A Spanish Girl and Her English Soldier – A Love Beyond Boundaries

Our Paris in our Springtime

Ana had returned in early March and we had lived our very own Parisian dream, exploring Paris and all it had to offer, which was a lot.  She did not pick up her History of Art course as the gap had been too long and so we were pretty much free apart from the few lessons that I had to give.  We did not seem to need to learn to be together – we just fitted and went with the flow. Many evenings were spent chez Luc enjoying his mother’s Cous Cous or Paella, his tales and his insistence on introducing us to his encyclopaedic knowledge of wine and liqueurs which always involved a tasting session. He was a wonderfully well educated man with whom we could discuss everything from philosophy to art and music, politics or history and from whom one could always learn.  Other evenings would see us jump in the car and go exploring, sometimes the well known attractions such as Versailles, sometimes just going where ‘Ponchita’, as Ana named my Vitesse, would take us.  We both enjoyed the simple sharing of little things. But, we also had some memorable evenings and nights including one where we finished up in the old market of Les Halles at the Pied de Cochon on my birthday where I managed to eat several bowls of strawberries and chunks of strawberry tart, much to Ana’s amazement and amusement.  It was a place where dinner jackets and long gowns blended with butchers’ aprons in a shared enjoyment of real Parisian cuisine.  On another evening, we found ourselves being chased by the Garde Mobile during a riot. And I remember going to a stunning Gipsy show with a rendering of Black Eyes that still sends tingles down my spine to this day. We occasionally allowed others into our lives. Peter, my German equivalent at the Lycée was one. He made us laugh so much as he would not go anywhere without planning it on a map first – we made him very nervous as I did not ever use a map. But he was a genuinely kind friend.  Ian Cunningham, a fellow army officer at Leeds swung an attachment to the French cavalry riding school in Saumur and we went down to see him and he came to Paris.  For reasons I will never understand, I was convinced that the Dustin Hoffman film, Little Big Man had been very funny the first time I had seen it and so I persuaded Ian and Ana to go and see it – as I said, for reasons I will never understand. Neither Ana nor Ian were too impressed with my choice.  Nevertheless, a little more than a year later he would be my best man at our wedding in the Cathedral in Ciudadela in Menorca, by which time his thighs had recovered from Saumur.

For me, this life was a simple choice. It was what I wanted and it was all I wanted. There was no internal struggle.  For Ana things were much more complicated. She had the constant pull from her family (Mother, Father and sisters) whom she loved and about whom I know she felt a bit of guilt.  So after a couple of months, with the father opening up his new hotel in Benidorm, it was decided that she would go back to Spain towards the third week of May and help him with the hotel and get a job as well so she could earn some money. The plan was loosely that she would come and visit me for a short while when I was back in England and then return to Spain where I would join her for a summer holiday.  Plan is perhaps better replaced with a word such as concept. Selfishly, I was not entirely happy but had enough sense to recognise that she had to do what she felt to be right.  I knew that separation meant pain and anxiety – ironically we both feared the other meeting someone else, which looking back on it now might seem foolish, but I could not bare the thought.

As I think back on those two months together after Madrid, I remember how my return to Paris was warmly welcomed by my pupils, who had been concerned about my absence, which was touching. Unfortunately their concern was not reflected by the Registrar who was quite grumpy about the whole thing and banned me from having any more classes in my room as he felt it to be not correct.  It was a shame as we had quite a good routine running where the pupils (I hasten to add these were pupils in the pre Grande Ecole course, the equivalent of years one and two of an English degree and thus pretty much my age) would come to my room in the morning, make me coffee and listen to English pop music on my record player while I would help them understand and hence learn more English, quite successfully I might add.  It is perhaps lucky that the Registrar had not been told that I conducted many of these lessons while still in bed……

I remember the pain of the separation after the magical time in Madrid and Salamanca and I marvel that the separation was for less than 2 weeks. I remember  somehow securing the room next to mine in the Lycée so that Ana could return to Paris. I look at her cable dated Wednesday 8th March 1972 telling me that she would be arriving at the Gare d’Austerlitz on Friday 10th at 9.30 and I relive the overwhelming sense of excitement and joyful anticipation mixed with anxiety that somehow it might not happen.  And I remember her arrival even now as though I were living it with every emotion. There is a romance about train stations whether it be the sadness of departures or the thrill of arrivals. This time it was the latter.  Could my heart have beaten any faster or harder?  I could scarcely breathe until she was in my arms. Her smile, oh that smile, that exploded inside the Gare d’ Austerlitz and lit up the whole of Paris and all of my world; those huge dark brown eyes radiating love and joy that pierced straight through to my heart; the warmth of her embrace and the softness of her lips; the whispers of love and happiness, of relief and disbelief that meant that we were alone and still, in a world of our own amongst the crowd of scurrying passengers, the station announcements, the noise of the trains pulling in and out.  Questions, laughter, touches to ensure that it was real, touches to say I love you, touches to say don’t let’s separate again, touches to say you are mine – more words travelled through our eyes and our hands than our mouths.  It was Paris, Spring was coming and we were together, in love and there, in that big wonderful city, alone in our childlike magical dream.  And we really did live that dream.

Saying goodbye at Orly Airport some two months later in May was not easy. It was painful; it was sad but that time together had helped us to build an amazing sense of oneness which would endure through whatever was going to be thrown at us. And as at her arrival, so at the departure: the little touches, the soft kisses, but this time the smile was sad and the eyes were wet and as she walked away she looked alone and vulnerable and I just wanted to grab her and pull her back. It was agony. And today a little more than a month after her final departure, I just want to grab her and pull her back.

Apart again

And we were back to love through letters.  One amazing development was that a great friend of mine, Mike Dharma Ratne, had suggested that we could come and live with him and Heidi in his flat in Leeds for the Autumn term.  It was an astonishingly kind offer as he was due to get married to her in September and we would be in their nest.  But it was hard to resist. It gave us hope and something solid to look forward to, crucially a way to avoid another painful separation.  We were both so happy about the idea.

I was due to finish at the Lycée in June.  There was then the matter of my summer holiday attachment to the Army, which was one of the requirements of the Cadetship.  I will immodestly now claim a brainwave. I have mentioned that the Army did not really know what to do with me while in Paris, but formally I was under command of the British Military Attache at the Embassy.  He had a staff that included two charming retired officers who had invited me to the odd diplomatic do and otherwise left me alone.  So I went to see them and explained that I thought it would be a great idea to finish off my year in France with an attachment to the French Army. They too thought this was an excellent idea and agreed that they would try and persuade the Regimental Adjutant to support my request.  I pushed my luck a little further by asking if I could do it somewhere in the South (i.e. closer to Spain) and then, knowing full well that a year in Paris had not helped my physical fitness, suggested that it would be wonderful if I could get the experience of an armoured Regiment (meaning no walking!).  Astonishingly they too thought this was an excellent idea. Even more surprisingly the Regiment agreed after I had been interviewed by the Regimental Lieutenant Colonel.

The next hurdle involved 3 dissertations that I was meant to have completed during my year in Paris.  But I had been a little distracted and had done precisely nothing about them.  I had not even read the books about which I was meant to be writing. The deadline was suddenly horribly close and I still remember that I was trying to write them on the ferry going back to England on the day they were due to be handed in at Leeds. But I was in love and I was on my own mission, oblivious to the trouble I was heading for with both the university and the Army.

For a variety of reasons, Ana could not get over to England for the few days that we had wanted and soon my posting to the 4eme Regiment de Chasseurs came through and I drove off to La Valbonne, near Lyons.  I was looked after so well and kindly that the whole thing passed quickly and easily.  I was invited to observe exercises, watch the Bastille day (14th July) parade and stay the weekend at one of the Officer’s chateau. The final farewells involved much embracing and sharing of momentos and then off to the Consulate’s formal reception before jumping in the car and heading South and West. I was on my way to Benidorm, once a tiny and charming fishing village, now a fast developing tourist resort.

Reunited on the Costa Brava

I drove through the night and got to the hotel the following day, 24th July. And once again I relived that highly charged moment of reconnection, once again I melted as I saw her and wrapped my arms around her, held her tightly never wanting to let go again. She was if anything even more beautiful with a dark tan, but what really mattered was feeling the strength of her happiness at seeing me and being with me again, of feeling that she really wanted me to be there and above all feeling the sheer force of her love. During those two months, Ana had been with her father in Benidorm, then returned to Madrid for a while before returning to Benidorm where she had found some work.  Her father had got his new hotel up and running with her help. She had found the atmosphere quite unpleasant and was shocked by the behaviour of many of the guests. Her worst experience was, however, with an acquaintance of her father who, under the guise of being able to offer her work in England, had taken her out for  a drink and then tried to tell her that I would not be faithful, so how silly of her to be.  His simply disgusting behaviour (made worse as he was married) culminated in him trying to kiss Ana – but he had reckoned without her strength of character and her strength, for she was deceptively strong when angered. And he had angered her very much.  It made me very happy to know that my being there made her feel safer.  She also wanted to make sure that everyone met me, as she had a horror of people thinking that I was of the English hooligan variety, which sadly predominated in Benidorm at that time. I think Ana was also keen for her parents to see just how much I loved her and cared for her so that, when she was away with me, they would know that not only was she loved, she was safe.  That was not a difficult task and I hope that just the way in which I looked at her would have comforted them no end. And I would continue to look at her like that for the rest of her life.

Ana continued to work in the mornings as she wanted to save money for her time in England so I tried to help her father with his hotel.  There were many Pythonesque moments.  The builders were finishing rooms on the day of arrival of guests while we rushed to prepare them and hoped that reception could slow the flow. I was asked to scrub the pool sides to get rid of the waterline marks left by suntan lotions, and being a good Grenadier, just got on with it straight away, with rather surprised hotel guests in the pool…. I even compered an evening’s entertainment.  I think most of the guests were a little surprised to hear my very English accent. But the afternoons and evenings were ours to enjoy.  Benidorm finishes abruptly and all around it there continued to exist a wondrous Spain of orange groves, peaceful little villages, green hills and isolated beaches.  So in the afternoons, we would jump in the car and drive off, sometimes to an empty beach, sometimes up in the hills, off the roads and down tracks – and we would talk, smoke and eat, perhaps a ‘bocadillo'(sandwich) on a beach or in the countryside or sometimes something cooked at a family run restaurant which was just their own dining room in their house.  I managed to get the Triumph stuck on a beach twice but we got her out with the help of some French campers who, as they proudly announced were doing “Camping sauvage” (savage or wild camping) – mind you anything less savage than their amazing set up would be hard to imagine.

In the evenings around 11, after supper, the two of us would wander off to enjoy a little night life in the clubs around Benidorm. Many were still small intimate night clubs where we could chat while sipping Cointreau on ice or just look into each other’s eyes and tell each other silently that we were meant to be together and that we never wanted that togetherness to end.  We would dance slowly and I would pull her close to me, breathe in her scent, touch her silky hair and wonder how on earth I could have been so so lucky.  Her rhythm, her innate ability to dance to both the main rhythm and the sub rhythms was astonishing and sadly something I could not match.  Her Chilean blood had mixed magically with the Spanish so that her dancing was totally instinctive and natural. Her lightness of foot, the suppleness of her body meant that she seemed to float around the floor. And without ever trying to be, her dancing was so sensual. Then we would wander back along the beach to the flat, often ending up on the balcony chatting and smoking into the early hours, sometimes alone sometimes with her sister Lola.

Meant to be

We managed to get away for a few days so that we could be entirely on our own. We drove South, beyond Alicante and found a hotel stood alone on a lovely beach in a bay. It proudly displayed 5 stars and, as an impoverished young man, I was a little concerned, but amazingly the hotel was so new and hence not full that a deal was struck.  It was bliss.  The beach was lovely. Ana had a new swimming costume, a dark blue bikini and just looked jaw droppingly stunning.  The beach was virtually ours.  Then came a moment that I feel was seminal.  There was a current and undertow on one side of the beach and somehow Ana had been sucked into it.  She could not get out of it and waved seeking help as she was being pulled away.  I have always been a strong swimmer, ironically encouraged by my father who in most matters had shown precious little interest.  And so I set off to rescue the girl without whom I knew I could not live.  It was not brave – to be brave I think you have to be afraid and my only fear was that Ana was in danger.  I did not think about it. I just went for it and I did it. I grabbed hold of her and fought my way against the current, the waves, the undertow – and the sea, who surely knew how much I loved it, relented and gave her back to me.  As we hit the beach I think something magic happened. It really was as though somebody had said “you will be together, nothing can separate you”.  We did not talk about it, but we both felt it. Somehow, surely if I had saved her or been allowed to save her then it must mean that this is meant to be.  I addressed a quiet thank you to the sea, my friend since childhood, and although I was cross with it for what had so nearly happened, I was also so relieved and grateful.  I looked at the beautiful girl next to me and whispered “Je t’aime, te quiero, I love you” and she replied “moi aussie je t’aime, te quiero, I love you” and with that smile she lit up the next 45 years. And if I had saved her life, it was as nothing when you look at what she did for me: she gave me my life for the rest of hers.