UN MECHON DE TUS CABELLOS, SUZANNE HUGH

 

UN MECHÓN DE TUS CABELLOS

 A LOCK OF YOUR HAIR

Perusing an old book of the time of the University when I dreamed of England and was immerse in the dominion of the text of Beowulf, the long vowels, the past tense, the ballads of Chaucer, T. S Elliot and the eight wives of Henry VIII, I found amid the pages a lock of the blond hairs of the woman I loved. She was my life.

Yes, and Adamo with a song of those days sang une meche de cheveux.

Well, the book was A short history of English Literature by Ifor Evans and includes a lot of marks underlined by me at difficult passages or new words.

At eighty, I still keep the sacred fire. Inside my heart smolder ashes of the big fire.

Here in Spain they say that England is our strenuous enemy, but I don't think so, as far as I am concerned.

Perhaps His Majesty government keeps a chip on the shoulder against Spain, no matter the political system we had.

We represent for them the other side of the coin against their policy of balance of power. But the Black Legend was bred by the Synagogue of Amsterdam.

We fought for the Pope in the Low Countries and Catholicism. The Jews, the Jesuits, the separators, the separatists. I don't care. I found a lock of your blond hair hidden in the pages of a book I read nearly sixty years ago.

More than a century has lapsed. A lot of water flowing under the Thames and still I am in love like a Romeo.

What happened to you, Suzanne Mary Hugh, who became Mrs Parra after our wedding in the Registrar Office of Hounslow 9th October 1969?

I married afterward and have four children but it was not the same. In fact, my life became a torture.

I wonder if our destiny is written on a star or our encounter at Hull was trivial. To be or not to be.

Suzanne, darling, give us Gibraltar back

Sunday, 20 October 2024