Autumn in Catalonia Read online

  Martin smiled. ‘My mother calls me Martí sometimes. Not when she’s angry, though! And she was pretty angry about me coming here!’ He corrected himself. ‘No, that’s not fair – she was just worried for me, that’s all. It’s why I mustn’t stay too long.’

  Carla studied his face, which was serene and happy. He was a medical student, he’d told them, and his mother had the local café in their village. He was the adored success of the family, for sure. She could guess that he was his mother’s darling. All of a sudden she felt desolate.

  ‘How wonderful to have a mother who worries about you!’ she said, and found that her voice would hardly bring out the words.

  ‘Carla, my love!’ Grandma protested. ‘Don’t feel like that. You know we’ve discussed how your mother loved you.’

  ‘When I was a child! When I was happy just to admire and adore her! What about later, when I really needed her? She was too busy dressing up for my father to go with him to their society parties, to worry about a troubled teenager! When my father hit me, did she stop him? When I wanted to get away, did she help me? And when they came to take Luc away, where was she then?’

  ‘Luc?’ Martin asked. This extra name seemed to throw him.

  Maria came to his rescue.

  ‘Luc is Carla’s fiancé. Early this summer he was arrested, just before they were due to get married. The Civil Guard came and took him away in the night.’

  Martin looked horrified. ‘What had he done?’ he asked, in a whisper.

  ‘Nothing!’ Carla’s voice was scornful. ‘My father found out about us, that’s all! Luc was a student activist, and his father was a known Republican in the Civil War. My father would have moved heaven and earth to stop me marrying Luc. We kept it secret from my parents, but what fools we were to think they wouldn’t know! I knew my father was spying on me, but I thought we’d been careful enough! More fool me. I underestimated my father. He disapproved of everything I did, and we didn’t speak, but he wouldn’t let me ruin his name by marrying an activist.’

  ‘But if he knew about the baby …’

  ‘Of course he knows about the baby! He’ll be planning to have it taken off me at the hospital. That’s what they do to single mothers here, you know. One more bastard baby given away in Spain. Who’s to care?’

  ‘They force you to give up the child?’

  ‘You never see the child after the birth. They just tell you it’s dead. End of story.’

  There was a pause while Martin seemed to digest what she was telling him. If you didn’t live in Spain, Carla thought, you would never believe it, would you? Fascism, relentless despotism, profiteers like Sergi, and all the powerlessness that went with it for ordinary people – it took all of these things to make her situation possible.

  ‘And Luc?’ Martin spoke again. ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘Not a clue, dear cousin, not a clue, although I suspect he’s in the Barcelona men’s prison. They can keep him hidden away without trial forever if they have someone like my father behind it.’

  ‘And your mother knows about all of this?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ Carla looked at him in gentle derision. ‘Luc was taken in July, when my father and mother were together at the hill house. She would certainly have known.’

  Martin looked thoughtful. ‘She hasn’t been in Girona since, though, has she?’ he said, after a while. ‘She may not know you’re pregnant.’

  ‘And you’re naïve enough to believe she would care?’ All Carla’s pent-up anger and frustration came pouring out as she answered him. ‘She certainly seems to have got round you, up in that damned house. Was she so sweet to you, then? Gracious? Friendly? Did she mention her family at all? The family she has abandoned! The people she has betrayed! And you think she’d care about Luc’s baby?’ Her voice rasped in her own ears. She got up as tears gagged her, and began to clear the table.

  Martin was silenced. He looked towards Maria for guidance. She gave him a smile but her eyes were troubled, almost bereaved.

  ‘My daughter has made some questionable choices in her life, Martí. Since she married Sergi Olivera I have never been sure that I knew her. Something changed in her, and she has led a life which abandoned us all. Until a couple of years ago I had never even met my own granddaughter. Only when Carla went to university and was able to make her own decisions could she make contact with us. No,’ she sighed, ‘I can’t tell you what Joana is capable of. I don’t know myself, although she has just sometimes helped us when we needed her, and I have always thought that at least she cared about her own daughter.’

  A silence fell that Carla could physically hear as she moved around the kitchen, washing dishes. As she came out to clear the coffee cups she caught Martin’s eyes, and what she saw there gave her a moment’s compunction. What they’d thrown at him was too far outside his experience. She thought about Luc, stuck in a gaol somewhere, in conditions she dreaded to imagine, desperately worrying about her and cut off from all communication. And herself, weeks away from giving birth, powerless and desperate. It was a situation beyond Martin’s scope, and she touched him lightly on the shoulder as she passed, in tacit understanding.

  Grandma was still sitting beside him, almost restfully. She had the gift of tranquillity. Martin looked more nervous by nature, in spite of that air of self-possession beyond his years. Did he get that from Great Uncle Luis? She knew Luis had been forceful and passionate, and driven to action, where Victor and Maria were gentle and enduring. His son Martin was harder to read.

  From a world far away, almost dreamily, Maria continued to talk about her daughter. ‘Joana was the apple of your father’s eye. And of her father’s. They were the closest of friends, you know, Luis and my husband. And Joana is her father’s image.’

  There was too much melancholy in the air, too much reminiscence, and sadness, and loss, and Carla moved quickly back to the tiny kitchen with the cups. After a second Martin followed her.

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help you?’ he asked Carla.

  ‘Not here, no,’ she turned her head and gave him a quizzical grin to lighten the mood. ‘Do you help in the kitchen at home?’

  He gave her a half grin back, and shook his head.

  ‘I thought not! Well you won’t here, either. But you can walk with me, if you will, after I finish here. Grandma will have a siesta now, but I need to walk. As long as I don’t carry heavy bags, walking does me good. If we go up on the old city wall we’ll get some air, and I’ll be able to put this creature to sleep for a while.’ She rubbed her stomach as she spoke.

  It was the end of confidences for the day, and Carla thought that everyone was relieved. That afternoon she and Martin walked across the footbridge over the River Onyar, and through the beautiful, if rather undercherished, old town, past the cathedral and on up the hill to the ruins of the Jardí dels Alemanys, and from there they climbed up to the remnants of the old city wall, and walked along its short, crumbling length in a stiff breeze that shook out Carla’s hair and smoothed the tired lines on her face, so that she looked again like a young woman.

  She found herself telling Martin the whole history of Girona, from Roman to medieval times, trying to impart her love for it, and pointing out the parts built by the Romans, by the Carolingians, and by medieval warring princes. The dilapidated buildings came to life for her as she spoke, and her problems dwindled to a mere transitory blip in history. And Martin grinned, and exclaimed in all the right places, and laughed and asked questions in that funny French Catalan of his.

  Occasionally they would pass by other couples walking, and she would hold a finger to her lips to stop him speaking until they were past. She was astonished to hear that he had been beaten for speaking Catalan at school in France.

  ‘I thought you lived in a democracy!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, but not a Catalan democracy. We’re all supposed to prove how French we are.’

  ‘And we thought you were so free!’

  ‘Not at scho
ol! They say we can’t learn proper French if we are constantly talking Catalan. And it has its effect. Among my friends we mostly speak French now. It’s not just because of our teachers, though – it’s subtler than that. It’s the influence of the outside world – films and tourists and so many people coming to live in the south from other parts of France who only speak French. Everyone wants to be sophisticated, and they’ve got us brainwashed that speaking Catalan is for peasants.’

  ‘Well it’s not true here! Here they can beat you or even arrest you for speaking Catalan, but it just makes people angrier. And the Civil Guard may try to intimidate us, and lots of them are brought in from other parts of Spain, but our local police all speak Catalan at home themselves! There was a group of young men the other week who surrounded a couple of policemen and harangued them in Catalan, asking them what they were going to do about it! The poor policemen were so scared! But you wonder whether the men may have received a visit later on from some rather more forceful policemen.’

  Martin grimaced. ‘Well I don’t think I’ll risk challenging any one at all. I’m here without full papers, you know. My mother wouldn’t agree to me travelling, and since I’m under age I’m supposed to have her permission. I need to keep a low profile so I don’t get you people into trouble.’

  ‘Don’t worry! As long as you keep your mouth shut in public there’s not much can happen. The neighbours in Grandma’s street keep themselves to themselves – nobody wants anybody looking too closely, even if they haven’t done anything wrong. So unless you really know your neighbours, most people just keep their heads down and only mix with family, which for us in Girona means nobody. And you won’t be staying long – you won’t want to, believe me! You’ll be sharing a bed with Uncle Victor and he snores louder than anyone I’ve ever known!’

  They met Uncle Victor as they returned to the house in the early evening. He was getting off a bus a block or so away from the apartment, an average-looking man in factory overalls covered by a dark tunic, one among a stream of workers heading for home, all dressed very much the same.

  They waited for Victor just outside the apartment block. He smiled as he saw Carla, and came towards her with his hands outstretched. Carla was aware of Martin stiffening beside her and, looking over, saw excitement mingled with apprehension on his face. He was gazing intently at Victor, and Carla wondered if he was looking for a resemblance to Luis. Well there was one, but Victor was homelier than any photo of Luis that Carla had ever seen, and deep lines in a leathery skin bore witness to a life of outdoor labour. His bush of hair was grey too. Luis hadn’t lived long enough to go grey. Seeing him through Martin’s eyes, Carla noticed more strongly than ever how worn Uncle Victor was, but the smile with which he embraced her brought a shadow of youth back to his face, and she couldn’t wait to tell him about Martin.

  She took him to one side to tell him, urgent and alight in anticipation of his reaction, and was rewarded by the look of astonishment and delight which flooded him. She led him up to Martin, and he took his new nephew’s hand, and held it. An incredulous smile was splitting his face. He said nothing, though, and led Martin into the building, up the stairs and through the door to the apartment before he spoke. Then he threw his arms around Martin in a very manly hug.

  ‘We don’t worry those people out there,’ he said, shrugging his shoulder towards the outer door and the world outside, ‘with the kind of good news we have been brought today.’

  Yet another smell of cooking was coming from the kitchen. Aunt Maria’s headscarf peeked out from the kitchen door, and Carla went towards her and threw her tired body into a chair as Maria fussed over her. The tiny space was filled with family, and as Victor patted his back again and again, Martin looked almost dumbstruck in their midst.

  Looking at their world again through his eyes, Carla thought how well he’d coped with them all. In the space of twenty-four hours, he’d met and won over Joana, it seemed, so that she’d provided her own car to bring him to Girona, and he’d charmed Maria, brought the biggest ever smile to Victor’s face, and, to be honest, given even her own prickly self every reason to be glad she had a cousin. She repeated to herself what she’d thought earlier on. Martin was nice. It wasn’t a big word, but it was an important one, and for nice things to happen was too rare in their lives. He wanted their kinship too, and the look of appeal in his eyes was like a call to discovery. She smiled across at him where he stood next to Victor, and he gave her a tired but happy smile in return.

  ‘Come,’ said Uncle Victor, moving away to a small cupboard. ‘I don’t often have a companion for a small glass of wine. I need to wash, and change these clothes, and then we’ll go down to the café for the aperitiù, you and me. But for now, we’ll have a small glass here, and see if these two ladies will make a toast with us.’

  He smiled at Maria as she made a gesture of refusal, and shook his head. ‘Oh no, Maria, you don’t get to refuse, not this time. My brother Luis is with us this evening, and you know how he was. Luis would have insisted, and you, my sister, at his invitation you would always accept!’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was a cloudless summer afternoon in Barcelona, the air heavy with a heat more sleepy than oppressive. Carla stood on the tiny balcony of Luc’s studio flat, languidly watching a plane going goodness knows where, full of tourists heading home. It left a long white trail in the deep blue of the sky.

  ‘It’s going to London,’ Luc said behind her.

  ‘Rubbish, it’s heading for Paris. I’ve always wanted to go to Paris.’

  ‘For the Moulin Rouge, vida meva?’

  ‘Not at all, you buffoon!’ Carla elbowed Luc in the ribs. ‘If I wanted that kind of titillation I could join the tourists on the Costa Brava! No, I want to watch the artists in Montmartre, and visit the Louvre, the Champs Elysées, Notre Dame, Orsay, the Eiffel Tower, oh everything!’

  ‘Then we’d better go for a month! A month in Paris for you, and a month in London for me!’

  ‘And where else?’

  ‘Wherever you lead me, little adventuress!’ Luc said, low into her ear. ‘“I want you, pure, free, irreducible you”,’ he murmured, ‘and before you ask me, that was Pedro Salinas, and he lived in Paris once, so you ought to appreciate him!’

  He curved around her, his whole frame enveloping hers as he leant against the balcony rail. Carla could feel his breath on the nape of her neck as he bent to kiss her throat, and then his cheek against hers as he pulled her backwards so she leant against him.

  She closed her eyes and protested, ‘It’s too hot for that out here.’

  ‘Then come inside! Come into my parlour and let me cool your heart.’

  She had to laugh – he was full of so much nonsense! If man could live from tomfoolery alone, she thought, then Luc would be a millionaire! But his voice was melting, and his breath was hot against her skin as his arms moved up her body.

  She gave a sigh. She had never in her previous life dared to imagine such happiness as this, something so simple and natural and untainted. They moved together into the bedroom, through the makeshift curtain, which shielded the room from the afternoon sun. Luc’s arms stayed locked around her body, and she giggled as his feet caught the sill. He wasn’t looking, and he nearly stumbled, and bubbles of laughter took her forward into the room.

  But as the curtain fell behind them, her father was there. Stocky, stubby Sergi, beautifully dressed of course, flanked by two thugs in uniform. His sneer said it all. What do you think you’re doing? You can’t get away, you can’t be free. Did you imagine you had the right to be happy?

  Carla woke up, tears starting to her eyes as so often before. The dreams were different in detail, but always the same in essence. She could remember so vividly her moments on that tiny balcony with Luc, and in the little room, their secret place from where the Civil Guard had come to get him. Nowhere now felt safe. There were no secret places in her father’s Spain.

  She lay still, choking back her anguish,
waiting for the dream to subside. Next to her the bed was empty. Grandma was already up, and she could hear her moving around in the kitchen, preparing Victor’s breakfast before his day at the factory. Carla lay, unrefreshed by sleep, listening listlessly to the sounds through the thin wall. She heard Victor heading for the bathroom, and wondered whether to get up herself. But there was nothing she could do, nothing she could contribute to their morning routine, and with her huge belly she always felt that she occupied too much space in this small apartment, among all the rickety chairs, and the clutter of Grandma’s trinkets, the salvaged relics from another world.

  The baby shifted inside her. It could no longer do somersaults – it was too tight now. Panic gripped her as she counted the days to giving birth – not much more than six weeks now, surely. She’d come to Grandma in search of shelter and nurturing, and together they were going to try to manage the birth at home, but what if something went wrong? Luc’s baby – nothing must happen to Luc’s baby. One day he would make it out of prison and come looking for her, she knew, and she and the baby had to be waiting for him. Even her father couldn’t keep Luc forever, could he? But he could keep him for a very long time. All he needed to do was emphasise the political threat, and suggest that Luc was planning violent protest. That would be enough to keep him under lock and key for as long as Sergi wanted.

  Politically I’m just as radical as Luc, thought Carla. She wanted to go and scream it in her father’s face. Take me too, if you have to have him. But Sergi didn’t want his daughter arrested, he only wanted her controlled.

  She waited until the sounds outside indicated Victor was leaving for work. Normally she would get up to say goodbye, but today she couldn’t face his smiles. He had stayed up late last night talking to Martin, teasing out the boy’s character, looking for Luis. He was happy this morning – she could hear it in his voice as he spoke with Maria. She couldn’t handle that right now. Martin’s coming was a diversion, but in the end a diversion always left you inexorably back on the same dark road as before. She knew that she was often sharp, angry, unpleasant at the moment. It was the view along the road which left her in such hostile despair.