Guernica (33 page)

“So, Miguel, Dodo told us about getting you out but not how they caught you,” Renée said. “If you don’t mind . . .”

“I’d rather eat now,” he said, taking a large bite of salmon and then one of bread to fill his mouth.

“They both fell asleep and the Guardia heard them snoring along the roadside,” Dodo offered. “We’re lucky that the notorious
Claw didn’t knock on the front door at a guard house and ask for a room for the night.”

“Easy, Dodo, or I’ll tell him all about your first trip across the mountains with the champagne,” Renée teased.

“Fair enough,” Dodo said. “I’m kidding anyway. He saved the flier’s life; he was incredible. I wasn’t at all afraid the Guardia
would catch on to me at the station. I was worried that Miguel would recognize me and start calling Major von Schnurr ‘Dodo,’
and maybe slap me on the back or give me a big hug in front of the Guardia. But he kept his mouth shut and went along with
it all. Very impressive.”

Miguel grinned and winked; he couldn’t tell Dodo how close he’d come to doing exactly that.

“Maybe I’ll turn into a master smuggler after all,” Miguel said. “What’s next?”

Dodo looked at Renée, who cleared the plates and began washing them with her back turned.

“Miguel, I think that might be a problem, for a while, at least,” Dodo said.

“What? Why? We did well. We got him through. I’m not much of a swimmer now, but I’m getting better in the mountains.”

“Yes, we did get him through, but I think the famed Claw might have too high a profile to risk going into the mountains anymore,”
Dodo said.

“It was only the Spanish guards who saw me, and they thought they shipped us off with the Gestapo,” Miguel argued. “They’re
not smart enough to follow up on it, are they?”

“What if they are?” Dodo said. “We have to assume they contacted the Gestapo about you
before
we called them. I can imagine the sergeant in Irun had a major surprise when the real Gestapo showed up Monday morning to
get the two of you.”

“But they didn’t know who we were,” Miguel said.

Dodo gestured toward his hands. “I think he’ll be able to supply a fairly accurate description.”

“I can keep my hands in my pockets,” Miguel said, louder than he intended.

Dodo wouldn’t say this if he knew how important it all was to him, Miguel thought. The threat of the Gestapo and the guards,
and of being caught or shot, consumed his attention during every passage. The concentration left no time to make all those
connections in his mind. He needed this; he needed to continue more than Dodo could understand.

“It’s not just you, Miguel,” Dodo stressed. “And it’s not just us. We’re in a group of hundreds of people from Belgium on
down. There’s Renée, her family, the fliers. We can’t take the risk.”

Miguel knew his brother had thought this through. This wasn’t the daredevil Dodo anymore. He was being smart. But Miguel couldn’t
imagine anything he could do that was more important.

“So, what now? What’s left for the Claw?”

Renée finished at the sink and joined them again, putting her hand on Miguel’s shoulder.

“Go back to Spain,” Dodo said.

Miguel flashed on an alternative. “I can help on the boats.”

“There’s a risk of being seen there, too,” Dodo said. “Not to mention your seasickness. I think you’d best go back to Errotabarri
and become invisible for a while. We can let everything settle down and see what we can do with you in a few months.”

Miguel took another drink of wine. It was blood-red and rich. He took another drink and broke off another piece of bread from
the basket. They were right. He had become a liability. He would endanger the entire system. He would miss it. He would miss
Dodo and Renée. Almost as much, he would miss the food.

Patroia
and Josepe Ansotegui anchored at a small inlet near Ciboure the next night. Miguel rode back to Spain in the hold of the
Egun On
, waist-deep in anchovies, prepared to hold his breath and dive beneath them if the boat was detained. He was dropped off
at the same high-tide pier from which he’d made his first walk into Guernica on a Christmas morning before his life had become
so wonderful and so terrible.

By the time he boarded a Britain-bound ship in Gibraltar, Charley Swan’s wound had reopened slightly and become infected.
It had taken a week to get to Bilbao and then down the length of Spain in a car chauffeured by a man from the British consulate.
There were roadblocks and inspections along the way, but the diplomatic papers opened all doors. He had been fed and tended
to, but he had not rested, still anxious over the final leg of the trip, which would be through exposed waters back to England.
He was stitched and cleaned and medicated by doctors during the passage, and when he arrived at Southampton, he was sent home
for two months of recovery. He would visit the homes of his crewmen’s families first, but then he would heal.

The consul in Bilbao had sent word to Annie and to Charley’s parents of his health and whereabouts. All had lived under the
assumption that he was alive and in hiding and had never mentioned any of the other possibilities. Annie had spent a week
with his parents in London after they heard he’d gone missing, and they had grown close through the shared anxiety. Annie
wrote them each week thereafter, sharing positive thoughts and feeling as if it sustained and strengthened her connection
to Charley. Now his parents planned to visit them after Charley returned to Pampis-ford and had time to settle in.

Annie started working on his welcome-home surprise the day after she heard he’d reached Spain. She found a small flat for
them down the street from her parents’ home. In the three weeks it took him to reach En gland, she furnished it the best she
could, given the scarcity of goods. She purchased a used wooden-frame double bed and some chipped cookware, and she co-opted
some of her mother’s older crockery. It was only two rooms with a bath at the end of the hall, but it would be more than enough
for them. And Blennie was positioned in a spot near the hot-water radiator, which tended to clank noisily as pockets of air
passed through.

They cabbed from the station toward her parents’ home but stopped a block short, and Annie told Charley to get out. She walked
him slowly to the second floor, extracted her key, and opened the door. He had expected to be housed for the two months in
Annie’s room at her parents’ home and was delighted by the idea of their own place, of any size.

“Until they rang up and told me you were alive, I never really thought otherwise,” Annie told him later. “The time I was most
worried was after they told us you were alive. I was afraid your ship would be torpedoed or bombed, or you’d be sick.”

After the first day or two of excitement, Charley was driven to bed by exhaustion and slept for much of the following week.
When he arose, he pronounced himself fit and eager to get on with his life. They visited her parents, sometimes ate meals
with them, and Charley told everyone of the brave people who had saved him. But mostly Charley and Annie spent their time
together at their new home, making plans.

After a simple dinner one night, Annie laid out a few icebreaking thoughts on a proposal. They had talked of children and
a family in those hours of gentle negotiations before their marriage. Both wanted children. As she awaited his return, she
had decided that she wanted to start their family immediately.

“Dear, some of the children from the home have grown up and moved out,” she told Charley.

“That’s wonderful,” he said, imagining them old enough to find their way on their own. It had been four years, and those who
were teens were certainly ready for independence.

“And some have gone back to Spain, to rejoin whatever was left of their families, although that’s surely going to be a hard
life, at least for a while,” she said, moving toward the sink with dinner plates. “Some of the ones without parents have been
adopted by English couples.”

With that comment, he understood where she was headed. She wanted to adopt a Basque orphan. Charley thought of Miguel and
Dodo and Renée, and the Labourds, and the pleasant children they’d known at the rectory home.

“Let’s do it,” he said, trying to be calm against his growing enthusiasm for the idea. “Let’s do it now.”

The dishes were forgotten as she encircled him with a hug that nearly caused his chair to tip over backward.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “And I don’t think I could pick one over the others here; it would feel like I had
a favorite all along, and the others would be disappointed. They’re already like family. If I can’t take them all, I can’t
take one.”

Charley understood her point and suggested they try to find one of the younger children, who would be with them for a longer
time and not ready for its own independence so soon.

From a dresser drawer, Annie produced a folder. It held the names of the hundreds still at camps and homes across Britain,
with sketchy biographies and descriptions of each. That night, over tea, they searched through the lists.

They worked through the youngest first, some as small as five and six.

“This is harder than I could imagine,” Charley said.

“I think we’ll just know,” Annie said.

They put small check marks beside a few of the names as they read through the lists from all the camps. In the register of
those at Stoneham, Charley found her.

“Angelina”

Real name unknown.

Brought to Bilbao from Guernica by a refugee after bombing.

Parents killed.

Identifying marks: Missing part of right ear. Silver lauburu earring in left ear.

“Annie, my God, Annie!” Charley shouted before falling silent.

“Pleased to meet you,” the little girl said in English, extending her hand for a shake.

She hesitated a moment, then dropped her bag and skipped a few steps toward the grinning man they said was her father. She
raised her arms, warning him that she was coming in for a hug. She was tall and leggy, with pale bony knees peeking out between
her skirt and white roll-down stockings.

The man with one arm closed in on them.

“I’m your
aitxitxia
, Justo,” he said. She did not remember him either. Miguel put her down, but the little girl continued to hold his hand, not
questioning how it came to be damaged so.

If the party at Errotabarri overwhelmed her, she didn’t show it. She had dealt with the entire process with less anxiety than
anyone else from the start. When the couple with the red hair arrived at Stoneham, she was not in the least shocked to hear
that she had a family in Spain that would be eager to have her back. She had always felt that somebody was there for her and
they’d someday get around to finding her. In the meantime, she had bounced between camps and shelters and homes enough times
to be comfortable with the process. She had adapted to new friends and new “family” for as long as she could remember and
accepted it as the norm.

She had never been told she was an orphan, not directly. She’d been labeled a “displaced person” all along. She interpreted
that as meaning a “misplaced” person, picturing herself as having been temporarily put in the wrong spot, and assumed she
would at some point be discovered and returned. When the red-haired couple arrived, she first thought they must be her parents.
She rushed them with hugs, which they accepted without complaint.

After Charley and Annie confirmed her identity, they cabled the British consulate in Bilbao. Father Xabier was informed by
his friends there, and he drove to Guernica to tell Miguel and Justo in person.

Miguel had been back from France for little more than a month, and he and Justo were coexisting more easily. There still was
no serious talk between them, nothing that would cause them to voice the heaviest thoughts they continued to carry. But the
passing conversations flowed without strain. Neither realized how much he’d missed the other until Miguel returned. He gave
Justo no specifics about the drama at the border, and Justo told him nothing about his own diversions. Justo told him he smelled
of fish and Miguel volleyed that Justo smelled like women’s soap. They both laughed, but Justo did not tell him that he had
invited the soap maker to live with them at Errotabarri. He would mention that in time. This was a time for the two of them
to settle into the partnership of running the
baserri
.

Until Xabier arrived.

Xabier shoved through the door one evening, breathless, face pink, and ordered them to sit, saying he had “important and wonderful
news.”

“Catalina is alive,” he said. “One of Miguel’s new friends from the border found her in England and matched her to the description
Miguel gave him. She’s safe and she’s healthy and she wants to come home.”

Justo assaulted him with questions through tears, and Miguel sat speechless, dizzy, wondering how such a thing could be possible,
fearful that it was a mistake. It had to be a mistake . . . how had she survived? How could she have ended up in England?
How could a flier he’d known for only a few days find his daughter? He had said he knew of children from Biscaya, true, and
he’d seen her picture. But that was—what?—four years old.

“Did they check her ear?” Justo asked. “They could tell by the ear.”

“Yes, there’s a notch in her right ear and there was a silver
lauburu
in her left,” Xabier said. “And she was found in Guernica that day, and she was the right age . . . it’s her . . . it
is
her . . . there’s no doubt. She’s on a ship already.”

Xabier relayed all that he’d been told, everything they’d been able to re-create of her path. A frightened refugee had picked
her off a rubble pile and taken her to Bilbao on the night train. Somebody else dropped her at an orphanage. Since no one
knew her name, the
anglais
eventually called her Angelina.

Angelina. Somehow the name caused Miguel to connect and to believe it was her after all. He had never once pictured her dead,
he’d never imagined what had happened. His mind couldn’t shape it. He thought of her every day, but only that she was gone,
disappeared, suspended somewhere at the age when he’d last seen her. But now . . . Angelina. It was a name they should have
given her from the start; it would have been a better tribute to her
amuma
, Mariangeles, and to Justo’s mother, Angeles. Angelina. Little angel. It was perfect.