2004 - Dandelion Soup (14 page)

Most of the village had come to wave off the small band of pilgrims. A bleary-eyed Michael Leary was there, and Marty Donahue. Mrs Cullinane, Sinead and Dermot Flynn. Dr Hanlon, Mrs Hanlon and Siobhan, who was wearing her best emerald-green dress and white sandals.

Sister Veronica, Sister Agatha and two rows of scrubbed and subdued orphans stood in a line together. Donny Keegan had a lump in his throat the size of a gob-stopper.

Padraig O’Mally clutched a new suitcase containing two new pairs of grey shorts and three T-shirts, two vests and pants and four pairs of ankle socks, which had all been bought out of charity money. On his feet he wore a new pair of brown sandals with squeaky soles; they were a size too big and meant to last In his pocket he had a twist of sticky barley sugar wrapped in brown paper to stop any travel sickness.

Father Daley and Donahue lifted the suitcases on to the train and struggled with Miss Carmichael’s enormous trunk, which weighed a ton.

When Sister Veronica wasn’t looking Mr Leary slipped Padraig some money and handed him a camera and a piece of paper.

“There you are, some pocket money for you, all the spare pesetas I could lay my hands on. Listen, I’ve written instructions on how to use the camera and there are five films.”

“Thanks, sir.” Padraig wanted to fling his arms round Mr Leary and hug him but instead he shook his hand like grown-up men did.

“Have a grand time, Padraig.”

Mr Leary smiled down at the boy and tweaked his ear gently.

“I will, sir. Will I write and tell you if I find the statue or see that fellah with the cloak and the hat?”

Mr Leary nodded.

Sister Veronica stalked across the platform towards them.

Donny Keegan wiped away a tear with the back of his hand.

“Now, Padraig, be sure to say your prayers every night.”

Mr Leary pulled a face behind her back and gave Padraig a surreptitious wink.

“And remember that Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Make sure you wash every night and morning. Living among heathens does not mean you have to sink to their levels.”

“Sister Veronica, Spain is a Catholic country.”

“Yes, well, Mr Leary, as you well know, there are Catholics and there are Catholics.”

The guard blew his whistle and the pilgrims clambered on board the train.

Padraig looked around for Sister Immaculata but she was nowhere to be seen. He’d said goodbye to her last night after supper but she hadn’t been her normal self at all. She seemed jumpy, far away, lost in a world of her own.

“Bon voyage,” called out Dr Hanlon.

Siobhan jumped up and down with excitement and blew Padraig a noisy kiss. And then another.

Padraig raised his eyebrows, grinned sheepishly and waved.

Mr Leary put up his thumb.

Donny Keegan blew his nose and looked down at his feet.

“I love you, Padraig O’Mally!” shouted Siobhan Hanlon at the top of her voice.

“The sooner that child goes to school with the nuns the better,” said Sister Veronica. She thought that if Siobhan Hanlon, the bold-faced little hussy, were an orphan at St Joseph’s she’d soon knock some sense into her silly little head.

Mrs Hanlon clipped Siobhan soundly round the ear.

Dr Hanlon sighed and winked at Siobhan.

The train pulled slowly away from the station. Padraig hung out of the window and waved furiously until the people on the platform were just a speck in the distance.

Outside the cannery three women sat on wooden crates eating their lunch. Ottilie and Carmen, who were sisters, sat on either side of old Dolores, who was almost blind. They ate sardines straight from the tin with their fingers and when the last of the sardines were finished they soaked up the oil with pieces of bread until the tins were as clean as if they had been washed.

Ottilie poured barley coffee from a battered flask into three tin mugs and handed them round.

“Alberto was telling me just now that the train from the south was held up this morning,” Dolores said.

“By bandits?” asked Ottilie.

“No. That queer little nubeiro they call Muli was asleep on the line. He refused to move until a passenger bribed him to shift himself.”

“There’ll be trouble brewing if he’s about again. The last time he was in Camiga he conjured up a terrible storm. Remember? It blew the stork right off the church tower,” Ottilie said.

“Look, Ottilie, over there near the customs shed, that’s him, isn’t it?”

“Who, the nubeiro?”

“No, look! The strange one they call the Old Pilgrim.”

“Oh yes, that’s him all right. He hasn’t been around these parts for a long time. I thought p’raps they’d locked him up. They say he’s wanted for murder.”

Ottilie and Carmen watched the Old Pilgrim with interest. He was standing alone, quite still, looking out to sea as though deep in thought.

No one knew where he came from. Usually he arrived in Spain on foot coming down through the Pyrenees. Occasionally he came by train from the south and once in a while on the boat from England.

Ottilie and Carmen had rarely seen him at such close quarters. News of his arrival in the area usually travelled fast Someone would report seeing him walking briskly through the dusk in search of a night’s lodgings in Los Olivares or bathing naked in the sea at Noja; sharing his supper with horses under a lonely bridge over a dried-up river. Following in the wake of a band of gypsies. Holed up on a snowy night in a shepherd’s hut or wining and dining with the monks in the many monasteries of the region.

Once, it was rumoured that he had been seen soundly asleep amongst pigs and goats in the thatched
palloza
dwellings in the mountains. He was an eccentric, a mystery of a man; some said he was on a pilgrimage but that he never ever made it to Santiago de Compostela. For whatever reason he never completed the final steps of his journey. He got within a few hundred yards of the cathedral and always turned back.

Then, suddenly, he would disappear again and nothing would be seen or heard of him, sometimes for several years or more, and then along he would come, like the first cuckoo of spring.

“I don’t believe he’s a murderer. I think maybe he’s a bit odd in the head but he looks harmless enough.”

“Funny how everyone calls him the Old Pilgrim but he’s not that old really if you look at him closely.”

“About forty, maybe even younger.”

“He’s a handsome-looking man for a foreigner.”

“The eyes on him would melt any woman’s heart.” Ottilie chuckled.

“Even yours, Ottilie?” Dolores laughed.

“Not mine, Dolores. I don’t want any man wedging his bollocks under our kitchen table. It’s bad enough working all hours to keep body and soul together never mind waiting on a man hand and foot.”

Ottilie and Carmen followed the Old Pilgrim with their eyes as he walked swiftly across the cobbled quay towards the church and then disappeared into an alleyway. He cut a peculiar figure, a tall, slender man wearing a wide black cloak and a broad-brimmed hat.

“Talking of odd people and storms, remember the kid with the funny name, who used to work here before Miguel? The little one who was quaint for her age, she had a mother who was a strange kettle of fish.”

“Yes, of course I remember her. Little Dancey, she was a lovely kid.”

“Well, I was talking to Rosendo the other evening in the Bar Pedro. I haven’t seen him for months. He was down for the day picking up supplies for the old folks. He was telling me that last year, the night after the storm, he picked up a woman near the monastery of Santa Eulalia. She was done up to the nines and she paid him handsomely to take her in his cart down to Murteda.”

“So?”

“Well, it was obvious it was the girl’s mother by the description he gave, he was quite smitten with her I reckon. Poor Rosendo has been desperate for a wife for years but it’s not likely to happen being stuck up there in that godforsaken hamlet. Anyway, I asked him about the child and he said there was no child with her.”

“That’s very odd. It was very strange how the kid was here one minute and then gone without even saying goodbye.”

“She was a very pretty woman although she didn’t look old enough to have a kid, if you ask me. She looked more like the kid’s sister.”

“I saw her once in Los Olivares buying a fancy pair of high-heeled red shoes, the sort of shoes American film stars wear, and yet it was obvious from the state of the kid that they didn’t have a pot to piss in.”

“Poor little thing. Her clothes were threadbare and those boots she used to wear were enough to shame a scarecrow! I don’t think she’d had a good meal in her belly in years.”

“I saw the mother going into the whore-house some nights, after she’d put the girl to bed.”

“Dear God! What a way to pay for a pair of fancy shoes. I’d rather go barefoot than lie on my back.”

“Did you ever speak to her?”

“No. She kept to herself. She had stars in her eyes that one. Full of airs and graces, if you ask me. Don’t know who she thought she was, teetering about the place in high-heeled shoes and putting the kid to work all hours like that.”

“She was a nice kid though, that Dancey, very bright, and the eyes on her! Beautiful they were, as blue as the Virgin’s robes, and eyelashes like feather dusters.”

“Señora Hipola told me that she left owing a month’s rent. Did a moonlight flit without a by your leave,” old Dolores said.

“She was a fly one if she could do Señora Hipola out of money,” Carmen grinned.

“Señora Hipola said that once she saw her taking a bath. She said she had a bellyful of nipples like an old sow.”

Dolores shrieked with laughter.

“Sefiora Hipola said that! I wouldn’t believe what she says, she has a wicked tongue on her that one.”

“Fancy, her niece Marta is to marry Ramon,” Ottilie said.

“Ramon! Oh my God, you’re joking, the poor girl must be desperate.”

“Poor Ramon, he can’t help it,” Dolores said.

“A dog can’t help having fleas but I still wouldn’t marry one!”

“Hey, look, the British boat is in.”

A large rusty boat had moored alongside the quay and the sailors were yelling and barking out orders and busily lowering the gangplank. Moments later the passengers began to disembark.

“Funny-looking people those British,” Ottilie said nodding towards the boat. “When they first arrive here in Spain they’re as pale as lard and then after a few days of sun they turn as pink as a dog’s dick.”

“A very flatulent lot I’ve heard and fussy with their food.”

They watched with interest as two milky-skinned middle-aged women came staggering down the gangplank. They stood arm in arm on the quayside swaying from side to side, their mouths agape like stunned fish.

Despite the warmth of the sunshine the women were dressed in ankle-length coats with fur collars, woollen gloves and felt hats the shape of piss pots. They wore stout lace-up shoes and thick brown stockings and carried enormous handbags. Both women hurriedly made the sign of the cross and then looked warily around the quayside.

The women were followed down the gangplank by two deck hands sweating profusely as between them they carried an enormous trunk. They set the trunk down with relief on the ground and wiped the sweat from their foreheads.

Next down the gangplank came a tall dark-haired man struggling with heavy suitcases.

“Now there’s a man I wouldn’t rush to kick out of the sack,” Carmen giggled.

Ottilie laughed loudly.

“I fancy your eyes need looking at, he’s a priest.”

“Ah well, a waste of a good man, if you ask me.”

A young boy clutching a small cheap suitcase followed the priest. He was looking around him inquisitively, taking everything in with eager eyes.

He was a skinny little thing with overlarge ears emphasized by a short crew cut. He wore grey shorts, a grey jumper and grey socks. The only colourful things about him were his bright-blue eyes and his pink cheeks. He looked across to where the women were sitting, smiled cheerfully at them and waved excitedly.

Ottilie and Carmen waved back.

“What a cute little fellow.”

“A barrel of mischief, if you ask me.”

“He looks kind of familiar to me. Something about his face. Who does he remind you of, Ottilie?”

“I know what you mean but I can’t for the life of me think who it is.”

The women sat in silence for a few moments and then Carmen said, “Damn! That’ll bother me for ages now. He’s the spit of someone I know, but I just can’t remember.”

Then the cannery siren sounded and the three women rose stiffly from the crates and went reluctantly back through the beaded fly curtains that hung across the doorway of the cannery.

Señora Hipola, on her way back from the market, was so full of the joys of spring that she gave a handful of pesetas to the open-mouthed beggar who was slumped outside the church of San Gregorio.

The beggar gawped in astonishment, stared at the coins in the palm of her hand and bit one to test it. Señora Hipola, who was as cold as a witch’s tit, usually gave her a tongue lashing about the evils of begging, being a disgrace to the women of the town. The beggar crossed herself and swiftly pocketed the money in case Señora Hipola had a change of heart Then she staggered to her feet and limped away across the quay towards the café and breakfast.

Señora Hipola hummed to herself all the way home, and more than a few people who saw her raised their eyebrows and stared after her. Señora Hipola was well known to the townsfolk of Camiga but not for her good humour.

The reason for her uncharacteristic cheerfulness was that she had successfully made a match between her niece Marta and the clock mender’s son, Ramon. And in a few days’ time the wedding would take place.

Marta was twenty years old and Elvira Hipola had decided that it was quite indecent for a girl of such advanced age to remain a single woman for one day longer. A few more years and she would be an old spinster, dried up and barren and no good to man nor beast. Besides, the clock mender’s son Ramon was a good boy, true he must have been standing behind the door when God handed the brains and the looks out but he was a good worker and an obedient son to his father. Perhaps he wasn’t over clean about himself and there was the little problem with his bladder, but in the name of Saint Jude, what the hell, no one was perfect.