Encarnita's Journey Read online

  Afterwards, venturing a little higher into rockier terrain, she had come across the remnants of a barricade, stones piled high, with slots for guns, and, close by, a cairn. A marker for the dead? Rinaldo might have been buried there. How would she ever know? She had picked a few pink and purple wild flowers and laid them on top, for whoever might lie beneath. She had moved around cautiously, knowing that bandits as well as Anti-Franco guerrillas were operating throughout the region. She was much less afraid of them than of the Guardia Civil, so that when she had caught sight of two men a little way off she had stood still and waved her arms in the air and shouted, ‘Hola!’ They had come slowly towards her, their hands on the pistols at their sides, but as they had drawn closer they had dropped them. They were obviously not Franco men. These were men who lived rough in the hills. They were long-haired and bearded and their faces were weathered. She had decided it would be safe to speak.

  ‘Have you seen a man with reddish-fair hair? He’s a Scotsman. He fought with the International Brigades.’

  They had been sympathetic but unable to help. They had passed a few minutes together and they had said that one day, in the not-too-distant future, Franco would be defeated and the Republicans back in power. They would not give up the struggle.

  On the way back down to the coast, keeping by the dried-up river bed, she had come across a gypsy family encamped in a cave. She had seen the sparks from their fire and heard their singing from a little way off. They were singing a lilting copla, one that she had heard sung before, in Yegen. It told, as many did, of lost love. Her mother had told her that it was a song her father had sung.

  The gypsies had met a foreigner with light-coloured hair and for a moment Encarnita had become excited, until she had realised that the details did not match Conal. The other man had been small and spoken a language different from English. German, they had thought.

  A gust of wind rattled the window shutter. The fire was at its last gasp. It was time to join Arrieta in the bed.

  ‘I expect your father will be at home in his bed in Edinburgh, Concepción.’ Encarnita got up carefully so that she would not waken her sleeping child. ‘It is a fine city, he told me, with a castle sitting on a high rock. One day we shall see that and the house where the man who wrote our book lived as a boy. I promise you that.’

  Encarnita lay down beside Arrieta, keeping the baby against her shoulder. She was a contented child who had thriven since the day of her birth. She was rosy-cheeked alongside some of the puny babies in the street. Arrieta said she was obviously of good stock.

  When Concepción was two weeks old, the priest called. He had heard of the new arrival and would have come earlier had he not been suffering from a bout of colic.

  ‘I can sympathise, Father,’ said Arrieta. ‘I, too, suffer with my stomach. It is God’s will.’

  The priest did not seem to like that idea too much; it might hint at retribution for a sin committed. ‘I ate something,’ he said. He was quick, however, to tell the villagers that it was the will of God whenever they complained of ills or injustices and that they should examine their consciences.

  ‘You have a delicate stomach,’ suggested Arrieta.

  He turned his attention to the child in the house, the reason, after all, for his visit. He had not come to discuss the state of his stomach, or his soul.

  ‘You will want the child baptised?’

  ‘We do,’ said Arrieta.

  ‘Do you have your marriage papers?’ he asked Encarnita, who was smoothing the brow of her child, which had become ruffled with the arrival of the black-suited man into the house.

  Again, Arrieta spoke for her. ‘So many things were lost in the war, Father.’

  ‘I take it she has not been born out of wedlock?’ he asked sharply. ‘Was she? Are you a married woman, Encarnita?’

  ‘Father,’ said Arrieta, ‘it was all most unfortunate. They were about to marry when her young man was called up. He had to go and fight for our dear leader General Franco. He could not refuse to do that, could he? It is only on account of the war that they did not marry.’

  ‘But she lay with him when she was not married to him.’

  ‘Things happen in the heat of the moment, Father, especially in such terrible times.’

  There was a knock on the outside door.

  ‘You go and see who it is, Encarnita,’ said Arrieta. ‘I will take Concepción.’ She held out her arms to receive the baby. ‘You must admit, Father, that it is a fine Christian name, Concepción?’

  Encarnita went to the door to find two women clad in black from head to foot standing on the pavement. From their necks hung little black cloth bags bearing a label that said For the Dead. Encarnita could hear the tolling of the funeral bell in the background. The sight of these women always gave her the shivers but Arrieta said bad luck would not come to you as long as you gave them something. Also, if you did not help to give someone a proper burial you might not get one yourself when your time came.

  ‘One moment,’ said Encarnita and she went back into the room to fetch an offering.

  ‘That day will suit us very well, Father,’ Arrieta was saying.

  Encarnita found a few centimos and took them back to the women, who asked God to bless her. She closed the door.

  ‘It is all arranged,’ said Arrieta, when Encarnita rejoined them.

  ‘It is a shame that this child will never know her earthly father,’ said the priest. ‘But she will be blessed by knowing her heavenly one when she is received into the church.’

  ‘We are happy to know that, are we not, Encarnita?’

  ‘What unusual eyes she has!’ The priest leaned forward to look into her face. Concepción was staring steadily at him, without blinking. ‘I can’t recall ever having seen such blue eyes.’

  ‘My grandmother had blue eyes,’ said Arrieta, which, indeed, was true. They had been a dark bluish-brown, but had definitely held a glint of blue in them.

  ‘Is that so? Ah well, let us hope that the little Concepción has a good life in front of her in spite of her unfortunate beginning. At least we have peace in our country now, praise be to God and our leader for that!’

  The women murmured.

  ‘But look at what’s happening in the rest of Europe!’ The priest shook his head. ‘It saddens me that men have to go on fighting each other and will not follow the example of our Saviour.’

  Encarnita and Arrieta were aware that some kind of war was being waged in Europe but they knew little about it and were not even sure who was fighting whom.

  ‘There have been heavy air raids on London,’ sighed the priest. ‘Many lives have been lost.’

  ‘London!’ repeated Encarnita.

  Arrieta gave her a warning look and engaged the priest’s attention. ‘You are interested in the news of the world?’

  ‘I hear it on the radio.’

  ‘Who was bombing London?’ asked Encarnita.

  ‘The Germans, of course, who else?

  ‘Hitler?’ she said, remembering Jacobo and their conversation about being a Jew in Germany.

  The priest nodded.

  ‘Is he not a friend of our own leader?’ put in Arrieta, a little smile making the corner of her mouth twitch. ‘Along with his other friend Señor Mussolini of Italy?’ They knew Mussolini. He had sent planes to bomb Málaga in the early stages of their Civil War.

  ‘Indeed.’ The priest looked as if he was about to go.

  ‘So Germany is fighting England?’ said Encarnita, her voice urgent. ‘And Scotland? What about Scotland?’

  ‘It is a part of England,’ said the priest, ‘so I expect it must be involved too.’

  She was about to ask if he had heard anything about the city of Edinburgh being bombed but stopped herself in time.

  After the priest had gone, Arrieta said, ‘You must watch your mouth, girl! Sometimes it opens too wide.’

  ‘I don’t think he suspected.’

  ‘What? That the father was a foreigner? Which
he was, wasn’t he? But, thank God, our baby is going to be baptised. I couldn’t rest easily in my bed if she was not.’

  ‘How did you persuade him?’

  ‘I gave him a little something.’ Arrieta rubbed her index finger against her thumb. ‘For the church.’

  ‘Not your savings, Arrieta!’

  ‘Not all of it. What does the money matter? It is more important that our child should be baptised.’

  Concepción went to the church in her bonnet and a well-worn christening robe borrowed from a neighbour and did not cry when the priest daubed water on her forehead. She stared up at him with her unblinking turquoise blue eyes. Promises that she would be reared in the Christian faith were made by her godmother, Arrieta, and she came home – as far as her mother was concerned – neither the better nor the worse for wear for the experience.

  ‘How can you say that, Encarnita?’ demanded Arrieta.

  Encarnita shrugged. ‘It’s just that the church has let such terrible things happen. Well, God doesn’t stop Franco stamping on us and treating us like animals, does he? And then he goes and prays as if he is the holiest of holies!’ Men were still being executed in the campo. They’d heard shots again only the night before. Every time Encarnita heard them she felt sick. Please God, she would mumble to herself, don’t let it be Conal or Rinaldo. And then she would wonder why she was asking God to do anything when she knew that He would not, could not. He appeared to be as powerless to change things as they were.

  ‘Hush, child. Don’t speak so loudly. Besides, you must give God the benefit of the doubt.’

  ‘I do!’ Encarnita smiled. Arrieta often said things that made her smile. She would not have wanted to admit it but she was pleased that her child had been baptised. Beliefs were not so easy to cast aside. When she lit a candle in church for Pilar she heard her mother’s voice telling her so.

  She held Concepción in her arms whenever she talked to her mother so that they were all three joined together in communion. Sitting in the dark church in the early evening, with only the flickering candles giving light, she remembered their life together in the little mountain village of Yegen. She remembered, too, her English friend Don Geraldo and wondered if he had been caught up in the war with Germany. Her childhood friend Luisa also came into her mind and she resolved to write to her. During the war they had lost contact.

  When Encarnita left the church she walked out onto the Balcón. The Balcón de Europa. The name had been given to it by King Alfonso XIII when he had come on a visit to Nerja after it had suffered an earthquake. The piece of land jutted out into the sea like a balcony and somewhere, on the other side, lay North Africa. The waves were high tonight and dashing against the rocks below in a great fury, sending spray flying in all directions. Encarnita loved living within the sound and sight of the sea. It made her think of voyages and links to other places and other people. It made her think of Scotland. A scattering of small lights blinked in the darkness. Fishermen. It was a wild night for them to be out. Arrieta said her husband had enjoyed being on the sea at night, away from the shore and noise and people, with the width of the sky over his head. Encarnita understood the peace of it. She rocked the baby in her arms, feeling the warmth of the little body against her own on a cool January night.

  A soft curtain of rain swept over them and she turned back for home. The fronds of the palms trees were fluttering in the wind. A storm was brewing. Three or four small children scurried bare-footed across the road in front of them, heading, too, for the shelter of their houses. Lights gleamed at windows. Arrieta’s street was only a few steps from the Balcón. As Encarnita turned into the narrow street, inhabited mostly by fishermen and their families, she realised that she felt at home here now. In spite of it being an unpaved and not overly clean street, where people struggled to survive, she felt that it was a place where she could bring up her child. In daytime, it buzzed with life; children played in the gutters while their elders hung about in doorways ready to chat. Encarnita knew that she had little option, anyway, but to stay. She was not so foolish as to think that she could find the money to enable Concepción and herself to sail across the sea in the near future. But, some day, she would. First, however, she would have to find a way to work and earn and save money.

  MAY 1945

  The war that had been raging in the rest of Europe had finally ended. Encarnita heard the news from an old man sitting in a doorway. Half the men in Nerja sat in doorways, out of the way of their womenfolk. Señor Quintana was missing a leg. He sat there, most days, from early morning until sundown, enjoying the air, with his trouser leg pinned back and a book in his lap. He was not the only man in Nerja to be missing a limb.

  Encarnita had found employment as a servant in the house of a small landowner on the outskirts of Nerja. On her way home from work she would often stop to pass the time of day with Señor Quintana, who lived with his daughter in a slightly-better off street at the eastern end of the town. He had been a school teacher in days gone by. She liked talking to him. They talked about the world that existed beyond Nerja, and he lent her books, some for herself and some for her child. He said it was never too early for the young to start, which Encarnita knew herself. She had already begun to teach Concepción to read a few words. She did not want her father to be ashamed of her when they met. Señor Quintana freely expressed the opinion that children needed books other than those they were given in school, which were based on religious texts and proscribed by the state. The ones he favoured were works of the imagination.

  ‘Yes, I heard the news about the war on the radio this morning,’ he said. ‘There are to be big celebrations in Paris and London and other cities. Not Madrid, of course,’ he added with a chuckle. ‘I don’t suppose our general will be rejoicing now that his old friends have been beaten!’

  ‘So the English have defeated the Germans?’

  ‘The British have, along with the Americans and their other allies. They still have Japan to deal with but that doesn’t seem to be too big a problem, from what they’re saying.’

  ‘So Europe is a safe place now?’

  ‘As safe as any place can be until someone decides to start another war. No doubt somebody will. It seems the world can’t get on without them.’

  ‘The British – that means Scotland too?’

  ‘It does. You’re interested in Scotland, Encarnita, aren’t you?’

  ‘It seems a nice country,’ she said, trying to sound off-hand. ‘They have mountains there as well, like us,’ she added limply, remembering Arrieta’s warning about not opening her mouth too much, even when she felt she could trust someone.

  ‘Was that Scotland you were speaking of?’ asked the man’s daughter, coming from within the house, drying her hands on her black apron. Josefina was a woman of fifty and some years, and had never been married. She broke off when she saw the book on her father’s knee. ‘You shouldn’t be reading that out in the street!’

  He held the book up for all the world to see. ‘Federico García Lorca’. He enunciated the name clearly.

  ‘Papa!’ She glanced up the street. ‘You know very well —’

  ‘That they have not only murdered our greatest poet but they are doing their best to kill his work too by banning it. Well, our house is one in which it will continue to live. Viva Lorca!’

  ‘Hush, Papa, por favor! You’ll get us arrested.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Josefina! They would only take me.’

  ‘And do you think that would not affect me?’

  ‘Of course. I’m only teasing you.’ He put the book back, face down on his lap. ‘Let us go back to talking about Scotland. That is a less dangerous topic.’

  ‘You remember the Scotsman who came here before the war, Papa?’ said Josefina, sounding wistful. Encarnita wondered if she had loved this Scotsman. Looking at her, it was difficult to believe that she might have done. She seemed too prudish, the kind of woman who spent much time on her knees in church and nagged at her father, who seld
om went himself, using his disability as an excuse. But perhaps she had become like that because she had been disappointed in love.

  ‘He told us that he sometimes wore a kilt when he was at home,’ said Señor Quintana. ‘For special occasions. Like weddings. He was an agreeable fellow and he could speak Spanish tolerably well. He visited our house several times. Perhaps visitors from abroad will start coming again now that it will be easier for them to travel.’

  Encarnita thought about that as she walked down Calle Cristo. Conal had told the goatherd that he would come back for her. But how would he find her? He had not known where she lived in Almuñecar, except that it was with a woman called Sofia, whose son had been killed by the Nationalists. The goatherd had not known much more but he might not even be alive by now; the blood in his veins might have dried up. Encarnita did not allow herself to consider the idea that Conal might not have survived the clutches of the Guardia Civil, or the warfare that had come to his own land. She presumed that, like young men here, he would have been conscripted into the army and expected to fight for his country.

  She carried on to the plaza to see if the man selling loquats would be there. He was. The small yellow fruits were set out temptingly on a tray of cactus leaves while beside them stood a pot of red toffee kept warm by a flame. Encarnita was going to allow herself to be tempted today. She stopped and bought three, one each for Concepción, Arrieta and herself. The man snagged them with a toothpick and then dipped them into the bright red toffee.

  On the way back to her own street she saw two members of the Guardia Civil standing on the corner, their hands resting slackly on the pistols at their waists, their rifles slung in the usual cross-wise fashion over their chests. One of them engaged Encarnita’s eye. She looked away at once. She had never seen this guard before. Most she knew by sight. There were about thirty guards in all in the pueblo and they patrolled the streets and beaches ceaselessly, by day and night. As a result, there was little crime, little ordinary kinds of crime, that was, such as theft, which could be punished by a few days in prison, even if the stolen goods amounted to no more than a couple of bunches of grapes from a stall in the market. Smuggling, however, did go on along the coast. Most of the men in the village, Guardia Civil included, smoked contraband tobacco.