread oven, where the glowing embers of two huge encina logs cast a dim orange light.

Ten years ago, at the age of sixty, Lula had pretended to forty-something, and had mostly got away with it, she believed. She still did not look her age thanks to surgery, and the house was gently lit; yet seventy was not thirty, nor even forty.

She had been a great beauty, not of the vulgar flamenco kind, but with dark long lashed eyes and good bone structure and an aristocratic demeanour. Her garbled intellectual pretensions had not been acquired at school, for she had been raised in an age when women were mere chattels and best left uneducated. There had been the catholic church, and a governess from England, and more church, catechism communion and confirmation, all of which she had rejected.

Now she believed in she knew not what; some wishy washy elemental spiritual force into which she would be absorbed when she died. She had had a voracious appetite for books, and had read many, absorbing indigestible quantities of religious philosophy, intellectual argument, South American Indian culture, Islamic ideas, Indian mythology. Now this jumble of ideas went round and round in a confused mind. Her conversation consisted of intense, not quite comprehensible and inadvertently comic monologues. It was exhausting to be in her company, so she was left more and more to her own devices; her own daughter with whom she had quarrelled almost thirty years ago, now lived in France somewhere and they had not spoken since.

Lula had been irresistible, all those years ago, and once a young woman had lived in the knowledge that she could have any man she wished for who was not homosexual (and even some who were), it became a mindset. She still believed that men desired her. Her bones might ache, but still she had lust for life; and just plain lust. It still persisted, that lust which was part of her makeup and had been a source of misery and joy to her. It had torn her apart at times, had led to her crazed escapades, her running away from her husband, her Mexican divorce, her second possibly bigamous marriage. Then there were all her ‘unsuitable’ sheet companions, and later the boyfriends she had stolen from her daughter, fucking her up in the process. What the hell?

Only yesterday, late in the afternoon, when the light was fading in a chillingly clear sky, she had seen the man with beautiful eyes. Right there, not four metres away from her own front door. In the shop across the narrow street. (She had been buying carrots for a cocido.)

“Mmm. You have beautiful eyes,” she had murmured behind the cluttered racks of detergent, toothpaste, biscuits, and coffee both instant and real.

“Thank you Señora,” he’d looked at her quickly, bathing her in the intensity of his regard. Fortunately the light was not very good, and this gave her hope.

“Are you from Asturias? There’s something northern about your looks,” she flashed her brilliant most seductive smile, (Crazed old ladies might say anything really), “and I’ll have five kilos of potatoes.”

She didn’t want them, but she would be unable to lift the bag of potatoes and the young man might be kind enough to help her into the back of her house, past the paintings and then of course she would ask him to sit for her, or stand. Who knew what might happen?

She could still be enchanting, almost seductive. She knew how to reel them in with a certain smile and after all men were only after one thing.

And so he had come into the house and followed her through the big cobbled hall with the embroidered hangings on the rustic walls, the 17th century tiles on the fireplace. Up seven shallow uneven steps then through a door into the sitting room. It was one of those rooms with smaller rooms off it, and on their way to the kitchen they went thrillingly past the half open door to her darkened bedroom where the sheets were tumbled with insomnia. He followed her across the large room, over the undulating terracotta floor, past the red and gilded bureau into the dining room with its billowing floor of ancient brick, then through the wide open arch into the little kitchen, perched in a gallery which overlooked the sheltered cobbled courtyard with its orange tree; golden apples of the Hesperides, vibrant against the dark green foliage, even in the dim blue light of a cold winter’s evening.

Her heart was beating. She ignored the pain in her leg. She did not want to seem sprightly, that was an adjective for the elderly, but yes she wanted to seem not the old crock she felt inside. The yearning lent her wings and she flew ahead of him without the aid of the stick which she needed on damp days. She smiled and thanked him, hoping he had not seen her grimace, nor imagined her as a dark spider, scuttling across her web and pulling in the strands.

“Would you like coffee, a drink?”

She was already in the kitchen her back to the counter. He put the sack of potatoes on the floor where she pointed in the gloom. He turned to look back into the dining room.

A couple of table lamps far away across the room cast a soft golden glow. Her paintings were hanging all around the pale brick-coloured walls. Luminous plants in vibrant colours; a dry stone wall with lavender, Corsican pines and a windswept sky; two pugs, like black velvet in a willow basket, eyes glinting and bulging; a knife and some fruit; a beautiful young woman sitting quietly, her hands folded in her lap; the portrait, head and shoulders of a handsome young man gazing intensely. Then there was another even larger picture of a man seen from behind, painted from the thighs upwards, in baggy corduroy trousers, an older man, a rough country fellow, muscular, all browns and chrome yellow and olive green, naked to the waist, hunched slightly, warily looking back over his shoulder as though being caught taking a piss, or masturbating.

His beautiful eyes stopped at that one.

She found they usually did. It was erotically charged.

“The paintings?”

“They’re mine. I painted them. All except this one, she pointed to the beautiful young woman. That’s me when I was younger, painted by my sister.” Her shoulder clicked as she raised her finger to point.

He nodded, his dark eyes raked her face. Of course she looked different now, dammit, but that did not mean she felt different inside.

Then he had put down the potatoes, mumbling his excuses. He must go now.

“Adios Señora.”

He had left her trembling, her buttocks resting against the cold white marble of the kitchen worktop. He had walked out through the arch into the golden room; out through the small doorway, leaving her in the bluish gloom, her hands resting on the cool surface on either side of her, her well constructed breasts thrust forward. A pose intended to provoke, now sadly pointless.

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