Bay of Secrets (33 page)

The cliffs were not all one colour as they appeared to be at first. Nothing was. An artist had to look deeper – his father had taught him that much at least. Like the desert landscape
of the island, these cliffs were, of course, combed through with other shades, darker colours, threads of grey and blue and rust. So. A pale honey to start with. Then build.

But Andrés could not go back to the island and so it could not be his home again. He could not go back as Ruby wanted to go back in order to go forward. He wanted to see them, of course he wanted to see them. His mother and Izabella. But Andrés guessed that it was his father who would never forgive. Just as Andrés would never forget.

Fuerteventura, 2010

Sister Julia sat down to rest for a moment on the bench under the orange tree in the square. She let her breathing steady. It was hot and she was no longer young. The walk from Nuestra Señora del Carmen was just long enough to provide her with some fresh air and exercise, though the main road into the village was lined with date palms which were untended and hung so low that their sharp leaves had threatened to take out her eye. But it was important to go out into the world sometimes. And had it not always been that way for her? Sister Julia relished the peace and tranquillity of the pale stone cloistered convent and the desert landscape all around, but had that sense of serenity ever settled inside her?

Her life was full. She helped with domestic chores in the convent and she prayed to God. She gave what guidance she could to the people in the village. She thought of the sad, dark-eyed woman who had given her that lace tablecloth she still kept in the drawer of her writing desk. Of the stories that even she might not have yet heard. And whenever she thought of the past and looked in her book of names … In
truth, even after all these years, Sister Julia was still struggling – to find that inner peace.

On one side of the square were the
ferretaria
and the
bazar
; on the other, the Bar Acorralado. A woman passed by. ‘
Buenos dias
,’ she said to Sister Julia.

‘God be with you,’ she replied.

A newspaper had been discarded on the bench beside her. Sister Julia glanced at it. Even after all this time, she remained curious about the world she had withdrawn from. She picked up the paper. Glanced at the front headline.
Niños Robados
. What was this?
Holy Mother of God.
She crossed herself. And underneath – a picture. A medical room – so like the one at the Canales Clinic that she shuddered as the memory flooded back. A narrow bed with a woman lying in it, an obstetrics trolley carrying the surgical instruments necessary to aid delivery, a nun holding a child –
a nun … Glory.
It surged into her mind as if it were yesterday – the women, the babies, the deaths. She could hear their cries. And see their tears.
Dear God in heaven.
She thought that her heart would stop beating.

Sister Julia fumbled for her reading glasses, which were in the purse at her waist. Her hands shook.
Niños Robados
. Spain’s Stolen Children. Could this really be what she thought it must be? Yes, it most certainly could. It was a scandal, she read. Arguably the biggest scandal to ever hit her mother country. The scandal of the stolen babies. In terror, she clamped a hand to her mouth. She had no choice but to read on.

There had been an exposé a few years ago, she read.
A few years ago … ?
And there she had been, going about her business at the convent, oblivious to what was happening in the outside world. What would she have done if she had known? Sister Julia thought of the book of names. Would she have been brave enough? She had been waiting so long for guidance from God. Now though, she read, there was an organisation fighting for the cause:
ANADIR
.

And something stirred deep within her. That was good. People much younger and stronger than she were fighting. She thought of the Spanish Civil War and the hope in her family’s hearts when they had thought the Republicans had won through. They had been rebels – and yet she had been almost too young to realise that. And those rebels had been quashed for many, many years. With methods such as these. Sister Julia let the newspaper rest on her lap for a moment. She gazed across the square at the three-legged dog loping in an ungainly fashion across to the
bazar
.
Dear God
 … And she had been part of it. A girl whose parents had fought against the values of those same Nationalists had been part of the conspiracy of domination.

She picked up the paper again. Her mind was reeling, but she had to know it all. She read of a young man whose mother had told him the truth on her deathbed:
It is wrong that you do not know you are not of my blood. I bought you from a priest for 150,000 pesetas.
A priest … And yet – this was not news to her, was it? Did she not know as much already? Had she not collected money at the Calle Fontana in place
of the priest and taken it back to Dr Lopez?

The truth will out.
People – her people of Spain – would not be dominated for ever. And those adoptive parents … They were not all bad people. They were rich yes, and desperate for a child. And they were weak and open to temptation just as all mankind. But in the end … They would not forget. And like this woman on her deathbed they might need to unburden. Just as Sister Julia did herself. She sighed. For now – surely – she must help them find the truth. She could not stand by and allow God alone knew how many people – for they were adults now, not children – not to find out who they were and where they had come from. She could help at least some.

Baby theft
 … she read.
Trafficking.
She had never thought of it that way. Holy Mother of God, even in her darkest moments, she had never thought of it that way.

And she was implicated. Of course, she was implicated. She had comforted the women who had lost their children – but she had never challenged the fact that a baby had been pronounced dead. She had never said to Dr Lopez,
How can he have died? Show him to me. Show me the dead child.
Again, she shuddered. She had not said these things because she had been told it was not her place to question. She – like the unmarried mothers themselves who had been pressurised to give their babies away for adoption – had been weak; intimidated by the doctor, that respectable and God-fearing man, that pillar of society who always knew best.

And yet she had known, hadn’t she? Deep in her heart she
had known. Else why had she written down the names? Why had she kept the book and why did she keep it still?

Sister Julia could hear the children in the school playground behind the square and music coming from the Bar Acorralado where the men of the village often congregated to drink and play cards and dominos. Life was continuing as if nothing had changed. But for her … Everything had changed. It was as if a bolt of lightning had come down from the sky and shown her with frightening clarity what had been done and what there was still left to do.

Sister Julia read on. She read that thousands of Spaniards had come forward, believing that they might be potential victims of the scandal. Women who were sure their babies had been taken from them but who at the time had lacked the confidence to challenge the medical profession, to challenge priests or nuns who were, were they not, men and women of God? Again, she crossed herself. There were those more corrupt who had hidden behind the apparent respectability of priests and nuns. Some of these men and women of God might have been innocent. But others … Her eyes filled with tears but she read on. It was too late for tears. She read of women who sometimes had lacked the funds to manage the burial of their own child, who had grasped the straw being given to them; that the State would take care of everything. Who’d had no choice. Who had believed what they were told – because the alternative was impossible to believe.

And she read that as many as three hundred thousand babies might have been stolen in this way.
Three hundred
thousand
 … Sister Julia let this awful statistic sink into her senses. It had then been going on all over Spain. And she had been one of the perpetrators.
Stolen
. It was an emotive word. It stood against everything she had ever believed in. And yet it was true. Dr Lopez had stolen those children to sell on for huge sums of money. And she, Sister Julia, had helped him.

It was still early, but the sun was getting hot and Sister Julia felt that she could barely breathe. She should have brought some water with her. But for now she could not stop reading.

Because of Franco’s 1941 adoption law, she read, the only way to prove family relationships was by DNA testing. It would be a lengthy and frustrating business. Babies had been moved around the country too and to other countries; files had been destroyed. Well, Sister Julia knew about that. There were no records. Most of the
Niños Robados
would never know who their true parents were.

She considered this. Thought about her own family, God bless them, who she had lost in different ways, but at least had known.

And that was not all. She put a hand to her head. She felt as if her habit was pressing against her body, her wimple squeezing at her temples. Graves were being exhumed.
Holy Mother
 … Again, Sister Julia crossed herself. She could feel the rapidity of her own breathing; a fluttering in her heart, an ache in her lungs as if she could not get enough air. Sometimes the graves – supposedly of babies whose mothers had been told they were dead – contained just a limb, sometimes
the corpse of an old man or woman, not even a baby at all.

Sister Julia closed her eyes. She put an arm on the side of the bench to steady herself. This was too much. Nuns – like her – had worked in hospitals and clinics all over Spain. And not only on the mainland. There were cases here too in the Canary Islands, in Fuerteventura. It had even happened here because the political arm of the Nationalist party and the Church, working together, had spread like an octopus and manifested supreme power over them all.
Dear God, Holy Father, give me strength.

But it was true. Nuns – like her – had cared for mothers and told them that their infants were dead. One nun – and Sister Julia could barely believe this story – had apparently been part of a terrible pretence. She put a hand to her mouth and thought for a moment that she would vomit. A pretence of showing mothers a frozen baby as proof that their child had died; a baby who was kept in a freezer for this very purpose.
A frozen baby
 … Julia shuddered yet again. Her whole body seemed to shudder and shake and for a moment the sun disappeared and her world went black. It was almost too horrific to bear.

But she must be strong. She remembered what her sisters had once said to her many years ago when they visited her at Santa Ana.
You are fortunate
, they had said.
As a nun, you have an important social role to play.
What would Matilde and Paloma say if they were still alive and if they knew of this, Sister Julia wondered? What would they think now of the important
social role which she had been asked to perform? Despite the warmth of the sun, the shadows around her were lengthening before her very eyes. And they were shadows stretching back to Spain’s Civil War; a legacy that haunted their society to this day. A legacy of pain and betrayal.

Sister Julia pushed her knuckles into her mouth to stop herself from crying aloud. What could she do? Why had she created her book of names if it was to serve no purpose?

She looked up from her reading as another shadow fell over her. It was a man, in his sixties perhaps, with sun-browned, leathery skin and dark eyes. He wore blue overalls and a bandanna around his head and she did not think she had seen him before. He was smoking a thin cheroot. And he was watching her, a curious, almost knowing look on his face.

‘
Buenos dias
, Sister,’ he growled in a low, guttural tone.

Sister Julia flinched at the sound of his voice and found that she could not speak. She couldn’t ignore the man though. So she just nodded.
Please go away
, she thought. It was not charitable, but …
Please go away.

‘You are well, Sister?’ he asked.

She realised what a picture she must present, how perturbed and emotional she must seem. There were tears in her eyes and she was hot and flushed. She bowed her head and tried to calm herself. ‘I am well,’ she said at last. Though the words seemed to stick in her throat. Well? After all she had read in this newspaper article? How could she ever again feel well?

The man did not go away as she had hoped. Instead, he sat beside her on the bench. His own breathing was shallow and uneven and she noticed now that he was thin and gaunt. He too, she realised, was far from well.

He leaned forwards, flicked at the paper which was still resting in her lap.

Sister Julia winced.

‘You read bad things in the papers,
no
?’ He clearly wanted to make conversation.

Sister Julia summoned all her strength. Sent up a silent prayer to God. ‘That is so, my son,’ she murmured. For she still had a duty to perform. She must not think only of herself. There were many others who had to be helped – and this man could be one of them.

He picked up the paper. Sister Julia froze. She did not think though, that she could bear to discuss it. Not with this man. Not with anyone – at least not at this moment in time.

But he just let out a deep sigh and threw the paper to one side. ‘It is life,
si
?’ he said.

No, Sister Julia thought. It was death. She got to her feet, a little unsteadily.

The man looked up at her. He cocked his head to one side. ‘Can I get you anything, Sister?’ His eyes were very dark. Inscrutable.

What she needed was water. But she also needed to return to the convent. Her emotions were in tumult. What she needed even more than water, was to pray. ‘Thank you, my son,’ she said. ‘I am well.’