Read Online Autumn in Catalonia by Jane MacKenzie - Free Book Online
Authors: Jane MacKenzie
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her through to the little room, pulling her down onto the bed beside him. There he curled her and crooked his arms around her from behind, cradling her close, whispering into her ear.
‘And my chamois thinks it’s bad news?’ His voice hugged her, reassured her, and defied her, as he always did, to be anything but happy. What to say? He didn’t have her family, her past. She couldn’t be happy-go-lucky like him. Yes, it was bad news because they weren’t free yet. Because she wanted to escape first, and work beside Luc, and build a future, not to burden him with a child when they had nothing. He called her his chamois because she was all brown hair and brown skin, but also because she was slight and svelte and tall and athletic. A woman who was alive, alert, who could work, who could contend with anything. A mountain goat could pass anywhere, skip nimbly through difficulties, leap upwards away from danger. A pregnant human was another thing altogether, it seemed to her, and a baby was something she didn’t have the place to protect, not yet, not till she was free.
She told him, and he listened, propped on his elbow so he could see her face. He didn’t belittle her fears. He knew how real they were. She had plumped up the pillows behind her so that she was almost sitting up. The bed served as their sofa in Luc’s tiny room. She pulled at a fray in the bedcover and waited for his reply.
‘We have to think,’ he acknowledged, after a while. ‘You’re pregnant, and we’re going to have a baby. That’s a given. It’s also a given that I want to marry you, and you know that very well. Even without a baby we were going to marry, vida meva , and if we’re going to go away together in the summer we have to be married anyway before we go, otherwise how would we get lodgings, or register for work?’
‘We’ve never talked about how we were going to manage things.’
‘I know, we’ve been stupid. It’s March already, and by July we’ll have finished all the exams and hopefully have graduation documents. My brother’s been working on getting me into his company, in their accounts office. It would be a start.’
‘Is Lleida far enough away?’ Carla was doubtful.
‘Is anywhere far enough away? Talk to me, Carla, now. Tell me really how far your father will go to control your life. If you disappear and change your name, will he really scour Spain looking for you?’
‘I wish I knew the answer to that myself,’ she sighed. She cast her mind back to that last meeting with Sergi Olivera. What was it he’d said to her? ‘You’re a shame to my name and I wish you didn’t bear it. But while you’re known tobe my daughter you’ll toe the line or I’ll simply make you.’
Did that mean that if she changed her name and no one knew who she was anymore he’d let her go?
‘He needs to be in control,’ she tried to explain to Luc. ‘I think he hates me in a way just for being a girl, since I’m the only child. His brother has a son in the officer corps, and he would have loved that, some fine young man to show off to his political connections. I wasn’t even cute as a child, and that must have disappointed him too, because to him women are there to adorn his life and to caress him, and to keep house and keep quiet. That’s what my mother does. She can be as sharp as hell with everyone else, but when she’s around my father she defers to him all the time, and when he gets angry and hits her she says sorry even when she’s done nothing wrong.’
‘Does he hit you too?’
‘Oh yes, sometimes.’ Carla stroked her cheek in remembrance. ‘Especially as I got older and became difficult. I just couldn’t be the frilly little girl he wanted, and I had my nose stuck in a book the whole time. At one time he even banned me from reading, and I had to hide in my room and keep my books under my bed. Even when he agreed, finally, to let me study he made me change my choice of degree from law to history,
‘And my chamois thinks it’s bad news?’ His voice hugged her, reassured her, and defied her, as he always did, to be anything but happy. What to say? He didn’t have her family, her past. She couldn’t be happy-go-lucky like him. Yes, it was bad news because they weren’t free yet. Because she wanted to escape first, and work beside Luc, and build a future, not to burden him with a child when they had nothing. He called her his chamois because she was all brown hair and brown skin, but also because she was slight and svelte and tall and athletic. A woman who was alive, alert, who could work, who could contend with anything. A mountain goat could pass anywhere, skip nimbly through difficulties, leap upwards away from danger. A pregnant human was another thing altogether, it seemed to her, and a baby was something she didn’t have the place to protect, not yet, not till she was free.
She told him, and he listened, propped on his elbow so he could see her face. He didn’t belittle her fears. He knew how real they were. She had plumped up the pillows behind her so that she was almost sitting up. The bed served as their sofa in Luc’s tiny room. She pulled at a fray in the bedcover and waited for his reply.
‘We have to think,’ he acknowledged, after a while. ‘You’re pregnant, and we’re going to have a baby. That’s a given. It’s also a given that I want to marry you, and you know that very well. Even without a baby we were going to marry, vida meva , and if we’re going to go away together in the summer we have to be married anyway before we go, otherwise how would we get lodgings, or register for work?’
‘We’ve never talked about how we were going to manage things.’
‘I know, we’ve been stupid. It’s March already, and by July we’ll have finished all the exams and hopefully have graduation documents. My brother’s been working on getting me into his company, in their accounts office. It would be a start.’
‘Is Lleida far enough away?’ Carla was doubtful.
‘Is anywhere far enough away? Talk to me, Carla, now. Tell me really how far your father will go to control your life. If you disappear and change your name, will he really scour Spain looking for you?’
‘I wish I knew the answer to that myself,’ she sighed. She cast her mind back to that last meeting with Sergi Olivera. What was it he’d said to her? ‘You’re a shame to my name and I wish you didn’t bear it. But while you’re known tobe my daughter you’ll toe the line or I’ll simply make you.’
Did that mean that if she changed her name and no one knew who she was anymore he’d let her go?
‘He needs to be in control,’ she tried to explain to Luc. ‘I think he hates me in a way just for being a girl, since I’m the only child. His brother has a son in the officer corps, and he would have loved that, some fine young man to show off to his political connections. I wasn’t even cute as a child, and that must have disappointed him too, because to him women are there to adorn his life and to caress him, and to keep house and keep quiet. That’s what my mother does. She can be as sharp as hell with everyone else, but when she’s around my father she defers to him all the time, and when he gets angry and hits her she says sorry even when she’s done nothing wrong.’
‘Does he hit you too?’
‘Oh yes, sometimes.’ Carla stroked her cheek in remembrance. ‘Especially as I got older and became difficult. I just couldn’t be the frilly little girl he wanted, and I had my nose stuck in a book the whole time. At one time he even banned me from reading, and I had to hide in my room and keep my books under my bed. Even when he agreed, finally, to let me study he made me change my choice of degree from law to history,
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