Daughter of Catalonia (19 page)

‘Because Jean-Pierre told them, that’s why.’ Colette was still twisting her hands around the tiny ball of paper. ‘You overheard Luis telling me that the camp was up that path from the road. Well, he didn’t tell Jean-Pierre. All he did was describe the clearing where the camp was, surrounded by earth walls, and how they’d had trouble getting wood up the little sidetrack through the trees. He didn’t say how to get there! It was at dinner here one evening. But Jean-Pierre knew it! Imagine, some bare old clearing that no one even thought about, but my husband had to know it, from the days when he used to go hunting, before his accident. He didn’t even say so to Luis, though I don’t know why. He
kept it for later and crowed to me that he knew where the Maquis camp was. He said there were three or four possible clearings, but that there was one in particular which fitted the bill exactly. The way he spoke worried me, but at the time I didn’t have any reason to think he would ever use the knowledge.’

Philippe reached over again and placed his hand on her shoulder. ‘I think Luis always made him feel inferior,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose he knew what was happening between you two, but he could see how friendly you were. At the time he would just have liked knowing something that Luis didn’t want him to know.’

Madeleine hadn’t spoken since she first blurted out the Germans’ accusations against Daniel. She watched them all like actors on a stage. She thought they had forgotten she was there, caught up in their own scene of disclosure and discovery. There was an explanation for everything, it seemed. Jean-Pierre was less wicked than pitiful and tortured, Daniel was an innocent caught up in an adult tragedy, Colette was a lonely woman who had found herself pregnant.

Which left Luis. Luis who had taken easy comfort in France while his wife stood up for him against all the forces of her disapproving parents, and nurtured her children’s love for him far away in England, and hoped and planned for their reunion. Luis who had spoken frivolously about his camp and betrayed his fellow Maquis. Luis who had never known that he had another son. Another son! The so-called hero who had died leaving his wife to shrivel away in England, his children to grow up struggling for his
memory, and his best friend to raise his remaining Catalan child as closely as he could in his image. The hero who was responsible for all the raw unhappiness being exposed before her.

All at once Madeleine felt sick, physically sick. She desperately wanted to leave, to be on her own. But she couldn’t leave, could she? She had started this. Philippe had called the meeting, knowing a lot of what she was going to hear, but she had pushed and pushed for answers. At least, she thought, I can get some air. She rose to her feet, muttered ‘Excuse me’ and stepped out onto the balcony. There she stood with her hands glued to the railings, taking deep gulps of air, looking down into the narrow gap between the houses, down to the cobbles below where normal people were moving around doing ordinary things.

Nobody followed her. She could hear her head pounding, her pulse beating a rock and roll rhythm, and above her eyes a nerve kept twitching. The May evening felt cold in the deep shade of the alleyway. Cold. How could she be so cold? She ran her hands up and down her arms, and then a shawl was thrown around her shoulders. She didn’t turn. She didn’t want to see anyone, to engage with anyone. She might have to be part of their tears and emotion if she did.

‘I called him Martin.’ It was Colette’s voice. ‘I made a bargain with my husband that I would stay with him and not tell what he had done if he would accept Martin as his son. I didn’t dare call him after Luis. I had to call him Martin, because it was Jean-Pierre’s father’s name. It was the only thing I could do to throw the wool in front of people’s eyes and persuade them the child was really Jean-Pierre’s.
But it didn’t matter what his name was – to me he was Luis, and when I sang to him I saw your father.’

Madeleine didn’t move. She wanted to close her ears. She gripped the railing so hard it hurt her fingers, and willed this woman to disappear. But Colette kept talking.

‘I loved your father, Madeleine, but he didn’t love me. He loved Elise with so much passion that I ached with jealousy. It was a passion such as I have never known. But they shared something I could never share with him either. Your mother was cultured, sensitive, educated. They had conversations I didn’t understand, and he said things about her which made no sense to me, although I remember every word he said – that she was floral, that she could smell people, intuit them, and that she had always known who he was, and where he lived in his head. He called it “affinity”.’

There was a doggedness in Colette’s voice, as though she had waited a long time to say these things, and now was determined to finish. It came out almost mechanically, expressionless, addressing Madeleine’s rigid back as though she was in a court room.

‘I was happy afterwards that Luis never got my letter. How complicated it would have been for him to learn he was to have a son. You see our relationship just wasn’t like that. I wasn’t his mistress. We were just friends who went to bed together because we were lonely, because there were so many gaps in our lives. Two weak people who brought about a tragedy. Because it was us. We did it. Not my husband, or Daniel, or anyone else.’

‘Whose tragedy?’ Madeleine spoke at last.

‘A lot of people. We always knew here that the greatest tragedy was your mother’s. That is why Philippe wrote to her again and again, trying to make contact. He loved your mother, you know, but he loved your father even more. And that was Philippe’s tragedy. I’ve watched him since the war. If he could have worn your father’s shirts he would have.’

‘Jordi’s father was tortured for days.’ Madeleine muttered. ‘He died an alcoholic.’

‘Another one, then, whom we damaged. There’s a long list. Don’t think I don’t feel it,’ Colette sighed. ‘And there are all the children. You and your brother, and Jordi, and now my Daniel it seems. It was a high price to pay. But what you have to understand is that we weren’t bad, Madeleine. Your father saved so many people, helped so many, fed so many, freed so many. And I was just weak enough to love him.’

Two hours later Madeleine was sitting in the passenger seat of Philippe’s little car as it drew into the centre of Collioure. The walls of the medieval castle loomed to her right, and to the left was a sort of man-made gully which led down to the shore, and which Philippe told her was designed to take floodwaters away to the sea. Beyond it was the old town, with a network of streets similar to but larger than Vermeilla.

Philippe led Madeleine down by the side of the gully to the quayside, holding her hand and almost dragging her along with him as his long legs strode forward, heedless of his sore back. He had pressed for this trip, back in Colette’s apartment, as Madeleine stood shaking and insisting she wanted to leave.

‘You haven’t come this far to go and hide in your hotel room,’ he told her. ‘You’ll eat with me tonight, and we’ll
see what we talk about. We’ll go to Collioure and eat anchovies, as simple as you like.’

The idea of food made her feel sick again, but she had acquiesced passively in all Philippe’s plans, and stood now on Collioure’s quayside, trying to focus on the outstanding beauty of the place. To her left was the bell tower immortalised on canvas by Matisse and so many other artists. To her right the bay swept round in a wide curve, encompassing two beaches, and two distinct parts of the little town on either side of the castle. It was Vermeilla made more dramatic and spectacular, with the same colours and charm but an added touch of elegance.

Philippe led her to a restaurant terrace and pulled out a chair for her with a view across the bay. He ordered drinks and she found herself drinking a glass of something sparkly which might have been champagne. It slid down surprisingly easily, and the light, chilled liquid soothed her aching throat and seemed to settle her stomach.

Philippe raised his glass across the table. ‘To your very good health,
ma petite
, and to all the good days to come,’ he said.

Madeleine took another long sip of the bubbly, and felt it trickle down her throat. That trickle was like cool silver balm, but her hand was shaking, so she put the glass down.

‘I don’t see the good days to come,
Tonton
Philippe’ she replied. ‘But if we must drink, let’s drink to you. Whatever you did, you did with the best intentions, and you never stop trying to help.’

‘And how do you feel now about your father?’

The cold, hard lump twisted again, deep inside
Madeleine’s stomach. She wanted to shout
How could he, how could he?
but instead she replied with a question of her own.

‘Did you know, during those months before he died, that Papa was having an affair with Colette?’

‘No, Madalena. Remember that I didn’t come down to Vermeilla for well over a year. I was out on a limb in Amélie-les-Bains, and the only news I had of home was what Luis brought me. Luis himself only came to the coast a handful of times between the end of 1942 and when he died – a handful of times in more than eighteen months. I think to call his relationship with Colette an affair is an exaggeration.’

‘So when did you find out?’

‘When I read the letter, on the evening of Luis’s death. When they brought me his body I knew that something in the letter had gone badly wrong, so I opened it and read it.’

‘And what did you think?’

‘So many questions! To be honest, Madeleine, I was too stunned and desolate to think too much. What I didn’t do was judge. It would have been a presumption to judge, when so much unhappiness and trouble was involved.’

Something erupted in Madeleine, an anger which burnt her throat, her face, her eyes. She almost spat at Philippe. ‘I might have known you would defend everyone! Whatever anyone does, you’re always going to find an excuse for them. Didn’t it occur to you that two people’s philandering had put a whole team of Maquis in danger? Had caused the arrest of Enric, with all the inevitable consequences?’

‘People were under enormous pressure, Madeleine.’

‘But
people
didn’t do it! My father did!’

‘Yes, but not many people lived life with as much passion as your father. It was his strength, and also maybe his weakness.’ Philippe spread his hands almost in supplication as he continued. ‘You want your heroes perfect? Well in that case you should stick to novels. Your father wasn’t perfect, but he was still extraordinary, and you need to accept that to be able to get his memory back in focus.’

Madeleine thought of Colette’s words, ‘Two weak people who brought about a tragedy’. But Colette wasn’t a weak person – far from it. She’d had moments of weakness, but picturing her in her café, forced to serve the occupying forces, all her neighbours gone, with a damaged husband upstairs, and her son many kilometres away, Madeleine could imagine what a delight and comfort Luis’s rare visits must have been. She was like a beast of burden, Colette, passively enduring, quietly bearing more than her fair share. But Luis? Where was his excuse?

Bitter bile rose in her throat, and she gazed out to the darkening waters of the bay, inhaling deeply and fighting back tears she didn’t want to shed. She was aware of Philippe beside her, waiting for her response, but there was nothing to say, was there? What did he want of her? That she should forgive everything, smile and pretend everything was fine?

‘My mother had to live with this too, you know,’ she threw at him, and when he looked at her in surprise, she felt almost jubilant for a moment. But it didn’t last.

‘He wrote to her,’ she said, her voice flat as a pancake. ‘I
found the letters in the jewellery box, just as you thought. His last letter told her he’d been through a dark tunnel, and pretty much admitted he’d been unfaithful. He was happy again because liberation was in sight, and said he’d found her again. He said she would understand!’

‘And so she would!’ was Philippe’s almost inevitable reply.

She was too exhausted to try to justify herself, to fight Philippe’s determined assault in defence of her father. He hadn’t seen her mother after the war, the destroyed ghost of Elise. But there was no point in replying. She wanted to be on her own, but he wouldn’t let her rest. Couldn’t he see how tired she was?

She spoke more to satisfy him than anything else. ‘If I accept what you say, where does that leave us? Where do we go from here?’

‘Well, you can walk away, of course, and go back to your old life,’ answered Philippe immediately, as if he had hoped for this question.

‘Or?’

‘Or you help me support Colette now as she decides what to tell Martin. And you help me with Daniel. I couldn’t get him to speak this afternoon about his own feelings. You’ve just discovered a shocking truth as an adult young woman, but Daniel has been carrying the same knowledge as a secret since he was nine years old – heavy baggage for a sensitive child. And now it’s all out, and he can talk, if he will. I’m hoping he may talk to you more easily than to me.’

Daniel and Martin. Martin and Daniel. A half-brother
and his half-brother. Her brain quite simply reeled.

‘I want Robert to come!’ she wailed. ‘I’ll do what I can, but I want my brother here. My real brother.’

‘Tomorrow, Madalena, we will talk to the world, but right now we will eat, and you will eat and feel better, and we will drink more wine, and celebrate being here, alive. Look, the moon is already out over there, across the bay! Drink Madalena, and love life, just like your father did.’

He ordered a plate of anchovies, and a little dish of tiny fried fish, and Madeleine did as she was told, and drank wine and ate, and deliberately dulled her mind, and didn’t speak, and watched the lights of Collioure brighten as the dark descended over the bay and shrouded the castle in a strange kind of intimate mystery. It wasn’t a remote castle, but a part of the town, a mass of golden stone which matched the stone of the church, the bell tower, the harbour walls. They connected, embraced, and encircled the safe harbour they had been built to protect.

The castle had been the German headquarters during the war, and countless prisoners had been kept there. She’d heard that as the occupation ended and the Germans prepared to flee, they considered torching the castle and killing all the prisoners from pure vengefulness.

It was also where the French authorities had kept the fleeing Spanish militia at the end of the Civil War – all the men who were considered the most dangerous. And from here they had released a troop for a day to act as guard of honour for Machado’s funeral.

Later, as they returned to the car, she found her voice, and asked Philippe where the cemetery was.

‘Just up the road,’ he answered, ‘But it will be closed now for the night. Why?’

‘I met a young couple working on Antonio Machado’s new grave there,’ she explained. ‘And they gave me some of his poetry to read. He seemed to write about everything that we’ve been talking about – war, and separation, and the sense of loss, and the struggle to make a life through it all.’

Philippe almost bounced in excitement, and stopped dead in the street, his huge, ungainly feet planted squarely in front of her and blocking her way forward.

‘Two quotations!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ll give you two quotations, and then I’ll tell you a little story. Antonio Machado wrote, “
My philosophy is fundamentally sad, but I myself am not a sad man
.” He lived some hard defeats, but the quotation I love the best of his is this one. “
Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again
.” It’s not a message of easy reassurance, but neither is it a message of despair. We create our future. It is not ordained. We have to keep on going, and look ahead, and know what is behind us but not try to go back there.

‘And my little story? Your father knew Machado. He’d met him in Paris, many years before. Machado was much older, but Luis admired him hugely, and loved his company. And when Machado arrived in Collioure, so sick, fleeing from Franco, Luis came to see him, and he brought Elise. He said he wanted her to feel him, to know the man and
not just the words. They found him wasted, desperately ill and hardly speaking, but your mother came away saying he had a “being”, an essence and reality, and that this filled the room.

‘And that, Madeleine, is the essence of your mother and father’s relationship. Their reality exists beyond anything else that happened. And there we end all discussion for tonight. And tomorrow we talk to the world, and you talk to Robert, and we put one foot in front of the other and make a road.’

I don’t want to talk to the world, thought Madeleine. I only want to talk to Robert. Oh, how I want to talk to him. He seemed to think I was exaggerating the importance of what Jordi told me, but it’s worse, so much worse than even Jordi could have suspected. It was funny, really, that all her life Madeleine had thought of Robert as the little brother who needed to be protected, the boy young for his years who seemed so vulnerable, but since their mother’s death he had become her confederate, the cornerstone of her sense of family. She could see more clearly how well Robert had coped with their reality as a child. How he had kept his own inner self while making a compact with their grandfather, and won his support and affection without once becoming his puppet. Grandfather needed Robert more than Robert needed him, and she had no doubt that if Grandfather cut off funds for his studies Robert would calmly follow a different course and build a new future. He knew how to make the sun shine, she thought, as she never would.

Right now, here in this deceptively beautiful, serene
corner of France, Madeleine felt terribly alone. Philippe, Colette, Daniel – they had their own tragedies, but what she had learnt today was hers alone to deal with. But if Robert was here then they would be two people together facing this new, desolate landscape. Would Robert know how to turn this situation in Vermeilla into something positive? There was a good chance, she thought, that he would know better than her.

The next morning found Madeleine back at the post office, sitting in the same little cubicle as the day before, but this time the voice at the other end told her to wait and disappeared for ages before returning to say that Mr Garriga was not in his room. The wave of disappointment which washed through Madeleine was almost more than she could bear. She fought back new tears, and left a message, which the voice, a porter she thought, assured her would be left in Robert’s pigeonhole. She thought hard about her message, but finished merely by asking him to call her at the Hotel Bon Repos. There was no point even beginning to explain what had happened, not in a scribbled message in a pigeonhole.

Leaving the post office she was at a loss what to do. She could see Philippe playing boules with a group of men in the square, their sleeves rolled up and their overall jackets laid on the bench behind them. He would be busy all morning, and in any case, they had agreed to meet during the afternoon to plan the ‘next move’, as Philippe insisted on calling it. Were they moving forward, or simply swimming to save themselves from sinking?

Philippe had finished off the Machado quotation last night as they drove home in the car. ‘
Wanderer there is no road. Only wakes upon the sea
.’ They’d been driving back along the coast road, and the moon was lighting up the water with such brilliance that it reflected onto the sands. Madeleine had responded by commenting how wonderful it would be right now to be in a boat running for the open sea, rather than trying to forge some kind of way ahead without any road. Papa, she thought, you have taken away my past, and I can’t see my way into the future. How could you, how could you?

Right now, standing lost outside the post office, with Robert a million miles away, Madeleine wanted to move, to walk, to empty her head and fill her lungs. She was tempted to walk along the coastal path towards Collioure, which she had heard was often a crumbled cliff path, but with magnificent views. But then on impulse she turned her steps up towards the vineyards, and climbed the hill with a ferocity which set her panting, finishing up by Daniel’s little field of vines, sitting quiet and deserted in the morning sun, as peaceful and timeless as they had been the previous Sunday, when the world still stood upright and dreams were still intact.