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CHAPTER 2

Valencia, 1931

Eight-year-old Ralph Colchester sat in the sun on the kitchen steps next to a box of oranges, peeling and eating them one by one, and trying hard not to get his white shorts and shirt dirtied. None of the maids came out to stop him.

He was thirsty after a hot, stuffy siesta. Solid and full of energy and little boy muscles, it was torture to lie still and wide awake for what seemed like hours, nothing to do but look up at the slatted shutters closing out the garden and listen to the sound of cicadas. He was sure the maid had forgotten to tell him it was over. It was a relief to be out in the sun now, working his way through the fruit, the juice starting to sting the skin round his mouth. He saw Mama coming through the courtyard garden and hastily put a half-opened orange back on top of the box, then rubbed his hands on the sides of his shorts.

She seemed so small beside the fountains of palm trees. She was wearing her going-out hat, like a soft bell shading her eyes.

She sat down on the step beside him. Taking a comb from her bag, she parted his hair to one side. Then they went through the big hallway that ran through the middle of the cool house. She opened the door onto the glare of the streets of Valencia and they walked down the boulevard of calle San Vicente.

The Café de Paris was a big room with rows of small tables across a shiny floor. Mr Gardiner was alone at one of the marble tables,
drinking coffee and a large amber brandy. A background of voices echoed off the green tiles on the walls. The ceiling fans high overhead added their clicking whirr. There was a scent of chicory and cigars. Mr Gardiner ordered him a cup of hot chocolate and a long fried pastry to dip in it, even though Ralph wasn't very hungry. Mama tied a big starched napkin round his neck and watched him, both her hands holding on to the bag in her lap.

She opened the bag and took out a letter, handed it to Mr Gardiner. He leaned away and studied it, looked it up and down two or three times.

‘He's divorced me,' she whispered, glancing at Ralph, who pretended not to hear. ‘He's got a divorce in Chile. He says he's got a new wife. Can he do that?'

‘He can in Chile, evidently,' said Mr Gardiner. ‘Extraordinary thing to do.'

‘I've nothing. He's stopped sending anything back for months now, nothing, and then this.' Mama began crying quietly and sadly.

‘Shh, shh,' said Mr Gardiner. ‘Come on now, old thing. Chin up. You know you're not alone. Silly Mummy, eh Ralph?'

Ralph nodded hard, Mr Gardiner and he restoring the world to rights again for dear Mama. Mr Gardiner was drumming the fingers of his left hand on the table. He held up the other hand to get the bill.

‘Aren't we meeting up with everyone for a picnic, old thing?'

She sniffed and made an effort to rally herself, and got out her small mirror to check her face, then they went out into the hot street to find Mr Gardiner's car for the drive to the river.

‘Come on, old Ferdie,' Mr Gardiner said, holding the door of the Austin open so Ralph could jump in the back.

He had an English name and a Spanish name, Ralph Ferdinand Colchester. He was born in Valencia, but Mama said he was English, because his father and she were English. He didn't know what his
father had to say about it since, a couple of years ago, his father had had to leave them in Spain and go away to build railway bridges through the wild parts of South America. He had been away so long that he had forgotten to send them any money, and Mama had been forced to take a job looking after dear Mr Gardiner's house. Ever since Ralph could remember Max had been there in the background at picnics and parties with the other English expatriates. And then Papa was gone, and Max had come up with his offer to help Mama.

And now Ralph could play in the gardens and the orange orchard, and talk with the Spanish maids in the kitchens at Mr Gardiner's house, but he was not to disturb Mr Gardiner. Although the truth was that Mr Gardiner didn't mind being disturbed a bit, it seemed to Ralph, and let him come into his office where the spidery pot plants crisscrossed the light slanting in through the Venetian blinds. He liked Mr Gardiner's silly jokes and funny faces that were just for him, and he liked the heavy smell of cigar tobacco that soaked into the fabric of the room. Mr Gardiner bought Ralph tin train sets with clip together tracks from the city shops, and once a wooden boat that he helped him sail at one of the summer picnics in the Valencian parks, picnics where Freddie Marchington or someone from the British Embassy crowd always brought along a gramophone, and someone's maid brought baskets of food, and there was always fizzy champagne and little bottles of cola in a bucket of melting ice. The grown-ups were sunny and giggly and had time to play with him while Mama, with her soft straw hat shading her eyes, sat up straight at the edge of the picnic rug, cutting Manchego cheese into neat squares and arranging them on a plate from the hamper.

Tippy Marchington, with her smudgy red lips, would be lying across the rug with her head on someone's leg, telling stories about people, and making the others put their hands over their mouths and say, ‘No, I can't believe that,' or shriek with laughter. But Mama
always looked sensible with her serene half-smile; much more good and lovely than Tippy with her blotchy face, especially when Tippy began crying – only because she had been drinking wine all afternoon, Mama said to him later.

When they got to the park Tippy was already there, holding court. Mr Gardiner flopped down on the grass and placed his panama across his eyes. Mama folded herself neatly at the edge of the rug, tucking the hem of her dress round her legs. Tippy had a man's booming voice and a cigarette in a holder. She was actually drinking from the wine bottle, as a joke. ‘So I had to let her go,' Tippy was saying to them. ‘What else could I do? Maids from the country are so silly. I told her when he started to call for her that she should drop that man. I could see he was married. You can smell it, but she just wanted to let herself be sweet-talked. She swore she'd dropped him but I could tell whenever she was going to see him because she'd be all red in the face and fired up and cross. Honestly, can you imagine? And now she's as big as a watermelon, and I can't have the shame in the house. He'll never marry her. And she was so good with needlework. Her poor little
bastardo
.'

Later, as Mama was helping pack away the picnic, Ralph asked her what a bastardo was. Mama said no, she didn't think it might be a type of mule in the villages. She wasn't sure, but it was a common sort of word, not nice. He should never say it again.

Sometimes they all went out in the cars for the drive to the beach, the wind blowing into Ralph's eyes. He'd turn round and kneel up, looking through flickering strands of hair as the wind blew it into tangles, and the legendary road disappeared behind them, the small donkeys and roadside villages retreating into the past. He liked to imagine stories; his best one was how he would see his papa one
day, see him walking along the road, and they would stop the car, and then his papa would jump in and say how he had been looking everywhere, looking everywhere for him and Mama.

After a day of being dazed by the beach and the sun and the wind they would make the journey home, and he would go to sleep in the back of Mr Gardiner's big car as they drove through miles of empty coastland. He'd hear the murmur of Mr Gardiner's voice, and Mama's voice, and the long note of the engine as if it were waiting to begin a song and then Mama would be lifting him out with Mr Gardiner's help and he would wake up in his room next morning.

There was a photo on Mr Gardiner's desk of a lady in a straw hat. By her side were a boy and two little girls, in a garden full of roses. For a long time Ralph had thought it was a photo of him, at some picnic he had forgotten. But when he asked Mama she said, ‘Don't be silly, dear. All little boys look the same. That's Mr Gardiner's little boy who lives in England with his mama and sisters.'

He wanted to know all about the boy. Mr Gardiner said he went to a school in England – because an English education made you a gentleman. Mr Gardiner looked very lonely when he looked at the photo.

Looking at the picture gave Ralph a funny feeling, that somewhere, far away in England, there might be another Ralph, with two sisters, who went to a school for proper English gentlemen.

CHAPTER 3

London, 1932

Ralph had lived on a big boat for two days, and now he was a long way from Mr Gardiner's house in calle San Vicente. He was standing at a window with a yellowy net curtain, watching the traffic go by in Westbourne Grove. They had been in this house for a week. It was cold, and outside it was foggy and when you walked along the pavements it was hard to see anything till it loomed up in front of you out of the mist. He wondered when they would go back. He missed Mr Gardiner.

Mama came into his room and took his hand. She was dressed in black, because Papa had died, a brave and good man, working hard to bring the railroad all the way to Chile. Ralph understood perfectly well that he would never see Papa now, and he knew it was silly, but he worried that when his papa returned to Valencia he wouldn't know how to find them.

‘Come down and have tea with your aunts, dear. And you'll remember won't you, not to talk about the funny old grown-ups in Spain? Aunt Flora and Aunt Cecily, well, they are quite old; they wouldn't be interested, you do see?'

In the drawing room the aunts were sitting either side of a marble fireplace where blue flames appeared in gusts across the red coals. Flora was small and plump with smiley wrinkles. Cecily was dark and stiff, with a sweep of grey hair each side of her forehead; Ralph thought Mama might be afraid of her.

Mama was in a shiny green silk chair with no arms. She was sitting up straight. There was a table with tea and cakes set out next to Aunt Cecily, but he knew not to ask. As soon as she saw him Aunt Flora held out her plump arms.

‘Here he is, our own dear Ralph.'

He went over and put his head on her big solid shoulder for a hug, the heavy lace on her dress imprinting his cheek. She put a stool by her chair and they gave him a plate with a teacake, sliced and toasted. He ate it, trying to keep the yellow butter drips on the plate.

His mama twisted the ring off her finger, the one with the three little diamond chips that came from a mine in Argentina.

‘Perhaps I should let you have this,' she said. ‘I don't know what's correct.'

The aunts began talking at the same time, Flora all fluttery and anxious. ‘There's no need,' she said. ‘No need. Really, it's yours.'

‘After all,' Cecily pronounced, ‘that is the purpose of a diamond ring, an investment, for times of trouble.'

‘And we are so very, very sorry, dear,' Aunt Flora said. ‘We feel so guilty, on his behalf, that he should have abandoned you in that way.'

‘The divorce was quite final, with the solicitors you spoke to in Spain?' Aunt Cecily asked.

Mama nodded, pulling at her lower lip with her top teeth. She swallowed and tried to speak, then shook her head.

The aunts looked at each other.

‘But Robert remembered the boy? He left funds to support the boy?'

‘It appears not. For the last few years I have relied on myself. I found a place with the Gardiner household, as a housekeeper.'

‘That must have been such a help to Mrs Gardiner.'

‘And really, there's no shame in acting as a housekeeper, it's almost like acting as a companion. Perfectly genteel,' said Cecily.

‘Oh indeed,' said Flora. ‘Most respectable.'

‘But it's so good of you,' said Mama, ‘to let us stay here while I look for a school for Ralph, when I'm hardly related to you any more.'

‘Lily, I never want to hear you say such a thing again. You have brought our nephew home to us, and such a very dear child.'

‘Thank you. And for making it possible with his school.'

‘Don't mention it again. And you must tell us if there's anything he needs, that you need.'

Flora and Cecily exchanged a look.

‘We want to give something to you, Ralph dear. With Mama's permission.' Flora picked up a little box from the lace cloth on the bamboo side table. ‘Come and see. This was our father's watch. He left it to your father, but he never came home.' She paused and looked sad, stroked Ralph's head. ‘So now we have decided that it should be in your keeping, as your father's heir. Of course, it's too big yet, but one day.'

‘Say thank you,' said Mama.

He whispered thank you, examining the heavy watch, its thick yellow chain and the black numbers on the dial. He held it against his ear and it became very loud, the secret mechanics inside adding their own reverberations to the solid ticking.

That night he put it beside his bed on the table, and lay and stared at it while Mama tidied around his room. He reached out his hand and stroked it.

Mama bent down to kiss him goodnight.