Autumn in Catalonia (25 page)

Joana shook her head. ‘Not a garden, but a big balcony, where Josep used to play and drive me mad! And Maria grew jasmine and passion flower in huge pots against the wall. They covered everything, and it felt like a garden.’

She fell into a reverie, continuing almost as though Carla wasn’t there. ‘They call it the flower of passion, but my Uncle Luis used to call it the flower of hope, because the flowers just keep coming, and new blooms replace the old ones every day. He used to pick the flowers and put them in my hair. That was back in the days of hope, of course. There were no passion flowers later.’

‘But there is this one, Mama, and it still has flowers.’

‘So it does!’ Joana smiled, and reached out to pick two of them, placing one carefully in Carla’s hair, and one in her own. ‘We are back in the land of hope, it seems!’

Carla touched the delicate flower tucked behind her ear, and kissed her mother on the cheek. ‘I know, and today I can really believe in it!’

They headed back to the house, where the men were slowly extricating themselves from the table. They could hear Neus calling for the three boys, who had disappeared
after lunch to play a rather violent game of tig at the front of the house, where their noise wouldn’t be heard.

‘We need to think about leaving,’ Josep explained. ‘I have to work tomorrow, and the boys have to be at school.’

‘Martin is going with you?’ Carla asked.

‘Yes. Toni reckons we can squeeze him into that great limousine you brought with you, and tomorrow morning we can put him on the train for France.’

The party was breaking up, and as Martin appeared from the house with his travel bag under his arm Carla felt a surge of panic. Josep and his family weren’t going out of their lives, but Martin was leaving – really leaving this time.

She looked around for Luc, and he came to her side, and took her hand. Neus reappeared, bearing three reluctant boys along with her, and from the house emerged the other women. Everyone was together, on this terrace, and Carla froze the scene and made her eyes take a photo of it, storing it for future memory. They had photos of the day, taken on Luc’s father’s old camera, but this was a personal memory in full colour, which Carla captured for herself alone.

Martin came forward to the table, to Carla and Luc. ‘I’ve said goodbye to your parents,’ he told Luc. ‘They’ve been very kind, and your father wants to be kept in touch with my studies.’

‘We’ll do that,’ Luc assured him. ‘We’ll always be in touch now, and you can write to us through either Joana’s address or Victor’s. And we’ll write to you as soon as we have our own address.’

‘Where will you be, do you think?’

Luc shrugged. ‘Since we can stay, I’ll probably look for
a job in Barcelona. It’s kind of our city, really.’

Martin nodded, and seemed stuck for any more words. Finally he managed, ‘You two will be fine now. Let me know when the baby’s born, won’t you?’

‘We sure will,’ Carla replied. ‘If Grandma has any say in it we’ll probably have to have the baby christened, too, and if that happens we’ll make you his godfather!’

‘I won’t be around much to watch over his or her childhood,’ Martin objected.

‘We’ll have plenty of clucking family around to do that, don’t worry. You can be his inspiration to aspire to life on the international stage!’

Martin smiled, and they hugged, with no further words needed. He turned to go to the car, where Maria and Victor were with Josep and his family, waiting to say goodbye to him. But blocking his way stood Joana.

‘I have yet to say thank you,
el meu cosí,
’ she said to him.

He held up his hand, and the tears that he had been holding back began to fall. Joana took the hand, and held it in hers.

‘We love you, Martin. All of us, and especially me. Never forget that, and know that I will always think of you, always remember you and everything you have done for us. And I will follow your career, your life, and expect you back here to see us. You leave a little bit of your heart here with us, and you take away a piece of each one of your family, to live with you in France.’

She kissed him, and he gave way and returned her embrace. ‘Thank you,’ was all he managed to say, his voice
too choked for more, and as he drew away, she took the passion flower from her hair and placed it in his, tucking it carefully behind his ear with a little caress of her fingers.

Two minutes more and he was gone, with all of Josep’s noisy crew. Tomorrow he would be back in France, and hopefully he wouldn’t get into too much trouble with his university tutors for his prolonged absence. Carla leant against Luc, and he put his long arms around her.

‘We will stay in touch with him, you know’ he said.

‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘There’s just been so much emotion attached to his visit here.’ She pulled herself together, and smiled. ‘Next time we meet we’ll do it without dramas, shall we, and do some ordinary stuff together, what do you think?’

‘I can’t imagine life being ordinary just yet! But give me time, and I’ll become the archetypal accountant, coming home each evening to you and Joaquima, and the five other children you’re going to give me, and you’ll have my pipe waiting for me, and a pot of
ollada
steaming in the kitchen.’

Carla gave him a punch in the ribs. ‘
Ollada
my foot! You haven’t tasted my cooking yet, dear husband, and you may find that your six children go hungry if you don’t cook yourself!’

‘Help me, somebody,’ Luc sighed, catching Joana’s eye. ‘I’ve been misled and now I’m lumbered with a wife who won’t cook! What am I to do?’

Joana laughed. ‘Don’t look at me, Luc! I haven’t cooked for nearly twenty years, and I’ve been a failure in preparing my daughter for marriage!’

‘He takes some feeding too, Carla!’ It was Luc’s mother who threw in the comment.

‘That I’ve seen!’ Carla retorted. ‘Well, we’ll just have to steal Grandma from Victor and have her come to live with us!’

‘Or you could learn to cook,
carinyo
,’ Maria smiled.

‘Or I could learn to cook,’ acknowledged Carla. ‘But not for six children, mind, and if you get a pipe I’ll leave home, Luc.’

‘And I wouldn’t blame you, Carla,’ chipped in his mother. ‘Let’s get this baby born first, and never mind any more just yet! The cheek of the boy, and he doesn’t even have a job yet!’

‘Well, if you’ve got my mother on your side then I’m sunk!’ Luc grinned ruefully at Carla. ‘Would you accept a modest husband instead, with some small cooking skills and a willingness to survive on sandwiches?’

Carla put her arms around his neck and pulled his head down towards her. ‘I don’t have much choice either, do I, now that I’ve married you?’ She looked over at Luc’s father, who had come out of the house, where he had lit all the lights. It looked cosy inside, and it was getting chilly now outside.

‘If you just stay like your father I’ll love you forever,’ she said, as she kissed the end of Luc’s nose, and then led him towards the open door.

Carla had been thinking for many weeks now about this trip. A full six months had passed since the events of October – events so dramatic that a little shiver went through her whenever she looked back at them. It would be a long time, she thought, before she would cease having those little, piercing flashbacks.

But for now life had changed completely. She and Luc were married, their baby had been born in wedlock, and life was safe.

It was astonishing what it did to you to feel safe. After six months Carla was beginning to get used to the feeling, and to cease looking over her shoulder all the time. As spring came upon them she had walked the streets of Barcelona, through the flower market, past the cafés with their throngs of courting couples and men doing business Spanish style over the
aperitiù
, and as she pushed the pram between them
she felt part of a new order, a happier, hopeful world to which she belonged. Soon summer would be here, and she and Luc and the baby could spend Sundays at the beach, or in Luc’s parents’ wonderful garden in Terrassa, or just sitting out on their own balcony watching the world of Barcelona passing below them.

But right now she had one more hurdle to cross. She had let all these months go by before making this journey to Sant Galdric, but now she was ready, and the time was right. She was sitting yet again in the passenger seat of the Mercedes, with Toni driving beside her, and Grandma Maria in the back seat cradling the baby. And they were going to visit Enric and Alícia Figarola.

She hadn’t known until just after the baby was born that Alex Figarola’s mother was called Alícia. It was a name she loved, and which brought her own father Alex to her mind as well, so when – to Luc’s eternal delight – their baby had been born a girl, and Joana had told them about the name, they’d made the decision to call their baby Alícia as well.

But until now the child’s great-grandmother, Alícia Figarola, didn’t even know that the child existed. And the story she needed to learn had to begin long before the baby. The Figarolas didn’t even know that their son had fathered a child, and had left behind him his daughter, Carla, who was his image in spirit and form.

Carla drew a long, deliberate breath as apprehension briefly tensed her throat. It was only good news that she was going to impart, and she refused to allow any of the stresses of the past to reinvade her life. Baby Alícia’s birth had broken a cycle, and those ruptured relationships, which
were the product of war – Uncle Luis dying before Martin was born, and Alex being torn from Joana and her unborn child – these things were in the past. Sergi had waged his own personal war, willed his own private hell on his family, but that was over too, and would never return.

Behind her she heard the baby making the little mewling noise that Luc insisted was singing. Carla turned in her seat to smile at Grandma, who was murmuring little comforts to the child.

‘You wouldn’t like to sit here in front with Toni, Grandma, so that I can look after the baby?’

‘Not at all,
carinyo
!’ Maria shook her head, and placed a kiss on Alícia’s forehead. ‘It’s over a month since I visited you in Barcelona, and this little one has changed again. You can have your lovely apartment, with its modern decor and all those fancy gadgets, but I’m going to be the one who makes sure that this little one grows up with more than you young people’s modern ideas! She’s growing strong, isn’t she?’ she smiled, gently extricating a lock of her hair from Alícia’s podgy grip.

‘She’s her father, God help her! I hope the Figarolas will recognise my little fair blob as one of their own!’

‘How dare she?’ Maria was crooning at the baby. ‘How dare your mother speak about you like that? You’re quite beautiful,
petita
Alícia, and don’t you let them be telling you otherwise!’

Grandma Maria had never been busier than in the last few months. It was she who had held the longest vigils by Sergi’s hospital bed, and who had control of his nursing room now that he had been returned home. Carla found
she couldn’t be anything other than sobered and appalled by what had happened to her stepfather. To see him sunken as he was, with such slow movement and minimal recognition returning, made her feel nothing should have to finish this way.

Joana had spent the winter months begging Maria and Victor to give up their apartment and come to stay with her in the Girona house, and with Sergi’s transfer home Maria had agreed temporarily. Both she and Victor were staying with Joana for now, but Victor hankered after their little apartment, modest and shabby as it might be. He missed the life of the little café where he met his pals after work twice a week, and he found his bed in Joana’s house too soft to sleep properly. He hadn’t given up work, either. If he gave up work, he said, then it would be to return to Sant Galdric. But most days he accepted a lift from Toni to the factory. ‘I’m becoming lazy,’ he would say, but with his usual easy smile.

Maria was happy, for now, in Joana’s house, but only because she had care of the sick room, watching over Sergi when the nurses weren’t there, and bringing coffee for the nurses when they were. To be useful and surrounded by family was Maria’s main wish in life, and Carla had no real concerns about either Grandma or Uncle Victor.

Was Joana as happy? Carla worried about her mother, who was still so tied, and still obliged to play the public game of being Sergi’s loyal wife. Joana had the power now, over all their finances, and over Sergi’s care, but was she really free? And for now she was busy enough with them all, but what would she do with herself in the longer term?
She seemed to have no interest now in all the fripperies she used to cloak herself in.

Luc would tell Carla not to worry. Joana’s life had been blown apart, he said, and she was in a period of reevaluation, but she was a strong woman and would find her own path. She was happy and busy, and for now just wanted her family around her. But Carla wondered. Something else had changed in her mother. Something had been opened up in Joana back in October that remained exposed, and made her seem vulnerable as a woman, in a way that she had never seemed before. They were women together now, Carla and Joana, but Carla had Luc, whereas Joana was like a solitary flower, and there was a little longing in her eyes, which Carla hoped one day to see disappear. She spent hours thinking through all the eligible men she knew for her mother, until Luc laughed at her and told her to stop trying to play Cupid, because her mother was already Venus.

Sant Galdric came into sight above them, with the mountains behind blanketed under snow for as far as the eye could see. But around the village the ground was green and the trees were blooming. The spring sky was so fresh and clear that the odd little cloud that passed above them seemed like an impertinence. It was a completely different light from the mellow of last autumn, and as they neared the village they passed a fallow field full of poppies and wild irises, which Carla pointed out to Maria with a gesture of mute discovery.

The village hadn’t changed from the times when Carla had passed through it before, or at least it was as small and spartan as ever, but it seemed less dusty after the spring
rains, and more awake, and she herself was more at peace, and could see the beauty of the old church and the square before it, and the line of little village houses on either side of the square. Seen in this light, Carla could still understand why Joana had found it so hard to be buried here after a childhood spent in Barcelona, but she could also see what it was that made it home for Maria.

You could imagine an earlier village, with a population twice the current size, and the villagers all dancing the
Sardana
together in the square after a wedding or a christening, with their own
cobla
musicians playing the accompaniment. Joana herself had probably danced the
Sardana
with Alex, and Grandma and Uncle Victor in their youth would have undertaken discreet village flirtations under cover of the dance. It was strange to imagine Victor flirting with a village girl, and if he had it would have been a shy affair, she was sure. The brief courtship Grandma had told them about seemed like a blip in an otherwise happy bachelor life. He’d been happiest with his sheep!

The Mercedes drew up alongside the old family house in Sant Galdric. Maria wanted to open the house up again, so that she and Victor could come up here sometimes, and rediscover their village lives. The plan was that on this visit Carla and Maria would stay in the village for a couple of days, so that Carla could get to know some of the village people, and so that Maria could reclaim her home, with the fresh sheets and many cleaning cloths she’d brought with her in the car. Carla would help, of course, but she knew she would be frequently chased outside with the pram.
Maria had some reconnecting to do on her own in her little village home.

Joana would maybe dare to come here some time later, Carla hoped, although she knew her mother needed first to go back to the hill house, and to relearn the beauty of it without Sergi.

So they stopped at the little village house, and went inside to drop off all the bags and trunks that had been loaded into the car. It was a small house, and simple, and the possessions that had been left behind looked lonely in the gloom of the closed shutters. It smelt musty too, and as Toni went round opening windows, Maria patrolled, with little distressed exclamations, picking up little ornaments and dusting them, and placing fresh food in the larder. Carla changed Alícia, and fed her, and thought that before too long the baby would go to sleep. If I am going to brave the Figarolas today, she thought, I want their great-granddaughter awake to greet them.

‘
Avia
?’ she ventured, and Grandma nodded, and came away from her fussing.

‘Yes, my child,’ she said, taking Alícia’s little hand in hers. ‘The time has come. Shall we go and meet your grandparents?’

Toni walked up with them as far as his mother’s house, where he stopped. There was a new coat of paint on the front door, so presumably his mother’s new pension was being put to good use.

Maria and Carla continued on their way, and as they walked up the street with the pram, Carla looked around her at the shuttered houses, and at the unshuttered ones,
which still held village life, and she held Luc’s courage to her as they approached the door of her father’s home. As she raised a hand to knock at the door, she brought Martin to mind and thought, this one’s for you cousin, for telling me to do it. He’d told her again, in his letters, that she should make this journey, and she’d taken her time but now she was here, and she could almost feel him beside her. You’re right, dear Martin, she thought. This is the right thing to do, and thanks to you I’m coming home.