Daughter of Catalonia (24 page)

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 hunger 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.

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.

Philippe had come to see Madeleine at breakfast time, just as she was giving Bernard a carefully edited, official account of the night’s events. The hotel was empty save for them, and Philippe had closed the dining room door behind him when he came into the room. Martin, he told them, was doing fine. He had been seriously cold, and it would be some time before his embattled body recovered fully, but there was no lasting damage. As for his mind, it was harder to fathom. The boy remembered nothing about his fall. He had come to the rocks, as Madeleine had thought, looking for solitude and the wild spray of the sea, but he didn’t know what time it had been, and no one knew how long he had been there, except that he hadn’t been lying there when the searchers had followed the cliff path earlier
in the afternoon. He hadn’t said much, Philippe told them, and no one wanted to ply him with questions when his mind was foggy and concussed.

He didn’t know either that his ‘father’ Jean-Pierre Perrens was dead. Philippe had learnt as soon as he came back to Vermeilla this morning. Daniel hadn’t come with him, refusing to leave Martin, and so he didn’t know either. But Philippe had seen Colette.

What she had told him Madeleine couldn’t fathom. Philippe’s questions seemed quite normal, but his eyes fixed her with what she thought was an overly searching gaze. But this, she realised, might just be her own guilty imagination playing tricks on her. In the late hours of last night she and Jordi had agreed that even Bernard and Philippe should not be told the truth, unless Colette chose to tell Philippe. It was her secret to tell, not theirs, and their whole concern was to set the idea of a tragic accident so firmly in everyone’s mind that no one asked Colette any questions she might struggle to answer. They weren’t out of the woods yet, they knew, since Colette’s state of mind was so disturbed, but she had the habit of silence, and it was silence they needed now.

Philippe might well know already what had really happened on the café stairs last night, but in front of Bernard he wouldn’t, she knew, say anything. Colette, he told her when she asked him, was still groggy from the sedative, and clearly in a state of shock, but her main concern was to see her son, and he would be taking her to the hospital later in the morning, when Martin was more likely to be awake.

‘He looks good,’ he told them, ‘and it will do her good to see him.’

‘And us? Should we see him?’ Madeleine wanted to know.

‘When his mind is stronger, then yes, it will be very important for you to see him. Robert arrives today, yes? Well the café won’t be opening today, but you should bring him to visit me later at the apartment. I don’t suppose he remembers where he started out his life. Come round and I’ll have some Banyuls to offer you, and then tomorrow maybe we can go to see Martin.’

So here they were, waiting for the train, and it seemed incredible that it was only just over a week since she had waved Robert goodbye at the Gard du Nord. Neither of them could have imagined that he would be back in France so soon, and under such circumstances. But this was his story too, and she longed to see him.

As the train drew in she reminded herself that there was no guarantee he would be on it. This was the first possible train he could be on, assuming everything on his journey had gone completely smoothly. She scanned the small trickle of passengers as they left the train, and for a moment didn’t see Robert, until Bernard tapped her arm and pointed with a smile. It was a couple, the young man on the platform helping a lady from the train, taking her case and then holding out a hand to help her down. The lady was Solange, and Madeleine thought simply,
Of course
. It seemed so inevitable.

‘Well, Bernard,’ Solange commented, as she kissed him and Madeleine, ‘I hope you have been useful to this poor child.’

‘It has all been most instructive,’ was his rather cryptic reply, but he put his arm around Madeleine as he continued. ‘This “poor child”, as you call her, has been through more than you know, but she has proved herself a pretty strong force. And good,’ he added dryly, ‘at recruiting allies.’

Robert just stood looking around him, and said ultimately to Madeleine, ‘I don’t remember anything, Lena. Will you show me?’

They walked that afternoon all over Vermeilla, through the cobbled streets to watch the men playing boules, along the beach to where the usual trickling stream was still a swift flowing waterfall, then back to the harbour wall to gaze over the impossibly blue waters of the Mediterranean. Robert was quiet at times, and especially when Madeleine told him about the events of the previous night. She didn’t hide the truth from him about Jean-Pierre Perrens. He was the only person she would tell, but he needed to know everything she knew. And she told him about Jordi, since he had so much to share in the week’s stories, the lives stripped bare. It was Robert’s life too. He didn’t question her about Jordi, except once, when he simply asked, ‘Will I like him, Lena?’

‘I hope so, Bobo,’ was her answer. ‘It’s important.’

At dusk they went to visit Philippe, all together, Bernard and Solange, Madeleine and Robert. For Solange it was a true case of memory lane. She held her breath as they climbed the stairs, and when Philippe opened the door to them she was unable to speak. Philippe didn’t notice, because he was completely transfixed by Robert. He stood at gaze for what seemed like minutes, and then took
Robert’s hand and held it, tears swimming in his eyes.

It was Bernard who broke the silence, introducing Solange and gently ushering Philippe backwards into the sitting room. They had bonded, these two men, Madeleine thought, in the last two days, and Bernard knew how to manage Philippe’s emotional enthusiasm. As Philippe recovered his poise, and searched through memory to recognise Solange from the young woman she had been, Madeleine took control of serving small glasses of chilled Banyuls, pulling Robert into the kitchen with her, pointing out the little stove in the corner with a grin of triumph.

There was too much emotion in the room for it to be an easy little gathering at first, but they were saved by nostalgia, as Philippe and Solange revived the past with stories of Luis, Elise and the children, and their rich but frequently almost absurd lives in this little apartment and this little community. Robert bloomed as always, and Madeleine basked in his sunshine. She was more serious than he. She always would be, and she would never have his easy knack of winning over company at the first meeting. It was lucky, she thought, with a private little hug of pleasure, that there was one person for whom she had no rival, someone as serious as her, with a need she could answer just by being herself.

When they returned to the hotel that evening there was a telephone message from Jordi saying he would come to Vermeilla next morning.

‘I told you she had made allies,’ Bernard winked at Robert.

‘We need to see Martin,’ Robert reminded her.

‘We will. But we can’t go until the afternoon, remember, until visiting hours, and anyway, I want you to meet Colette first.’

Philippe had told them that Colette had spent half an hour alone with her two sons that day. He had left them alone and didn’t know what they had talked about, but he felt Martin needed to see Madeleine and Robert now. He didn’t say why, but they were all groping towards understanding, and for now perhaps it was best just to take those steps without questioning, and see where they led.

And first thing Sunday morning those steps led Jordi to Vermeilla again, where Madeleine had been waiting for him (was she foolish, she wondered?) since early light. She and Robert were standing outside the hotel watching the desultory Sunday morning activity on the quayside. It was too early for the Sunday strollers, and the fishing boats lay at rest at the top of the beach. The bay was reasonably calm, with white flecks where the Tramontane still touched the blue waters, and above them all the clouds had been swept clear away by the wind. They could see for many miles, to a horizon halfway to Corsica, sea meeting sky in an indigo haze.

As they stood silently contemplating, the peace was broken by the put-put of an ancient motor, and Jordi’s rickety motorbike chugged around the corner and drew up next to them. Robert looked a question at Madeleine, and she nodded, blushing, before moving towards Jordi, and walking into his embrace. Mindful of Friday’s heavy waterproofs and bedraggled hair, she had taken time to
dress this morning, choosing an elegant, creamy dress with a low neckline and nipped waist to show off her long, slender figure. She had always known she was pretty, but no one had ever whispered to her before that she was beautiful, or run their fingers through her mane of hair, or kissed her neck until it tingled. The memory set her nerves clamouring, and she wanted to touch his newly shaven cheek. He had even ironed a new shirt, she noticed. Was it for her or her family? Either way, he looked wonderful.

Releasing her, he held a roughened hand out to Robert, who took it surprisingly shyly. He looked very young beside the lived-in Spaniard, but there was an innocence about both of them, thought Madeleine, that they were both quite unaware of.

They walked together along the front, and took coffee by the beach, and then Jordi’s restless energy drove them along the cliff path, serene now, with just a vivid breeze, until below in the distance they could see Collioure, with the clock tower standing solo, guarded by the Chateau Royal, in a medley of golden stone.

‘This must be the most beautiful place in the world,’ said Robert.

Jordi shrugged in a very Hispanic gesture of magniloquence. ‘It isn’t Spain, and it isn’t the Vallespir, but it is pretty enough. When the sun shines it shines too,’ he conceded.

Madeleine laughed. ‘And amateur artists paint toy pictures of it to sell to tourists, eh Jordi? The Vallespir is magnificent, but Matisse came here before he went to
Céret, and it was here he found his colours. You have to admit that!’

‘I admit nothing!’ Jordi said, with his arm around her. ‘Robert, your sister has arrived here from what sounds like a rather tame England, and I’m afraid it has all rather gone to her head.’

Robert grinned, but came back to Jordi’s earlier words. ‘Tell me about the Vallespir, and the camps,’ he asked.

They talked and walked until Madeleine remembered with a guilty start that they were due to meet Bernard and Solange for lunch.

‘And then we have to visit Colette.’

‘And Martin? Did you say you were going to see him this afternoon?’ Jordi wanted to know. ‘I’m glad, but I’ll leave you when we get back. I don’t think Colette even realised who I was on Friday night, and you don’t want to bombard her with more people and memories than you need to.’

‘You’ll eat with us?’ Madeleine urged.

‘Yes,
ma belle
, I’ll join you for lunch. You can introduce me to your aunt.’

Solange greeted Jordi with her usual calm pleasure, and quelled Bernard’s mischievous tongue as she turned her elegant smile to the young man, and talked to him about his work. His prickles had raised slightly in front of Madeleine’s sleek Parisian family, but Solange was so natural he had no resistance. Madeleine said little, but watched them all with a glimmering smile. They took time over lunch, but then Jordi insisted on leaving. Solange didn’t want to come to the café with them either, but Madeleine begged her to.

‘I can’t see what my presence can add to the situation, Madeleine. The poor woman will have enough to do handling seeing Robert. It’ll bring Luis right back before her eyes. The last she needs is a crowd.’

But Jordi came surprisingly to Madeleine’s support.

‘I think they need you, Solange,’ he said. ‘You knew Colette all those years ago, and you’re the link to the past. I think your presence will reassure her.’

‘She’ll hardly remember me,’ argued Solange, but her protests lacked conviction. She kissed Jordi on both cheeks, and ushered the others away, leaving Madeleine standing with Jordi by his motorbike.

‘Come back soon, young man,’ they heard her say, over her shoulder. as she entered the hotel.

‘Your aunt is a lovely woman.’

‘I know. Jordi?’

‘Yes,
ma belle
?’

‘If you insist on calling me
ma belle
, I shall have to call you
mon beau
!’

‘With pleasure,
carinyo
.’