The Guardian of Secrets

by Jana Petken

  They prayed for Marta and Miguel. Miguel’s remains lay somewhere on a rocky mountainside hundreds of kilometres from the gravestone that sat in front of them now. They had not been informed of the exact location or cause of death; there was no time for such formalities in a country where hundreds of thousands of bodies lay in unmarked graves stretching from northern Cataluña to the North African colonies, Pedro had reminded them.

  Ernesto opened his eyes and gazed lovingly at the sleeping baby, his grandson. A smile lit his face; war had brought death, but it had also sent the gift of new and innocent life, a life, he prayed, that would never experience what they had lived through.

  On their return home from England, Ernesto had been shocked to witness the scale of chaos and degradation in Valencia. The Rawlings ship had remained offshore, having been refused entry into the port of Gandía, which had been turned into a refugee camp for tens of thousands of fleeing republicans. He would never forget the faces of the vanquished, he thought. Men, women, and children desperately trying to get out of their own country, all attempting to board boats of any kind that would take them out of the victor’s vengeful path. Some ships had attempted to dock, but the stampede of thousands had driven them away again before the ropes had even been tied to the jetties. Some people, he witnessed, had jumped off rocks and swum to ‘nowhere’. Others had thrown themselves onto rocks rather than allowing themselves to be arrested.

  When their small motor boat drew up alongside the jetty, six nationalist soldiers had escorted them to waiting cars. The soldiers had accompanied them all the way home, with rifles and machine guns ready to kill anyone who threatened them; thus was the New Spain.

  Ernesto stared again at Marta and Miguel’s crude graves until he couldn’t bear to look or think any longer. He turned from them and walked a short distance, casting his eyes over the landscape as he did so. War could not defeat nature, he thought just then. Nature would grow the orange trees back to fruition. It would produce the oranges, grapes, and vegetables on his burnt-out land. It would be powerful enough to rebuild the lives of the workers who remained, for nature would nourish them. It would take a lot of money to put things right, but money he had, he reminded himself. It would take years to return the land to fruition and its rich, colourful, and profitable state, but he would do it with nature’s help. This would be his war and he would win.

  “Let’s go home,” he said to the others.

  Celia was the last to move. She felt unable to take her eyes off her son’s and daughter’s graves. She felt her legs tremble beneath her skirt and instinctively held out her hand to Ernesto, who kissed it. She gave him a weak, loving smile and went into his arms.

  “Yes, let’s go home,” she said.

  Chapter 87

  María sat down beside the two marked rocks. She wasn’t ready to leave her sister and brother just yet. She still had so many things to say to Marta, things she couldn’t say to the living. She knelt in front of the graves, and she had just begun to rearrange the newly laid flowers when the first tear fell from her misty eyes. She wiped it away with her veil lying on the ground beside her feet and hung her head. Everything was so perfect, she reminded herself. Her parents, Aunt Marie, and Pedro had returned, yet she was miserable. She hated the way she felt, shrouded in a great dark shadow that followed her everywhere she went. She had thought that the homecoming would lift her spirits, that she’d be happy for all that she had instead of wishing for what was gone forever. But the shadow wouldn’t leave her. A memory surfaced: the day that she and Carlos put Marta in the ground at the start of the war. Carlos had held her, promising that he would always be by her side, no matter what. Her anger towards Carlos had long since gone, and she admitted now that it was never really anger in the first place; it was missing him, loving him so much that his absence hurt. It was desire, need, and a greed for him, which had nothing to do with anger. Tears now fell unheeded. The intensity of pain grew with each passing day, and sometimes it was so terrible that she could hardly take a breath …

  He stood behind her as he had so often in the early days when he accompanied her to the grave. He was afraid to frighten her now, to shock her with his presence. He’d thought about this moment for so long, had ached for it, but now he hesitated.

  María sensed rather than saw. She shivered in the sun’s warm rays and turned around slowly. Her body froze as she stared into the face of the ghost that had haunted her for so long. Her mind was a jumble of unanswered questions. He was dead, yet there he was, standing tall above her. She had his death certificate, yet there he stood, smiling, crying, and trembling just as she did.

  She stood up, closed her eyes, and then opened them again, expecting to see nothing, but he was still there, still smiling, still crying. She didn’t know how or why it was possible, and she didn’t even want to ask the question. Instead, her head spun with his name on her lips: Carlos. Carlos was alive, here with her, and as she threw herself into his arms, she could only believe that some miracle had brought him back to life.

  He pushed her gently away, and they gazed at each other like two strangers, each afraid to make the first move or say the first words. All of María’s dreams stood with the man smiling in front of her, and she found herself smiling as well. He had been lost to her so many times before, and now she saw with absolute clarity the reason for the anger she’d felt on the news of his death. She had mourned his loss, but she’d also unconsciously waited for him to come back to her, just as she’d always waited, with indignation at his long and silent absences.

  Now they held on to one another, both overcome with such happiness that only comes once in a lifetime to a lucky few.

  “I have a son? Are you going to introduce me?” Carlos finally said, looking over at the baby.

  “You have. His name is Carlos, Carlos Pons Martinéz.”

  Carlos cried, picked the baby up, and kissed his tiny head. They sat together beneath the tree, holding hands, kissing, and drinking in the sight of each other. After a while, Carlos told her about his escape from the rocky hillside on the river Ebro. He was, for the first time, honest and generous with the truth and left nothing out.

  “There will be no more secrets between us both,” he told her.

  María’s eyes filled with tears as he vividly described the way in which he’d swapped his identity tags and papers with a dead Spaniard in the trench before escaping into the hills. He was shot in the leg and in the shoulder. He had lost a lot of blood but had somehow managed to crawl out of the trench before the enemy tanks and soldiers saw him. At the river, he’d disguised himself amongst hundreds of dead and wounded. Then, after a while, he’d grabbed on to a floating log that had been swept onto the banks by a torrent of water. He didn’t know which direction to take, so he allowed the water to be his guide. He was later found near a republican field hospital, where they saved his life. He couldn’t remember being moved to a hospital near Valencia afterwards, but he spent almost three months there, recovering from his injuries.

  He had made the rest of the long journey home on foot, dodging nationalist patrols and resting in houses of people who’d suffered so much yet who had found the time to help him. His knowledge of the countryside had meant the difference between life and death, he told her, and although it had taken him weeks to walk the long road, he had made it home at last.

  “I have been here since yesterday afternoon,” he told María when he’d finished his story. “I slept under this tree, waiting for you. I knew you would come, and when I saw you with the baby, I wanted to run out from the trees and take you in my arms. But I couldn’t allow your family see me. No one else knows I’m here, not even my mother and father.” He grew quiet, lay down, and rested his head on María’s lap.

  María stroked his head and ran her fingers through his matted hair and unkempt bearded face. She had to tell him about his parents, but the words wouldn’t leave her mouth. She just couldn’t do it, not yet. She wondered whether to ask him why he hadn’t l
et her know that he was alive, but in the silence between them, she knew the answer to that question and she understood; that was all that mattered now. She also reflected that Carlos’s war had been no more and no less evil, turbulent, and painful than it had been for any general, soldier, nurse, or civilian. One day, she thought, he would come to realise that and eventually forgive himself. The blood of fellow countrymen tainted all Spaniards, as it did those who watched passively from afar, and no one had been left unscathed by it.

  “I almost didn’t come back,” he said, breaking into her thoughts. “I thought that maybe it would be better, that it would be safer for you and for everyone else to believe me dead, but I had to see you again one last time.”

  María’s body stiffened, and her terrified eyes looked down on the top of his head. He was going to leave her again!

  “What do you mean, one last time?”

  He sat up and looked into her eyes filling with tears. “María, I can’t stay here. It’s too dangerous for me, as well as for you and the baby. They will be looking for me, and they’ll find me.”

  María sobbed now. “No, they won’t. I told them you were dead. I showed the Guardía Civil your death certificate. So you see, they won’t look for you anymore. You have been crossed off their lists.” She watched his mind at work and his silence gave her hope.

  Then he spoke. “How long do you think I can remain hidden before someone sees me and recognises me? María, I won’t be able to remain a ghost for long. I’m known here, and someone or other will report me. They will do it to save their own skin. I have to leave again, for both your sakes.”

  María wiped her eyes and felt the pain of sadness wash over her, but with that pain came anger and determination. She had made up her mind the moment Carlos told her he was leaving, and this time she would get her way.

  “If you think I’m going to let you walk away from me again, you’re very much mistaken,” she snapped. “Miracles happen for a reason, and they shouldn’t be wasted. You are alive when I thought you were dead. You are here when I thought I would never see you again. If you leave, your son and I go with you. I won’t be parted from you again, not for a single day. Do you hear me? Not one day more!”

  Carlos cupped her face and smiled at her determination, but still he didn’t speak.

  “Carlos, please say something,” María said more gently.

  He kissed her, and she forgot his terrifying words for a moment. He stopped suddenly, drew away, and she watched his inner struggle.

  “María, I could survive alone in the mountains, but you and the baby couldn’t. You don’t deserve to live like fugitives, begging for food and sleeping behind rocks and in derelict houses like animals. I can’t ask this of you. I love you too much to take you with me.”

  “We can go to England, to Merrill Farm.” The words came out of María’s mouth, but she didn’t know where they had come from. She had never thought about England, had never been interested in visiting her mother’s country. But going there now seemed the only option, even if it meant going into exile and leaving her family behind. Merrill Farm would allow them to have a life without fear.

  Carlos pushed her gently away. He stood up, leaned against the tree trunk, and pushed his hands through his hair. María watched him, waiting for his reaction, but his stony face gave nothing away.

  “Carlos?” she said, urging him to give her some kind of response. Still he said nothing.

  She went to him, encircled his waist with her arms, and rested her face against his chest. She felt his quick panicked breathing and the thumping of his heart ringing in her ears. At last, he tilted her chin and stared into her weepy eyes.

  “María, my mother and father, your family? We can’t leave Spain. England is so far away. Think about it; we could be exiled for years.”

  “Yes, but we could also be happy together with our son,” she parried back. “Rawlings’s ship is still at anchor off Gandía Port. George Rawlings promised to remain there until my father told him otherwise. My father didn’t know what he would find here. It was a precaution.” She paused, her eyes widened, and she gripped Carlos’s collar with her fingers. “This is fate!” she told him excitedly. “This is meant to be. My father will get us to the ship, Carlos. We can go today, the three of us! You are my world, you always have been, and it doesn’t matter where we go, just as long as we’re together. You can’t leave me again. I won’t let you!”

  While he thought about her words, she took a deep breath and prepared herself to tell him about his parents. She couldn’t keep it from him any longer:

  “Carlos, your parents … They were arrested four days ago.”

  His body stiffened, and he pulled her to him, so tightly that she could hardly breathe. “Where are they?” he asked her with a catch in his voice.

  “Your mother was taken to a prison camp, an old school just outside Valencia. Your father is in the Valencia prison. Thousands have been taken, Carlos, thousands … I’m so sorry.”

  “Can anything be done?” he asked her.

  “I don’t think so. My father went to the comisaría only this morning. He tried everything to get them freed, but no one would listen to him. His name means nothing to the authorities now. They’ve taken half the village, Carlos, anyone who doesn’t fit the right profile, and those that have been taken have not been returned. Your father thought he would get out in time, before they came for him. He remained with me for as long as he could …”

  “Then they’re lost to me,” Carlos said. “Have you seen my brother?”

  “No. He hasn’t been seen for more than a year now.” She tried to speak again, but he squeezed her hand and begged her to listen.

  “María, my parents mustn’t find out about me. The bastards will torture them if it becomes known that I’m alive. They’ll torture them for information until they kill them both. I know how it works.”

  María looked into his bloodshot eyes, wanting to share his grief, but that grief was his and his alone. He was right, she admitted to herself. Whatever happened, wherever he decided to go, it had to be now. She watched him pick up the baby and hold him his arms, and the first tear fell from his eyes.

  “I have a son,” he said so simply.

  “Carlos … England?” she asked him again.

  “Yes,” he said, kissing the baby again. “We’ll go to England.”

  Celia Merrill, 12 June 1939

  My babies have gone, all gone but one, yet I still feel their presence in my every waking moment. My Miguel, Marta, and now María have left me forever, and as I sit watching the last sliver of sun slip quietly behind the mountain peaks, I can only wonder at God’s great plan. He gives only to take away, yet his gifts are not lost, for the joy of them will linger in my mind and heart forever.

  I am home now with my memories and with my beloved Ernesto, whom God deemed fit to spare. He is my world, my rock, and my future, a future without my beloved three children, taken from me, in reality, not by God but by the destructive evil of man himself!

  Pedro has remained. He was the first of my children. He was my reason for living in a time of great despair. He brought me to eternal happiness, to a wonderful husband and children who filled my life with pure joy. Pedro shall always be with me, to comfort me and to remind me that all is not lost … I never thought I would say this, but thank you, Joseph Dobbs. You unwittingly gave me a most wonderful life.

  Chapter 88

  Spain, 2010

  “Your grandmother won’t last the night,” the doctor said matter-of-factly.

  “I know, Doctor,” Lucia said, nodding her head in resignation.

  “There’s really nothing else I can do. I’m sorry. It’s her time, and she wants to go now.”

  Lucia showed the doctor to the door and braced herself to face her grandmother again. She needed more time with her before the rest of the family arrived; her grandmother’s story had not yet ended. She looked at the clock and went through everything in her mind again. She
had managed to finish reading the journals and had deposited the old trunk in her attic, where it would remain until it was safe to dispose of it for good. She had also come to a decision that would split the entire family, but she would not back down, not after everything she had learned. She had never felt so sure of anything before, had never been so resolute. Nothing her family could say would change her mind now. Her grandmother would get her dying wish, and she would more than likely lose the family she loved.

  María lay in bed and watched the curtains sway gently in the breeze. What had happened after Carlos’s return? It all seemed so far away now, and she couldn’t see him or her family in the thick fog that surrounded her eyes. They were like colourful shadows dancing in front of her, like ghosts in a rainbow. Everything was so vague.

  “I must concentrate,” she whispered feebly. “I must finish …”

  “Yaya, can you hear me?”

  Was that Marta’s voice? Was she here again? María wondered, desperately trying to open her eyes.

  “Marta … Marta, is that you?”

  “No, Yaya, Lucia.”

  María smiled. It was her Lucia … She would finish her story now.

  María looked out of the window, and the shadows began to dance again. Carlos was smiling. He was always smiling teasingly at her.

  “Your grandfather and I were married in England by the same minister that married my mother to Joseph Dobbs. We were refugees, so we were not given any legal papers to sign, nothing to say that we were husband and wife. The marriage was never recognised or legalised in a civil court, but it was recognised in the eyes of God. That was all that mattered to us, that we had been blessed by God.”