Daughter of Catalonia

by Jane MacKenzie

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ one of them told Daniel, patting him on the shoulder. ‘A night in hospital and tomorrow he’ll be nagging us to leave. But he must have hit his head, and he may have some concussion, so we’ll have to keep him under close observation. And we need to get some heat into him as soon as possible. He’s suffering from slight hypothermia.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Philippe said. ‘If he wakes he should have one of us with him.’

  ‘And me!’ Daniel’s voice was urgent. ‘I’m going with my brother.’

  He looked across at Madeleine, who was still holding Jordi’s hand. ‘My brother!’ he said, defiantly, holding her gaze.

  ‘You don’t want to go and tell your mother?’ Philippe asked.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Madeleine said hurriedly, with her eyes still on Daniel. ‘I’ll tell her everything’s fine.’ She had a vision of Colette in her apartment, all alone with her worry, alone as she had been most of her life, and had a sudden desperate desire to bring some comfort to her.

  ‘Don’t let her come to the hospital tonight,’ the ambulance man instructed. ‘The boy won’t wake for a while, and he’ll look a whole lot better tomorrow than he does now. Just tell her everything’s going to be fine.’

  ‘Tell her I’ll come back for her first thing in the morning,’ Philippe added, and the whole party moved off towards the village, the ambulance party turning off before the main village onto the nearest access road, where the ambulance was waiting. There was a lot of jocular backslapping among the remaining men, as they headed off to their warm homes, and then, as they reached the end of Colette’s street, there were just Jordi, Madeleine and Bernard left.

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Bernard asked.

  ‘No thank you, Uncle. Not unless you want to. You’re not even wearing oilskins, and you’re shivering. I think you should go and change, and see if Mme Curelée still has any supper left for you.’

  Bernard grinned. ‘Well, I seem to be leaving you in safe hands! You’d better come back to the hotel afterwards, young man, and we’ll get you a room.’

  ‘No thanks, sir. I’ll be fine. Philippe has offered me a bed, so I’ll stay tonight at his place and get away at first light to open my gallery.’

  ‘But you’ll come back tomorrow to meet Robert?’ Madeleine’s voice was urgent.

  Jordi smiled. ‘Yes, carinyo, I’ll come back tomorrow. This is a play I want to see the end of!’

  ‘You seem to be one of the principal actors,’ Bernard commented with his usual irony, and then he was gone, heading for warmth and a glass of Mme Curelée’s best wine.

  The café was in darkness as they approached, but the door wasn’t locked, and they stepped inside into the warmth, and then looked at each other, wondering what to do next. Why was the café closed so early? It was perhaps not surprising that there were no customers, but the café had been open as a base for the search parties, and Philippe had said Colette was preparing soup for them. The silence and the darkness stood between them and the stairs at the rear of the long room, and there was no light filtering down the stairs, so presumably the door to the upstairs flat was closed.

  Philippe and Bernard had left the café without telling Colette where they were going. Had she gone looking for them? Jordi shot Madeleine a look of enquiry, waiting for her lead.

  ‘Colette must be upstairs,’ she said, trying to sound confident. ‘Do you want to come up with me?’

  She made some tentative steps forward into the café, but Jordi’s voiced stopped her.

  ‘Wait,’ he said urgently, and brushed past her. He moved towards the stairs, and then bent to the floor. For a moment Madeleine couldn’t see why, but then she saw he was leaning over a human shape. Martin came to mind, but this wasn’t Martin. She moved to join him, and looked down at the huddled wreck of Jean-Pierre Perrens, lying at the bottom of the staircase.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s dead. His neck’s broken.’ Jordi’s reply was carefully neutral. ‘Is this Perrens?’

  ‘Yes, it’s him.’ Madeleine couldn’t take her eyes off Jean-Pierre’s body, the crippled legs tucked almost shamefully beneath him, and his head twisted at an odd angle from his neck. He looked small and strangely inhuman, as though this bag of broken bones could never have been a man, could never have taken vindictive revenge on his wife’s lover, or later on his wife’s child. It occurred to Madeleine that she had only met this man once, on the day of his outburst over lunch. He had figured large in her life for several days, and she had dreaded seeing him again. But there was nothing he could say or do to her now. Nothing he could say or do to anyone.

  The silence around them was absolute. Not even any sound of rain now penetrated the café. Madeleine and Jordi stood together hypnotised, eyes fixed on Jean-Pierre Perrens.

  ‘What do you think happened?’ Madeleine asked.

  ‘Well either he fell or he was pushed,’ was Jordi’s typically uncompromising reply. ‘You said he didn’t move around much on his own?’

  ‘No, he was semi-crippled.’ Madeleine’s voice sounded loud to her in the quiet of the café. She was glad of the dark. It made the body seem less real, less substantial.

  She couldn’t have said what made her look up, but after a moment she lifted her eyes to glance up the narrow stairs, towards the apartment, and as she did so she caught sight of Colette, sitting on a step halfway up, half hidden in the gloom, looking down on them without moving.

  ‘Colette?’ Madeleine’s voice came out in a whisper.

  Colette didn’t answer. She moved her eyes to meet Madeleine’s, but nothing else moved, and her stillness was uncanny. Madeleine looked to Jordi, but he didn’t move either. The silence hung in the air, and then Madeleine moved up the stairs. She sat on the step below Colette, and repeated her name.

  ‘Colette? Are you all right?’

  Colette fixed her eyes almost painfully on her, and eventually she spoke.

  ‘He wasn’t a man. He was my husband but he wasn’t a man.’

  Her voice was flat, expressionless, and she spoke as though it didn’t matter, as though she was telling a casual story.

  ‘Do you know how he became crippled? He got into a fight on the railways, on a train, with one of his workmates. They were fighting over some woman, some salope who worked in the office. She was the other man’s girlfriend and Jean-Pierre had been sleeping with her. The other man threw him from the train. Nobody ever told the truth about it, and Jean-Pierre didn’t want to press charges, but that’s what happened. My husband, crippled because he had screwed another woman. And yet that same man, that connard, my husband, made me pay for the rest of my life for what I did with Luis. I lived with that, but what he did today I could not forgive.’

  Madeleine let the meaning of the words sink in. Colette’s eyes strayed away, back to the body lying grotesquely at the bottom of the stairs. Madeleine followed her gaze, struck by how steep these stairs were. Colette didn’t even seem to notice Jordi, standing beside Jean-Pierre. He seemed a long way away to Madeleine, in a deep hole far beneath them.

  How long had Colette been sitting there, she wondered? And what had she done?

  ‘Colette, did you …?’ she began, and then stopped as Jordi moved, and she saw him shake his head with a quick frown. He spoke then, directly to Colette.

  ‘He fell, Colette, didn’t he? Was he trying to go after Martin? He shouldn’t have tried to come down the stairs on his own, not with his legs being so weak. It must have been terrible for you to find him like this.’

  Colette looked at Jordi for the first time, without curiosity. She didn’t answer, and Jordi’s voice became more insistent as he came up the stairs towards them.

  ‘We’ll go up to the apartment now,’ he said, taking her hand and urging her upwards. ‘Come, Colette, there is nothing you can do for your husband now. Let’s go upstairs.’

  Madeleine put her arm around Colette. ‘We found Martin,’ she told her. ‘He�
��s going to be all right.’

  Colette looked up urgently. ‘Martin? You found him?’

  ‘The men brought him up from the rocks beyond the beach. We think he fell and banged his head. They’ve taken him off to hospital, but they say he’ll be fine.’

  ‘You’re sure? He’s all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, he’s fine, and Philippe and Daniel have both gone with him to the hospital. So now, why don’t you do as Jordi says, and come upstairs with us.’

  Colette’s hand closed around Madeleine’s, and she looked pleadingly into her face. ‘He said he hated me. He ran away … so unhappy.’

  ‘He loves you, Colette.’ Madeleine rose, easing Colette upwards, and between them she and Jordi coaxed her up to the apartment, and into a chair. Jordi disappeared downstairs again and reappeared a few minutes later with a glass of brandy from the bar.

  ‘Drink this, Colette, and listen to me. I have to go and bring the police here. We have to report your husband’s death. But you have to be clear on what happened. He fell down the stairs, remember, trying to go after Martin. He was worried. You didn’t see him, remember? You didn’t know what he was doing.’

  ‘Going after Martin,’ Colette repeated, as though the words were in a different language.

  ‘Jean-Pierre fell down the stairs. You had just found him when Madeleine and I came in to tell you the good news.’

  ‘Martin …’

  ‘Yes.’ Jordi’s voice was infinitely patient. ‘Martin is safe and well. But your husband didn’t know that, and he wanted to look for him, didn’t he?’

  Colette took sips of the brandy and nodded.

  ‘Don’t say anything unless they ask you, Colette,’ Jordi said, ‘and it’ll all be fine, you’ll see.’ He looked across at Madeleine, who was standing silent by the table. ‘Stay with her, Madeleine, and don’t let her go back out onto the stairs. I’ll go for the police. Is there a local policeman? Where does he live?’

  ‘Just in the next street, I think. A house with a green door. But Jordi—’

  ‘Come with me to the door,’ Jordi said, and took her by the hand, then, once out of sight of Colette, ‘are you all right?’

  Madeleine was trembling slightly. ‘Yes, it’s just the body, and Colette, and everything. Did she push him, Jordi?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’d say so for sure, but she mustn’t say a word. Don’t let her admit it, Madeleine. She has to keep the truth to herself, even with us, otherwise she’ll never see this through.’

  Madeleine shivered. ‘Yes, I see that. I’ll tell her about Martin, and not talk about Jean-Pierre at all. But don’t be long, will you?’

  Jordi shook his head briefly and opened the door. ‘As quick as I can, don’t worry.’

  The next hour passed like a strange dream from which Madeleine was sure they would all suddenly wake up. She repeated Jordi’s story to Colette again and again until he arrived back with the policeman, but in truth the story was barely needed. The poor local policeman was the same man who had been in the café earlier, during the search for Martin. He was an old friend of Colette’s, a local in the bar, and he was so shocked by the sight of Jean-Pierre’s body that he did nothing but exclaim and commiserate with Colette, never dreaming that anything more than a terrible accident had occurred.

  Colette just sat in dazed silence, drinking a cup of hot, sweet tea which Madeleine had prepared, while people came and went. The policeman sent for the local doctor, who prescribed her a sedative and urged her to sleep.

  ‘My son …’ was all Colette said, to which the doctor replied breezily that he’d heard all about Martin being found safe and well, and that if she slept now she would be able to see him in the morning.

  As the doctor prepared to leave, Colette clung to his arm for a moment. ‘My husband …’ she began, and Madeleine, standing by her side, held her breath for a painful moment.

  ‘Don’t think too much about poor Jean-Pierre, Colette,’ the doctor said gently, with his hand on her shoulder. ‘He didn’t have much of a life recently, did he, and he wouldn’t have known what was happening when he fell. It would all have been over in a second. He would just be happy to know your son is safe. You have two fine sons, my dear, and Jean-Pierre was very proud of them both. Now, let the young lady put you to bed, and I’ll come to see you tomorrow.’

  Jordi and Madeleine stayed in the apartment until Colette was in bed, and the sedative had finally closed her eyes. Everyone else had gone, and the silence had again descended on the café as they crept back down the stairs. The lights were on in the café and the body was no longer there. It was almost possible to believe that nothing had happened. They turned out the lights and pulled the door to behind them, and stood in the street, breathing the night air, wondering what time it was. Madeleine had no idea how long they had been in the apartment, but the night, now calm, seemed incredibly beautiful.

  ‘Will you walk me home, Madalena, to show me where I am staying?’ Jordi asked.

  ‘Follow me,’ she replied, taking his hand.

  As they stood in the street outside the little building, Madeleine leant into Jordi’s shoulder, and he drew her close.

  ‘We got through that all right,’ he said. ‘Thank God. Whatever that poor woman did, she doesn’t deserve to be punished any more.’

  Madeleine reached up and ran her fingers through his long, unruly hair, and he caught her hand and brought it to his lips. He looked tired, and suddenly Madeleine felt a terrible weariness dragging at her whole body, and a bleakness she couldn’t find the words to express.

  ‘No one needs to punish her, Jordi. She’ll punish herself. She’s been blaming herself ever since the war, and now she has to live with this all on her own. She’ll be even lonelier than ever.’

  ‘Welcome to the world of secrets, carinyo.’ The words were hard, but Jordi’s tone was matter-of-fact. ‘But she’s managed fine, for all that, you know, raising two sons who love her, keeping them all going, keeping her respectability here in Vermeilla. And now she won’t have that husband as a millstone round her neck, and they can all be free.’

  He bent and kissed her. ‘We’re part of the secret, Madeleine, but the boys will never know, and Martin can even believe that Perrens was sorry and coming after him. It’s not such a bad ending.’

  ‘No.’ She sighed. ‘What a day! Do you know that this morning I didn’t even know you! Not properly, that is.’

  ‘Oh, we knew each other. We just hadn’t realised it, that’s all. When I met you, you had a bruised look which made me feel I wasn’t alone, but you had something more too. You had hope. You came along to give me hope, ma belle, and to set me free too.’

  ‘Me? Jordi, please, I am just nothing. I’ve always been just nothing, all my childhood, all my life. Here in Vermeilla I’ve caused nothing but trouble, coming in like a silly little innocent, full of questions and idealistic notions about my father. I can’t see how I can have given anyone hope. You made a life, like Colette, a brave life from tough beginnings, but I’ve never done anything except live in my grandparents’ house and concoct ridiculous dreams around my father.’

  ‘Hush!’ Jordi laid his fingers on her mouth, and kissed her forehead. ‘You have a quality you don’t even know yourself. Innocence is a gift, not a crime.’ He shook his head as though trying to work something out. ‘I’ve never been much of a person for words, Madeleine. I’ve been better with my hands. But somehow with you it’s easy to speak, and because you’re so open I can be too.’

  Madeleine looked at him in wonder. Was she so open? It was a challenge merely to keep up with his own candour, or so it seemed to her. She still felt inadequate, but maybe this was something she had to live with. What she didn’t feel was alone in her incompleteness. She met his eyes and the need in them shook her. She reached for him at the same time as he pulled her to him. He kissed her with the desperation of a man released from captivity, and she felt all the emotion of the day, all the emotion of too many years, translated into a physical hun
ger which pulled her tighter and tighter to him as his big artist’s hands held her close.

  Who am I? This isn’t me, she thought, then, Yes it is. I am all of this, and a vision of Luis came before her, laughing and reaching out, not for the compensatory love which Luis had shown Colette, the soothing oblivions of war, but for the real passion which had lit up his life, she was sure now – the all-consuming embrace of Elise. I am my mother and my father, she thought, but more. I am more than any of them here, now, and maybe I can be free.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The sun showed its face timidly at first on Saturday morning in Vermeilla, but the wind had shifted and the Tramontane was rising, swirling in from the Vallespir and cleaning up the skies, pushing the clouds back out to sea. By lunchtime, as Bernard and Madeleine stood waiting for the arrival of the train from Toulouse which should be carrying Robert, the skies above were a perfect blue, and it would have been hard to believe in yesterday’s wild, pummelling rain. The brisk wind cooled the temperatures, and reminded Madeleine of her first morning in Vermeilla, just seven days ago, when she had woken to the same Tramontane, stirring the harbour waters in front of her hotel window. The weather since had changed and developed as rapidly as had everything else in this momentous week. And now the weather had come full circle, repeating the work of nature and laughing at the mere events of man.

  The evidence of yesterday’s storm was still all around them. The storm drains which carried rainwater to the sea were still pouring grey torrents into the bay, there were slimy mud swirls on the quayside left by the drying floodwaters, a falling branch had damaged the mayor’s car, and outside every building the women were cleaning steps and sweeping up debris. And drama had come to the Perrens family, with their son in hospital after slipping on the rainswept fishing rocks, and that poor soul of a father of his killed trying to come down the stairs in his distress.

  The village was buzzing with the news, and had they had less to do in cleaning up there might have been still more talk. But the women still found time to cook and take food to the café for Colette, and to light candles in the church for the soul of the father and the health of the son.