The new entry in the DNB provided me with another piece of useless information: it mentioned the attempts by a few scholars to attribute Shakespeare’s plays to De Vere and dismissed them scornfully as being ‘without merit’. The most striking thing is that the earliest of these attempts was dated 1920 and written by one Thomas Looney (another accusatory surname). So Rico’s hated colleague wasn’t even a pioneer, or even original. I imagine the Professor would be pleased to hear that, although he may remember nothing about it.
Eduardo Muriel and Beatriz Noguera had three children, two girls and a boy, the latter being their youngest child, and once the idea of a possible false paternity had crossed my mind, I began studying their faces, their gestures, their behaviour with an extemporaneous detective’s eye, trying to discover in them clear traces of Muriel or, indeed, a complete absence of any resemblance or reminiscence or affinity. This was a somewhat vain endeavour, since I hardly saw them: they were at school most of the time or else in their bedrooms, for Beatriz and Flavia ensured that they made few if any incursions into the areas occupied by their father, who treated them with undoubted but absent-minded affection, as if they were guests or permanent residents in the same hotel. Besides, all three were so like their mother that it was as if she had conceived them entirely alone without any help from a man. The oldest, Susana, who was fifteen when I met her, was the very image of the youthful Beatriz I had seen in photos: there were a couple of framed photographs on full view, one of her wedding day with Muriel, when she must have been about twenty-two or twenty-three, and which was probably kept on display at her request or insistence (for him, that bond would be a bitter memory), and another — I wasn’t sure whether it was earlier or later — which showed her wearing a small brimless hat, in the style of the late 1950s or early 60s, and holding in her arms a little child whose identity I did not, at first, know: a very sweet two-year-old boy with fine features, his bright eyes looking to his left (Beatriz was to his right), and wearing a little fur coat, something of an exaggeration even for the cold of a Madrid winter, and a kind of white balaclava topped with a pompom, which covered most of his hair, ears and neck, but not his oval face, which stood out clearly. She wasn’t looking at the child either, but wore a vaguely distracted expression, as if she were thinking some pleasant thought quite unrelated to that particular occasion, which, despite the dark background that offered no clues, seemed to me to be some church ceremony, a christening or another wedding perhaps. Beatriz was slimmer, but, contrary to her husband’s jibes, perfectly recognizable, she hadn’t changed much at all; the same bold eyebrows, the very thick eyelashes, which were neither turned back on themselves nor curled, the straight nose so charmingly retroussé, the full, wide mouth that revealed — in a dreamy half-smile — the slightly widely spaced teeth that unwittingly lent her a vaguely salacious air, in marked contrast to her otherwise childish face, both in photos and in reality. (It was one of those mouths that would instantly lead many men to imagine unexpected and inappropriate scenes, often quite against their perfectly respectful efforts to suppress such scenes entirely.) Her features (or what they conveyed of her spirit, on the occasions when that spirit grew animated and sloughed off its usual languor or prostration) were not in keeping with her curvaceous body, they seemed to demand a less powerful, more moderate trunk, abdomen and legs, and her insolent curves a less innocent or ingenuous face. In the wedding photo, in which she was looking directly at the camera and smiling unreservedly, with a look of evident euphoria or possible triumphalism, her features were decidedly childlike, as if she were a mere girl disguised as a bride, albeit prematurely well developed. Muriel, on the other hand, already wearing his eyepatch, even all those years ago, appeared not sombre or grave exactly, but solemn, like a man convinced he is taking on an enormous responsibility. He looked young, but, in comparison with her, seemed a veteran of adulthood. She was still playing at contracting marriage, whereas he was utterly serious and conscious of the appropriateness of that verb ‘contract’, which could equally be applied to obligations, debts, responsibilities and diseases. And this wasn’t only because he was a few years older than her, it wasn’t that simple. He was someone who already knew what it means to renounce something, or who was aware that love always arrives late for its appointment with people, as he once gloomily told me, a phrase he had read somewhere.
In their firstborn, Susana, one could already clearly see (although it was more of a manifestation really) the mother’s candid expression, which both daughters would retain intermittently into their old age (no life is without its intermittencies, and no character is exempt from, on occasions, betraying itself), along with the intimidating, explosive body, which, if I can put it like this, was already beginning to blossom, whether precociously or not I didn’t know nor was I even prepared to think about it: if I refused to take any pleasure in looking at Beatriz, I strictly forbade myself from doing so when in the presence of her promising adolescent daughter, of whom, besides, I only ever caught fleeting glimpses. As for any sexual attraction, Susana and I coincided even less in time and space; she was more like a painting, an inanimate representation, not past but future, as yet unfinished. With their second daughter, there was no danger of my eyes straying: Alicia was twelve when I first went to their apartment, although her resemblance to her mother and her sister would doubtless increase with age. As for the boy, Tomás, who was eight years old, his face was another perfect copy of Beatriz’s. All three were like miniature versions of her, in different sizes. It was therefore impossible to find in them any trace of Muriel, nor, of course, of anyone else, if, that is, another man had participated in the engendering of one of them.
I imagine that neither her unhappiness nor her occupations prevented Beatriz Noguera from being a good mother. Although she did not live solely for them and delegated quite a lot of work to Flavia, she was always available to attend to them, listen to them and console them when necessary, insofar as a woman contemplating suicide, as I later found out, could. She was extremely affectionate and, seeing her embrace and caress her children, one could imagine the kind of affection, at once warm and delicate, that she would have bestowed on Muriel had he allowed her to, or that she had perhaps bestowed on him at another time, a time still invoked by her and not forgotten. However, perhaps as a reflex response — that of the beaten dog — perhaps influenced and inhibited by her husband’s continued rejection of her, she did not go out of her way to lavish affection on her children unless they asked her to. It was as though her whole existence, or her passage through the world, had become tainted with timidity or restraint; perhaps that is how it had been right from the start or perhaps it began at one particular moment. When you’re rejected by the main object of your love, it’s easy to become filled with a general feeling of being surplus to requirements, to feel that any display of affection could be deemed bothersome or undesirable, that the quality of your love has somehow been downgraded and so should never be imposed on others without your first being invited to do so. It saddened me a little to see her waiting for some sign from her children before she dared to pet or pamper them. Fortunately for her, the two younger children still naturally and regularly sought such petting and pampering, and she seized on and enjoyed those occasions, her face bright with contentment, but, at the same time, with a slightly distant, apprehensive look in her eyes, as if she could already see on the horizon an end to such effusions — children grow up and move away and, for far too many years, sink into surliness, and when they do come back, they’re no longer the same — and as if, with some uncontrollably fatalistic part of her mind, she were already saying goodbye to them. Her eldest daughter no longer sought such displays of affection and was more reserved, although her trusting, ingenuous temperament led her to develop a certain sense of camaraderie with her mother, I would occasionally hear the murmur of their talk and their laughter, although these conversations were, nevertheless, short-lived, superficial and the laughter brief, to do with some recent incident or practical everyday matter. It seemed to me sometimes that Beatriz walked about the apartment putting herself in the firing line, if I can put it like that, waiting for someone to summon or approach her and demand her company, her advice, her mediation or help, or as though asking permission with her wary eyes to kiss or embrace them.