A Forbidden Love: An atmospheric historical romance you don't want to miss!

KERRY POSTLE left King’s College London with a distinction in her MA in French Literature. She’s written articles for newspapers and magazines, and has worked as a teacher of Art, French, German, Spanish, and English. Kerry’s first novel, The Artist’s Muse, about the relationship between Wally Neuzil and the artist Egon Schiele, came out in 2017.

She lives in Bristol with her husband. They have three grown-up sons.

Kerry is currently working on her third novel about the artist Raphael.

A Forbidden Love is her second novel.

Follow her on twitter @kerry_postle

A Forbidden Love

KERRY POSTLE

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Kerry Postle 2019

Kerry Postle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008330798

E-book Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008310271

Version: 2019-02-25

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Acknowledgements

Extract

Dear Reader …

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

To Paloma

and all the women who lost their lives during the Spanish Civil War

‘The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink – and in drinking understand themselves.’

Lorca

Prologue

March 1940, Malaga

Luis de los Rios ran out of the university building onto the Avenida de Cervantes, black jacket in one hand, tan leather folder in the other. The porter called after him, ‘Running late today, Seňor?’ But the unlikely academic had already been swallowed up by the bushes on the other side of the road.

He was on the Paseo del Parque, a long pathway shaded by trees that ran between the harbour and Malaga’s old town. Every Friday morning between ten and eleven Luis walked up and down it. Always on the same day, always at the same hour. He never taught then. He’d insisted it be written into his contract. No one knew why. And today he was running late.

At 9.50 a.m. a student had turned up at his door. Luis’ instinct had been to brush him aside but the better part of him had won out. He’d sat back, listened to the boy. Or tried to. He’d looked at his watch – 9.52 – and rolled his eyes. Looked at his watch again: 9.57. He thrummed his fingers loudly on the desk. Why was he not able to focus on anything the boy was saying? By seven minutes past ten Luis had had enough. The wooden chair he’d been sitting on went crashing to the floor. ‘I must go,’ he’d said, running to the door, hurtling along the corridor and flying out of the building. And wishing he’d listened to his instinct in the first place.

It was ten minutes past ten by the time Luis set foot on the path in the park. Lined by tall plane and palm trees, it felt like a cool, dark, cavernous cathedral and it calmed him instantly. He blinked. His eyes adjusted to make out strips of light and shade on the path beneath his feet. He looked upwards. The sun shot through the green ceiling above. He blinked again. His eyes focused further. He saw people as they walked back and forth under the high, fringed canopies, an optical illusion of unbroken movements bathed in radiance.

Was she here?

He was later than usual – ‘but not too late,’ he said to himself.

He proceeded to walk along the path. Purpose pumped through his veins. His skin tingled, senses crackled, as parakeets flew through the air, their plumage igniting into a vivid green. Their fiery wings blazed a trail into his soul, lifting him on his way.

He went past the old men, acknowledging them as he passed, just as he did every week; nodded to the widows, and the young women who shared their grief. They were here, survivors all, leading a semblance of a normal life, just as he was, refusing to let the past destroy them. They milled around, sat on benches, talked about the weather. Luis winced, moved by the dignity of the everyday in the face of a memory of the horror they all shared: civil war. A nation could not recover from it easily.

Yet if innocence had gone forever, hope had not. That’s why he was here, making his way to a clandestine meeting, the details of which he’d written in a note and handed to a girl over four years ago.

He didn’t even know if she’d read it.

Meeting place: the Antonio Muñoz Degrain monument, Parque de Malaga

Time: 10–11 a.m.

Day: Friday

I’ll wait for you.

Luis sat on a bench and looked at his watch: 10.45. He thought back to the last time he’d seen her. He’d pushed her away. He’d had to. It was time for her to go. But he had given her the letter. She had it. He hoped she’d read it.

He leant back against a bench and cast another glance down at his watch. 10.55. Time to start making his way back to the university. He’d always been a good timekeeper. A smile broke out across his face as he remembered that the girl he loved had not. He ran his fingers through his hair, resigned to the fact he’d not found her. This time.

He went to pick up his jacket and folder when the screech of a parakeet overhead distracted him. Threat or warning, either way it was too late. The brilliantly coloured bird had already left its dull coloured deposit on the shoulder of his crisp, white shirt.

‘Filthy beast!’

An old gypsy woman dressed in tattered clothes, a black shawl wrapped around her wiry grey hair, smiled at him through cataract-misted eyes. ‘Supposed to be lucky,’ she laughed at him. In the haze of her fading sight Luis had something of the angel about him. To Luis, she looked like a fat, old bird, too large and heavy for the tree above, sat as she was on a nest made of cloth, her skirts billowing up all around. He watched as she plunged her hand in amongst the many layers that surrounded her. She pulled out a dull-coloured patch with frayed edges and waved it at him.

For want of anything better to clean himself up with, Luis accepted her tattered offering. He rubbed away at his shirt as quickly as he could, his head nodding in the gypsy woman’s direction, grateful that all that was left of the parakeet’s slimy gift was a suspicious, damp stain on his left shoulder. She flashed her crucifix at him in response with a smile that made her eyes disappear. But now he really had to go. He walked swiftly back along the dry, dusty path, shouting back his thanks.

He’d very nearly packed all the emotions he’d allowed to spill out over this last hour back into the neat compartments he’d allotted them in his mind when he lurched backwards, pulled back by a familiar voice. ‘Don’t run off now, Paloma!’ A little girl, swift as a comet, hurtled past him, her flaming hair dragging his eyes along with her. When the speeding ball of fire screeched to a halt back along the path, not far from the Antonio Muñoz Degrain monument, Luis’ heart missed a beat.

The child clung on to a young woman with long, dark hair.

It was her. It was Maria.

Chapter 1

‘What are you going to do when you grow up?’ It was a clear spring day in 1936 and Maria lay back under the gnarled, black branches of the olive tree and looked up at the Andalucian sky above: vivid blue, and as cloudless as the future she saw for herself. She and her friend Paloma often sought shade and solace in this grove, under this tree, far away from the dust and heat of the village. And here they would dream.

‘When I grow up, I’m going to …’ Paloma began. She flicked out her fingers in frustration, brushing Maria’s own. ‘Oh, I don’t know!’ she cried in answer to the older girl’s question – but she did. She would grow up to do the same as her mother, and her mother’s mother before her. A husband would be found for her, she would have children, and both she and her husband would work up on the landowner’s estate. That was the way it was; that was the way it had always been. Paloma’s fate was as set as if written in the stars. It was only Maria who saw a future full of possibilities for her friend as she gazed into the bright, limitless sky above. And Paloma loved her for it.

Instinctively she turned on her side to wrap her limbs around Maria’s. Legs, arms, fingers interlaced, a tangle as fixed and as complex as the roots of the olive tree beneath.

The girls’ skins squelched, mollusc-like, as Maria pulled herself away. Pushing herself up to sitting, she propped her back up against the solid trunk of the tree.

She looked at Paloma, cheek squashed against forearm. The skin, usually so plump and firm, gathered in folds and pushed her left eye closed. It struck Maria that in that moment her friend took after her mother Cecilia, whose skin cascaded in folds all over her body; ill-fitting, stretched and worn out, through overuse no doubt. Maria’s father would often sing the woman’s praises – how she fed her children well, repaired their clothes, kept a spotless home, worked hard – but the fact remained that Paloma’s mother was irritable, illiterate and limited. There. Maria had thought it again. Guilt ran a feather over her skin, causing her to shiver. Perhaps she’d judged Paloma’s mother too harshly – her father was always telling her so – but the fact remained: if she didn’t show Paloma there was another way to live, a future other than the one she saw mapped out for herself, then her dear, sweet-natured friend would slowly but surely turn into a beast of burden, just like poor old Cecilia.

And Maria wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she allowed that to happen.

‘Sit up,’ she snapped. ‘So, what do you want to do when you grow up?’ She would have a response.

Paloma rubbed her eyes and sighed.

‘If you don’t answer I’ll have to ask somebody else.’ Maria’s voice was sharp and vaguely menacing. Her eyes scanned the olive grove for possible candidates. They alighted upon a herd of goats resting under a nearby tree. She recognised her own stupidity.

Thankfully Paloma did not.

‘No, it’s fine. I’ll play,’ the gentle soul said, her tone one of quiet resignation. Two years younger than Maria, she always felt grateful the older girl had chosen her and not her sister Lola to confide in. Lola was sixteen, the same age as Maria. It would have made sense for the two older girls to be close. But they weren’t. Never had been. They were fond enough of each other, and the fact that they were opposites in every single way was not, in itself, insurmountable. But that Paloma was so easy to be with, so innocent and good-natured, made her a perfect companion. Lola’s little sister had become the little sister that Maria had always wanted. She could love and protect her, and teach her about all the great and good things in life. Lola, on the other hand, came fully formed with a tongue as sharp as a knife.

Paloma brought her chin to nestle in the curve between her knees, her black hair still curled up flat with perspiration around her face. A stray lock misbehaved and draped itself like a dark rope against the deep pink of a cheek that was soft and plump once more. If Cecilia had ever looked like this Maria could not imagine it. She leant over towards her friend and pushed the dark unruly coil back with tenderness and waited for an answer.

‘Well,’ Paloma began, unsure how to proceed. To get married was the pinnacle of her life, and the thought of a wedding with an abundance of flowers, food, finery, and all the froth that went with it, had started to fill many a quiet moment. But to admit this, Paloma knew, would displease her friend. She waited for guidance.

‘Will you have children?’ Maria asked.

‘Y-yes,’ Paloma answered. ‘Once I’m married.’

‘Why?’ Maria asked.

‘Why? Why what?’

‘Why would you get married before having children?’

Paloma’s dark brown eyes widened; Maria’s creased with satisfaction. ‘In fact,’ Maria ventured, emboldened by the surprise in Paloma’s eyes, ‘why would you get married … at all?’ Her young friend’s already wide eyes turned into the fullest of moons.

The evening before, Seňor Suarez, the village teacher who used to work in Madrid and still had family and friends in the capital, had come to eat with Maria and her father, Doctor Alvaro.

The winds of change were blowing and whistling their sinewy path around Spain and though they’d barely touched Fuentes de Andalucía in any significant way, the more travelled citizens, of which Seňor Suarez was one, often brought back stories from the outside world whenever they returned to the sleepy little village. Suarez was teacher, philosopher, and general do-er of good deeds (mostly political), and a frequent dinner guest at Maria’s home where the precarious state of the government and how to best help workers in the area were his topics of choice. But last night, as he had smiled over at Maria and realised for the first time that she was a young woman, his conversation had taken a new turn.

‘You know, in Madrid, and I hear it’s the same in Malaga, things are so very different for women now. They have more freedom. More choice.’ He’d looked over at Doctor Alvaro who’d nodded for him to continue. Suarez had already told them that night about a growing vegetarian movement in the capital. Nothing his friend had to say, Alvaro thought to himself as he chewed on a particularly gristly bit of sausage, could be more challenging for both he and his daughter to swallow than that.

But then again.

‘A woman no longer has to get married if she wants to live with a man.’

The doctor had choked on the wine he’d just poured into his mouth. He’d expected talk of work opportunities, education … not co-habitation. But he was open-minded, fair, forward-thinking; he knew his good friend to be so too. ‘Please, carry on,’ he’d spluttered, waving his hands around as he struggled to keep his eyebrows from arching.

‘And it’s true that some women no longer want to have children.’

This time it had been Maria who’d choked, though her father’s eyebrows, try as he might to stop them, now leapt up to meet his fast receding hairline. This was a strange conversation indeed. Fascinating and embarrassing for Maria in equal measure. The teacher’s words had slapped her full in the face like a wave, waking her from her romantic dreams; as they receded, she’d taken in their meaning.

‘To have or not to have children, women see it as their right, their right to choose. Times are changing.’ And with that Seňor Suarez had coughed most dramatically, prompting the doctor to slap him hastily and heartily on the back while pointing his daughter towards the door with his eyes.

Maria hovered around the old oak table, topping up wine glasses and clearing away dishes as if she hadn’t noticed.

‘How’s the reading programme going up at El Cortijo del Bosque?’ Doctor Alvaro asked his friend.

El Cortijo del Bosque was the name of the local estate owned by Don Felipe, principal employer in the area. Work on his estate was agricultural. His workers were paid a pittance. Don Felipe himself was fabulously wealthy. And that was how it had been for centuries.

But things weren’t only changing in Madrid.

In February 1936 the left-wing coalition, known as el Frente Popular, had won the general election in Spain. This had allowed the good doctor and teacher to push through much needed reforms in Fuentes de Andalucía in general, and up at El Cortijo del Bosque in particular. In the early months of the year both had worked tirelessly to secure better pay and conditions for the estate’s workers, Suarez at the negotiating table, Alvaro behind the scenes. Guido, the estate manager, represented his employer’s interests, at times most savagely. But, snarl as he might, there was little he could do against what was legal; he had the will, but not the right, to resist.

Don Felipe, the landowner, was furious of course: with Guido and with the useless lumps of flesh who worked his land and whom he thought less of than his bulls and horses. As for Suarez and Alvaro, if Guido had ever mentioned them to him he certainly didn’t care enough about them to waste his energy remembering their names; they were men of no consequence. No, he was too busy shouting abuse at Manuel Azaňa, the new prime minister, along with the motley collection of left-wing degenerates that made up the government, to take any notice of them. Don Felipe despaired. Even his beloved Falangist party, a party that believed in the true greatness of Spain, in the monarchy, the Catholic Church and centuries of tradition, was coming under attack.

Don Felipe’s Spain, the Spain he knew and loved, was disappearing.

He had no choice but to whisk his family off to their second home in Biarritz.

And thus Suarez had no choice but to seize the moment and take education to the workers so that at the next round of negotiations they would be able to help themselves. That was what he was doing presently up at El Cortijo del Bosque. And Guido could do nothing to prevent it, no matter what orders his master barked at him from the south of France. But progress was slow.

‘The truth is we need more teachers,’ Suarez had confessed.

‘The truth is very few people in the village can read,’ Alvaro had replied. The sound of a creaking door disturbed him. His eyes had shot round like a searchlight at the top of a watch tower. There, standing in the kitchen doorway, a copy of Don Quixote clutched to her body, was his daughter.

‘You can do it,’ he’d said, knowing she’d been listening to them and confident that she would relish the chance. She’d nodded, pulling back her chair to re-join them. But before her skirt could touch the rush seat her father’s voice had scooped her back up and pushed her out of the room and towards the staircase. ‘Now bed, my girl!’

‘But if I’m to help out surely I need to …’

‘Bed!’

That night Maria hadn’t minded that her attempts to stay up late had failed. She had gone to bed happy and excited. Happy that she would be helping Seňor Suarez with the reading programme, excited at what he’d told her about women in Madrid. All night ideas of choice and freedom had stampeded around in her head looking for somewhere to live.

By morning they’d found a home. The teacher’s words were now her own.

And so that was how Maria was here, under her favourite olive tree, about to take a familiar game in a new direction. Starting to feel sticky, she shook her hair, generating at most a slight, warm breeze. She cast a ‘brace yourself’ look in Paloma’s direction: her friend was about to become the testing ground for her very own liberal education project.

She repeated, as word-perfectly as she could, what Seňor Suarez had said about women, children and marriage the night before. She lingered on the phrase ‘right to choose’.

Paloma said nothing. Maria continued.

‘Seňor Suarez—’ Maria slipped in his name because Paloma liked him ‘—said that women in Madrid have more …’ The older girl paused before opening her arms out wide and shouting out ‘freedom.’ She could not have drawn any more attention to the word if she’d underlined it and decorated it with a bright red ribbon.

Paloma fell back against the tree.

‘Well, you could get married, if you want to,’ Maria backtracked. ‘But you don’t have to. That’s what I’m saying. Things are changing. Gone are the days when parents start planning a wedding the moment a boy looks at a girl.’ Paloma breathed heavily out through her nose as if by the expulsion of air alone she could find room in her head for this shocking revelation. That she dropped her head to one side suggested that she’d failed. It was far too heavy a load for her fourteen-year-old brain to manage. She looked questioningly at Maria and rubbed the back of her head as if it were a magic lamp. A light flickered in her eyes.

‘It’s true,’ Maria insisted. ‘According to Seňor Suarez, women are having babies and they aren’t even married. In Madrid. Even Malaga!’ Paloma screwed up her nose then let out a snort. Madrid and Malaga were both as alien to her as the moon and every bit as inaccessible. ‘And some women in the city don’t even want to have children. At all. Not ever,’ Maria continued. ‘That’s what Seňor Suarez says. They’d much rather have a career.’

The older girl looked up at the sky and hid herself there a while, a smile of satisfaction on her lips. She’d delivered what she told herself was her coup de grâce (a phrase she’d learnt quite recently after having found it in some book or other, and she congratulated herself on having found an opportunity to use it, even if it was inside her own head). She’d chased away all thoughts of husbands and playing children from this game of theirs.