Free The Poet's Wife by Rebecca Stonehill Page B

walks far too fast for me.
    ‘The rich are suffering. The poor are suffering. What’s right with him!’ she calls back over her shoulder and I laugh happily, understanding nothing.
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    W hen I am ten years old, the king dismisses Primo de Rivera. But this is the extent of my political understanding; my world revolves around games in the courtyards and garden of Carmen de las Estrellas, meals with my family, lessons in the attic and hours spent reading and dreaming in the shade of my orange tree.
    Every so often Mother takes us to visit Aurelia and her family. I long for these excursions because they are so alien to our everyday activities. My family must be such a curious sight, winding our way over the mountain paths with Mother at the helm and an assortment of youngsters trailing behind. We spend a few hours there in the yard of Abuela Aurelia’s cave, playing with her grandchildren and helping her to collect bits of twine and esparto grass she crafts chairs from.
    Pablo is a few years older than me. He is the most serious boy I’ve ever met but he intrigues me. He has a clear talent for drawing, but I’m also fascinated by the walls of silence he’s pencilled around himself and forbidden anyone to enter. Whilst the little ones noisily race around the yard after the chickens, I like to sit beside Pablo on the roof of the cave watching him draw. I always sit at a slight distance so he’s not uncomfortable, and I never feel he objects to my presence.
    On the way home from visiting our friends, we pass a small chapel on a lonely mountain pass. Mother’s hand instinctively flickers up to cross herself and we all follow suit, a fumble of fingers. My parents are officially Catholic, yet they both strongly feel we shouldn’t receive our worldly education in an institution that Mother describes as being riddled with Catholic dogma and disease. So several years ago Father converted the attic into a schoolroom with wooden desks and chairs and a blackboard, convinced that without the distraction of windows to gaze through, we’d daydream less. His plan failed of course, because when a child doesn’t want to listen to their teacher, the setting is irrelevant.
    We’ve had tutor after tutor, a number of them cracking under the pressure. Fernando constantly clowns about, rarely taking lessons seriously at all, and what with Alejandro forever staring into space and Juan looking like he’ll break into a hundred pieces if asked a question, I’m frankly unsurprised that several of our tutors barely last a month.
    One morning, Fernando manages to squeeze himself into the back cupboard filled with notebooks and chalk sticks. Giggling away, the rest of us close the door on him and return to our seats to wait for the tutor to arrive. When he does appear, he eyes us all suspiciously because we’re seated so quietly at our desks staring up at him. The poor man’s downfall is his failure to notice that one child is absent and he proceeds with the lesson whilst we bend our heads over our arithmetic. Moments later, the soft mewing sound of a kitten comes from the back cupboard. The tutor glances round, but as the noise stops, he continues writing sums on the blackboard. After a while, the mewing resumes. Bewildered, the tutor pulls dust-laden boxes away from the wall, searching for a lost cat. María flicks her hair and innocently suggests that perhaps it has become trapped in the back cupboard.
    Bending down, the tutor unlatches the door and as it swings open on its hinges, a skinny boy jumps out, chuckling like a little ghoul. The tutor is given such a fright that he lets out the most high-pitched scream I’ve ever heard from a man in my life, leaving him mortified and blushing the shade of ripe tomatoes. Mother hears the commotion, claro – she hears everything – and flies up the stairs as fast as her long legs can take her. The tutor takes the rest of the day off with a migraine and Mother sits at the front of the classroom,