Daughter of Catalonia (17 page)

Beckoned in by Philippe in a surprisingly hearty voice, she found him as Colette had predicted, dressed but on his sofa, a cushion behind his back, reading a book with a notebook by his side. He disclaimed any great pain, and laughed at the quantity of croissants and other delicacies sent by Colette, assuring Madeleine that he expected to be up and about by the afternoon. She made coffee for them both, and sat at the table opposite the sofa, wondering how on earth to open up the questions which seemed to be stuck between her stomach and her ribs. At last it was Philippe who came to the subject. Unlike Colette he had not forgotten her meeting with Jordi last night, and wanted to know how she had got on.

‘You two needed some time to talk together,’ he commented. ‘I’ve often wondered how Jordi really feels about the war, and how much Enric shared with him. They were so very close at the end, having no one else, as it were.’

And so in the end it was easy.

‘He had things he wanted to tell me,’ Madeleine agreed. ‘Things that his father told him, and that he has been keeping to himself ever since. I think it has been eating away at him, and since last night it has begun eating at me as well. Uncle Philippe, Jordi told me that it was Jean-Pierre Perrens who betrayed my father’s camp, and sent the Germans there. I don’t know what to think, but I needed to ask you.’

Philippe gazed into his coffee cup, as though seeing some long distant past, and then sighed.

‘How did he learn that, I wonder? How did Enric know? I was sure no one knew outside the family.’ His voice was weary, laden with memory which was quite clearly as painful as it was heavy.

‘The Germans told him when he was being tortured. They taunted him with it to make him speak.’

‘Oh.’ His sigh was long and hung in the air. ‘Poor Enric. He never said a word. Never in all these years.’

There was wonder in the words. Madeleine felt a huge reluctance to continue. She didn’t want to step anywhere near Philippe’s relationship with Colette. But she knew that having started there was more she needed to say.

‘Jordi told me his father respected you, and didn’t want to make trouble for Colette and her family, since they were friends of yours. So he didn’t denounce Jean-Pierre. It’s
true, then, that he set the Germans on the camp?’

‘Yes,
ma petite
, it’s true. Sadly, it’s true. Colette never forgave him, but he was already such a damaged person, withdrawing into his own world, and so she stayed with him, and ran the café, and raised the boys. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do.’

‘But why? Why, Uncle Philippe? What would make Jean-Pierre take such a terrible step? It seems such an incredible thing to do.’

‘Who knows, my dear, what goes on in such a mind as Jean-Pierre’s? You saw him the other day, and his outburst about your father. That, of course, was brought about by your presence, but it’s clear he had all sorts of fears and paranoia associated with Luis.’

‘And Colette knew?’

‘Colette found out, Madeleine, and did everything she could to stop it. She sent a letter to me immediately to give to Luis, to warn him. But the Germans found the camp so quickly, before Luis came again to visit me. He was due to visit that very evening, I remember, and we should have been able to warn him in time.’ His voice was anguished as he remembered. ‘It was so terrible. How could the Germans have found the camp so quickly? I’ve never understood myself how Jean-Pierre could tell the Germans exactly where to go.’

The words burst from Madeleine before she could stop herself. ‘But it was Daniel who showed them the way! Jordi told me it was Daniel. The Germans taunted his father with that as well, saying that even the child was part of the betrayal.’

‘No!’ Philippe’s response whipped at her. ‘No! You’re wrong there! There is no way that Daniel was involved. No way, do you hear? Whatever any German bastards may have said!’

Daniel’s face swam before Madeleine, with its gentle, genuine smile. He had taken her in like a sister, or maybe more. Could he have done so if he had been caught up in her father’s death? And could Jean-Pierre have involved his own son without Colette knowing? And Daniel wasn’t even living at home. Surely he couldn’t have known anything about it. She rushed into speech again, her voice loaded with relief.

‘Daniel was living with you at the time, wasn’t he? So he was close to the camp. But he couldn’t have known what his father had done, could he? He wasn’t here in Vermeilla.’

Philippe’s face closed over, and she felt him withdraw.

‘He couldn’t have known, surely?’ she repeated.

Philippe took his time replying. ‘Daniel was here in Vermeilla for the weekend just before your father died,’ he said at last. ‘He had been living with me and hadn’t seen his mother for months, and suddenly there was a chance to come down here with a man we knew who had a pass to bring vegetables and fruits down from his farm to the coast, to the German bases in Vermeilla, Collioure and Port Vendres.’

He paused again, before continuing, his voice suddenly hesitant. ‘It was Daniel who brought me the letter from Colette for your father. But he didn’t know what was in the letter. I’d swear he didn’t know anything, and certainly
not how to find the camp. And he hated the Germans, like all the kids did then. They were all gung-ho, talking about liberation and how we were going to send the Germans packing. Daniel was even more excited than most.’

A silence hung between them, and Madeleine thought that Philippe was very far away, in Amélie-les-Bains fifteen years ago, surrounded by his schoolchildren, and taking that letter from Daniel, newly back from his visit home. There was nothing she could say. Nothing that he wasn’t already wondering himself. She lifted their coffee cups and went to the sink to wash them, and still Philippe didn’t move. She moved around the little kitchen area as quietly as possible, drying plates and cups and placing them in the same cupboard her mother had used all those years ago.

Behind her she felt rather than heard Philippe moving, straightening himself painfully against the back of the sofa, and as she turned he was shaking his head as if to wake himself up.

‘We need to visit Colette,’ he said. ‘But not now, not when it’s nearly lunchtime at the café, and not after lunch, when Daniel will be at the harbour sorting out nets. There’s a lull in business at the café at around four, and Daniel will be there as well. That’s when we need to go. Madalena, go to the café now and tell Colette I don’t need lunch. I have the remains of her bread and some fine Pyrenean cheese. But tell her I’m feeling better, and will come to see her this afternoon. Will you, my dear?’

He held out his hand and she went to him, her face drawn and troubled. He stroked her cheek and gave a half smile.

‘Daughter of Luis, don’t worry now. We’ll find the truth and the truth will help us all. Your coming here has unleashed a flood of information – unbelievable almost, when all these years we just got on with living and tried not to ask too many questions. But sometimes one individual, one simple person, can be a catalyst which prises open people’s lives. And what you find out can’t be controlled once the flood starts – it’s stronger than us all. But it will be positive in the end. I believed that when I took you to meet Jordi. You needed to learn and he needed to talk, although he didn’t know it. I don’t know all the truth, but I believe we need it now.

‘But we must never be bitter, whatever happened. Your father would not have been bitter. He understood human frailty and only real badness angered him. I put some of his writings in that envelope over there. I thought you might like to read them. It might help you to understand his life.’

Madeleine pounced on the envelope, and held it to her chest.

‘They’re only some old tracts and newspaper articles,’ Philippe smiled.

‘Maybe, but you have no idea what they mean to me! I’ve never read a word he wrote, or seen a single document that could give me even a glimpse of him.’

Philippe looked thoughtful. ‘You mentioned that the other day, and you know, I find it very strange. How could Elise have kept nothing of Luis? It’s hard to believe. Was there nothing even in the jewellery box?’

‘The jewellery box?’

‘Why yes. Didn’t your mother keep the box? A silver one, with curved feet?’

Madeleine looked at him blankly. ‘Yes, I have the box. But I don’t know what you mean. It has her pearls in it, and some earrings, and a couple of rings.’

‘But you checked the chamber underneath?’

He saw her bemusement, and started again. ‘Your mother’s jewellery box had a false bottom, and Elise and Luis kept their most secret documents in it – the stuff which would have betrayed them. I remember Luis challenging me to find it one day, because he wanted to be sure nobody else would ever discover it.’

Madeleine gripped the envelope between tight fingers. ‘How does it open?’

‘There’s a seal on the bottom. I remember if you pressed that down, then at the same time you could twist one of the silver legs. And then you could lift off the bottom.’ He paused. ‘Where is the jewellery box now?’

‘In my hotel room. Oh my God, excuse me Uncle Philippe, but I have to go.’ She rose and moved towards the door, then came back and hugged him gingerly, trying not to put pressure on his sore back. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, a tremble in her voice.

Philippe grinned. ‘Glad to be of service. This may indeed be a day of revelations. You won’t forget to meet me at four o’clock, at the café?’

‘Oh no, I won’t forget! There’s no danger of that!’

Back in her hotel room, Madeleine picked up the jewellery box with shaking fingers, and turned it upside down. There was no line anywhere to indicate a flap, no sign at all that this bottom might open, but there was the seal, which stood out as a ridge around an engraved circle. Could it move? She pushed down hard on it, and nothing happened. But Philippe had been sure, so she worked around it with her nail, and when she pressed against the very edge it seemed to give very slightly, almost too little to notice. She held her finger in place, and with her other hand groped around the four silver feet with their ornamental claws. She held her breath when the third one moved a fraction, and then, quite easily, it twisted as she rotated her finger. It was uncanny, and she didn’t dare shift her grip, but slowly she lifted, and as she did so the base of the jewellery box lifted away cleanly from the rest. So no wonder there were no
signs of a flap. This was an invisible join around the whole base of the box.

For a long moment she just gazed at the cavity she had exposed. Several faded pieces of paper nestled inside. With hands that shook, she leant forward and with infinite care lifted out the little sheets of paper, one after another. They clung to each other, nestled as they had been so tightly in the shallow space.

‘My God!’ she uttered in wonder to herself. On top there were three thin sheets, each a letter in an unfamiliar handwriting – the letters Philippe had spoken of, which Luis had written to Elise. So they made it to England after all.

She lifted them out carefully, and unfolded them along the fragile crease lines, terrified of tearing the cheap, brittle paper after all these years. Her father’s words scrawled across the pages, in ink which had faded to a dirty brown already.

The first letter was dated March 1943, just four months after Elise and the children had left France. It was carefully reticent about what Luis was doing or how he was living. It could have been a letter from any French civilian to his wife. Madeleine read with a mixture of hunger and diffidence, suddenly timid in the face of this strange script, all Spanish loops and swirls, of a man whose handwriting she had never seen.

Madeleine read the letter several times, rushing at first and then slowing down, finding the feel of her father. She didn’t want to put it down, and found herself simply gazing at the text, the image of Luis in his safe house floating elusively before her. Eventually she laid it carefully to one side, and lifted the second flimsy sheet.

This letter was different. It was dated November 1943, a full year after they had left, and Luis seemed to have fallen into a deep trough. The Allies were making inroads, he wrote, but it was all taking so long. When would it all end?

It felt like an intrusion to be reading these words intended only for her mother. And the dark tunnel had never come to an end for either of them. He had never again touched her mother’s face. Madeleine brushed her hand across her eyes, and picked up the last of the letters.

The third letter had been written in May 1944, and Madeleine realised with a jolt that it was dated less than a month before Luis had died. Luis was buoyant again, with the Allied invasion of France expected imminently.

The letter went on to ask about her and Robert, but Madeleine had eyes only for that paragraph. By the time Elise had got this letter, possibly Roussillon had been
liberated, but also Luis was dead. So much hope for the future seemed to be mixed up with so much anguish for how he had been feeling. What was the quote from Voltaire? It lurked somewhere in her consciousness, but she couldn’t bring it to the fore. Something about the folly of despair? She would need Philippe’s library to answer the question.

She looked again at the jewellery box which had held these letters secret all these years. There were more papers in it, and when she lifted the first of them she realised that they were Philippe’s letters, in his spidery writing. She put the letter abruptly back in the box. I’ll read this later, she told herself, but for now she couldn’t bear to read the news of Luis’s death. She was dazed and amazed by her father living. She had only just rediscovered him.
Please don’t kill him off yet
, she pleaded dumbly at the little pile of paper.

She placed the heavy silver bottom back on the jewellery box, but didn’t lock it in place, almost in fear that she might not be able to open it again. For a long time she sat gazing at the wall, not moving, and then a protest in her stomach reminded her that it was lunchtime, and she hadn’t eaten yet today.

There was a picnic waiting for her downstairs.

‘The oven is broken,’ wailed Mme Curelée, ‘and all our other guests have left this morning. I wondered whether you might like to eat a picnic on the beach since the weather is so beautiful? Or I can serve you the same food in the dining room if you prefer? But it will all be cold, alas.’

To be outside in the sun, with a sea breeze! Madeleine embraced the idea like a deliverance, and within minutes
had put on her simplest cotton dress and was walking along the beach to the very end, away from the village, carrying the sheaf of Luis’s newspaper articles and tracts to read over lunch.

At this end of the beach there were no boats or bathers, since a scattering of rocks broke the water in the shallows and made swimming unsafe. The same rocks formed almost a wall at the rear of the beach, and continued from the end of the beach in a jumble around the coast to the next bay, on the way to Collioure. Madeleine spread a blanket on the rough mix of sand and pebbles, and lay down in the heat of the midday sun, letting its rays seep into her skin and ease her tired nerves. Bread, chicken, a soft goat’s cheese and a cherry tart had been packed in Mme Curelée’s picnic basket, as well as a small flask of red wine, and in the warmth of the sun and the wine Madeleine succumbed to her tiredness and dropped into a soothing sleep. It was no more than a doze, really, but one peopled by dream-like figures. She dreamt of her father as a young boy, in some village in Spain, bare foot and laughing in the street. He looked like Robert as a boy, but tougher and browner, and at one point in the dream he went inside a narrow door into what she knew was his home, and she was sure she was going to see his family, but then she woke up.

She lay disconnected for a while, gazing at a small cloud working its solitary way across the sky, then she shook herself mentally, and stood up and went across to the big, round boulders which fringed the end of the beach, where a little stream trickled down through the rocks to the sea. She washed her face and hands and drank a little of the
water, which was fresh and not too warm. Then she spread her father’s articles around her. Later this afternoon, she thought, they’re going to remind me my father is dead, all these people who knew him when I didn’t, but for now I have him to myself.

From the intimacy of reading his letters to the woman he loved, it was a different experience meeting Luis the writer – her father as a public figure. Philippe had put together some of Luis’s most passionate pre-war writings, sophisticated, complex pieces arguing the case for France to finance the Spanish Republican army, calling it the key defence against Fascism. Mussolini and Hitler were funding Franco, it seemed, but France had chosen a policy of ‘non-interference’, like lots of European countries. Luis argued that there could be no ‘neutrality’ in this war – to try to be neutral was to advance Fascism in Europe. He praised the thousands of Frenchmen who travelled to Spain to fight against Franco. The souls of the Frenchmen who died, he argued, would call out from the grave to reproach their government, which could have stood with them. It was the soul of her father which Madeleine saw, etched in his writings about Spain. He must have hated not joining the fight himself in Spain. His longing came through in every word he wrote.

These passionate pieces contrasted with some very simple World War Two tracts which Philippe had included in the bundle. The Civil War was lost, and Spain was beyond saving for now, but there was still a fight to be won here in France, and Luis’s efforts had moved to wartime resistance. The tracts were single propaganda sheets urging
people to keep faith, giving the frequencies for Radio London, telling them the Allies were winning the war, and that Maréchal Pétain’s promises of a good life under the Germans were already being terribly betrayed. The tracts were in plain language, crudely printed, and must be the same as tracts appearing all over France, Madeleine thought. They revealed nothing about Luis himself, except for the risk he took in producing them.

Next to these, and very different again, were the newspaper articles Luis had written during the war – his carefully maintained ‘cover’, written for a Perpignan newspaper which was firmly under Vichy control. These articles talked about the best way to grow vegetables, how to help children to learn discipline, how to follow simple German rules, and how to reduce fuel consumption in your home. These were Madeleine’s favourite pieces, so tongue-in-cheek as they were. They were so innocuous as to be laughable, but she wondered how they could have fooled any Vichy official, given Luis’s public record of radicalism before the war.

Most of these articles had been cut out from the newspaper, but in two cases the rest of the page had been left intact, and these full pages made interesting reading. A Perpignan man had been caught stealing and sentenced to two years detention – he would undoubtedly have joined the forced labour being sent to Germany, Madeleine thought. The River Têt had flooded again, damaging some close-lying farms. The local mayor had spoken at a school prize-giving, and had awarded a special prize for ‘public service’. It all seemed quite safe and parochial, except
for a small piece reminding readers to be alert for the activities of Jews and Communists, and to report any Jews still working in forbidden professions. ‘We cannot be too much on guard,’ the article said. ‘All around us there are Jews and Bolshevists plotting to bring down our beloved France.’

She lost herself so much in Luis’s working world that it came as a huge shock when she found one final sheet, typed on the most basic imaginable machine, presumably from his resistance hideout. ‘Freedom is coming,’ it declared. ‘The Allied invasion is imminent, and we will liberate our beloved Roussillon from the German oppression. It will be over this summer, and they will flee our land and leave us free again. Hold faith and watch for ways to help us. Every man and woman will have their chance to serve France.’

Suddenly the world of the Perpignan press receded, and the paragraph full of hope and redemption he had written to Elise swam before her eyes. Here he was again just before his own end, and reading the tract all Madeleine could see in her mind was the camp and the German rifles advancing towards the shed. The impudent, eager, radical Luis, who had been so alive, was dead after all.

She put the paper down sadly, checked her watch and realised it was gone half past three. It was time to go to the next confrontation, and God knew what it would bring. Slotting the sheets of typed paper back into the envelope, she rose quickly, suppressing emotion, and walked back along the beach. In a last gesture towards her previous mood, she took off her sandals to walk in the shallows, digging up the tiny pebbles with her toes.

She returned to the hotel to change, and sat by her window for a moment before setting off for the café, looking out at the bay, raw nerves taking over as she listened to the cackle of the seagulls. Philippe believed that the allegations against Daniel could not be true. She had so much faith in Philippe, and she desperately wanted him to be right. But jagged nerves sharpened their edges nevertheless against her stomach wall.

I don’t want to go,
she thought to herself, then,
Or is it that I don’t want to know? God help me, can’t I live for just a while in the world where my father is alive, and writing and working and hoping?

But she had asked for this meeting, for these answers. She was the catalyst and the ferreter of news. There was no point in giving in to weakness now. Philippe would be waiting for her.