Autumn in Catalonia (10 page)

It was Martin who finally resumed their conversation. ‘Carla told me her father hit her,’ he said at last, keeping his voice level. ‘Did he resent her?’

Joana sighed. ‘Things were never easy. But at first he was all right with her. She never looked like him, or even like me, to be honest. She was all Alex, especially as she got older, tall and dark, with a face all angles and expressions. But she loved Sergi when she was tiny, and always tried to
please him. He didn’t like her back, though, and it showed, and she gradually withdrew from him. That was all right, though – I could paper over the cracks.

‘The real difficulty came later. You see, the bargain for Sergi was that he got a wife who could adorn his career, and give him sons to secure his line and cement his future, but the sons never came. He blamed me, of course, and as he always had an aggressive streak we both suffered, Carla and me, whenever he was angry or wanted someone to bully.’

She ran one hand down her arm, as if to feel the bruises. ‘Sergi could never in a million years have accepted that he was incapable of bearing children, and yet the evidence was there that it was not me who was infertile. Carla was the proof of that, and he knew it underneath, and it just made him angrier. He got his own back by running me down, bending me more and more to his will. But he still required me to play the role of devoted wife, to smile for his friends and host his parties. In the eyes of the world we were a great couple, successful, fashionable, solidly loyal to the regime.’

She was amazed at how good it felt to let down her guard. She’d never told this story to anyone, and had grown used to her private armour, leaning on it as a prop. This ‘cousin’ had pierced right through it, though, with his bolt of lightning out of the blue, and now it seemed she couldn’t pull the shell back round her.

‘You didn’t ever feel you could tell your mother?’

‘No!’ The word spat out from her throat, angrier than she had intended. ‘My mother believed like everyone that Carla was Sergi’s baby. They all thought I’d sold out when I
married Sergi! Well, let them think so! I had to make a new life, and that was that. Later, when it got difficult, well, she was so far away, stuck in that village, praying for me at Mass, no doubt. It was like another world. She could never have understood our lives in Girona, and I wouldn’t have swapped all of Sergi’s nastiness to go back into that village by then!’

‘And Carla?’

‘What about Carla?’

‘Could you have shared with her? You were both suffering, after all.’

She looked at him with renewed hostility. ‘You don’t understand! For most of her childhood Carla barely suffered at all from him. He would sometimes strike her, but all fathers would hit their children occasionally. He was hardly around when she was a girl – mostly her early life was just school, girls’ parties, music lessons, all that kind of thing. When most of Spain was starving, struggling to find food, she had more than most other girls could hope for, and all I wanted was to keep it that way, keep her innocent and out of it all, and make sure she had a future. But she got prickly as she got older, just at the same time as he was turning against us. She was too intelligent, too direct, too much like her real father, and the two of them began to hate each other. I was stuck in the middle, but she hated me too by then, and wasn’t much interested in my opinions. I don’t think she needed me to fight her battles for her! She was twice as strong as I’ll ever be, and desperate for confrontation.’

She looked out over the veranda towards the hills. ‘She
was lucky. She could get away and make her own life. I was in a contract, and had to obey.’

‘But she never really got away, did she? Carla has never really been free. Her father had her watched, stopped her marrying, gaoled her fiancé, and now that she’s completely vulnerable he’s got her trapped!’

Joana winced at the challenge in his voice, and was relieved to see Paula shuffling out with the tray of food and the champagne. She put salad, and rice and chicken in front of Martin, and plonked the bottle on the low table between them, scattering some of the heavy charge in the air. As she headed indoors, Joana grinned at her departing back.

‘You’d better get on and eat that,’ she told Martin. ‘She’ll be desperate for her siesta, and wanting to clear the plates quickly! And while you eat you can tell me about Carla. You left her at my mother’s place?’

‘Yes,’ he answered, and told her the story between mouthfuls. ‘She’s staying indoors, hoping to keep out of your husband’s way. We believe that Sergi will try to abduct her – his henchmen saw me with her and then he came by himself to check me out when we were walking together in the street. He has never done that before, Carla says. She hasn’t seen him in person since she last visited him and you together. He must wonder if Carla has found herself a new man, and Carla is sure he’ll want to remove her from any new friendship which might jeopardise his plans and his control of her. Your mother is sure of it too. The easiest way for him to be sure of removing her illegitimate child is for him to lock her away somewhere.’

He paused to look at Joana, and she bit her lip and
nodded. He continued. ‘She’s frightened of what might happen at night-time, but we thought that she would be safe by day today if she stayed inside, long enough anyway for me to come here.’

‘And she trusted that I would help her?’

Joana couldn’t help the little note of appeal that came into her voice. Martin hesitated, and as she watched his face her own hardened in response, and she held up a hand.

‘There’s no need to answer that. She has no reason to believe in me. Let’s just talk practicalities instead. Carla needs to get away immediately from Girona, to somewhere Sergi won’t look for her. Well, she can come here. She won’t love it – she won’t want to be with me, and she has always hated this place, but she’ll be safe here. It’s the last place Sergi would think of looking for her.’

‘Does your husband not come here at all, then?’

Joana laughed a little bitterly. ‘As I told you, he came here in August, with some business visitors. Otherwise no. Sergi has discovered far more fascinating company than me now – he had a very cool young woman as his mistress the last time I was in Girona.’

‘And are you kind of banished here?’

‘In a way,’ she answered, after a moment. She almost laughed at herself. Was she going to tell this young man everything about her life? But he made it very easy to talk, somehow.

After a moment she continued. ‘Sergi tells the world I have a problem. With this.’ She gestured at her glass, and the open bottle of champagne waiting by her elbow. ‘He may well be right. But one way or another he has made it
difficult for me to be among our old social group. He’s done it very cleverly, and everyone believes that I’m here for my health, that he has nothing but concern for me.’

She watched Martin’s face for any reaction. It was Uncle Luis who looked back at her, not judging, but just waiting. She felt a little surge of defiance run through her as she drank again from her glass. She’d broken open her cage a little that afternoon, and it felt as though Uncle Luis was applauding her.

‘I may yet have a trick up my sleeve that will surprise Sergi, though!’ she continued. ‘Bring my daughter here, Martin, and we’ll talk. She can’t have the baby here, but before her time comes perhaps I can change a thing or two. I’ve maybe accepted Sergi’s diktats for just a little too long. It’s time I remembered whose daughter Carla really is.’

Alex’s face came into clear focus before her, and she wanted to tell him, to reassure him. No one will take your grandchild away, Alex. No one will harm Carla’s child. It was like a promise to herself, to the Joana she had once been, before she became afraid.

It was the coldest January Joana could ever remember. Above Sant Galdric the Pyrenees were cloaked in snow, deep snow that had driven the shepherds further and further down the mountains to the point where the sheep now huddled in hurriedly fenced areas just outside the village, in dirt fields normally used to grow vegetables. But the ground was too hard this winter for planting vegetables, and, hearing the bleating of the sheep, Joana wondered if they were as hungry as she was. They certainly weren’t producing much milk, Uncle Victor said. The little cheese the villagers were eating was sparingly spread on hard bread. But while they had the sheep and last year’s flour and potatoes they could still eat, unlike some people in the towns. Franco’s armies had cut them off from food supplies, and the winter was hard indeed for the people in the cities.

Joana huddled against the church wall, sheltering from
the icy wind. There were no village youths in the square this evening, but that suited her. She was waiting for Alex. She hadn’t seen him now since Christmas, two weeks ago, and travel was so difficult, but this afternoon he’d arrived home, coming into the village on foot, to spend the long holiday weekend with his family. There would be no feasting for Epiphany this year, but Alex’s mother and father were on their own now, with his brother away fighting, and Alex had found a way to be with them – and with her.

At Christmas Alex had asked her to marry him. At the thought she hugged herself, enfolding their secret inside her thick woollen coat. They couldn’t tell anyone yet. It had been a great thing for his family when Alex was taken on for training by the solicitor in Girona. Until he completed his training they would resist him marrying anyone. And Joana was just a child, or at least that’s what they thought of her. She smiled. Alex didn’t think her a child. He loved her, he said, for her laughter, her life, and her belief in dreams, and together they were going to make a future, one where she could take Mama and Josep and all of them away from Sant Galdric and into a different world.

Night had fallen now in the little village square, and Joana was seriously cold. Supper, such as it was, would be ready at home now, and she could not stay out much longer. Hurry up, Alex, she murmured, and as she did so he turned the corner, his tall, slender form outlined against the dark sky. She came away from the wall like a shot, and he pulled her into his arms.

But he was uncharacteristically sober as he drew her through the church doors, out of the night air and into the
marginally less cold nave of the church. He sat her down beside him on the hard pew, and cupped her shoulders in his hands so that she looked straight into his face.

‘I only just made it up here today,
carinyo
,’ he told her, ‘and God knows how I’m going to get back. I may have to walk all the way to Girona, all thirty kilometres. There’s no fuel anywhere, and I was lucky on the way up to get picked up by a carter for some of the way. This may be the last time I can get home for a very long time.’

Joana gulped. ‘They’re coming, then?’

‘Yes, my love, they’re coming, and much faster than anyone thought. Franco’s best generals, and an army of hundreds of thousands. They’re nearly at Barcelona already, and they’ll show no mercy once they take it.’

‘But we have an army too! They’ll defend Barcelona!’

‘We have no weapons left, Joana. The Nationalists have tanks, and planes, and ammunition, and food, of course. Our men have nothing left to fight with.’

‘And your brother?’

‘God knows! We’ve had no news of him for months. If he’s still alive he’ll be one of those left fighting in the streets of Barcelona when the attack comes. My father already told me today he doesn’t expect to see him again. You know, it makes me so angry in Girona when I hear people saying they just want the war to be over now, no matter who wins. I know they’re suffering, but what do they think is going to happen if the fascists walk into the city? Do they think everything’s just going to return to normal and we’ll all shake hands and be friends? Those bastards of Franco’s will murder us all just for being Catalans and for daring to hope!’

‘My uncle Victor says there could be a truce – a negotiated end,’ Joana voiced, but without conviction as she looked into Alex’s dark, troubled eyes. He didn’t answer, just shook his head, and put his arm around her as she shivered.

‘You’ll be all right here,
carinyo
. They’ll be too busy fighting over the cities to worry about tiny villages like this one.’

‘And you?’

‘I’ll be all right as well,’ he said. ‘I’m just a clerk, and nobody in Girona knows that my brother fights for the Republicans. They’ll have no reason to come looking for me, and I’ll just lie low. There won’t be any reason to go to work anyway, if the Nationalists take Girona. I can’t see anyone worrying about property conveyancing and the like for a while, can you?’

He sounded bitter and Joana knew how it had galled him not to be fighting alongside his brother. But his parents had begged him – one son was enough, they’d said, to lose to a brutal Civil War. She raised her hand and touched his cheek.

‘If no one needs solicitors right now, must you go back to Girona? Could you not stay here until it’s all over?’

‘For how long, though? It may take weeks or it may take months. Nobody knows, and meanwhile the boss keeps up the pretence of being open, and when all this is over we will at some stage have some kind of government, some kind of life, and I’ll need my job!’

They sat for a while longer in silence, their breath misty in the cold air of the church.

‘I’ll need to go,’ Joana said eventually, with a despondency unusual in her. ‘They’ll be waiting for me at home to eat.’

‘Me too,’ Alex replied, then smiled at her ruefully. ‘We’ll be all right, you know. We just need to wait and things will come out the other side. You and I have no involvement.’

Joana protested. ‘My father was a Republican journalist. He was gaoled by the same people who now fight with Franco’s army. My Uncle Luis too, and he was a ringleader, so his name was well known. If they come to Sant Galdric looking for Republican sympathisers then my family stands out like a sore thumb.’

‘Only if they come, and only if someone tells them. What your uncle and father were involved in happened way before the actual war started, and miles away from Sant Galdric as well. When your mother brought you and Josep back here she broke the link with all of that. No, the scores the Fascista will be looking to settle will be much more recent. My parents will be more vulnerable, like others in the village who have a son in the war. But the village will hold together, if needs be. No one will say a word.’

Joana shivered again. You really believe that if everyone sticks together we’ll be all right? She didn’t voice the question – it was useless for now to speculate, and all they could do was hope. There might yet be a negotiated settlement.

‘Meet me tomorrow, behind the byre,’ Alex was saying, and she nodded and kissed him with a fervour that made no concessions to being in church. She would meet him anywhere. It might be their last chance for a long time.

In the weeks after Alex’s visit little or no news came to Sant Galdric. Nobody was travelling, except for one fruitless
journey made by Uncle Victor with a mule and cart to try to get more hay for the sheep. He came back with some meagre sheaves for which he had paid with three valuable livestock, and some news that Barcelona was being fought for street by street, by civilians and military alike. They heard aeroplanes rumbling in the distance, and could imagine the bombardment which must be taking place, both in Barcelona and in coastal towns nearer to Girona. Barcelona had been so grievously bombed in the last year that it was a wonder anything still stood, or so it was said.

Alex had left on 8th January. It was nearly three weeks later that they heard the planes that bombed Girona. Oh my God, thought Joana, this is it! Barcelona must have fallen and they’re attacking Girona now. The bombs fell with a dull boom, which resonated up the valley towards them and seemed to amplify as it echoed immediately back from the mountains above. The villagers gathered together in the square to listen, in silence, Uncle Victor with his arm round Grandma Aina, and Mama standing erect and calm, with one arm around each of her children. Little Josep, who normally never stayed still, stood as silent as them all in the arc of his mother’s arm, his eyes huge as they saw the planes curve round above them after the sound of the bombs had ceased, heading for their base back south.

And then the silence was deafening, and all you could do was imagine, and wait, and worry. On 5th February, after five more bombardments, they heard that Girona had fallen, not like Barcelona, where they’d fought for every street corner – this time there was no army left to resist, and the word was the Nationalists had just walked into the
city. Joana held her breath and waited for news from Alex. Surely among all the refugees making their way out of the cities he could find a way to walk home? But Sant Galdric wasn’t on a route to anywhere and no one came this way – there was no news, no visitors, just silence and hunger, and to her shame Joana found herself longing for something to happen, even though it would almost certainly be bad news. But Alex might come – surely Alex would come.

At home her mother continued as patiently as ever to make soup from practically nothing, and to cook rice and potatoes. Straggling refugees finally appeared in the village, thin, hungry and very cold, with stories of a mass flight of the army and thousands of civilians across the border to France. As the village got hungrier and the numbers to feed grew greater, Victor and the other shepherds killed two sheep, splitting the meat between the houses. It was a desperate thing to do – these were female sheep and the life of the village in the future depended on their offspring. Once they’d done this, though, they took the remaining sheep far away from the village, where nobody could find and steal them. There was too much hunger, and too many strangers around whom they distrusted.

It was just a few days later, in mid February, that the first victorious troops appeared in the village, just one rattling truck with about a dozen dirtily clad soldiers, waving the Nationalist flag and hooting their horn. People hid, but the soldiers banged on the doors and demanded that everyone come out of their houses, and slowly the villagers did so, grouping again in the square, all together, facing the soldiers, murmuring
sotto voce.
Joana heard Victor whispering to her mother.

‘Look, isn’t that young Sergi Olivera, old Carla’s grandson? What is he doing here among that lot?’

‘Goodness knows! I haven’t seen him in the village for nearly a year. He wasn’t a Fascista back then, or at least no one said so! But knowing his father, it shouldn’t surprise me!’

‘His mother would turn in her grave! She was a fine woman.’

‘Well, and so was the boy, until the mother died and he was left with that rogue of a father. I used to feel sorry for the poor little bugger – but who’d have thought he’d end up with that evil bunch!’

Joana looked across at the group of soldiers, armed with a mixture of rifles and revolvers, and there he was in the middle of the group, talking to an older man who looked like the officer in charge. Sergi! Why she knew him! Last summer he’d been among the young men who hung around the square and ogled the girls, and he’d made it clear he liked her more than all the rest. She remembered a comment he’d made that had shocked her at the time.

‘You’ll take some flowering yet, my beautiful girl, but one day you’ll be ripe and ready for me to pluck. So don’t take any of these village idiots while I’m away. Keep yourself for a real man, and I’ll be back!’

He’d held her arm and stroked his hand down her back, and she’d been frightened a little by his sheer manliness, but he wasn’t seriously threatening, not there in the village square with Alex nearby.

Now Sergi was even broader and more muscular
than he’d been all those months ago – and he’d become a Nationalist soldier. When had he made that decision, she wondered? Had he decided to join the winning side, enlisting so late? Somehow it didn’t surprise her – there was something of the profiteer about Sergi, and anyone that Alex had disliked was not to be trusted.

She shrank back behind her uncle. Oh God, Alex, she thought, you told me this wouldn’t happen in Sant Galdric! Did Sergi bring those people here? What do they want with us?

What they were looking for, it seemed, were runaway Republican soldiers. Half a dozen of the men were dispatched to search the houses, and the rest advanced behind the officer in charge to stand right in front of the villagers.

‘Right, Olivera, you know these people! I’m sick of going through villages and finding that everyone has suddenly turned into a loyal Nationalist! All these bastard Catalans are filthy Communists, we know that. So tell me who is who here that we should know about.’

To be fair to Sergi he looked very uncomfortable as his eyes shifted along the little crowd, and when he caught his grandmother’s eye he flinched. The old lady stood stock-still, her eyes gazing at him in despair from behind her thick headscarf, and he dropped his eyes from hers and turned to the officer.

‘I don’t live here,’ he explained. ‘My father left here years ago, and I just come up on holiday sometimes to see my grandmother. They’re pretty quiet-living people here – it’s a dump of a village with nothing going for it.
They probably don’t even know what’s been happening out there in the real world.’

The officer frowned and tapped his foot impatiently, clearly unsatisfied, and Sergi turned searching eyes and pointed suddenly to someone in the crowd. ‘That family,’ he called out. ‘They have a son fighting for the Communists. That one I know. The son’s called Felip, Felip Companys.’