by Carlos Alba
Still no one spoke. It reminded me of a scene from a black-and-white horror film of the 1930s when all you could hear was the crackling of the soundtrack. Mama began to sob, and I sat next to her, laying my arm gently around her shoulder. Papa started to talk in Spanish, slowly at first, but then his words arrived quicker and more fluidly, as though he was delivering a speech, setting forth the components of an argument, the pitch of his voice rising incrementally, his delivery booming ever louder as he built towards an angry, impassioned climax.
Though I couldn’t make out the full content of his speech, it was clear this was an issue about which he felt strongly. He was in full flight when Mama rose to her feet, her face red with anger.
‘Poco de respeto,’ she said quietly but sternly.
He stopped. It was one of the few times I witnessed her challenge him so directly, halting him in his tracks. I knew what she’d said, it was a phrase he often directed towards me. ‘Show some respect.’
Later I asked him who Franco was and why his death was so important.
‘He was a very bad man,’ Papa replied.
‘Don’t teach the child disrespect,’ she said, in that same stern tone. She looked at me, her eyes reddened and damp.
‘Franco was the leader of our country,’ she said measuredly. ‘He kept order on the streets when there was none.’
I was confused, not knowing what to think or how to feel, whether to be pro- or anti-Franco, to be happy that he was dead, as Papa appeared to be, or sad, like Mama. I couldn’t understand how two people could have such wildly differing opinions about the same person. They even called him by different names. Papa spat his name out like it was a term of abuse, while Mama called him el Caudillo, which she said was his proper title. Pablito was firmly anti-Franco, but then he agreed with everything Papa said, and I was sure he didn’t know any more about the ruler than I did.
A pall descended over the house, where it remained for several days. Mama wore black, and she had a permanently concerned look on her face as she monitored the World Service for updates. A large bundle of Spanish magazines arrived through the post from Abuela, all dominated by pictures of important-looking men, dressed in formal suits with black ties, looking solemn. Papa did his best to appear unintererted, but he listened out for the news on the radio and he pored over the magazine coverage.
From the pictures Franco looked friendly enough, particularly in his younger days, with his bushy eyebrows like Denis Healey’s, his thin, neatly trimmed moustache and his warm, reassuring smile. I guessed he was a jolly man, the sort you’d like to have as your uncle, who would buy you presents at Christmas and lead the singing at a family party.
His clothes were militaristic and dashing. In some of the more recent shots, when he was ageing and balder, he wore a black uniform with gold epaulettes and a red sash, a ceremonial hat with a white feathered plume and white gloves. In older pictures, he favoured a beret and what looked remarkably like the uniform of the SS. He appeared to be giving a Nazi salute to a convoy of trucks carrying troops. I also heard him described on the radio as the ‘former Fascist dictator of Spain’. And I knew that Hitler had been a Fascist.
It hadn’t occurred to me until then that Franco was the same bloke who’d been the leader of the country during the war, all those years ago, when Spain supported Germany, but from his pictures he looked pretty old, so I guessed he might well have been. If that was the case, I couldn’t understand why Mama was so upset. Surely she wouldn’t cry over someone who had been friends with the filthy Hun, would she? I considered asking Papa but thought better of it, remembering our previous run-in over Spain’s military history that had ended with Max Miller’s face being pummelled to a bloody pulp.
The worst of it was that no one else in Mosspark seemed to know anything about Franco’s death. Nothing had changed, and the world beyond our front gate was oblivious to Mama’s grief, to Papa’s passionate displays of enmity, to the story that appeared to be dominating newspapers in Spain.
I didn’t like bringing friends home, but around that time Bobby Watson persuaded me to let him come back to my place after school to watch Magpie. It started at four-thirty, and his ma and da didn’t get home from work until five. Reluctantly I agreed, but the moment I saw Mama, dressed all in black, seated next to the radio, with a box of tissues on her lap, I knew I had some explaining to do.
‘How come yer ma’s greetin?’ Bobby Watson inquired as we settled down on the settee.
‘Cos Franco died,’ I explained.
‘Franko Baxter died?’
‘No, not Franko Baxter. General Franco.’
‘Who’s General Franco?’
‘The Spanish head of state.’
‘Never heard ay him.’
Papa changed after Franco’s death. Until then he’d barely mentioned Spain, only ever expressing ownership of his nationality when pressed to do so, when it was raised in conversation with strangers, or if it became an issue because of his poor English. His silence on the subject suited me – the less attention drawn to my foreignness the better, as far as I was concerned.
But now he referred to it unprompted, talking about the country in proprietorial terms, referring to the Spanish as ‘we’ and to Spain as ‘my country’. There was clearly a reawakening of his interest, not just in Spain, but in Catalonia, the region of his birth. He spoke glowingly about its architecture and scenery, its history and culture and the artistry and industry of its people. He told us that many people regarded themselves as Catalan rather than Spanish, in the same way many people in this country saw themselves as Scottish rather than British.
Over dinner, he declared as a statement of fact that Gaudi’s Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família in Barcelona was the most beautiful building in the world. He recalled, as a young man, watching Gypsy dancers in the Plaça de Sant Jaume and how he’d stood transfixed by their elegance and the rhythmic, erotic aggression of their movements. He spoke with passion of a bullfight he’d attended, of the primal beauty of the muscular, majestic bull pitted against the bold matador.
Long after we finished eating he was still talking, telling us about the breathtaking sweep of the Catalan landscape, from the hiking trails in the verdant hillsides of Val d’Aran, across the rich growing areas of the region known as las cartas del paisaje – literally the letters of the landscape – famed for its almonds and olive oil, to the coastal areas of Aigua Blava, Calella de Palafrugell and Tamariu, with their tiny, bobbing fishing boats nestling in craggy coves, cast in his memory as forever sunkissed, idyllic and untouched by modernity.
In this new spirit of openness, I discovered important things about Papa’s past – how he’d left the orphanage where he grew up when he was eighteen and moved to Tangier. I asked him why he’d moved to another country, and he said it was something to do with the Civil War. I asked him what a civil war was. He said it was when people in the same country fight each other, when friends and brothers are often enemies. He said the war was started by Franco, then a military general, who used the army to overthrow the government and kill all the Spaniards who didn’t agree with him.
‘Why would an army kill its own people?’ I asked, but Mama interrupted and said angrily, ‘Pablo. You shouldn’t be talking to him about these things.’
I knew that Morocco was in Africa, on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain, because we’d done it in Geography and I’d read about the Moors in the National Geographic in the school library.
‘This is where I meet your Mama and where Pablito is born,’ Papa announced blithely.
I reeled from the force of this bombshell. If what he said was true, it meant I had a brother who was African. As soon as we got up from the table I headed straight for my bedroom, put my head between my legs and forced myself to breathe deeply. Being Spanish was bad enough, but at least Spain was in Europe. Morocco wasn’t just another country, it was another continent, full of Arabs who smelled and didn’t believe in Jesus, according to Sh
itebag Shearer, our gym teacher. If that got out at school, my life wouldn’t be worth living.
* * *
As well as being more overt about his Spanish heritage, Papa became more cynical about his adopted homeland. He’d never particularly liked Britain, but his complaints became bitter and more frequent. He talked scathingly of its people and their fondness for drink, of the drab cities, the thick accents and the poor, joyless food.
He saw petty discrimination everywhere – in newspapers, on the television news, in football commentaries, in supermarket queues, in traffic jams – and every setback was seen as part of a conspiracy to debase and discredit him by arrogant anglosájones.
Mama, in contrast, loved Britain, with its expansive countryside, its temperate climate, its friendly, warm-hearted people and, above all, the opportunities it afforded families like us to better ourselves. She accused Papa of deriding the country which had accepted him so welcomingly and had given him such a good standard of living compared with what he could have expected back in Spain.
Her position relative to his hardened, and, while he’d always appeared to be the dominant force, I became aware of a creeping acceptance that she now set the ground rules. She served him devotedly and industriously, but if she decided to take a stand on an issue, like when he lost a month’s wages gambling on cards with his fellow baggage handlers, she imposed her will, and he accepted it uncomplainingly.
He began to seek out fellow Spaniards to socialise with. Opportunities were few, given the sparseness of the Spanish population in Scotland, but the consulate in Manchester put him in touch with an expatriate group that met weekly in a community centre in Edinburgh. He started attending their Tuesday meetings, where they swapped items of news and gossip from the old country, along with newspaper cuttings and magazine articles and items of Spanish food and drink they’d acquired.
Mama was sceptical. He’d never expressed any interest in meeting Spanish people before, and she pointed out that if he really wanted to do so, Spain was full of them. Why drive a hundred-mile round trip to meet a group of strangers with nothing in common but the geographical accident of their birth, to talk about a country he’d chosen not to set foot in for forty years?
Papa brushed aside her criticisms. On the nights the meetings took place he’d arrive home from work early, change, bathe, shave and dress in his finest clothes before setting off in a cloud of Aqua Velva.
He’d return home late at night, and over breakfast the following morning, buoyed and energised, he’d breathlessly recount the people he’d met and the things they’d discussed. Salvador, a chicken-sexer from Valladolid now living in Broxburn, knew a shop where you could buy authentic turrón. Jose, from Valencia, now running a Toyota dealership in Haddington, knew a restaurant in London where you could watch Spanish football matches from last season on videotape.
‘So, you’re going to travel all the way to London to watch a football game that’s a year old?’ Mama asked scornfully.
‘I nae go, I only say is possible,’ Papa said defensively.
‘Did anyone have anything important to say, like what is happening politically back in Spain?’
Papa waved his hand dismissively. ‘Politicamente? Si, I tell you wha is happen, nothing, tha’s wha is happen.’
‘What about the move towards democracy that we keep hearing so much about on the World Service?’
‘I tell you, there is no democracia while this burro Suárez is in charge.’
The ineffectiveness of Adolfo Suárez, the new Spanish prime minister, had become a source of vocal grievance for Papa, who regarded him as a stooge of King Juan Carlos, the new head of state, who in turn was a stooge of Franco.
Most of the Spaniards he encountered at his meetings had settled here with wives or husbands from Scotland whom they’d met while they were holidaying in Spain. There were others from Spanish-speaking countries, living in Scotland for an assortment of reasons, like Maria Cristina – or Dr Maria Cristina Carvajal to give her full title – from Chile, who taught South American history at Edinburgh University, and who seemed to occupy a greater proportion of Papa’s conversation with every passing week.
His take on continuing developments in Spain became infused with her opinions and observations, and his every sentence seemed to begin with ‘Maria Cristina says’, or ‘Maria Cristina thinks’, or ‘According to Maria Cristina’. He also began to share her interest in what was happening in Chile, where, I managed to surmise from the snippets of conversation I understood, something important had just happened. I wasn’t altogether clear on the detail, but I knew that a lot of people were leaving the country because they didn’t like its new leader – who must have been a real ogre, because Papa hated him even more than Franco.
‘Maria Cristina, she say Spain is, how you say, full a corruption. She say it is soon like Chile unless all the old Franquistas, they are kick out.’
Mama, who had dubbed Maria Cristina ‘Santa Maria’, threw up her hands in exasperation every time her name was mentioned.
Ah, Santa Maria knows everything. Why don’t you go and live with her if she is so clever?’
Papa flushed and slammed his coffee mug down on the table.
‘Wha you talk, woman? She talk more sense than you, I tell you this.’
Then one day when I returned home from school, Mama and Papa were involved in a blazing row. Papa was getting ready to attend his weekly meeting, and I figured their argument must have had something to do with that. I heard Maria Cristina’s name mentioned several times, but this was more than Mama’s usual gibes about Santa Maria. As he was leaving she followed him to the front door, screaming in Spanish, before slamming it behind him.
The atmosphere in the house for the rest of the evening was tense. Pablito arrived late home from school because he’d been given detention for failing to hand in his homework on time. This made Mama’s mood even sourer. They had a heated conversation in Spanish, and I couldn’t make out whether she was reprimanding him for his detention or continuing the argument she’d had with Papa. I tried asking her what was wrong, but she just said ‘nothing’ and told me to tidy my bedroom.
After we’d eaten dinner in silence, we sat down to watch television, but I could tell Mama wasn’t paying attention. Every time she heard a car in the street outside she got up from her seat to peer through the gap in the curtains. Usually we were all in bed asleep by the time Papa returned from the meetings, but on this occasion it was clear she was determined to stay up. I was sent to bed at nine o’clock as usual but forced myself to stay awake, resolved that I wasn’t going to miss out on whatever excitement was due to take place upon Papa’s return.
It was around eleven-thirty when I heard the front door open and the sound of Spanish voices in the hallway. I waited until they moved into the living-room before climbing out of bed, and tentatively making my way downstairs. The hallway was dark and as cold as snow. Any residual heat that had built up through the evening had dissipated into the night when the door had opened, replaced by an icy swirl of air suffused with the acrid smell of coal smoke from neighbours’ chimneys.
Gently, I pushed open the door to the living-room and peered inside. A woman and two children stood between Mama and Papa. Pablito was seated on the settee with his fist trapped under his chin, his eyes darting back and forth between our parents.
The strangers looked cold and hunted. The children – a boy of about eight and a younger girl – stood close to the woman, as though they were hiding behind her, each holding on to a leg. The boy clutched a dirty, brown, slickly matted cuddly toy close to his face with his thumb secreted inside his mouth, hard against his cheek. Their look was a world away from the people I was used to seeing in Mosspark. With their black hair and swarthy complexions, they more closely resembled us, but they were even darker, and with thin, almond-shaped eyes they appeared almost oriental.
After a tense stand-off the woman spoke, cautiously. Although she was speaking in Spanish, I was abl
e to deduce that she was apologising. Mama interrupted, addressing her directly, then midway through her speech she turned to Papa and switched from Spanish to English.
‘I told you I don’t want them here. Why have you put me in this position?’
Papa opened his palms entreatingly. ‘Wha you want me dae, put them out on the street? They have nowhere tae go.’
‘That’s not my problem, Pablo, I’ve told you a dozen times. What do I have to say to make you understand?’
‘These people, they are lucky tae be alive. They come thousands a miles tae be safe and wha we dae, throw them out?’ he asked.
‘Why don’t you send them to stay with Santa Maria? She is a rich college lecturer. She has plenty of room.’
‘She already have a family stay with her.’
Mama laughed. The three strangers watched the exchange in silence, wincing as each contribution was delivered.
‘Does she know where we live?’ Mama asked. ‘Does she know how many rooms we have? Have you told her, Mister Big Shot, in your tailored suit and your handmade shoes? Does she know that we live in a two-bedroom council house?’
The little girl began to cry and Mama stepped forward and lifted her into her arms, kissing her on the side of the head.
‘Está bien, querido, no hay necesidad de llorar,’ she said. ‘It’s all right, my darling, there’s no need to cry.’
She saw me standing in the doorway and her expression hardened. ‘You, get up to your bed,’ she ordered sternly. ‘This has nothing to do with you.’
I left and returned to the top of the stairs, from where I tried to listen to the rest of proceedings, but the door to the living-room had been closed and the voices were muffled and indistinct. What snatches of conversation I did catch were in Spanish, so, defeated, I went to bed and fell asleep.
I was woken by Mama ordering me from my bed. I guessed from the breaking light outside it was the early hours of the morning. She ushered me downstairs to the living-room, where two makeshift beds had been prepared using cushions from the settee and sleeping bags. She told me I was to sleep in one of them alongside Pablito. The family of odd, frightened-looking strangers was to have our bedroom.