Bay of Secrets (10 page)

And then she noticed something else. Something that made her stomach dip with alarm. It was in the top right-hand margin of the certificate, printed in red ink.
Delayed Registration
. What did that mean?

Ruby shook off her exhaustion, got out her laptop and Googled. She found a pretty comprehensive article straight off. Births should be registered within forty-two days, apparently – that was the law. But in fact the authorities encouraged registration at any time – otherwise there could be all sorts of problems, like not being able to get a passport, not being on the system, not being able to vote and so on. So even if a birth hadn’t been registered within forty-two days, it still could be. It could still be registered years later, in fact. But the birth certificate would be marked
Delayed Registration
. Like hers. She read on. Documentary evidence had to be provided. What would that be? Notification from a midwife perhaps? There’d have to be a midwife, wouldn’t there? And witnesses. A midwife again? The husband maybe? The civil registrar
would examine all the evidence … Ruby scrolled down. Date and place of birth would be verified. Finally, the notice of late registration would be put on public display – a bit like the banns before you got married. If no one opposed the registration you were home free. You existed.

She closed the site and shut down her computer. Why wouldn’t her parents have registered her birth immediately? It wasn’t the sort of thing that would just slip your mind. She thought of the photos in the family album. No baby photos for the first six months of her life, no birth registration either. What did that mean? Two and two generally made four, didn’t it?
Delayed Registration?
Did that mean that someone – other than the birth parents – could register a birth? Did that mean … ? Could it mean … ?

Ruby was struggling. She was tired. It had been such a long and emotional day.

On its own this might mean nothing – she could almost hear Mel telling her that it was nothing. But added to the other things that she’d found … It had to mean something, didn’t it? And if there was a reason why her birth hadn’t been registered straight away, then why hadn’t her parents told her? Was the truth so unpalatable that Ruby couldn’t be trusted with it?

She went over to the bookcase and ran her fingers lightly over the recipe books, the volumes of poetry, the photo albums. It was time to get personal. Who would know whether or not Ruby was Vivien and Tom Rae’s daughter? Who would know what had happened when she was born –
the true story? Who would know why her birth had been a late registration and why her parents had left a shoebox of photographs – not to mention the love beads, the baby’s bonnet and the guitar plectrum – in the bottom of their wardrobe? Who would know about the infertility? Where Ruby had come from and why her parents had never told her the truth?

The only person she could think of was Frances.

Barcelona, May 1939.

Julia was just seventeen. The Civil War had come to an end and her family clustered around the radio listening to the recording of Franco’s grand victory parade – taking place in Madrid along the Castellana, now called Avenida del Generalissimo.

‘They waste no time in changing the name,’ her father said darkly.

‘They waste plenty of money though, from the sound of all this pomp and ceremony,’ her mother added.

Julia saw her parents exchange a conspiratorial look. The parade sounded lavish, it was true. But Mama and Papa were careful what they said – even in front of their own family, they were careful. They had to be, for there were spies everywhere, desiring to curry favour, wanting to betray their own.

The three girls leaned closer to listen. Julia caught the excitement in Paloma’s dark eyes. She grinned. It was infectious. Surely now, things would change, Paloma’s eyes seemed to say. Surely this was a new beginning – for them, for the young, the new blood of Spain.

Julia wasn’t so sure. What did her sister know of politics
and economics? Those subjects did not interest Paloma – they never had. Julia was young, but already she knew more. She listened, she observed. She stayed in the shadows but she heard everything.

The commentator described General Franco and what he was wearing.

Julia’s mother clicked her tongue in disgust. ‘Who cares?’ she muttered.

‘Ssh,’ their father told her. ‘
You
should take care, my love.’

But the girls hung on to every detail. Under the uniform of the Captain General, they learnt, Franco wore the dark blue shirt of the Falangists. And a red beret.

‘All colour,’ said Julia’s father. ‘All show.’

There were 120,000 soldiers in the parade. ‘A hundred and twenty thousand,’ breathed Matilde. ‘Imagine.’

Julia could not. Paloma looked as though she could though. She looked as though she longed to be there among them. Being admired, thought Julia.

And in the sky above, they were told, aircraft formed the words VIVA FRANCO.

‘Glory,’ said Paloma. Her skin was faintly flushed. Julia guessed what she was thinking; she knew her so well. Hadn’t she listened to her sister’s inconsequential chatter all her life?
Now things will change. Now I will get my chance. I will find a man to love me.

‘Would you like one of those soldiers to come looking for you?’ Julia teased. Life had been hard for the family these past years. Paloma wanted a man to look after her; she – more
than any of them – deeply resented not having the money to spend on clothes and other fripperies.

She tossed her dark head. ‘And what if I would?’ she said.

Julia shrugged. ‘There are other things in life.’ She caught her father’s gaze on her, thoughtful.

Paloma let out a snort of indignation. ‘It is different for you, Julia,’ she said.

‘And why is that?’

‘You are so serious.’

‘Perhaps.’ Julia turned away from the radio to look out through the window at the world outside. A world in which everything had changed. She was more serious, it was true. And what was wrong with that? She was not looking for a man; not yet. She thought of the Vamos boys who lived next door; of Mario who she often caught watching her with narrowed eyes and a considered expression. He was unruly, she did not trust him, and besides, she had more important things to think about. She wanted to know about the world, about what was happening to them, and so she eavesdropped on Papa and Mama’s whispered conversations and stood in the shadows of the city cafés where people discussed such matters.

She turned now to her father. ‘What do you think about the new regime, Papa?’ she asked. ‘Will things change now that the general has won the war? Will we get more food? Will you get more work? Will everything settle down?’

‘You are so young, Julia,’ Mama said. ‘Too young to worry about such things.’

‘Hope to God she never has to worry about such things,’ her father said. ‘Hope to God she never goes hungry again.’

Julia heard the desolation in his voice. But Paloma and even Matilde could not get enough of what they were listening to on the radio. ‘If only we could be there,’ Paloma said with a deep sigh. ‘To witness such a spectacle.’

‘God is their witness,’ their father muttered. ‘
Cielos santos.
’ He cursed softly and shook his dark head. ‘I never thought they could do it. I never imagined.’

Yes. Julia understood what he meant. He had believed, had he not, that the Republicans would win through? They all had.

*

They had indeed seemed to be winning. By 1937 most of the street fighting had been over and the Republicans controlled their city. Julia was only fifteen and she had quickly got used to the changes, though some had felt strange at first.

‘We must not say “
Señor
” and “
Don
” any more,’ her father had told them. ‘It is considered servile.’

Julia was confused – she had thought it good manners. ‘But what should we say, Papa?’ she asked.

‘Comrade,’ he told them. ‘This is the correct greeting.’

Julia and her sisters started using this at every opportunity – it became almost a game. ‘Good morning, Comrade,’ they would say to each other first thing, and, ‘Goodnight, Comrade,’ when they went to bed.

Her parents didn’t seem to mind. But what did they really think? Even then, Julia had sometimes sat at the top of the
stairs, when she was supposed to have gone to bed, listening to their late-night conversations, and she found out. They admired the sense of fair play. They felt this new way was necessary in order to escape the control of dictatorship. They had high hopes of a new and prosperous Republican Spain. Would it happen? Maybe it would – because there were other changes too. Businesses became collectives, private motor cars were commandeered; the Workers were in control.

Julia, and most of the other young people she knew, felt that this was no bad thing. Why shouldn’t there be equality? Why shouldn’t the old ways change? It felt rebellious, daring and exciting. Julia watched the transformation of their city in wonder. Buildings were draped with red and black flags and painted with the symbol of the hammer and sickle; even the trams and taxis were painted black and red. Revolutionary posters were pasted on street corners, and down the Ramblas the songs of the Revolution were played through loudspeakers day and night.

Paloma had responded to the excitement too. She clapped her hands. ‘It makes me want to dance,’ she had laughed.

Julia had laughed with her. But would dancing be frowned on by the Republicans? It seemed likely. They did not appear to smile very often.

‘The important thing,’ Papa had told them, ‘is that there is enough food for everyone. No one will go hungry.’ And this was true. Both Julia’s parents had work; her father in the construction industry and her mother as a primary school teacher. And Julia only had to look into the faces of the
people on the streets to see something even better. Belief in the future. Hope.

But it had not lasted. In the winter of 1938 the city of Barcelona was heavily bombed.

‘Why have they attacked us?’ Paloma whimpered as the sisters clung together in Matilde’s bed late at night. ‘What have we done?’

‘Nothing,’ Matilde soothed. ‘We have done nothing.’

But they all knew that three houses down the street had been hit. The families of two of Julia’s closest friends had died; many others were killed and wounded. Buildings were destroyed. The city was in turmoil. And Julia knew why, because she had heard her own father say it.
Barcelona is being bombed for what they call its Republican sins.
The Nationalists had hit back.

The whole family was in shock. But this was only the beginning.

At the start of the following year Franco’s troops closed in and they all had to hide in their homes in terror as Fascist troops paraded down the city streets.

‘Save us, save us,’ Paloma cried in terror. Even she was too scared to go out and look at them.

Julia watched her mother cry and she saw her father hold her hand and comfort her. ‘Do not be scared, my love,’ he said to her. ‘At least we have been spared.’

‘But for what?’ Julia’s mother cried. ‘What will become of us? Will we ever be safe again?’

Julia’s father could not answer that – because he did not know.

But like everyone else, after the city had been taken, he took care to sever his connections with the people who had become the wrong people to know, the dangerous people to be affiliated with. Julia understood why it had to be done. Everyone did the same. People scurried around, heads down, eyes averted. And anyone with the wrong political connections had to leave Barcelona – fast.

In March, Madrid fell, and then Valencia.

‘It is all over,’ Julia’s father said. ‘
Dulce Jesús!
’ He swore, but in capitulation rather than anger.

He was right. On 1 April, the last of the Republican forces surrendered and Nationalist victory was proclaimed.

*

One night, a few weeks after they’d listened to the victory ceremony on the radio, after Julia had gone to bed, as the cathedral bells tolled midnight, she heard the rise and fall of her parents’ voices once again. She pulled her robe around her and sat huddled on the stair to listen. It scared her. The words poured from her father in a stream – like lava from a volcano; it was as if he had to talk or he would go mad. He spoke of political militants and ‘Bolshevik infection’. Of the madmen, the tramps and the beggars who kept all their worldly goods in a bundle underneath the arches of Calle Fernando. And of the prison camps such as Montjuïc Castle and the continuing executions there; of those who had been tortured and yet still lived with the scars. His voice rose in panic; it grew louder and then faded. Her mother was trying to soothe him; Julia could hear her voice, could imagine her
stroking his hair from his face, drawing him to her for comfort.

She sighed as she returned to her bed. Since the war nothing was the same. How could it be? Spain’s economy was in tatters. Bridges, railways, roads, all was in chaos. But it was more than that. After what she had heard last night, Julia was worrying for her father’s sanity.

That night they had eaten their fill but it had not been a happy family meal.

‘Where did you get the food?’ her mother had asked Papa.

‘I earnt it,’ he replied. His eyes were wild.

He did not have to say more. Chaos had brought corruption and since the end of the war the black market had flourished. Beans, meat, olive oil, flour … They were all hard to procure and cost so much more than the official levy.

Had Papa earnt it? What exactly had he done? Julia had seen how hard he had to look for work – despite the destruction that lay around them, despite the desperate need for rebuilding. His shoulders seemed to hunch lower with every day. And she knew from what she had overheard that he had to be careful who he worked for and that people had to be cautious about who they employed. Please God he would not be thought a former left-wing sympathiser.

‘We all know,’ she had heard him say, ‘what happens to them.’

The following night there was almost nothing to eat. Mama cooked a little rice and a few beans – though Julia knew she had to be thrifty; she did not know where the next
meal would be coming from. There were days when their family went to bed hungry – too many days.