Daughter of Catalonia (7 page)

Through the open doorway Madeleine caught a glimpse of Bernard holding Solange’s coat for her to step into, and then Solange turned her head, and said with wry amusement, ‘The light of the Mediterranean seems to have got into you tonight, Bernard! But I am glad you have fallen for Elise’s daughter. If we can make her smile like Elise, then you’ll be right and I’ll be grateful. So we’ll do as you
suggest, and if she falls into the sea, we can always send you down to fish her out!
Bonne nuit, Maman
. Have fun with the children. We’ll make the most of these two weeks, and then we’ll be very brave and let the little Madeleine follow her mother,
n’est-ce pas?
’

The little, old-fashioned train rattled through the hills of southern France, wending its way past deep canyons and strange rock formations, opening out to give broader views of the mountains occasionally, green and hazy in the late afternoon sun. They had passed Toulouse, and Carcassonne, with its medieval city, and according to Madeleine’s map she should soon be able to see the sea. She had been travelling since dawn, and had become almost part of the rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat of the train’s motion, bracing herself with her fellow passengers automatically when they swung corners around the mountains, shifting her buttocks uncomfortably from time to time on the hard, leather bench.

She had changed trains twice, and walked platforms whenever stops permitted to breathe in the sun on sleepy platforms with troughs of flowers and empty benches. The
further south they reached, the sleepier the platforms, and the less baggage and shouting and engine noise. Her fellow passengers also changed. The commuters and harassed mothers were replaced by peasant women in grey-black skirts and flowered aprons, their square, weathered, rather beautiful faces expressionless as they sat next to their husbands, mahogany-skinned farmers of lean build and bent legs. Conversation between them was muttered and almost incomprehensible to Madeleine, heavily nasal and guttural, and with their mouths hardly seeming to move. It was depressing to think she was heading further south, to Catalonia, where her correct Parisian French might turn out to be quite useless.

Her seat was next to the window, and she was hemmed in by canvas bags of shopping and farm produce. Her neat, old-fashioned suitcase, brown leather with black stitching, sat on the rack above her head, lost among the jumble of country possessions which spilt over onto the floor. There was no chance of leaving the carriage to walk in the corridor. She shifted once more in her seat, stretched her legs between a large black trunk and the legs of the woman opposite, who smiled at her with surprising friendliness, and closed her eyes to the Cathar country outside. She was weary, and anxious to arrive, and wanted above all to see the Mediterranean appear before them. Soon, soon …

Only yesterday she had said goodbye to Robert at the Gare du Nord. Ten days with him in Paris, and they had packed the days full of sights and sounds. They had eaten at St Michel, taken coffee at the Café Procope,
strolled down the Boulevard St Germain and along the banks of the Seine, visited Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower. All of the obvious tourist attractions, plus all the galleries, and the obligatory visit to the Opéra to see Callas sing. They had bought horrendously expensive, handmade, violet-centred chocolates at a
salon de thé
, soaked up smells in a cheese shop and charcuterie on the left bank, and everywhere they went they stopped for coffee, to sit on the terraces and pavements and watch Paris go by.

At Montmartre Robert had insisted on running all the way up the steps to the top, and Madeleine had followed, protesting but laughing, for once happy that her unfashionable skirt and shoes were so much easier to move in than those of the chic Parisian ladies who watched her with haughty amusement. From Montmartre the whole of Paris fell around them, a panorama which was nevertheless small enough to cup in your hands. The city noise was distant, and the little web of streets around the church was an intimate village. If ever she lived in Paris, Madeleine thought, it would have to be here. They drank aperitifs in the square, bathed in sunshine, surrounded by the artists who peddled second-rate portraits. Lunch was disappointing – tourists’ fare at inflated prices – but it didn’t matter. The moment was as perfect as it needed to be.

Tante
Louise had wanted Madeleine to stay at least long enough after Robert’s departure to plunge into Paris fashions and meet some more of their Paris friends, but she was determined to make the trip south before her
grandparents started asking any questions. Already she had received a letter from Peter, wanting to know when she would be returning to England, and suggesting that he might come to visit her if she decided to stay on in Paris. She had replied to put him off, but there was no time to lose in making this journey. She didn’t need high Paris fashion to visit a small Catalan fishing village, but she bought some dresses for the sun – sleeveless dresses with narrow waists and swirling skirts which made her feel strangely daring and feminine. And she allowed Louise’s chic hairdresser to tame her long hair into gentle curls which swept off her face and over her shoulders, and which Robert, almost awed, said made her look like Grace Kelly. Then she left most of her belongings with Louise, bringing only enough clothes for a few days, and her mother’s jewellery case, which now never left her side. This was just a quick trip, she told herself whenever she felt nervous.

Bernard had taken care of all arrangements, with admirable efficiency, discovering what hotels were available in Vermeilla – one or two new tourist hotels, it seemed, now that the French had discovered the Mediterranean for holidays, and a couple of older hotels, one of which, the hopefully named Hotel Bon Repos, had accordingly been booked for her. She was armed with phone numbers of everyone back in Paris in case she got into difficulty – ‘I can be there in a day,’ Bernard had said to her, at least three times, as they stood at the station this morning.

It wasn’t the travel, or managing on her own, which
bothered Madeleine. She was so nervous she could hardly breathe at times, but it was the task ahead, the searches and introductions, the probable failure, the fear of the unknown. It’s just a holiday, she kept telling herself, without any real conviction. But now her nerves were numbed to the point of exhaustion, and she closed her eyes and listened without hearing to the mumble of voices around her and the rumble of the little brown train.

She woke to a rush of blue. Blue sea, blue sky, and as they curved to follow the coast, she could even see blue waters ahead on the other side of the train. She was startled, but then remembered that this was an area of flatlands and inland lakes. The train was passing between a lake and the sea. Then she could only see the sea again, impossibly blue and still, with a low evening sun shimmering gently on the water. This was not the sparkling, choppy Mediterranean she had expected, but a quiet sea, deep and reflective, purple-fringed, with a pink mist drawing in the evening sky. Not a postcard but a painting, with all the colours of Matisse in one simple panorama. Still half asleep, she drank in the dreamy vastness, gazing towards the horizon as the evening light darkened in the distance and shrank the sea.

Then it was gone, and they were in suburbs, among houses, and all around her people were gathering together belongings. They were coming into Perpignan, and here most people would leave the train, but she had some more miles to go, further yet towards Spain, down
towards the Pyrenees, away from the flatlands and the plains of Roussillon towards the rocky coastline around Vermeilla.

There was a ten-minute wait in Perpignan, and she got off the train briefly to stretch her muscles, stiffer still from sleeping in an awkward position. So close now to her goal, she was terrified of missing the train, and hung around the door to the corridor by her carriage, waiting to see doors being closed and hear the bangs and clatters as the train prepared to depart. A conductor came by her and spoke to her, not in French, she realised with a rush of excitement, but in Catalan. Then he saw her incomprehension, and repeated, in carefully polite French, ‘On board, Mademoiselle, if you please. The train is about to leave.’

‘How long until we reach Vermeilla, Monsieur?’ she asked him.

‘Just twenty minutes, Mademoiselle,’ he reassured. ‘You are nearly arrived.’ He was middle-aged, she thought, maybe forty or so, but he gave a very male smile as he looked at her, and opened the door wider to allow her to re-enter the train.

‘Which carriage are you in? This empty one? Let me take down your suitcase now, then, since there is no one here to help you when you arrive.’

‘Thank you,’ Madeleine smiled at him.

His gaze swept over her again, not disturbing, merely appreciative. ‘The pleasure is mine,’ he twinkled, as he left. Her first Catalan admirer: Madeleine chuckled and settled down for the last twenty-minute ride to her destination.

The train again followed the coast, but it was now
growing darker, and the lights were on in her carriage, so she had only the impression of a deep, dark space on her left from time to time as they headed towards Vermeilla. Three small stations, almost empty of passengers, and then they had arrived. A station like any other in France, almost half a mile from the village, and not a taxi to be seen, so Madeleine picked up her small suitcase and headed down the single road to look for her hotel. Nerves on end, she refused to feel daunted. Soon ahead was a square surrounded by plane trees, carefully trimmed in their camouflage colours. Gentle street lights illumined the square, a rectangle of shingle with sections for playing boules, and little shuttered shops all along one side.

Then she could see the sea, to her left, just yards away at the end of a cobbled street with a couple of restaurants and, she hoped, her hotel. She headed towards the water, here lit by the lights of the bay. There was a promenade, a sea wall, and then the bay, now moonlit and serene, with a few boats at anchor, several more tied to a stone jetty at the end of the shingle beach. It was the most peaceful scene Madeleine had ever seen. The bay curved round, with buildings all around it, soft and pink in the low street lighting. A stone church stood watching over the bay, timeless and sober. Behind her a bar was doing good business, but the sounds receded from the waterside, and the still, purple waters captured the silence.

She stood for what seemed a very long time, not wanting to move. Not much would have changed here, she was sure, since she had left over fifteen years ago.
Turning, she looked back at the village, the thriving bar on the promenade, the little streets leading away in a fan from the bay, wooden shutters on small windows designed to keep out the sun, tiny balconies with their spectacular views of the bay and the sea beyond. Everything was in miniature, a tiny world to itself on the fringes of France. Tears welled up, and she blinked them back. Where had their apartment been, she wondered? Where had she lived, with her Papa,
Maman
and Robert? And was there anyone here who would remember her? Her nerves from earlier in the day returned, and she felt suddenly very alone.

She looked further along the promenade and saw a little sign above a doorway, lit by a tiny lamp above it,
Hotel Bon Repos
. So her hotel was on the seafront. The sheer magic of this made her smile; her tears receded, and she walked towards the hotel.

The entrance to the hotel was an old archway, with heavy wooden twin doors opening outwards, and now held open to the world, with a small porch inside and an inner glass door through which a small flood of light glowed amber on whitewashed walls and a floor of beautiful Spanish tiles in a riotous pattern of orange, yellow, blue and green. The hall was a narrow corridor, leading to a steep staircase in the gloom beyond, while by the entrance was a dark wooden counter, a small reception area behind it, and then a door to a room which looked, from the glimpse Madeleine caught of it, like an office and sitting room combined. Two rickety old chairs in Spanish leather stood in front of the counter, and, shining silver in the light of the single bulb, on the counter was a tiny push-button
bell. Madeleine put her case gratefully down onto the tiles, and rang the bell.

There was a flurry of movement from the room beyond, and the sound of a kindly, hectoring voice, and then two people crowded into the small space behind the counter. Monsieur and Madame Curelée, her hosts at the Hotel Bon Repos. Madame Curelée dominated the tiny space, an elderly, matronly landlady in a black dress and rumpled apron tied over an ample waist. Almost tucked behind her was her husband, a small man with a few wispy grey hairs, who stood in her shadow, wordless but nodding. Madame Curelée was voluble in her welcome, a woman, Madeleine was sure, who would have her life story from her in hours. Her strong accent indicated she was a local woman. She might prove useful. After all, Madeleine had nothing to hide, and was here to learn and discover. Madame Curelée would undoubtedly be a mine of local information. For now, she allowed the elderly woman’s words to flow over her, enjoying the feeling of being at her destination. It was the end of the first stage of her journey, and it was good to have arrived.

‘Welcome, Mademoiselle Garriga. We have your reservation, of course. And the best room for you, with a view of the sea, and next to the bathroom. I am sure you will be very happy. How long are you staying? At least a week? Well, welcome. Have you travelled far? From Paris? In one day?
Mon Dieu!
You must be exhausted. You will sleep well on our bed, but first I am sure you want to eat something. Alain, come here, take Mademoiselle’s suitcase to her room. Quickly now, the poor young lady is tired. Go
with my husband, Mademoiselle, and then, when you are ready, I have some purée with a nice piece of beef for you, just waiting for you to arrive. Our dining room is there behind you, and there’s a little sitting room as well. You’ll be comfortable, oh yes, very comfortable.’

Madame Curelée waved a hand of dismissal at her husband, almost pushing him towards the stairs, still nodding and smiling at Madeleine, who found herself following wordlessly in his hapless wake, like a piece of flotsam drifting in a strong shore-bound current. Madame’s words followed them up the stairs.

‘You will find your towel in your room, Mademoiselle. You will want to wash before some supper, I’m sure. And there is a new lavender soap in the bathroom laid out for you on the washbasin. As soon as you are ready I will have your supper ready for you, so late as it is, and you most likely starving on that long train journey. And a glass of wine to warm you. Oh yes, oh yes, a glass of our good Vermeilla wine will set you to rights, no doubt.’ And she gave a satisfied nod which brooked no argument.