Daughter of Catalonia

by Jane MacKenzie

  ‘Yes.’ The voice was Jordi’s, coming from the shadows, and Bernard looked at him in surprise, as though he’d forgotten he was there.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jordi. ‘You only have to look at the state of Madeleine and me after an hour or so on the motorbike. If he hasn’t found shelter he’ll be in real danger. Poor kid, we need to find him quickly. So tell us, where are your team looking, and where is left to cover?’

  Philippe looked at him in amazement. ‘There’s no need for you to go looking, Jordi! No point either – you don’t even know what Martin looks like.’

  ‘No, I don’t, but Madeleine does.’

  ‘You can’t mean to take a girl out on a search like this? In this weather?’

  ‘Madeleine isn’t a girl, she’s a woman. You’ll come with me, won’t you, ma belle?’

  Madeleine nodded vehemently. ‘We just need to change clothes first, that’s all, and we need some oilskins. And you need to tell us where to look. But my worry is that he doesn’t want to be found. If he’s hiding somewhere, how on earth is anyone going to find him unless he comes out voluntarily?’

  ‘That would be all right, Madeleine.’ Jordi was incisive. ‘It actually doesn’t matter if everyone is out there looking for nothing, provided the boy is safe somewhere. That’s the best case scenario for all of us.’

  There was a silence. Madeleine stood up abruptly. ‘Come on, then, let’s get looking. You’ll tell us where to go, Uncle Philippe?’

  Philippe nodded. ‘Get changed, and then I suggest you cover the whole beach area again as far as the coast path. It’s been done, but some time ago, and now the search has moved away up into the hills and further along the coast path. I’ve been worried that Martin might be hiding in the rocks almost anywhere behind the beach further along, and in the dark no one would find him if he kept well hidden. But now the teams have moved on, there’s just a chance he may not be hiding so intently.’

  Bernard looked at Jordi’s muscular frame, and then down at his own rather rounded figure, and gestured towards Philippe.

  ‘You’d be better borrowing clothes from Philippe than from me,’ he said ruefully. ‘Although to my mind Philippe is too tall, and his trousers will hang off you.’

  ‘No,’ Philippe shook his head. ‘That’s no good. What we need is Daniel’s clothes. He’s a bit taller and thinner, but his fishing overalls are loose and would do you very well, Jordi. Come with me and we’ll ask Colette.’

  He made towards the stairs, and then turned back to see that Jordi hadn’t moved. He was still sitting in his chair against the wall, looking straight at Philippe without speaking, and his whole body said no. Philippe looked nonplussed, and Madeleine thought, they don’t understand what this means for Jordi, even to have come into this café. He can’t go upstairs, where Jean-Pierre lives. Doesn’t Philippe see that? She moved from where she was standing towards Philippe, until she was positioned almost protectively in front of Jordi.

  ‘Why don’t you get the clothes, Uncle Philippe, and then Jordi can change at the hotel, in Uncle Bernard’s room?’

  Philippe nodded, still perplexed, but too preoccupied to question. He disappeared up the stairs and came back some minutes later with a clean set of overalls, and some fresh underwear which he passed surreptitiously to Jordi as though afraid Madeleine might see them. He also had two sets of oilskin jackets and trousers.

  ‘These will fall off you, Madeleine, but you can always tie the trousers around the waist. It’s better than getting wet again, like before.’

  Bernard came with them to the hotel, leaving Philippe to man the café in case of news. Madeleine rubbed her body roughly with a dry towel, and threw new clothes on, covering herself afterwards with the smelly oilskins, and then hurried downstairs again to find Bernard and Jordi already waiting for her in the hallway.

  ‘Very elegant, my dear,’ murmured Bernard with a smile. Madeleine grinned back.

  ‘Catalan fashions, my uncle,’ she answered.

  Jordi laughed. ‘Right, let’s go.’ They went out into the unabated storm, leaving Bernard to make a hurried dash back to the café.

  The night closed around them, and the rain drove into their eyes from the dark, angry waters of the harbour.

  ‘We go all the way along to the left to start,’ Madeleine shouted to make herself heard, and they began a cold, fruitless search, along the village seafront, from the end of the sea wall, with nothing but open sea beyond, where huge breakers crashed over the wall and poured over their oilskins, and Jordi held Madeleine to stop her slipping. There was nowhere to hide here, with nothing but the sea wall and the stone-flagged quayside all around, and the quayside stretching before them in front of the village streets seemed equally fruitless, but as the beach opened up on their left, Jordi roamed it back and forth, almost to the seafront and back, and again, and again, covering the bare sand, although nothing could possibly be there, surely. Then the fishing boats loomed ahead, drawn up as high as possible on the beach, away from the waves, and tied firmly to avoid any danger of them being swept away. They searched the boats, the nets, the boxes of equipment. Their night sight had improved, but there was no sign of a living form.

  They moved on, holding hands for spurious warmth, and headed along the beach away from the village, to where the tourists would swim, and where Madeleine had lain only two days before, eating lunch in the sunshine at the very end, by the rocks and the tiny stream. There were rocks behind them all along the beach, and here was where Philippe had thought Martin might hide. It seemed unlikely to Madeleine. Surely a boy wanting to run from hurt would head much further from home, but the other searchers would be covering other areas, and Philippe wanted them here. They could only make a small contribution, especially as neither of them knew the area.

  So they searched. The gaps between the rocks were large enough for a young boy to push through, and there were obviously holes behind where he could huddle. They pushed into each hole as far as they could, Madeleine first, as the slimmer of the two, flashing her torch into the darkest corners, with Jordi supporting her from behind. They called non-stop for Martin as well, but there was nothing there, nothing even this black night could hide.

  They turned their attention to the area above the rocks, Jordi clambering up, and then reaching down to help Madeleine to follow him. Up here was a broad ledge with scrubby bushes, and behind that a sheer rock face that no one could have climbed. They raked through the bushes, making their way cautiously along the rocks in the lashing rain towards the end of the beach. Ahead the ledge opened up, and they came to the path which led up from the beach to join the coastal path to Collioure.

  ‘Not that way,’ Madeleine said, pointing up to the right. ‘That’s the path, and the search party are already along there. We have to stick to the beach.’

  Jordi nodded, and wiped drops of rain off her frozen nose.

  ‘You all right?’ His voice was impossibly tender in the circumstances, and Madeleine leant upwards for a kiss.

  ‘Doing just fine,’ she reassured him. ‘Let’s keep going.’

  He took her hand again, and they headed down the path back to the beach. There were a few more rocks behind the beach which were quickly covered, and then they were at the end. Ahead was the little outlet of water, barely a stream two days ago, surrounded by rocks, where Madeleine had washed her face and hands. Tonight it was a raging torrent of white water, bursting through and over the rocks towards the sea. It was impossible to get closer than several yards away.

  There certainly won’t be anything here, Madeleine thought, but Jordi had taken a step further up the beach, away from the sea, to where there was a bigger lump of rock which stood proud of the cascading water. He leapt for a point halfway up the rock where a piece jutting out gave him a foothold. Madeleine watched and held her breath as he climbed up, and stood on the top of the rock, with the wind almost taking his feet away, and the rock slippery beneath him. He scanned the jumble of rocks beyond the torrent, and pulled the
torch from his pocket to flash it across the water.

  He scrambled back down the rock, and exclaimed urgently.

  ‘There’s something there. Something white, on the rocks, way past the water, but I have no idea how you would get to it.’

  ‘Martin?’

  ‘I don’t know, Madeleine, but it could be. It isn’t moving.’

  Madeleine felt her blood run cold.

  ‘What can we do?’ she said.

  ‘We need help. There must be some way to get to those rocks, but we may need ropes, and we definitely need someone who knows the terrain.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Madeleine said. And then, ‘Do you think he’s alive, Jordi?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. But he could be, and as long as that’s the case, we can hope.’

  Hope. Take back the news and hope. Wanderer, your footsteps are the road. Let him be alive, prayed Madeleine, and we’ll make a way forward. I promise you, Martin, we’ll make a way forward.

  She reached for Jordi, and together they ran back along the beach towards the village.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  They could see Philippe and Bernard at the door of the café when they turned into the street. They were talking to three figures in heavy waterproofs, although the rain seemed finally to be easing off. Jordi had set a pace which Madeleine could barely keep up with, and her breath was coming in gasps by the time they reached the group. Everyone’s eyes were on them, and before they had stopped running Jordi had started to speak.

  The men listened intently as he told his story, and then Philippe demanded, ‘Just a shape, you say, on the rocks?’

  ‘Yes, a white shape. I couldn’t say for sure it was a boy, but it’s the right size. It was too far away for the torch to pick anything out, so all I could see was the blob of something pale against the black rock.’

  The oldest of the men spoke up. Madeleine recognised him as Serge, the man who had first spoken to her about her father, on her first day in the village. Was it only six days ago? Since then Madeleine had learnt that Serge was the owner of the most successful fishing boat in the village, and a spokesman for the whole fleet.

  ‘We were on the path earlier on, in daylight,’ he said. ‘You can see down to those rocks when you get to the top of the cliff, and we didn’t see anything.’

  ‘But surely that’s good news?’ urged one of his companions. ‘If that shape was just some netting or something, it would have been there all day. Only a human could have come there after we passed.’

  ‘Can you get onto the rocks without crossing the water?’ Jordi asked.

  It seemed you could, by a track down from the path. The rocks were used by villagers as a spot to catch fish from, and only the children ever went across the stream, Philippe told them. Their more sensible elders had created a way down through the bushes from the top path.

  ‘Is it somewhere Martin would have headed for?’ Madeleine asked, recovering her breath.

  ‘Possibly. He’s not as keen on fishing as some of the boys, but he dabbles, and it’s certainly somewhere he might go today if he wanted to be quiet.’

  ‘Or wanted things a bit wild!’ Serge added with some scepticism. ‘By the time we came down from the path the light was fading, and the sea was already pretty wild, and it had been raining for some time. He wouldn’t have got across the stream, that’s for sure.’

  The group had started moving by this time, back in the direction of the beach. Philippe and Bernard caught up with them, having fetched coats and hats, and they headed at a half walk, half run for the track which ran above the beach. At the end they met the path, where Madeleine and Jordi had been earlier, but instead of turning left towards the beach, this time they turned up the hill to their right. Almost immediately they saw moving lights and heard voices coming towards them, and within a few moments four figures emerged from the night ahead. It was the other group which Philippe had spoken about, which had been searching the path one last time. Daniel was among them, and Eric, Madeleine saw. They looked wet and grim, but at the sight of Philippe and the others Daniel’s tight face brightened. He surged forward.

  ‘What are you doing here? Do you have any news?’ His voice drilled the air, caught between hope and misgiving.

  ‘This young man thinks he saw something on the rocks, past the stream,’ Serge muttered.

  Daniel looked an enquiry towards Jordi. ‘On the rocks? What did you see?’

  ‘Just a shape, that’s all. Something pale which didn’t move. But it was the right size.’

  Anxiety made Daniel belligerent. ‘How on earth did you see anything of the sort? Who are you, anyway?’

  Madeleine spoke up. ‘He’s with me, Daniel. We were doing our own search along the beach. Philippe asked us to. And of course there was no way to cross the stream, so Jordi climbed up on to the rocks this side of it just to have a look. We think what he saw needs to be investigated, that’s all.’

  ‘Investigated?’ Daniel gave Jordi a puzzled look, then turned to Serge. ‘Are you going down the track? Do you have enough torches? It’ll be hellishly slippery – we’ll need ropes.’

  The ‘we’ was almost a challenge, but Serge didn’t blink. He nodded, and said, ‘Yes, we’ll need ropes, and maybe five or six men, to be sure we can bring him out, if we find him.’

  Eric stepped forward. ‘Me, then, as well as Daniel. I must have lost more fish off those rocks than anyone in the village!’

  He put his arm around Daniel, who responded with a tense smile. The whole group moved back along the path, which climbed steeply up towards the cliffs between Vermeilla and Collioure. It was inky black, and Madeleine held onto Jordi and followed his torch. Within less than a hundred yards they stopped by a narrow gap in the undergrowth to the left. Serge pulled a haversack from his back and pulled out three thick blankets, and, underneath them, some lengths of rope. The blankets went back into the bag, and then six of the men set off down the path, roped together with plenty of slack between them.

  The rest of the party waited. Philippe moved across to stand by Madeleine and Jordi, Bernard by his side.

  ‘They’ve got a bit of a climb to get down there,’ he explained, ‘and it’s just a dirt track, so it will be slippery, as Daniel said. You’ve seen how quickly we climbed, coming up the path to here. But the track is the only way through the undergrowth. Further up the cliff path you get wonderful views over the sea, but just at this bit there’s some pretty dense vegetation, and a tangle of brambles which is impassable. You get glimpses through sometimes, and you can scramble down to the rocks in places by daytime, but mostly, of course, people use this little track down, which is fine when it’s dry, or they cross the stream. It’s normally just a trickle.’

  ‘I know. I had lunch on the beach just by the stream on Wednesday.’

  ‘Well, if we move back along the path, we’ll be getting closer and closer to the level of the rocks, and we can keep in contact with the men by shouting to them. Thank God the rain has stopped, and that wind has calmed down a bit. We may even make our voices heard.’

  It seemed like hours before they could actually hear the men on the rocks below, exchanging advice – ‘Watch this bit, it’s treacherous; step here; give me your hand’ – and then, at last – ‘There it is! There’s definitely something there!’

  The group on the path followed as closely as they could, and as they neared the beach they were only a few yards above the rocks themselves. They could hold a conversation with the men below.

  It was Daniel who called out, ‘It’s definitely him. Look, he’s wearing his shorts and school shirt. He must be frozen, poor mite.’

  Serge reached him first, and went silent while those behind him hurled questions. Madeleine could imagine him hunched over the body, reaching for the boy’s pulse, feeling his cold wrist, checking for warm breath on frozen cheeks.

  ‘He’s alive!’ came the cry at last. ‘But he’s very cold, and his pulse is weak.’ Another pause and then, ‘I can�
�t feel any broken bones. We’ll wrap him as warm as we can and bring him back up the path. It’s going to take a while, though. We want to keep his body as immobile as possible. Somebody go and call an ambulance. Tell them we need a stretcher at the top of the track.’

  The group on the path sprang to life, and two men set off at a run for the village. The rest had nothing to do but wait, and Jordi wrapped warm arms around Madeleine from behind, and spoke into her ear.

  ‘He’ll be all right, Madeleine. He’s young and fit, and he’ll recover fast. He must have slipped and knocked himself out, but he hasn’t been there all afternoon, we know that.’

  Madeleine brought her hands up to cover his, and caught Bernard watching them. He exchanged a glance with Philippe, and Madeleine shot them both a smile of pure elation. Her world had been changed today, and something in her had been completed. Her new brother was going to live, and there was no more anger or tension left, only relief and a deep happiness.

  Half an hour or so later the men emerged from the track, moving gingerly, with two men going before, lighting the path for the others, holding tight to the ropes in case anyone should slip with the blanketed bundle. They laid Martin delicately down on the broader coastal path, and Philippe immediately knelt down beside him and felt his pulse, then chafed his hands.

  ‘He’s so cold,’ he muttered. He took the scarf from around his neck and wrapped it around Martin’s head, rubbing his hair gently through the soft wool. No one spoke, but Daniel knelt beside Philippe and held his brother’s hands between his own. The unconscious boy’s face seemed desperately pale, even in the dark night, and when torchlight occasionally touched him it gave him shadows and furrows far beyond his years, and yet he looked almost absurdly young.

  It seemed an age before the ambulance men arrived, men who were obviously well known to everyone except Madeleine and Jordi. They wrapped Martin in new, dry blankets and checked the body, nodding satisfaction as they moved from legs to torso to arms. Then they lifted him easily onto a stretcher, and fastened straps around him to hold him steady.