Where have all the Spaniards gone?



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Chapter 3:  Six Pretty Seamstresses

I pull the curtain aside. As far as the eye can see are the empty rail tracks, with concrete posts supporting cables and lights. In the dim distance are the black shapes of warehouses. This is France by night. It is magic. It is gloomy. It is depressing.

There are lines of wagons lying stationary on the sidings. Occasionally a small man, bent over, carrying what looks like a large spanner, walks past. It is two o'clock in the morning.

Then the tapping starts. The engine hisses in the gloom of an almost deserted station. From somewhere in the distance comes a single metallic clang, followed a few seconds later by another clang, and another. The clanging sound comes closer and closer, and then recedes back into the distance.

There are six of us in the carriage spread around in various states of discomfort. Although things could have been worse. I have done this trip before. I know that the only way to travel is to put the luggage on the floor. At Waterloo everyone had squeezed into the carriage and bundled all their luggage onto the racks above our heads, but once across the channel I insisted that it should all be taken down. The older boys complained, but I wasn't going to be diverted. I had one trump card. I had been on the school trip to Switzerland only three months before. I'd done this trip. I had the bruises to prove it.

"No way. That luggage comes out of those racks. There are two damn good beds up there, I'm not having them filled up with luggage. If no-one else wants to sleep in the luggage rack, that's fine with me, but I'm sleeping in one of them."

"Where the hell are we going to put the luggage if you're going to kip in the luggage rack?"

"No problem, you put the luggage in the space between the seats, on the floor. The soft stuff goes on top."

"Where are our legs going to go you prat?"

"On the luggage, where else?"

"We cant sit with our legs on the luggage," whinged one of the older boys, "dont be bloody silly."

"If you want to sit all night, good luck to you. I want to lie down, I dont know about the rest of the guys."

There was a general murmur of assent. Everybody wanted to lie down.

"With two of us out of the way in the luggage racks the rest of you have a corner seat each, with plenty of room to spread out your legs. If we dont do it that way what are the poor prats going to do who have the middle seats? And how much kip is anyone going to get sitting up?"

Even while I was talking, there were hands grabbing the luggage, and plonking it on the floor. Kip was sacred. Kip was essential. Kip meant being at least half-ways comfortable.

The train moved off, and we raced from station to station all across France. Orleans, Vierzon, Chateauroux, Brive, Toulouse. The yards, the backsides of towns, the gloom lit by rows of lamps on concrete posts, cables slung from post to post like some surrealist painting, this was the unseen France, this was France's nervous system strung out along its body.

Suddenly there is a bright set of lights, and a group of men around a wagon moving sacks into a waiting lorry, then the clang, clang, getting closer and then fading into the distance. At Vierzon I lean out of the small window. There is a man walking up the side of the train with a large pole, whacking each wheel as he goes by.

The train moves forward slowly, slowly, then suddenly gathers speed so fast the carriages jerk forward, and we are way out in the country again. There is darkness everywhere, with not a light to be seen, and the rhythm of the train lulls us all back to sleep.

At Toulouse at five o'clock in the morning the station is bright and busy. The restaurant is open, and people are rushing around, shouting, and waving their arms about. It may be ridiculously early but a new day has already started.

By breakfast time we have reached the medieval city of Carcassonne. We can see the ancient city walls up on the hill above the new town. But of the new town all we can see are more marshalling yards, more warehouses, and more of the backside of France.

After Narbonne the railway line moves right onto the coast, and we follow a spit of land right across a lagoon, and there to the east of us is the magical sea: the Mediterranean. It is time to get up; time to see that stretch of water we had heard so much about. Time to tread in the footsteps of the Romans and the Carthaginians, and immerse ourselves in all that stuff we had heard so much about day after day in school. And the great thing about it all was that it didn't look remotely like it had sounded in school. It looked real and exciting.

We jump down and try to get our shoes on, and haul the baggage back up in the rack, but no-one can get their shoes on. For some strange reason our feet have all grown in the night and we all hobble around, with aches in our backs, and feet sticking over the back of our shoes.

There on the other side of the train are the Pyrenees, leaping up as massive great mountains squeeze us in between them and the sea; and then at last we are in Spain.
The Mediterranean sparkles and glitters. It is blue and calm, and just sits there beyond the rocks, beyond the villages, always there. And on the other side a strange, alien land; a dry land where the colours are bright and hard, where shadows cut deeply into everything, where the heat hovers in a nervous haze over even the lushest valley; where the dust in the road billows up in great clouds every time a lorry rolls past; where the villages are a jumble of concrete, and wiggly roofs, and refuse is strewn haphazardly around; where the roads zigzag around the buildings in a crazy pattern; where the dogs stand, thin and aggressive, barking incessantly; dogs that bark all night in an endless horizon of yelps that define the land; dogs that bay at the cockeyed moon, sharp above the crisp edge of a mountain; cockerels that blast hell out of the early dawn, shaking the land to make it cough up the sun; cocks that wrench the final dark of the dawn, pulling it down; cocks that keep on crowing, threatening to peck the sun to pieces; old women, pottering about like black barrels, with stiff backs; old women waiting at the church door for the young priest to turn the massive key and wheel back the great wooden door, so they can hide in the church among the candles and the gloomy columns; so they can look at the pretty and sad Christ in the small chapel by the east gate, a Christ dressed in fancy coloured mini-skirts, layered over the sickly mannequin body; so they can apologise again to Christ for all the woes they have caused themselves as they hobble onto their aching knobbly knees. And, despite all this, that strange air of inactivity and decay that leaks across every old Spanish town.

Finally, we steam into the great sprawling metropolis of Barcelona, with its housing estates strung out along the coast, its factories, it's warehouses, and millions of streets, it's dirt and grime, and its yellow taxis belching smoke.

"Where's the coach then?"

"You dont get a coach, we're walking to the hotel."

"What? With all this luggage?"

"It's only just down the road. Stop complaining."

So we walk across a main road, and into a wonderful tree-lined street. There is a road down one side, a great pedestrian avenue down the middle, and another road on the other side. There are small kiosks on the central avenue selling sweets, drinks, cigarettes, and flowers. Great banks of wonderful flowers stretch almost across the whole avenue. There are men sitting on small wooden seats, only inches off the ground, shining shoes while customers sit in chairs reading the morning papers.

Down the street we walk. Everywhere is new, everywhere is different, everywhere is alive. Crowds surge up the street. Strange yellow taxis puff along the road. They have grills on the back which are fed with nuts processed into blocks. The grills heat water which creates steam which propels the cars along.

It is warm, but the street is in deep shade from the great towering trees that line its whole length. There are narrow streets off each side, packed with blocks of tenements, all closely built, with small balconies jutting into the street, almost touching. The streets are all in deep shade making the buildings look dark and sombre.

At the end of the street, facing the harbour, is the statue of Christopher Columbus, or Christobel Colon as he is known in Spain. There is a lift up the inside of the column taking you to a gallery around the top from where you can see across the city, over to the docks, across the slum buildings to the east, round in a sweep, taking in the Parque de la Cuidadela, and the city suburbs, right across to the hills of Tibidabo in the north, and then past the more expensive suburbs, round to the gardens of the Montjuic Palace, and in the distance, the airport.

Down in the harbour is a replica of Colon's ship, the Santa Maria. It is really just like a large half melon hollowed-out, with a deck across half of it like a lid, with a mast and some rigging for good measure. There is nowhere for anyone to hide from the elements, or the rigours of the sea, and I am not surprised that most of the sailors were scared out of their wits for most of the journey.

On sunday I wander around the streets of the medieval quarter and came to the Square of Saint James where I can hardly move, the press of people is so great. In the middle of the square is a strange dance going on called the Sardana. People just move out of the crowd into a small cleared area, take off a coat and carefully lay it on the ground and begin dancing, first to the left and then to the right in a circle. The dance is stately and slow, with the dancers dancing on their own, but also within a group pattern. Up against the walls of the church is a small band of musicians.

On the other side of the Ramblas is the sweet little Park Guell, where the seats curve round in whirls, covered with mosaics. There are balconies held up by columns carved like tree trunks. It is a fun gypsy garden. Supporting columns rise like chimneys above the balconies they are supporting. Paths wind around into small arbors. It is all like an incarnation of one of Lorca's Gypsy Ballads. It is a sophisticated northern version of a rustic gypsy south.
by the water the gypsies
build winding arbors
with branches of green pine

From our bedroom window we can look out across the backyards of the tenements. There on walls at night the cats sit in lines and howl their feline canciones. But by day one of the rooms opposite fills up with six little seamstresses, busy making clothes which are then sold in the shop below. All day they work in their little room sewing away.

We sit on the window ledge, wave, blow kisses, and call out rudimentary Spanish love calls, for all the world like the cats at night. The girls giggle, and wave back. They can afford to be daring at a safe distance.

One day, however, I have the bright idea of going round to wait outside the shop at six o'clock to catch them as they come out. I have my Principios de Español under my pullover, and have memorised a few useful phrases, so we are quite confident. We easily spot the clothes shop in the next street and stand about waiting until the girls come out in a little huddle, giggling as they see us.

The book I am using is a text book, so the language and phrases are all rather stilted, and I speak in a simple, but probably very Spanish manner. The meetings between boys and girls are strictly monitored. The girls still have to be chaperoned, even in a city like Barcelona. The fact that they are all together in the public street makes it okay. The fact that we speak in very set patterns also makes it all okay. One would have to be very stiff and formal on such a first meeting in any event. But of course we go too far.

"Will you come with us this evening to the fountains?"

A look of alarm spreads across every face. "The fountains? Oh no, we cant come out in the evening."

We try again, but they are adamant, and we part, each with an "hasta mañana", and they are off into the evening bustle, while we return to the hotel for our evening meal.

Later we walk down to the fountains on our own, and sit on the steps where little pools of water bubble dark red in large stone saucers like tiny fires in the night, and we watch the fountain changing colours and patterns. This is the real life. This is the real Spain. All around us are Spaniards talking quietly. Little points of light glow as people suck on their cheap cigarettes. The cars swing up the Avenida. The moon comes up over the docks and hangs, big and bright, in a black sky. The air is warm, the big split leaves of the palm trees above us slice up the sky in a delicate lattice work, while all down the steps the folks are celebrating the end of another magical day.
.... to be continued