Return to Fourwinds (7 page)

Consuelo appeared on the balcony behind him, squashing him against the railing with her soft weight. She leaned out and punched the air. He could feel her waving and screaming at the soldiers.

‘
Viva la República!
' she yelled. The soldiers in their pinched caps and blanket rolls for sashes looked up and waved back. Ralph gave a wave too. ‘Come on, shout,' she said. ‘Shout no to Franco. When Franco comes he do this.' She motioned someone slitting a throat.

‘Please Consuelo!' Mama was signalling for the girl to go back inside. In the wealthy, expatriate part where they lived most people were watching the tank go by in silence, remembering the nuns and priests burned in the monastery.

‘But it is the new government in Valencia now,' she said. ‘Now we are all republicans. You, me, him, all the same.'

‘Please,' implored Mama. ‘The lunch?' Consuelo stood on the balcony, looking as though she did not think that she was the one who should go back in the kitchen and peel vegetables for soup. She
left behind her odour of soured citron and something that Ralph was beginning to recognise as
Consuelo's smell
: a smell that grew almost unbearably strong and sweet at the end of a hot day.

The tutor didn't come. He sent a message to say he was returning to England. Ralph copied out sums from his primer and filled in the answers. Mama held them out in front of her as if by gazing at them she might uncover some truth. She handed them back with a ‘splendid, dear', but no ticks or crosses.

The next night the explosions and bangs from the bullring began early. But this time they did not stop; they thundered on mechanically and relentlessly for hours. The noise multiplied, churned itself out, stuttering on and on violently and spitefully. It echoed through the stone streets, assaulted the houses and vibrated the windows. No one could explain what was happening. There was no question of getting any sleep. Max stuffed Ralph's window with a quilt. He brought the gramophone through and played the loudest music they had, took out a pack of cards and made Ralph concentrate on a game of Racing Demon.

Finally, as the darkness faded into the grey shapes of morning, the gunfire fell silent. They took down the quilt and the first birdsong began to seep in through the shutters. Mr Gardiner pulled on his coat and went down to the bar a few houses away.

He came back white and shaken, and forbade them to leave the house. The soldiers from the barracks and anyone suspected of sympathising with the advancing troops of Franco had been machine gunned to death in the sandy arena of the Valencia bullring. Three thousand people.

Everyone with a British passport was given safe passage to the coast, but Mr Gardiner was staying at the bank. He said the argument was between the Spanish peoples; they would not harm the British. Mama wept and clung to Ralph, but they were only taking children
on the first boat out. He was to be met off the boat train by Aunt Flora, and Mama would follow on as soon as she could find a place on another.

But in the days after Ralph's boat sailed the Spanish borders were closed. The civil war that was to tear Spain apart had begun and it would be a long, long time before he would see Mama again.

CHAPTER 5

Fourwinds, 1981

On the other side of the bed Alice had stilled, ambushed by sleep, but Ralph remained wide awake. The ring that Sarah had dropped on the desk a few hours ago had been left on the bedside table. He lay and looked at the pale stones glimmering in the darkness, the strange way they had of gathering and reflecting any small source of light, even at night. He sighed. In a few more hours he'd have to get up and collect Nicky from the train, break the news to him. He'd be alone, his brothers not due back till the supposed day of the wedding.

His eyes dry with fatigue, deeply tired but sleepless, Ralph got up and belted his dressing gown. He made his way softly down the wide staircase to make a hot cocoa.

There was a light on in the sitting room. Pushing the door open a little way he saw that Sarah's father was still up, seated at the desk in a circle of lamplight, writing with concentration. The room around him was shaded away, the aunts indistinct figures in their portraits. No one had drawn the curtains against the summer night, the glass black and polished, reflecting Ralph's form as he stood framed in the doorway.

Peter looked up, startled. ‘Oh Ralph. Did I wake you? I'm so sorry.' He showed a couple of fingers of whisky that he had poured out into a crystal tumbler. ‘I hoped you wouldn't mind.'

‘Think I'll join you with that whisky.' He picked up a second glass from the tray on the chest, glancing over at the paper where Peter
had been writing, but didn't like to ask questions. ‘Sarah's sleeping?'

‘The doctor left a sedative. He thinks there's a chance her voice might come back in the morning. When she's had chance to calm down.'

Ralph sat down in the armchair by the desk and Peter laid down his pen. ‘Did you manage to get through to Nicky?'

‘No. But I'll pick him up at the station in a few hours, so . . .'

‘Ralph, I just wanted you to know that if it should come to pass, if things don't go ahead, I want to cover all the costs.'

Ralph held up his hand, made a hushing noise. ‘Bride's nerves. I'm sure she'll be fine in a couple of days. A good rest and then she'll be on top form again for the big day.'

‘I hope so. But I have to tell you, the last time she couldn't talk it took a while to fade. Weeks.' He sighed and leaned back in his chair. ‘I can't say I understand what's happened. She's been so very happy, so looking forward to the future.'

‘Nicky's the same. Never seen a chap more head over heels. You get a feeling, don't you, when people are right for each other? Look, why don't we see what the morning brings? I'm sure when she sees him tomorrow things will sort themselves out.'

Peter got up from the desk and sat in the armchair on the other side of the cold fireplace. The iron basket was piled with pine cones, dusty and brittle.

‘What must it be now?' Ralph said. ‘Nearly forty years since I first clapped eyes on you?'

‘In the garden. They were having tea in the garden and you were there with her brothers. The very first day I arrived. They had wonderful gardens, the Hanburys.'

‘You know, Alice was pleased to see you again, Peter. We both were. It was just, after so much time . . . She feels badly about how things ended. She didn't want you to think . . .'

‘A different world. It was a long time ago. I was always grateful to the Hanburys.'

Ralph studied the man on the other side of the fireplace. Some seven years younger than himself but already grey-haired, there was an almost professional gravitas about Peter, a man who might absorb a confession into his stillness and give some kind of absolution. For a moment he thought, But yes, I could speak to Peter; Peter, who had known Alice when she was still a girl. Ask his advice.

Ralph rubbed his lips. They felt numb.

Through the window the marquee was just discernible in the fading darkness, slowly billowing with the wind, the flank of a creature breathing in its sleep.

He shifted in his seat, aware of his body feeling heavy and stiff, a man in his late fifties who didn't roll with the punches so well any more.

‘Suppose I'd better try and get a bit of sleep. I'm sure it's all going to work out, once he's back.' Ralph padded away in his leather slippers.

Peter clicked off the desk lamp and picked up the paper where he had sketched out a branching family tree. Faces that he hadn't seen for decades swam up towards him in the half-light.

And Sarah, what did she know about them? He'd told her so little. When the wedding had been announced he'd had an impulse to track them down, try and invite them, but in reality it was simply too late to do such a thing.

But now, with Sarah stalled and silent, sleeping fitfully upstairs, it seemed clear to him that it wasn't going to do. You couldn't expect to send a child out into life as an adult not really knowing where they came from. That was the truth of it. When Patricia was awake perhaps he would ask her what they should say. How odd, really, that they rarely spoke of the years before they met, the people they had lost – something they had agreed upon without ever stating it openly.

The first notes of birdsong outside, fluid and clear as water. There was no situation that God couldn't redeem, that's what he believed; no situation that He couldn't turn to good in the end. Peter picked up the piece of paper, made his way upstairs.

Later, as he lay almost asleep at the start of that summer dawn, thinking of Sarah, thinking of the day ahead, Peter thought he heard a door open and close again, somewhere downstairs. He listened out for a moment, but hearing nothing more decided he'd been dreaming, closer to sleep than he realised.

And when sleep came in he dreamed of a child in a ripped mac, following his brother through the streets of Manchester.

CHAPTER 6

Manchester, 1935

‘Not you two again,' said Elsie.

There was a boy on her doorstep. He wore droopy shorts cut down from old trousers, a shrunken woolly with his long eleven-year-old wrists gangling out. Next to him was a smaller boy in a very grubby raincoat with a big rip down the front. They were right there on the threshold as soon as she opened the door, smiling like she might be pleased to see them.

‘Don't you two have anywhere else to go?'

‘We like coming to see you, Aunty,' said the youngest one.

They had shorn hair like little convicts and bare, expectant faces, ready to sit on Elsie's new sofa and be offered a plate of malt loaf slices. They were always hungry.

‘Come in off the step then, our Peter. Hurry yourself, Bill,' she said, half pushing them in. She went out, taking off her pinny, and gave a swift look up and down the street.

‘We got lost finding it,' said the little one, ‘but I asked, I did, at the lady's house down the road.'

‘Is that your car, Aunty Elsie?' the big one said, sanding the bottom of his shoes on her doormat, trudging off the street dirt. There was a new Austin Seven in front of the house. But Elsie wasn't listening.

‘You knocked on the neighbour's door! You don't just go
knocking on doors around here. What did you say? Did you tell them I was your aunt?'

‘I told her your new address: 63 Margaret Road, Manchester.' Proud, because he'd remembered.

‘God save us,' she said. ‘You're not to do that again. Did you hear me? I said, did you hear me?' She was shouting now. Both the boys nodded urgently, eyes wide at this new sin.

She deflated and sighed.

‘Not in the front room, go through to the back.'

Sitting by the fire and fortressed inside a square, brown armchair, Uncle Vernon was listening to the football on the wireless. He smiled at the boys and winked. Peter sat down directly opposite him and stared at him as if something might happen. The fire in the grate gave a crackle and the child jumped. Bill jiggled one leg, making his head nod slightly.

The radio commentary washed to and fro across the room in waves of excitement that seemed hardly contained by the wireless box, and every so often Uncle Vernon would take out his pipe, look at the boys and nod his head towards the box, and the boys would nod back.

Elsie came back in after a while and banged a plate of malt bread on the side table. She pointed to it. She switched the wireless dial to the muted sound of music.

‘Eat up then. How's your mother's health these days?'

‘She's been out in the sanatorium, for her breathing.'

‘Oh aye. So who's been looking after you lot?'

‘Our Kitty. She's been doing the cooking.'

‘Kitty's got a job in the big shop,' the little one said. ‘And she's got,' he swallowed and took a breath, ‘a costume from the catalogue, but we're not allowed to touch it.'

Well, at least that's a pay packet coming in for their mam at last,
since that father of theirs 'as never 'ad a job in 'is life.' She was saying this to Uncle Vernon now, as if they couldn't hear her.

‘He's 'ad lots of jobs, Aunty.'

‘Maybe I'll go and see your mam out in the country. Though I don't know, I've got a weak chest myself.'

The boys munched and stared. If anything Elsie seemed to have a strong and substantial chest under her floral pinny, like the breast of a big grey pigeon.

‘I'll never know what got into your mam's head, the day she came home and told your grandfather she was marrying. You'd better eat that up now. It's a long walk back. I'll never forget his face. He were standing in front of the clock on the mantelpiece – that clock kept time beautifully – and his face was white as a sheet. You can't stop her when she gets an idea. And she'd 'ad an education, you see. Your grandfather said all along she couldn't go to the grammar school, because it were a lot of money for the uniform, but it were our mother said we had to save up the money because Evelyn must go. And that's how she repaid them. Well, that's marrying the Irish, you see, drink away their money. He went white, your grandfather, because he could see it, and she couldn't. She was marrying a man half blind, from the gas in the war. I remember, he said, “Mother, it's our Evelyn that's blind.”'

She shook her head and they sat and listened to the fire crackling and the radio mumbling songs in a small polite voice. The plate of malt bread was empty.

‘Well, Kitty'll be making your tea, and it's a long way back.'

‘'Ave you made some nice umbrellas, Uncle?' said the oldest one.

‘Ooh, your uncle's been promoted in the works. He's high up in the umbrella business now is your uncle.'

The boys stared at him.

Vernon tapped the side of his nose. He lifted up his left flank and
fished about in his pocket. He brought out a handful of coppers and began to sort through them with a pointed finger. Then he held out two clenched fists towards them.