Autumn in Catalonia

by Jane MacKenzie

  Eventually she rose wearily, and washed and dressed in the same old clothes, which Luc would have thrown on to the nearest fire. Another day, and another sixteen hours or more before she could again seek out her bed, and the fragile dreams of Luc.

  They went out together that morning, Carla, Maria and Martin, brought along to help carry a heavy load of washing. It was as they returned that she saw the black car, sitting on the corner of the street, with its two male passengers carefully not looking in their direction. She said nothing to Grandma or to Martin. Perhaps the men in the car wouldn’t think too much about the presence of a young man with them. It had been a while since she’d seen the black car with its black-suited driver, sometimes alone, sometimes with a companion. They were here to monitor her pregnancy, she knew. Sergi might know she was pregnant, but he couldn’t know exactly how far, and he wouldn’t want to miss the birth. He would have all the local hospitals and clinics primed, she was sure, but he would be watchful nevertheless, in case she slipped away.

  As she walked past the car she fixed her gaze on the men inside. She didn’t know either of them, but they didn’t look like policemen, at least as far as she could see. Did Sergi have his own private army? A personal driver, like Toni, but one she didn’t know? And another – who was he? She smiled at the two men, a sweet smile of defiance, but they looked determinedly ahead.

  It was later that day, after another afternoon walk with Martin, that she saw her father. This time her heart stopped. Never before, to her knowledge, had it been her father who trailed her. It was the silver Mercedes she spotted first, and at first she thought it was Toni driving. Both her mother and her father had a Mercedes, each one a ‘gift’ from the German entrepreneurs who were currently ploughing up the Catalan coast for their new tourist resorts.

  But then she caught a glimpse of a tailored beige suit and her father’s clipped, greying hair, and she knew it wasn’t Toni. He cruised slowly towards them, and as he got closer his eyes swept over them both. She caught hold of Martin’s arm.

  ‘Martin, we have a problem.’ she said.

  He looked an enquiry.

  ‘Look to your left, a little ahead. That’s my father in the Mercedes.’

  He looked startled, and shot a quick look in the direction of the car, then averted his eyes.

  Now that she had got over the first shock, Carla felt a soaring anger at the man whose gaze grazed so contemptuously over them.

  ‘There’s no need to pretend you haven’t seen him,’ she told Martin. ‘He’s making no attempt to hide himself, is he?’

  ‘What is he doing here?’ Martin’s voice was understandably nervous.

  ‘Checking you out, I think. I didn’t say this morning, but two of his henchmen were in our street today, watching us. I didn’t think they would pay much attention to you, since you look like pretty much any young guy from around here. But my father is paranoid about who I might meet, and I think they went back and told him there was a young man with me, and lo and behold, here’s my loving father turning up to see us.’

  The car had come to a near halt now, crawling past them as Sergi studied Martin from head to toe. Carla took a step towards the car, but it just glided past. She fixed her eyes on her father’s face, but he wasn’t even looking at her. All his attention was on Martin.

  ‘He thinks I’m your boyfriend?’ Martin’s hand gripped her sleeve convulsively.

  Carla was almost amused. ‘Possibly, yes, and holding on to my arm won’t do anything to dissuade him!’

  Martin withdrew his hand as though she had burnt him. The car had passed them now, and they stood and watched as it reached the end of the road and turned onto the main avenue. Neither of them moved. Carla felt suspended in time, continuing to gaze after the car long after it had disappeared from view. What might he do, she wondered? What would Sergi do now? There was a tight knot in her chest and her thoughts wouldn’t come clear.

  She became aware of Martin by her side, nudging her urgently. ‘Should we go inside?’ he asked. ‘He may come back round again. I think we should move.’

  Carla nodded. Her surge of defiance had faded, and she felt cold and afraid. She wanted to hide, from her father and from the world. All she wanted was to feel safe. But she never felt safe now, not even in her dreams.

  They found Maria at the table mending one of Victor’s shirts. Beside her lay a pile of socks for darning, but when she saw the two white faces coming into the room she laid it all aside and came to greet them, an anxious question in her eyes. She held out her hands and Carla put one hand into them.

  ‘Little one?’ It was a term Grandma rarely used these days.

  ‘We just saw my father.’ She could never bring herself to call him Papa now, not since last year. ‘He drove by to check us out. I think he wants to know who Martin is.’

  She sank into a chair, and leant her elbows on the table, reaching for a sock and winding it around her fingers. A little nerve throbbed at her temple, twitching her left eye. Martin sat opposite her, and she noticed his hands working in the same way. Shock, she thought. We’re both in shock. If Sergi could create this effect merely by driving past in his car, then what else could he do? Well she knew, didn’t she? Luc was behind bars.

  Maria disappeared into the kitchen. She didn’t bother with exclamations or questions. Instead she reappeared a few minutes later with two cups of hot chocolate, dark and bitter, and placed these in front of Carla and Martin, neither of whom had moved at all.

  The hot drink slid down Carla’s throat, and reached that cold knot in her chest. Her tight muscles eased, and she found she could think again. Grandma came to sit between them at the table, and her body seemed to give off a warmth as well.

  ‘So, my children?’ she said.

  It was Martin who told her, how Sergi had slowed down to examine him, taking his time, scanning him with that raking stare, crawling past in the sleek Mercedes.

  ‘He’s an impressive man,’ he ventured, tentatively. ‘Commanding, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maria. She looked at Carla. ‘What did you make of him this time?’

  Carla looked at the wall, thinking back to Sergi, sitting so disdainfully behind the wheel of the car, checking them over. He’d hardly seemed to look at her, and yet she was sure he had noted everything about her, from her gaunt face to her shabby clothes, to the bump he was seeing for the first time. She wondered if it gave him satisfaction to see her brought so low. He’d certainly been angry enough the last time they’d met, but the eyes that had skimmed her over just now had been clinical rather than vindictive. He wasn’t acting against her so much as to protect himself.

  She brought her gaze back from the wall. Grandma was still watching her with troubled eyes.

  ‘I think he may well assume that Martin is a new boyfriend,’ she answered at last. ‘It seems mad, when you see my condition, but he’s not to know we’ve only just met. Maybe he thinks I’m so desperate I’ll seek any man’s protection. It’s the way he thinks about women, anyway.’

  ‘So what will he do now?’ asked Martin.

  ‘I don’t know. Since you’re not staying more than a day or two he may get the message not to worry. I guess he’ll have his henchmen patrol around here pretty regularly over the next couple of days, watching us. Once they see that I’m back on my own again he should leave us in peace, don’t you think?’ Peace! Now there’s a strange word to have used, she thought.

  ‘Well, no. No, I’m not so sure,’ Martin said, taking his time.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I know I’m new in on this situation, but I can’t see that he’ll just let it go. If I disappear, won’t he just assume that he’s frightened us and I’m making myself scarce? He won’t necessarily think I’ve gone for good, and he’ll still think I’m around somewhere as a threat to his plans.’

  Maria nodded her head. ‘I’m afraid I think he’s right, Carla. Your father is the most distrustful of men. Martin can le
ave us and he’ll be safe, but I have a terrible fear now that your father won’t any longer leave things to chance where you’re concerned.’

  Carla knew what was coming next. She knew, too, that they were right.

  ‘You think he’ll take me away,’ she said, and was surprised at how matter of fact her voice sounded.

  ‘I fear so. He doesn’t know when the baby is due, but he has seen for himself today that it’s not too far away. He’ll want you somewhere secure and under his control for the next weeks, far from me and Victor, and far from any young man who may have taken up your cause.’

  Damn him, damn him! Sergi’s iron-hard face came before her again, and she felt such a wave of hatred that it was frightening. He can’t make me so helpless! I won’t let him!

  ‘So I’ll go away too!’ She put her cup jerkily down on the table and some dregs of chocolate splattered the tablecloth. ‘I’ll go away to Barcelona. There must be someone who’ll hide me down there.’

  ‘Who, my love? Who can hide you that Sergi doesn’t know about? And who can hide you when the baby comes?’

  Carla met her grandmother’s eyes and read such a sombre message that she was filled with dread. ‘So what can I do?’ This time her voice would barely come.

  Maria reached out and took her hand. ‘I don’t know, child. I don’t know. Perhaps Victor …’

  ‘Victor?’

  ‘I just thought maybe he might know someone who can hide you in the hills. One of his friends with sheep. It’s not what I would want, with the baby coming, but maybe I could go with you, and together we might manage.’

  Maria’s voice was hesitant, anxious, and Carla looked at her in despair. To have the baby in a mountain hamlet, or even a hillside shed? She gazed into Grandma’s troubled face and thought, she’s frightened, as frightened as me.

  It was Martin who broke the silence.

  ‘There may be something else we should try.’

  ‘Something else?’

  ‘I think I should go back to see your mother.’

  Neither Carla nor Maria spoke. Carla wasn’t even sure what he was saying. He continued, his voice growing stronger and more persuasive as he gathered momentum.

  ‘I don’t think your mother knows that you’re pregnant or what your father is doing to you – not all of it, anyway. I think she needs to be told, and I want to go up there and tell her. You don’t think she’ll help you, but no one has given her a chance, and you’ve run out of other options.’

  He held Carla’s gaze, and his eyes were alive with conviction. Her own brain felt dead in comparison. She didn’t agree with him, she knew that, but she was beginning to respect his intelligence, and she had no response to his conviction. But still she couldn’t answer him, and Maria stayed equally silent. It didn’t stop him, and he ploughed on persuasively.

  ‘If I go up there tomorrow by the earliest bus, I should get to the house before lunchtime. And if Joana lets Toni bring me back I can be here by evening. Do you think your father will feel he needs to work so fast that he’ll raid this apartment? I can’t see it – he could only do that with the police, surely, and he’d have to have you arrested, wouldn’t he? I think he’ll try to do something less embarrassing to him than that if he can, and maybe lift you in the street – the street was so empty today that a couple of men in a car could pull up and bundle you inside before anyone noticed.’

  Carla shivered, and Martin grabbed her arm across the table. ‘Yes, but that’s good news, in a way, Carla! If that’s the easiest way to remove you, then for now you’ll be safe as long as you just stay indoors, and that gives me time to go up and see your mother.’

  ‘And if she refuses to help?’ It was Maria’s troubled voice that broke into his onslaught.

  He paused, but not for long. ‘If she refuses to help us, we can look at other options. Not some mountain hideout, though – we can do better than that. My sister – Luis’s first-born – is married to a Spanish exile in France, and before I left home he gave me the address of his family by the border with France, in La Jonquera, and if we need to I could take you to them, and then get you out to France afterwards. We must be able to get you out somehow.’

  ‘No!’ Carla was surprised by her own cry. ‘I won’t run away to France! I could never come back, afterwards, and then what will happen when Luc gets out of prison? I have to be somewhere where Grandma can find me.’

  Martin was silenced, but his ideas were taking root nevertheless.

  ‘They won’t take your baby away from you in France,’ Grandma said.

  ‘And when Luc is freed we can get him to France as well,’ agreed Martin. ‘But first will you let me go up to the hill house?’

  Carla thought back to the last time she had been to the hill house. It would be two summers ago, and relations between her and Joana had never been more strained. Sergi had been there with some friends, for the hunting, and his daughter’s mere presence had annoyed him. What on earth is that girl wearing, he’d asked her mother? What kind of specimen is she? She’s not even half a woman!

  She’d clashed with one of his guests too, when he’d asked her why on earth she wanted to get a degree. Mama had agreed with the guest.

  ‘It would seem that an education is doing nothing to improve my daughter’s manners, Señor, and I apologise on her behalf. Carla is the product of a spoilt background, I’m afraid.’

  Later that night Sergi had struck Carla hard, twice, snapping her head from side to side, and Joana had stood by and watched him. He’d threatened to take her out of the university, and after that first threat she’d learnt to toe the line, and stay in the background whenever she was with them.

  What on earth was it that Martin had seen in her mother that made him think she would want to help? She asked him, and all he could reply was that Joana had vulnerable eyes.

  ‘She’s got you besotted,’ she protested, exasperated. She didn’t want to ask her mother for help!

  But she was too desperate now to be proud, too frightened to refuse even the remotest possibility of assistance.

  ‘You won’t get any joy from my mother,’ she told him eventually. ‘I know you won’t, but you’re right that as things stand I have nothing to lose. By all means, cousin, go up there tomorrow and see what she says. I’ll stay indoors and we’ll lock the doors. But Martin?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Take care what you tell her! She’s spent her life dong whatever my father wants, and she could even turn your visit against us, and make trouble for us.’

  ‘More than we’re in right now?’

  ‘No,’ she said finally, admitting defeat, ‘Nothing can be worse than the trouble we’re in right now.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  The autumn day had grown warm and very still, and not a hint of a breeze stirred Joana’s afternoon peace on the vast veranda. In the parched heat of August such stillness would have been uncomfortable, and the hill house was designed to capture the summer breezes to cool its dark rooms and shaded terraces. But now, in October, this airless Indian summer was a blessing. It held off the sharp mountain winds of winter, which whistled relentlessly around the house and reminded you that it was meant for summer living.

  Joana leant back on the cane sofa and lifted her bare feet from the cold tiles. She placed a cushion behind her head and closed her eyes. Even from the depths of the veranda where she lay, she could hear the chirping of the mating crickets in the wild grasses that surrounded the house, burying their eggs before themselves dying off in the winter cold. And from somewhere nearby came the drone of a bee drinking from the autumn crocuses. Soon Gabriel would come up from the village to harvest this year’s honey from the hives, and the drone bees would die to keep the queen alive. Joana twitched the cushion behind her and shifted position restlessly, then gave an angry shake. It was all too inevitable, too peaceful, too inert.

  Reaching out her hand, her eyes half closed, she found her glass of champagne and raised it to her lips. The bubbles trickled sl
owly down her throat and seemed to ease an itching just behind the vocal chords. She relaxed again and dozed gently, excluding the world from her shaded niche. Beyond the veranda the hillside lay becalmed.

  Paula shuffled out from the house and lifted the empty glass from her hand. Joana didn’t move. The half slumber was too precious to let it slip away, and while she appeared to sleep she was safe from Paula’s grumblings. Her soft hair tickled her cheek, and it felt like a caress. She still had beautiful hair, she knew, despite her forty-one years. She had been courted for those golden curls, once upon a time, but it felt like a long time ago.

  Joana smiled in her near sleep, remembering those days of innocence and hope, before the war came home to them and all was lost. It was Sergi who’d rescued her then. Sergi who also loved her, who wanted her so badly. She lay on Sergi’s chair, on Sergi’s veranda, and tried to keep the picture.

  Paula shuffled back out onto the veranda with a pot of coffee. Smelling it, Joana opened her eyes. Paula was only trying to make her drink something else than her after-lunch champagne, but the coffee smelt good nevertheless. Sergi always had the best coffee in his houses. He spoke of a supplier in South America – Columbia, he said. Joana suspected it came as a free gift from some local importer in need of Sergi’s favour.

  Putting the pot down on the long table, Paula looked over the wall to call Toni in for his coffee. Suddenly she held up her hand to shade her eyes, looking far down the hillside.

  ‘Is Toni not around?’ Joana asked.

  ‘Not that I can see. But there’s someone walking up the track towards the house, down there.’ Paula gestured away down the hill.

  ‘Gabriel?’

  ‘When did old Gabriel ever walk up as far as here?’ Paula scoffed. ‘He waits for Toni to fetch him, does our Gabriel. No, this is a young man, I’d say. I think it’s that same French man that came here the other day – the one who called himself your cousin.’