Autumn in Catalonia (24 page)

‘And if he does pull through, the brain damage will be temporary? He will recover?’ Joana asked.

‘In part at least, Señora. There are many cases of people with such injuries resuming almost normal lives eventually.
We have seen some remarkable recoveries against all expectations, but even after months of recovery your husband may be left slow of movement and speech, and indeed of thought. I wish I could tell you more, but we don’t know enough about brain injuries as yet to be able to diagnose long-term effects with conviction, especially when the injuries are so recent. And this was a very strange attack, which was targeted at the head, as though someone wanted to do the maximum amount of damage.’

The doctor shook his head sorrowfully, gave another tweak to the machine and checked various tubes, and then eased himself out of the room, just as Maria and Carla and Martin arrived. Martin stayed in the background as a flood of explanations in Spanish were exchanged, and the lawyer assured Joana of his continued attention to all her needs.

Joana was still reeling from the doctor’s reference to the attack being a seemingly deliberate attempt to damage Sergi’s brain. But the very thought of such a thing seemed to be hastening lawyer Gibert on his way. His inherently proper nature clearly recoiled from this whole sordid scenario, and he just didn’t want to be involved, or at least only from behind the protection of his mahogany desk.

‘Come to see me in my office when you are ready,’ he told Joana, ‘and we will talk about how best you should manage your husband’s affairs. For now I will leave you with your family, and would urge you not to distress yourself too greatly.’

He took Joana’s hand briefly in his, and manoeuvred himself towards the door with grace, and a respectful bow
to Maria and Carla, not actually meeting their horrified eyes. Then he was gone, and Joana was left with Maria and Carla and Martin, whose combined gaze was fixed on Sergi in utter, stunned bewilderment.

‘What happened?’ Maria whispered.

‘Some prison guard or guards have beaten him up, that’s what!’ Joana whistled. ‘God knows why, but it was a vicious attack. You see how they targeted the head specifically? The doctor says he’ll have some brain damage, long term, and that it may be permanent.’

Maria was horrified.
‘Santa Mare
! Who could have wanted to harm him like this? You mean the guards had something against him? How could they be so brutal?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps some official paid the guards to do it?’ Joana raised her hands. It was all too sudden, and too brutal.

Carla had gone sheet white, and Joana worried that maybe she shouldn’t have come here in her condition. She reached out and took her by the arm. Meanwhile Martin had gone over to stand beside Sergi, and was gazing with almost clinical interest at his swollen face. It was he who spoke.

‘Someone wanted to destroy your husband’s brain here. Why should any official need to do this to him? Didn’t we agree that his career is effectively over? He didn’t represent a threat to anyone in government.’

‘He had enemies, though.’

‘But why put themselves at any risk by arranging this, when he was already down?’ He had his eyes still fixed on Sergi, and seemed to be fretting frustratedly at the senseless
of it all. ‘Was there anyone to whom he was still a threat?’ he asked, turning to face the three women.

‘Just me.’ It was Carla who spoke, in a very small voice, leaning into Joana’s arm.

Joana held her, gratified, and gradually the truth dawned on her. ‘You, yes Carla, but also the blackmailer! I’m just remembering – I saw a man yesterday going towards the prison, and he looked at me as though he knew me. He was kind of familiar too, but I couldn’t figure out who he was. Well, now I remember – it was him I saw when he came to the house for that first meeting with Sergi!’ She looked past Martin to where Sergi lay. Oh dear, had Sergi been attacked because his erstwhile blackmailer thought he would now be on his hit list?

Carla made a little frightened sound. ‘You think he had some friends among the guards? Someone who could do dirty work for him?’

‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know, but if that’s the case then he’s achieved his object, hasn’t he, and I don’t imagine we’ll ever hear from him again.’

Martin backed her up. ‘It’s over, Carla. I’m sure Joana’s right, and it was the blackmailer who organised this, and now he’ll be happy.’

Joana shivered, and leaving Carla she took a step forward towards the hospital bed where the shell of Sergi lay. Martin stood to one side, and she had a clear view of her husband. What did she feel? He looked so different, lying there with those bandages covering most of his head, and the tubes everywhere, and that white sheet over him was like a shroud. She shivered again, and Maria came to
stand beside her and put a hand on her arm. She leant her head against her mother.

‘Poor Sergi,’ she said, and meant it. ‘Do you know, Mama, I think the person who best understood him was you, or at least you understood where he’d come from and why he was so driven and angry. He always had something to prove, but he was never quite sure he had really proved it, so it drove him further and further, and built that anger in him. What he couldn’t dominate he had to hurt. But I don’t think he was ever happy. And you know what? I don’t think he killed Alex, either. I don’t think he felt that powerful in those days, and I think he just said it the other day to hurt Carla, because she had bested him.’

‘I hope that’s true,
vida meva
,’ Maria commented, in hushed tones, her eyes still fixed on Sergi, and the machines that blinked all around him. ‘But do you realise that you’re speaking about him in the past tense?’

It was true. But somehow Joana was sure Sergi was going to live.

‘Yes,’ she answered, slowly. ‘Because the past is dead – that old Sergi.’

‘So you think he’ll live?’ It was Carla who spoke, her voice doubtful.

‘The doctor says there’s a chance he may not, but I’d say he’ll live, just because it’s Sergi! He’s a tough cookie. But he’ll be ages in here, whatever happens, and the doctor spoke of possible long-term problems in movement and brain function.’

She looked down at him again. ‘Do you think he’ll be happier, if all that ambition and aggression is gone? I could
look after him, you know, if he becomes easier to deal with. He’ll need me now.’

Nobody answered her, and they all stood in silence for some minutes, watching Sergi as if a response might come from him. But he seemed more remote the longer Joana looked at him, and eventually she shook herself, throwing off her introspection, and turned to grab Maria by the shoulders.

‘You know what, Mama? As I said, whatever happens, Sergi will be in here for a very long time, and do you know what we are now? We’re free! Carla and me, and Luc, we’re all free! There’s no one watching us anymore, and we can do exactly what we want, and my daughter and her husband can live the lives they choose, anywhere they want to be!’

A feeling of elation suddenly surged through her, and she had an urge to twirl her mother round and round, but Maria was still lost in thought, with nothing but confusion written on her face.

‘But what will you do now,
carinyo
?’ she asked, not understanding.

‘Do? Why I, no we, are going to live, Mama! And right now, do you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to Terrassa, you and I, and Uncle Victor, we’re going to go back up with Carla, and I’m going to see my daughter married, that’s what. And I’ll be the one who buys the champagne!’

‘But Joana, how will Victor leave his work?’

‘Mama, in my house there are 400,000 pesetas in cash, and in Sergi’s accounts there is a great deal more. My uncle can leave his work as soon as he wants to, and at last I’ll
be able to look after us all properly – not lavishly, perhaps, but decently.’

‘And if Sergi regains his faculties?’ Typically it was Carla who had this doubt.

‘He won’t remember anything about what happened to this particular money. It’s enough to keep us for many months while we wait to see what happens to him. But the key thing is that from now onwards we live without shadows.’ Joana had to stop herself from shouting it, so anxious was she to make them see, and to carry them with her. She reached out her hand, and Maria put hers in it.

‘Mama, many years ago I left you all, and since then I’ve lived a compromised life on Sergi’s terms. And I made myself so much believe in it that it’s only gradually in the last few months, since I’ve been incarcerated up there in the hill house, that I’ve really begun to understand what I’d done to myself, and to Carla, and to all of us. But thank God Carla’s life is going to be different. History is not going to repeat itself. Carla has her man and her baby will be born into a different world, and I want us to be there, Mama, all of us together! So come with us to Terrassa, and later I’ll look after Sergi properly, I promise you, but let us first be free.’

Maria took her time, then nodded. She shot a look over to where Sergi lay, surrounded by his tubes.

‘God help him and pardon him,’ she said, and crossed herself. ‘But you’re right, my daughter. The sun is shining outside this room, and we should all be part of Carla’s future.’

Maria turned her gentle smile on Joana, the smile that had pillowed her childhood, and Joana enfolded her in her arms. With one more look over to the body that was Sergi she turned to both Maria and Carla and gestured towards the door.

‘Let’s get out of here, shall we? The lawyer came before I’d had breakfast, and I need a coffee more badly than I can tell you.’

Luc’s home had been invaded by Carla’s family. They completely swamped the house and Luc’s gentle parents, and it was hard to believe there could be so many Garrigas in the world. Certainly Carla had never seen them all together before – in fact, she realised, this was the first time they had all been together, ever.

At their head were the older generation, Victor and Maria, and then Maria’s children, Josep and Joana, and Josep’s wife Neus, and then finally the youngest generation – Josep’s three boys, and alongside them Joana’s daughter, Carla herself.

And then there was Martin. He might not have the Garriga name, but he had a Garriga father. In fact his father was the absent head of this whole family. But it had taken all of Carla’s persuasive efforts to get Martin to Terrassa for the wedding, and he still held himself to one side, shy
amongst all the exuberant Garrigas, and unsure of his place in this very Spanish family scene.

‘You see all these people here?’ Carla said to him on the Wednesday evening, ‘Well two years ago I didn’t know any of them except my own mother. And until today my mother had never met her brother’s wife and children. We’ve been a broken family, and you’re as much a part of this reunion as any of us – even more so, really, when you’ve played such a large part in bringing us all together.’

Martin smiled, but she wasn’t sure she’d convinced him. They were outside in the garden, where Luc’s father had laid a treasure hunt for Josep’s boys, made all the more exciting for them because it was nearly dark, and the hunt was being conducted by torchlight. With them was Uncle Victor, like a boy himself, yelling in triumph as he unearthed a clue, while their audience was made up of Carla and Martin, and of Luc’s father, who had accepted this invasion with the same pleasure and goodwill he’d shown to Carla.

Luc came out from the house and joined them, carefully carrying three beers, and Carla took the opportunity to leave him with Martin, while she slipped into the house to get a jacket, since the night was turning chilly. As she passed through the large, old-fashioned hall she could hear women’s voices from the kitchen, where Grandma and Neus were helping Luc’s mother to prepare dinner. The men, of course, had nothing to do with preparing food, and through the door of the sitting room Carla could see Joana deep in conversation with Josep, and she smiled at the thought that Joana would find it equally alien to find herself working in a kitchen.

To be fair, though, Joana and Josep had a lot of catching up to do. Brother and sister had met again that afternoon for the first time in nearly twenty-five years, and had stood without words for several minutes, eyes fixed on each other’s faces, seeming to soak each other up, noting every detail of the changes wrought by a full generation spent apart. When Joana had left the village, Carla realised, Josep had been a boy of thirteen years old. This sturdy, competent city dweller was a man she didn’t know, and possibly wouldn’t even have recognised had she passed him in the street.

But Joana had changed less. Carla knew from early photos of her mother that she had looked much as she did now, allowing for some natural aging, and she was not surprised that it was Josep who found it easiest to make the first move towards his sister. It was in Josep’s character, anyway. After those silent moments he had stepped forward and taken Joana by the hand.

‘So this is little Carla’s Mama! Why, I do swear, Joana, that you’ve grown even more beautiful over the years. Do you still play
botifarra
?’

And after that it had been easy, or it seemed so, though a sort of haze of wonderment seemed to hang over Joana, as she watched Josep with Neus and his boys, easy and funny and masterful, in his role as father and the simplicity of family life. Their oldest boy was about the age Josep would have been when Joana left home, and he looked very like his father. Joana couldn’t take her eyes off him.

But in this early evening brother and sister were ensconced in the sitting room, and the world was leaving them alone. Carla could see a beer by Josep’s elbow, and a glass on the
table in front of her mother whose contents she could easily guess. She slipped by the door without disturbing them and popped her head round the kitchen door.

‘Can I do anything?’ she asked, but she knew the answer. She had already been shooed out of the kitchen earlier.

‘Not at all, my dear,’ Luc’s mother twinkled at her. ‘I’m very ably helped by your grandmother here, and your aunt. In fact, they’re leaving me nothing to do, which suits me very well, because I’ve never been very organised in the kitchen. You go and rest that baby of yours. We don’t want any accidents before we get that wedding ceremony over tomorrow.’

Grandma added her voice ‘We’re doing very nicely here,
carinyo
, and
Senyora
Serra has bought so much food that we are preparing a nice buffet for tomorrow lunchtime as well, which we’ll hopefully be able to eat in the garden, if this good weather continues. And we have young Mireia here,’ she pointed to Joana’s maid, whom they had brought with them from Girona to help Luc’s parents handle the influx of people. Mireia was enjoying herself very much, Carla thought, in a house where servants were unknown, and she was therefore treated as an equal human being, a helping hand rather than a subservient one.

‘Off you go,’ Maria repeated, ‘and tell them all outside that we’ll eat in half an hour, so the boys had better find that treasure fast.’

Carla acceded graciously, happy enough if truth be told to collect her jacket and then go back to Luc outside. She’d had little time alone with him, and was looking forward to tomorrow evening, when they would finally be given
a room together – Josep and Neus’s room, with the boys’ truckle beds removed, since they would all leave after lunch tomorrow.

This reunion was brief and to be savoured, and the evening meal was therefore long and noisy. Carla took herself off to bed soon after the
moscatell
was produced. Josep was performing a parody of his sister Joana in her younger years, parading up and down the length of the long table, flouncing imaginary skirts and wagging a finger at them in mimicry of Joana’s teenage temper. Joana was laughing as Carla never remembered seeing her laugh, and protesting that anyone with Josep as a younger brother was bound to be infuriated more often than not.

Carla passed by Grandma, who was laughing too, and she paused to kiss her before waving a hand at the others.

‘You’re all very merry, but will you feel so merry tomorrow morning?’ she asked them, smiling. ‘I’m going to bed now, because if I’m going to face the priest tomorrow I need my beauty sleep first.’

Luc got up to escort her upstairs. ‘It’s all right, you know, he really is a nice young guy – most untraditional, in the best possible way. He’s even in favour of women’s education, so you can impress him with your erudition, Carla!’

‘I’ll believe it when I see it!’ Carla retorted. ‘I’ll rely on Grandma to support me. She’s so obviously holy he won’t dare to criticise her!’

But the priest was exactly as Luc had described him. He came to the house early next morning to talk Luc and Carla through the service, and he even spoke to them in Catalan, which Carla found almost unnerving from anyone
in authority. She answered him in Spanish, stiff in spite of herself, and he held up his hand to stop her.

‘We’ll do the service in Spanish,
Senyorita
, but here in the house there is no need to be so formal. I come from a village just a few kilometres from here, you know, and we prefer to keep things simple.’

And if anyone told the bishop about him, what would happen then, she wondered? But this house was known to be liberal – a reformist priest could feel safe here.

He left them after talking through their lines with them, and after he’d gone it occurred to Carla that he hadn’t at all made her feel conscious of her advanced pregnancy. It was a blessing, but one that was missing later that morning when they walked the short distance from the house to the church. The neighbourhood was at work this Thursday, but a few women had gathered to watch the cortege go by, and Carla could see them muttering at the sight of a bride within so few weeks of giving birth. A couple of younger women even sniggered, and as she caught their gaze Carla felt her stomach tighten, and even had a moment’s panic that this was the baby coming.

But it subsided, and she drew herself up and faced the women, holding tight to Luc’s arm. People outside their lives had not the least idea of what she and Luc had been through, and now that they were crossing the last hurdle, the opinions of a gaggle of women were irrelevant.

She hadn’t dressed as a bride, though. She was dressed in the same tailored dress and coat that she had worn to visit Sergi just two weeks ago. It fitted beautifully over her bump, and she was again grateful for Mama’s fine fashion
sense. It gave her confidence, and as she walked on past the women she gave them a smile, and inclined her head, in a gesture that discomposed them in a most pleasing way.

They all entered the church together, without formality, and Luc, Carla and Martin advanced to the altar together. To everyone’s chagrin Luc’s brother had been unable to join them today. His employer had refused him leave of absence, and had brooked no argument, telling him that hundreds of others would be only too pleased to have his job. Luc had sworn angrily, using words Carla rarely heard him use, and had thanked his lucky stars that he was no longer obliged to think of working for ‘that bastard’, as he called him.

So he had asked Martin to be his best man. Martin had demurred at first, saying it would all be in Spanish, and he was sure to do the wrong thing at the wrong time, but Luc had insisted.

‘I’ll dig you in the ribs when we need the ring,’ he said. ‘It’s all you have to do.’

So Martin had accepted. He looked a little drowned in the suit he’d borrowed from Luc’s father, but he nevertheless brought tears to Maria’s eyes.

‘My brother Luis has come to my granddaughter’s wedding,’ she whispered to him, as he stood almost to attention next to Carla, and she held him tight before they entered the church.

In the end Martin produced the ring to order, and the ceremony was over before they knew it, the priest keeping the prayers mercifully brief. Carla held tight to Luc’s hand throughout, holding her breath, counting her blessings – she hardly knew what she was doing.

But when he kissed her the cheer that went up in the church was worthy of a much larger crowd, and she couldn’t resist looking behind her at all of her family, and giving them a defiant thumbs up. We made it, she wanted to shout.

And then they were back at the house, bearing the priest along with them, for lunch in the garden, on long trestle tables laid out on a terrace newly raked of its leaves. There was a chill in the air, and you could feel that winter was not too far away, but it felt more like spring to Carla. The baby pressed its feet against her stomach – it felt heavier and heavier now every day, with its head pressing down uncomfortably. Come when you like now, she thought, and the relief was so strong she choked up and could barely eat the tapas of anchovies, squid, and
butifarra
sausage and wild cep mushrooms (Luc’s father’s own fresh gathering from his secret mushroom site in the woods).

They ate pasta, and tender mountain lamb, and when the time came for dessert it seemed Neus had brought up with her from Barcelona a massive wedding cake filled with coconut, almonds, dried pineapple and pecans, cutting off wedges, which she insisted Carla and Luc should feed to each other before the cake was shared out among the rest of the family. Carla had never envisaged that their wedding could be in any way like other weddings, but it turned into a real party, nothing like the opulent, fashionable weddings she had attended with her parents as a child, thank goodness, but full of festive hilarity.

After lunch she walked with her mother in the lovely, ramshackle garden, avoiding damp spots for the sake of
Joana’s silk shoes. She repeated to Mama what she had been thinking for the last few hours.

‘Well, the baby can come when it wants now. I’m here with Luc’s father, and he can call on a midwife when the time comes, so we’ll be thoroughly well looked after.’ She thought back to the last few months and whistled through her teeth. ‘Who’d have believed it! You know, it’s only two and half weeks since Martin walked into Grandma’s apartment and persuaded me that he should tell you about the terrible mess I was in. Two and a half weeks, and the entire world has changed! This baby will owe its whole future to that moment.’

‘Yes.’ Joana was unwontedly sober as she answered. ‘Thank God for Martin! He has mended the damage I caused. You know, I’ve never yet said sorry to you, Carla, for letting you go – for allowing my prejudices and false allegiances to damage our relationship so terribly that I didn’t even know when you were in the gravest jeopardy.’

Carla put her arm around her mother. ‘Well, I was a pretty prickly person to try to love, for a long time, and I deliberately flew in the face of every code you lived by! And the worst didn’t happen, did it, and we have mended the damage. Martin could see us all afresh, with an outsider’s eyes, and he wasn’t weighed down by our history. We’d made a bad and good divide, each of us, forced on us by Sergi, and we couldn’t see beyond the barriers he’d built up between us.’

Joana sighed. ‘Poor Sergi,’ she said, and then stopped in front of a flowering shrub. ‘Oh my goodness, look at this! It’s a passion flower, and still with some flowers on it, by God, at this season!’

She reached out and touched one of the flowers, flat and open with its white petals and purple-blue stamen. It wasn’t the most beautiful flower Carla had seen, but her mother was stroking it almost reverently.

‘We had one of these at the apartment in Barcelona when I was growing up. It was your grandmother’s pride and joy, and I do remember it still flowered late in the year.’

‘Uncle Josep told me about your apartment in Barcelona. You had a garden?’