Hunger Town (52 page)

After Tours we left the Loire Valley and headed south to Poitieres and Bordeaux, a city with wider streets but narrow cobbled lanes between stone buildings. In the distance the conical towers of chateaux reminded me of inverted ice-cream cones. The cathedrals we caught glimpses of took my breath away. I had never before seen the lace work of Gothic decoration, such gargoyles and flying buttresses, but there was no time to linger.

Three days and we reached Biarritz and the Atlantic coastline. My first sight of the sea breathed the familiarity of home. The towering lighthouse reminded me nostalgically of the lighthouse at Port Adelaide.

‘We're coming into the country of the Basque people,' Marie said as she negotiated a narrow winding street. ‘The Basques are a separate national group and their territory actually straddles France and Spain. They are proudly independent and consider themselves neither French nor Spanish. The people of the Asturias also consider themselves separate and independent and they, too, are reluctant to accept the dominant control of the Madrid government. It is one of the problems of the Asturias.'

‘Ah,' I said. ‘Hence their anarchist ideas. No central government, just workers' committees to run the place themselves.'

‘Such a dream, Judith. But,
mon Dieu
, they are unlucky, because the Asturias are rich. Mines, you know: coal and gold. Lots of people want a piece of the Asturias. There's money there.'

‘Isn't it always the way? I suppose that if they were poor they'd be left alone to live in happy poverty and no one would give a damn whether they had workers' committees or not. But whatever dreams Harry might have had I doubt whether their home-grown anarchist ideas would suit Port Adelaide. They certainly wouldn't suit the ship owners.'

She grimaced. ‘Money makes the world go round, ma pauvre.'

‘And my husband had to get himself mixed up in someone else's political struggles.'

We savoured our shared cynical feelings in silence.

Once again she was intent on the road, which wound around the steep cliffs. Below us, beneath jagged outcrops, lay the Bay of Biscay. Inland we could see the saw-teeth snow peaks of the Pyrenees that at times floated ethereally above the clouds. On the slopes of the foothills grew pine trees and since they weren't deciduous the countryside looked greener, less dismally cold.

The wind that swept in from the Atlantic threatened to sweep us off our feet when we paused for a rest. I hugged my coat around me but gratefully breathed the sour smell of salt. We stopped at St Jean Pied de Port only a few miles from the Spanish border. ‘We must eat,' Marie said. ‘I don't think that we'll have any difficulties at the border but just in case we are held up, better to eat now.'

Anxious excitement tightened my stomach. I knew that crossing the border would not solve the problems we faced in finding Harry but Spain meant I was nearer to him and all that I hoped for. We were approaching that time when we would know what we could or could not do.

I had dodged thinking of the possibility that during the weeks we had travelled Harry might have left Spain and was now journeying home. If this were the case, who would tell me? Would I take the long journey back to Australia tormented by a lack of news of him, suffering again the agony of doubt, always wondering, always conjecturing? I had never confided my fears to Marie that the whole trip might be futile but I supposed she, too, had known this; even perhaps feared it.

St Jean Pied de Port was a pretty little town with wooden fishermen's cottages and a small cafe on a narrow cobbled street that wound down to a protected cove. Marie ordered minced veal with spicy peppers, rice and potatoes. ‘Basque food, Judith,' she said with satisfaction. ‘Enjoy it. Harry won't be helped by you not eating. Crossing the frontier is only another step on the road. It is not something to fear. No one will interfere with us.'

‘No,' I said, more to reassure her than myself. ‘Of course not.' I spoke a little shakily, ashamed to admit that each difficulty we came to filled me with a fear that we would fail to hurdle it, that at this point something would happen to baulk us. I even dreamed at night those vague frustrating nightmares when I struggled helplessly to do or find something that was nameless but terribly important.

Marie ate calmly, savouring every mouthful. ‘I haven't had such delicious food for many years. I had forgotten, it's so long since I was here.'

‘You? Here?' Amazed, I stared at her.

‘Oh, yes, in some by-gone era.'

‘You never told me.'

‘Didn't I? I suppose I thought you knew.' She laughed. ‘It was oh so long ago.'

‘So long? And now you're an ancient woman, Marie.'

She chuckled.

But the discovery that none of this was new to her reassured me and I tucked into my veal mince. With full stomachs we walked back to the car.

At the border two French guards looked plump and bored. One leaned negligently against the side of the hut which was the frontier post. Marie pulled up and he drifted over to our car. She wound down her window and smiled. His spirits visibly lifted at the sight of a pretty woman. Later Marie commented with amusement, ‘He probably gets sick of peasants and animals and fishermen. I was a nice change.'

He checked our passports cursorily, glanced in the back seat, noted our artists' easels, and burst into a flood of French conversation with Marie. I heard the word
Anglais
several times and gathered by his surprised expression that Marie had delighted him; an Englishwoman answering in fluent French.

A fisherman in oilskins, carrying rods and a basket, came through from Spain. Without more than a glance the guard waved him through.

‘He has a girl on the French side,' he smirked and winked knowingly at Marie. ‘Says they are prettier in France.'

He was in no hurry to let us go and lounged by the car, one hand resting on the door. Eventually he sighed, stood back, and waved us on, all the while urging us to return and spend an evening with him. Spain was no place for pretty women. But he had eyes only for Marie.

The Spanish officials were less friendly. They had guns slung across their backs, wore heavy leather boots and patent leather caps. Their faces were dark and saturnine. One, unsmilingly, inspected our passports with diligent attention.

‘English?' he questioned.

‘Yes.' Marie's Spanish was fair but she didn't try to explain that we were Australian.

‘Here? Now? Visiting?' He looked surprised.

‘Yes.' She produced her engaging smile. ‘We're artists. Painters.'

‘But this is winter.'

She looked mournful, full of regret. ‘Yes, I know. They told me Spain was sunny even in winter and very beautiful.'

He was slightly mollified to have his country praised.

‘Besides,' now she was confiding, ‘when I was young I visited here and I never forgot. You know how it is when one is young.' She even managed to blush on target. ‘He'll be as old as I am now. An old man.' And she flirted her eyes at him.

He allowed himself a small smile and again checked our passports slowly and thoughtfully, looking from the photos to our faces. He turned over our belongings on the back seat, paused at our cases, his hand hovering, but he didn't open them. He stepped back and waved us through.

Marie's shaking hands clutched the steering wheel and she trembled as she translated what had passed. ‘I was afraid, Judith,' she gasped, ‘that he'd open our cases and see the men's clothes for Harry. I tried to think up a lie to cover that and my mind went quite blank.'

‘Marie,' I said fervently, ‘you constantly amaze me. I am filled with admiration. And all this for me and Harry. How can I ever repay you?'

She grinned at me. ‘Just once in a while, Judith, I am scared, but mostly I am having fun. This is the greatest adventure of my life.'

I looked at her disbelievingly. ‘I understood that your youth was full of adventure. Full of hairy escapes.'

‘Ah, yes, certainly. Those hairy careless years. But this one, Judith, is the great adventure of my mature years. It has purpose. The only adventures that are worthwhile have purpose. Then they are never forgotten.'

I smiled at her lovingly and a little tremulously and then I looked out the window so that she wouldn't see the tears in my eyes. Surely in the whole world no woman ever had a friend as courageous and loyal as Marie.

The Spanish Atlantic coast was, of course, the same as the French one. The road wound narrowly around steep cliffs. Sometimes I feared to look down as the drop turned waves into mere lines of frothy ripples about jagged rocks. Marie chatted easily, driving skilfully, honking the horn on bends. Sometimes we trailed a cart drawn by horses or oxen, waiting for a slight widening in the road to squeeze past. Occasionally a rider on a mule or an overloaded doleful little donkey drew to the side and gazed at us curiously as we went by.

‘I'm guessing—because again the road's unknown—but I'm estimating that it should take us only a couple of days to reach Gijon and Oviedo and from there we can begin our search.'

Eventually the road left the coast and we headed inland towards Bilbao to find accommodation for the night. A set of craggy limestone peaks made jagged lines in the sky as if some giant had incised the rocks with a huge knife.

‘The Picos de Europa,' Marie said.

I stared at them wonderingly as, never out of our vision, their dominance followed us along the road.

We drove through Bilbao, an ugly industrial town, and found a small hotel on the outskirts. The proprietor was curious about our destination but when we said Oviedo he shook his head.

‘Don't go there, ladies,' he warned. ‘It is not a nice place. Franco's dirty soldiers from Africa have taken over. They prowl the streets like packs of wolves.' He spat into a bronze spittoon. ‘Women are not safe and men they shoot. Even children they shoot.' He spat again. ‘The navy shelled Gijon and planes dropped bombs on Oviedo. I believe the cathedral is destroyed. A heap of rubble. What barbarians destroy the house of God? No respect for our holy church. The dirty Moors. Let them come here. We Basques know how to deal with dirty Moors. Don't go there, ladies.'

We collected our bags from the car, put them in our room, and walked out to find a cafe for our evening meal. We were subdued and silent. We had read of the atrocities in the Asturias but now they were much closer, more personally threatening. We were both, I think, worrying about Harry and apprehensive about the dirty Moors who roamed the streets like packs of wolves.

‘Maybe not Oviedo,' Marie said. ‘Maybe somewhere smaller and quieter.'

The next morning we left Bilbao very early. We soon met the coast road, strung with numerous small towns and villages that either clung limpet-like to the cliff face or nestled in sheltered inlets with groves of pine trees behind them. The sun shone and occasionally there was the curving dazzle of a yellow sandy beach. We crossed bridges; some were stone structures with supporting arches slimed with the green damp of ages.

Sometimes the road swung inland and the folds of the countryside looked green and lush. Later that afternoon we reached Llanes, a busy fishing port with terracotta-roofed stone houses.

‘It's still early,' Marie said, ‘but if you don't mind I think we'll stop here for the night and make some inquiries about where we might stay close to Oviedo. There is a large town La Felguera a short distance from Oviedo but it is industrial and may have suffered as much from Franco's Moors.

‘On the other hand we should plan to be close enough to the village Harry mentioned in his letter. What was it, Judith?'

‘Sama, I think, or Sami. I memorised it because I was afraid to carry his letter. His friend is Garcia.'

Marie snorted, ‘That may not be much help. I have a feeling that Garcia is probably a name as ubiquitous in Spain as Mary is in Ireland.'

‘He also had the nickname ‘Little Lorca'. Harry said he aspired to be a poet.'

‘That might narrow it down a bit.'

My spirits sank. Once again our task seemed dauntingly impossible: such a huge place; so many cities where people slid into anonymity; so many dispersed villages where it was likely that outside their small world little was known. And then there were the mountains and their inaccessible villages where there would be no roads for a Citroën; only tracks for mules or donkeys.

Marie glanced at me and read my thoughts. ‘Have you ever ridden a mule,
ma chere
?'

‘
Non
, Marie.'

‘An experience, Judith.'

‘
Oui
, Marie. But it will be very slow. How many miles an hour does a mule do?'

She began to laugh. ‘Depends, I suppose, on whether it's a farmer's Deux Cheveaux or a Peugeot mule.'

Her laughter was infectious and if there was a little hysteria in our joking there was also relief in our merriment at the ridiculous.

Marie appealed to the proprietor of the hotel in Llanes for advice. As always, I marvelled at her ability to charm and deceive. We were English ladies on holiday, requiring help, preferably from a man wise enough to give the right advice to naïve English gentlewomen who dabbled in the arts.

Time and again I had seen some man puff out his chest and succumb to the melting helplessness of Marie. That she was no longer young seemed only to increase her charm. With none of these enticements and little capacity to play a part, I kept in the background, and although I was always treated courteously men did not usually show the same desire to protect me.

The beaming proprietor fondled his small moustache and passed a hand over his thinning hair. He suggested the small town of Sotrondio. A village would be impossible for us, he said. We wouldn't find a suitable hotel and there would be no petrol for the car. And we should not venture into the mountains. The roads were bad and there were bears.