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

The wedding ceremony was like a dream. The bride looked more beautiful, lovelier than I had ever seen her.  And in her expressions I saw the solemn and I saw the joyous. We exchanged rings saying to each other: “Recibe esta alianza en señal de mi amor y fidelidad a ti” (Receive this ring as a signal of my love and faithfulness to you”) and how I loved her soft Spanish voice, so gentle, almost childlike, nervous perhaps, but determined and brave; we all signed the great registry book and then that extraordinary moment heading towards the evening light framed by the huge doors.  You can see the joy on both our faces as we emerged onto the steps and then somehow through the happy chaos, people crammed themselves into cars higgledy piggedly and amazingly everyone found themselves walking across the white sands of Cala Blanca to the Reception in the restaurant right on the beach. But it wasn’t really a reception; it was a party, a vibrant, noisy Spanish party and it sucked everyone into its merriment and its beat.  And somehow in all that noise and celebration, we found a quiet moment, just the two of us on the soft white sand and I remember that look she gave me. It was love; it was accompanied by the sweetest of little smiles but her eyes held me and they told me many things:”we have done it; we are together for always; you are mine and I am yours; I love you – love me please forever” – and how could I not for those eyes could melt Antartica.  The photographer surprised us but as you can see in the picture below, Ana does not waver. The courage she had shown in choosing me, in choosing to leave her country and start a new life is perhaps a little hard to grasp for those who are used to cheap easy flights, a mass of communication options and the expectation that almost everyone speaks English. But if you travel back to 1973, it was very different. Even now I cannot quite believe how much she must have loved me to do that and I think it also says that she must have realised just how much I loved her.

And then came the time to toss her rose and once again that smile lit up the night, but perhaps more importantly for me, it lit up my life; it said “I am happy; I have married the man I want to spend my life with…..”

I called this chapter Flowers on the Sands of Cala Blanca.  There were two flowers that evening: one was a lovely rose that had been in Ana’s hands through the ceremony and beyond. I loved its beauty, its simplicity and its singularity.  The other was more precious, more delicate, more exotic, more beautiful, more sensitive, more colourful, more scented, more complex, more full of life, one that would enrich all who came across her and felt the magic that she had to share.  How I loved her and throughout the 43 years that we were to have together, I learned to appreciate the wonders of that extraordinary beauty more each day. The external beauty was but a symptom of that which lay within. I would spend the rest of our lives together being happily surprised to discover more and more of that treasure day by day. What I did not know at the time was that what I saw then was simply a baby bud that would with time flourish before finally exploding into a rare wonder and beauty, truly magical and beyond earthly.

As the night advanced, the time came for us to escape on our honeymoon. First we had to return to the hotel to get changed and collect our bags. It was somewhat disconcerting to discover that there were three of us in the car: Ana and I seemed sufficient; her mother of whom I was very fond nevertheless felt a little excessive.  To my relief, she did not join us on the honeymoon where over a few days we were finally alone together, able to relax and think only of us. It was a dream and our mutual attraction and love at last took on the ultimate physical expression where the passion, the imagination, the selflessness, the ability to feel what the other feels all lead to a joyous beginning that happily simply got better and better throughout our marriage. Ana remained for me the most attractive woman on earth for 45 years. She never lost her ability to entice and to excite; she could flirt delicately and surreptitiously; she could flash her eyes or dance for you; she could with her laughter that was like music call you to bed. I spent my life desiring her and she made herself the most desirable creature that I could ever want. And I think that that physical passion helped keep the excitement of our love affair fresh and vibrant for all of its years, reinforced the feeling of this being a love affair and helped us remain and feel so in love with each other rather than drifting into a more staid state of loving. We did have the warm and cosy, the snuggle, but we never lost the explosive passionate desire, the mutual attraction and the excitement of the physical side of our love. And I could never take my eyes off her, which together with the way in which I looked at her, had told her family so quickly how in love I was with her. It is a look that cannot lie and I think it gave them huge confidence. That look would last a lifetime – it was after all a look of love and her beauty continued to thrill and fascinate me for all of her life.

To this day I still remember the lovely night dress that her grandmother had given her.It was in a bright very pretty orange that set off her tan beautifully, ruched so that it showed off her figure – she looked and was so feminine, so sensual and so sexy.  We spent the first night close to Ciudadela at Cala n’Bosch and then the the next three in the North near Fornells. The time flew by – swimming in that crystal clear turquoise set off by the darker patches marking rocks, lying on the white sandy beaches, eating under the stars of those oh so clear Menorcan skies and all the time scarcely daring to believe that this was reality.  And then the time had come to depart.

25th July is a date that Ana always remembered.  The emotions it stirred are mixed. For me there was an excitement of heading off on our new life but that excitement carried some worries too.  I was taking this delicate and exotic creature away from her natural environment, her family and her friends into what was in reality an unknown even for me and however selfishly I wanted her and indeed needed her, I desperately wanted her to be happy. How frightening it must have been for her and of course there must have been sadness at leaving her family. But, as she had told me often, our separations had shown her, every time more and more, that the one she wanted to be with, the one she missed the most and the one she loved the most was me. And now it was with me that she was heading off on a lifelong adventure and a lifelong love affair, where I would prove the verity of my promise that she would never be alone, that I would always be with her.  She had been so brave to elope with me, to keep fighting to keep our love affair alive and finally to marry me. And what an adventure our love and our life would prove to be whether partying wildly in Berlin or sailing home from Italy in a tiny boat with an 8 month and 8 year old. This young Spanish girl must have known there was adventure coming – our beginnings had written that in the sands of Cala Blanca. That adventure would include her standing up to armed IRA terrorists while protecting her children, inspecting the 10 o’clock Turnout of the Windsor Castle Guard dressed as an officer in Bearskin and Greatcoat, fighting off a rape attempt, watching the solar eclipse from the cockpit of Incorrigible, crossing the River Thames three times while taking her daughter to school for the first time (a one mile journey on one side of the Thames that took three hours), looking for her Beetle engine under the bonnet, travels to Florence, Venice, Paris, Athens, New York, Amsterdam and Copenhagen, giving the most amazing dinner parties, and of course and inevitably melting the hearts of so many, being surprised at having three daughters but then bringing them up to believe in themselves and ensuring they would fly free and appreciate what civilisation had to offer them in the form of literature, Art and music. But for me the greatest adventure of all for both of us was just us, was falling in love over and over again, of remaining lovers in love, of never being anything other than the children that we were when it all started.

It is only on reading these words that I have written and the comments that I have so gratefully received that I have come to realise just what an extraordinary beginning we had. I suppose for both of us we did not realise at the time – it was simply what it was; it was our beginning, but now I have come to realise that it truly was an unusual and exciting start, something which I had never stopped to consider. Neither of us had really wanted to go to that party in the Lycée, but we did without really knowing why. I walked in to that crowded smoke filled room with loud music thumping and even as I write I can remember so clearly what I saw.  I saw a blurry crowd of people and through that haze, almost as though in a spotlight, one face stood out in complete clarity, a beacon that would guide me to that first dance, to my falling in love as I saw her smile and felt her softly press up against me, one hand holding hers, one firmly against her back and her head against my chest, the softness of her hair against my cheek and her scent gently mesmerising me. Nor will I ever know why I woke up on 8th December with that premonition that made me jump in the car and head straight to where Ana lived.  And if this were a film, we would all moan and say “too much!” when seeing me arrive with minutes to spare before she would have been whisked away by a taxi.  But fatefully that is what happened.  There is not a second of exaggeration. So, so far, this simply reinforces what I think we both felt, that somehow this love had been pre ordained.

What I had never thought about before writing this were the idea and decisions that were life changing.  Once we were in the car, I asked her to stay with me in Paris and then come to England for Christmas – and remember we had known each other barely ten days. I have no idea of how I came up with that idea, indeed it was not something I had even thought about beforehand.  I would like to call it brilliant; others would doubtless choose foolhardy as a better description, but it was not just an idea, it was a decisive move, a real declaration of what she already meant to me.  But in truth my part verges on the insignificant when you consider hers. Ana, from her strong Spanish roots and her Catholic upbringing with a father who was used to being obeyed, with no grasp of English said “Yes”, or rather “Oui”.  It was an astonishingly brave thing to do. She chose a young English student soldier that she had known for 10 days with whom she could only converse in a mutually foreign language; she chose to disobey her father; she chose to be away from the family for the first time in her life for Christmas, to come to a foreign land.  What of course I see now is that, yes, we were children, we chose adventure and excitement, getting a smidgin more than expected when we discovered the police were looking for us when Ana was posted as missing (assumed kidnapped).

But above all we chose love, a love that had already chosen us, a love that helped us overcome many obstacles, a love that finally led Ana down the aisle to join me so that we could become husband and wife and then took the two of us to Mahon airport to fly off on a new adventure together, more in love than ever.  It may have been pre ordained but we had both had to prove ourselves worthy of that love, we had had to fight, to show determination and courage. We had had to believe in our own destiny and we had had to make it real.

This story took place between 28th November 1971 and 21st July 1973, 20 months which sounds like a short time.  But it does not feel it and I don’t think it did then.  So much happened in that time that in many ways it feels much longer.  But however one looks at it, the impact is hard to over estimate.  As we danced that first dance, I knew I was in love; that this was it; that somehow our spirits had gently yet explosively united.  When we made our first truly crazy decision in the car on 8th December, I think we both must have known that we were in love and starting something special. But I don’t think either of us could have had even the tiniest inkling of what we had really started.  Even as we flew out of Mahon, I think we were two lovers in love yet almost childlike in our innocence of the life we were heading off to discover and live, of the romance that would be ours forever – one love, one life; a Spanish girl and her Englishman in a love beyond boundaries.