The Return by Victoria Hislop Read Free Book Online

careless expression of short-lived passion but a declaration of real, lasting devotion. ‘J - M’ - the heavy doors would never shed this expression of affection until they were taken from their hinges and turned into firewood.
     
    As they sauntered back into the corridor, they paused outside the studio, where the framed posters jostled with each other. Felipe and Corazón appeared on one of them. The style of type dated it to around 1975 and it was advertising a flamenco performance.
     
    ‘Look, Maggie, it’s a picture of our teachers!’
     
    ‘God, so it is! Hasn’t age been cruel!’
     
    ‘They haven’t changed that much,’ said Sonia in their defence. ‘Their figures are pretty similar.’
     
    ‘But those crow’s-feet - she didn’t have them in those days, did she?’ commented Maggie. ‘Do you think they’d show us some flamenco? Teach us how to stamp our feet? Give us a bit of a clatter on the castanets?’
     
    Maggie didn’t wait for an answer. She was already back in the studio, explaining and gesticulating to the teachers what she wanted them to do.
     
    Sonia watched her from the doorframe.
     
    Finally, Felipe found some English words: ‘Flamenco can’t be taught,’ he said gutturally. ‘It’s in the blood, and only in gypsy blood at that. But you can try if you like. I’ll show you some at the end of the lesson.’
     
    It was a statement designed to challenge.
     
    For the next hour they repeated the movements from the first half of the lesson and then fifteen minutes before the end, Felipe clapped his hands together.
     
    ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Flamenco.’
     
    He strutted over to the CD player, flicked swiftly through his wallet of music, and carefully extracted what he wanted. Meanwhile, Corazón changed her shoes in the corner, to a pair with heavy heels and steel-capped soles.
     
    The class stood back, quietly expectant.They heard palms against palms and low drums. It was dark and very different from the happy-go-lucky sound of salsa.
     
    Corazón strode out in front of the group. It was as though she no longer knew they were there. As a guitar played, she raised one arm and then another, her sinuous fingers fanning out like daisy petals. For more than five minutes, she stamped her feet in a complex sequence of heel and toe, heel and toe, that accelerated to a thunderous vibration before it stopped dead, with a final, decisive ‘BANG’ of her hard shoe on the solid floor. It was a virtuoso display of strength and breathtaking technical prowess as much as a dance, somehow the more impressive because of her age.
     
    On the very beat that she stopped, a wail emanated from the speakers and eerily wrapped itself around everyone in the room. It was a raw-throated male voice and seemed to express the same anguish that had shown on Corazón’s face as she had danced.
     
    Just before she finished, Felipe had begun and for a few seconds mirrored his wife’s movements, proving to the audience that this dance was not pure improvisation, but a well-rehearsed piece of choreography. Now Felipe took her place centre stage. Narrow-hipped, his slim back arched into a ‘C’, Felipe briefly struck a pose before spinning himself around and beginning a series of floor-hammering steps. The sound of metal on wood bounced off the mirrored walls. His movements were even more sensual than those of his wife, and certainly more coquettish. It was as though he flirted with the class, his hands travelling up and down his body, his hips rocking one way and then another. Sonia was transfixed.
     
    As though to compete with Corazón, he executed an ever more complex sequence of steps, time after time landing by some miracle on precisely the same spot, the music drowned out by the hammering of feet. The passion of it was extraordinary and it seemed to have come from nowhere.
     
    Felipe’s finishing pose, eyes to the ceiling, one arm wrapped around his back, the other thrown across his front was one of