Lucy Gordon - The Stand-In Bride

The only one of the family Maggie took to was a young cousin, José, a boy of fifteen, who idolised her and constantly found excuses to visit their house. His infatuation was so youthfully innocent that neither she nor Roderigo could take offence.

Maggie had blotted out many of the details of that time, so that now she could no longer be sure exactly when she’d begun to see that Roderigo lived mainly on credit. He had expensive habits and very little way of servicing them. The ‘business’ was a joke through which he could claim tax breaks without making a profit. And why should a man bother with profit when he’d just married a wife with money?

He went through Maggie’s modest wealth like water. When the ready cash had gone the house in England was sold and the money brought to Spain. Maggie tried to insist that it should be banked for a rainy day, but he bought her an expensive gift and swept her off on vacation, both of which she paid for.

He silenced her protests with passion. In his view, as long as he was a good husband in bed, she had nothing to complain of. When she argued he began to show the other side of his character, the bully. How dared she criticise her husband? This was Spain, where the man was the master.

Maggie began to see with dreadful clarity that Roderigo was a fair-weather charmer, delightful while things were going well, but unpleasant when life was hard. And over the four years of their marriage, life grew bitterly hard. In that time she grew up fast, changing from a naive girl into a clear-eyed woman, surviving the disintegration of her world. Romantic dreams vanished, replaced by a realism that was almost, but not quite, cynicism.

She managed to cling onto a little money, standing up to Roderigo in a way that once wouldn’t have been possible. But it was a waste of time. When threats didn’t work he simply forged her signature, and then the money was gone.

Why hadn’t she left him, then? Looking back, she often wondered. Perhaps it was because, having paid such a terrible price for her love, she couldn’t bear to admit that it had all been for nothing. And besides, she was pregnant.

When she found out she entertained one last pathetic hope that Roderigo would finally discover in himself a sense of responsibility, and put some work into his business. Instead, he resorted to crime, petty at first, then more serious, always just managing to get away with it. Success went to his head. He grew careless. A theft was traced to him, and only the best efforts of an expensive lawyer got him off. His confidence grew. He was untouchable.

Then the police called again. A man had broken into a wealthy house in Granada, and been disturbed by the owner. The thief attacked him and fled, leaving the man in a coma. Roderigo’s fingerprints had been found in the house.

He protested his innocence, swearing falsely that at the time he had been at home with his wife. Sick at heart, Maggie refused to confirm the lie. He was arrested, tried and found guilty.

The day before the trial began she went into premature labour. Her six-month daughter was born, and survived a week. During that time Maggie never left her side. The news that Roderigo had been found guilty and sentenced to ten years seemed to reach her from a great distance.

She would never forget the last time she saw him, in prison. Once this had been the man she loved. Now he stared at her, hard faced, his eyes bleak with hate. ‘Be damned to you!’ he raged. ‘You put me here. What kind of a wife are you?’

Exhausted and grief stricken from the loss of her child, she fought for the strength to say, ‘I couldn’t lie. You weren’t with me that night.’

‘I wasn’t in that house-not then. I went there once before, that’s why my fingerprints were there-I stole a few trinkets, but I harmed nobody. I swear I wasn’t there that night. I never attacked that man.’

She gazed at him, wondering why he seemed to be at the end of a long tunnel. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said bleakly.

‘But you must believe me. My lawyer-there is to be an appeal-you must help him-’

‘I’m going back to England. I never want to see you again.’

‘Curse you,’ he raged. ‘Curse you for a false bitch!’

‘You curse me Roderigo, but I also curse you, for the loss of our child. I curse the day I met you.’ The tunnel was getting longer, taking him further and further. ‘My baby is dead,’ she whispered. ‘My baby is dead.’

His anger collapsed, and he began to weep. ‘Maggie, I beg you-don’t go! Stay here and help me. Maggie, don’t go!’

She had left the prison with his cries ringing in her ears. José, now a lanky young man of nineteen, was waiting for her. He took her to the airport and kissed her goodbye with tears in his eyes.

It was José who wrote to her three months later to say that Roderigo had died of pneumonia. He had simply lain there, refusing to fight for his life, waiting for the end. Maggie, who’d thought her misery could get no deeper, had discovered that she was wrong.

To despair was now added guilt. Her dreams were full of Roderigo’s cries, swearing his innocence, begging her to stay and fight for him. He had been a bad husband, selfish and deceitful, spending her money, turning on her, destroying her life. But her conscience accused her of being a bad wife, deserting him in his hour of need. If she had stayed, perhaps he would be alive…

She had fought back in the only way she could, by denying the past. She resumed her maiden name, blotting out Roderigo from every corner of her life. Her passport, her driving licence, the rent book to the shabby little apartment which was now all she could afford, all proclaimed her Margaret Cortez. Roderigo Alva might never have existed.

It was only sometimes, in the darkness, that she heard him still, shrieking his desperation and fear. Then she would bury her head beneath the pillows and pray hopelessly for an absolution that would never come.

At Malaga Airport a car was waiting to take them the hour’s journey through the Andalucian countryside to Granada. Catalina was filled with excitement. ‘I’m so glad to be back,’ she said. ‘You will love it here, Maggie.’

‘Whereabouts in Spain did you live before?’ Sebastian asked from Catalina’s other side.

‘In the city of Granada,’ Maggie replied briefly.

‘So you know this place?’ Catalina sounded disappointed. ‘You didn’t say. But then, you never talk of that time.’ She patted her hand sympathetically. ‘Forgive me.’

‘We’re not actually going to the city, are we?’ Maggie said, anxious to forestall one of the girl’s sentimental outbursts. ‘I believe Don Sebastian’s house is a few miles outside.’

‘In the foothills of the Sierra Nevada,’ he said. ‘It is the most beautiful place on earth.’ And for the first time Maggie thought she detected real emotion in his voice.

He was silent for a few miles, then he said, ‘There,’ in the same tone. And she began to understand.

Don Sebastian’s ‘house’ could be seen on one of the lower slopes. It was actually more like a small Moorish palace, sitting serenely overlooking the valley. It seemed to be built on several levels, and even from a distance Maggie could perceive its beauty, how it extended into gardens, towers, rambling this way and that in leisurely style.

The car had begun to climb a road that twisted and turned among elm and cypress, giving her glimpses of the lovely building, that were snatched away almost at once, to be replaced a moment later with a closer look, even more beautiful.

They came at last to some wrought iron gates that opened, apparently of their own accord, to let them sweep through. A little more climbing and they were there, the front doors standing open and a middle-aged man and woman waiting ready to greet them. Maggie guessed these were the chief steward and housekeeper. Behind them there was a crowd of servants, who had evidently come to see their new mistress arrive.