Hide Me

Miriam exhaled.

‘If, by digging, you mean looking up your father’s family, then I think you’re a little late.’ She expelled the last of the smoke with a short laugh. ‘They’re all dead, as far as I know.’

‘Not all of them.’ Harry leaned into the climb, head down. ‘What about Olive?’

Her mother paused. Harry rounded another bend, then stopped. The shadow of a crucifix pooled across the road in front of her like an inkspill. She looked up to see a yellow sandstone church, its gothic spires piercing the sunlight. Crazy-paving brickwork jigsawed across its façade. Next to it was an archway and a sign that read Cementerio de Polloe.

‘That woman’s not family,’ Miriam said eventually.

‘She had a child with Dad’s brother, didn’t she?’

‘And that’s all she did. She never married Cristos, had very little to do with any of us after he and Tobias were killed.’

Harry crossed the small courtyard and tried to recall Olive’s face. She hadn’t seen her since she was four or five, and the memory was hazy: black hair, white skin; sullen mouth too large for her plain face. To a child, she’d looked ugly.

Harry stepped under the archway and into the cemetery. A ribbon of tarmac unravelled into the distance, lined by gloomy, monolithic tombs. The birds seemed noisier this side of the archway, but maybe it was just that all the other sounds had died away.

‘Harry? Are you still there?’

‘I’m here.’

‘You can’t want to talk to that woman.’

‘Why not?’

‘She was nothing to do with us. That’s probably why she left. She didn’t belong, and she knew it.’

Harry experienced an odd pang on Olive’s behalf. Someone else who didn’t belong in her mother’s world.

She shook the feeling off and strolled along the tarmac, eyeing the ornate crypts on either side. Some were bigger than garden sheds, and designed like mini-churches with their own spires and stained-glass windows. Harry noted the elaborate coats of arms on the doors and raised her eyebrows. This was how the wealthy got interred.

Miriam’s throaty voice cut back in. ‘Anyway, who knows where Olive is by now? She could be anywhere.’

‘She’s still here in San Sebastián.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Dad told me a couple of weeks ago.’

‘And how on earth would he know, after all this time? Keeping in touch is hardly one of Salvador’s specialities.’

Harry recalled her father’s chronic domestic truancy and had to admit, her mother had a point.

Harry made her way further along the avenue. The cemetery was laid out in a vast grid that must have stretched for almost half a mile. Daubs of colour stippled the view: reds and yellows; lilacs and pinks. The sea of flowers spoke of a recent church ceremony, and their sweet scent drenched the air.

‘You know how they died, I presume?’ Miriam’s voice sounded thick with smoke. It had deepened over the years to a near-masculine pitch from all the tar. ‘Cristos and Tobias, I mean?’

‘Dad always said it was a car accident.’

‘Well, that’s one way of putting it. Sal never did like to face unpleasant facts.’ She paused to inhale on her cigarette, then said, ‘They were killed twenty-odd years ago in an ETA car-bomb attack.’

Harry stopped in her tracks. ‘Jesus. I didn’t know that. Poor Olive.’

Miriam made a vexed sound, as though sorry she’d inadvertently evoked sympathy for an old enemy. Harry pictured her peeved expression, probably heightened by the knot of silver-blonde hair that yanked her brows into a haughty arch. She looked a good decade younger than her sixty years, though Harry often wondered what would happen if she loosened her hair. Would her face collapse like a punctured sack of flour? She couldn’t remember ever seeing her mother without her merciless topknot. Maybe it was just another way she had of staying in control.

Harry continued along the wide path, inhaling the dense perfume of flowers. By now, the grandiose crypts had given way to traditional headstones, though these were still large and imposing. Most were engraved in Spanish, but some bore inscriptions in Euskara, the impenetrable language of the Basques. Language seemed to define this unique people. Ancient, complex and once-forbidden, it seemed to be the crux of who they were, along with their fervent independence. Everyone knew the Basques were fiercely proud of their identity. Harry envied them that.

‘Look, for heaven’s sake, Harry, just what is all this about?’

Harry took her time about answering, the only way she had of imposing any control. She strolled past the headstones, browsing through the names: Familia Alvarez; Familia Hernando. Eventually, she said,

‘Everybody needs to know where they come from, don’t they?’

Familia Constancio; Familia Corrales.

Miriam snorted. ‘Is that what this is about? Discovering your roots? Believe me, you can know too much about those.’ She took a quick pull on her cigarette. ‘And once you know a thing, you can’t shake it off again, either.’

Harry turned off the main path into a narrower walkway. The graves were smaller here. Many bore photographs that had been glazed on to black ceramic plaques. Harry stopped in front of one, a portrait of a silver-haired lady with a shy smile. She read the inscription:

Tu hija no te olvida. Your daughter will never forget you.

Harry blinked, aware of her throat constricting. She swallowed and moved on.

‘All I want is a sense of where Dad grew up. Where his home was, what his family was like.’ She managed a smile. ‘Who knows, I might even settle down here.’

Her mother gave a shriek of laughter. ‘Oh, God, don’t be naive, Harry. You never settle anywhere, do you?’

Harry’s cheeks burned. Miriam went on.

‘Let’s face it, fitting in just isn’t your thing, is it? You don’t have the knack. Even at home, you were always the odd one out.’ Her mother paused, and when she spoke again her tone was faintly mocking. ‘You don’t really belong anywhere, do you?’

Something shifted in Harry’s chest, something hard that ached. Suddenly she was seven years old again, lying on the floor for hours outside her mother’s room, her face pressed to the crack under the door, wondering when her mother would come outside again and talk to her.

Harry clamped her mouth shut. Jesus, she’d thought she was over all that crap. She picked up her pace, her eyes still flicking across the headstones, and aimed for an offhand tone.

‘Well, it doesn’t much matter.’ Familia Cortez; Familia Barillas. ‘For all I know, this job won’t even come off.’

‘I see. And if it doesn’t, you’ll leave San Sebastián?’

‘Maybe.’

Miriam paused, then abruptly wound up the call, as though suddenly she’d lost all interest. Harry sighed and shoved the phone back in her pocket. Stupid to have shared anything personal with her. The woman pounced on vulnerability like a hawk on a fieldmouse, and it wasn’t like Harry to let her guard down. The damn graveyard must have made her sentimental.

She continued browsing through the headstones. Familia Soliz; Familia Verano. Then her step faltered, and she felt her extremities tingle.

Familia Martinez.

Harry held her breath and moved in closer, a light buzz travelling along her arms. She scanned the most recent inscriptions, just to make sure:

Cristos Martinez, 1 Martxoa 1947 – 3 Apirila 1987

Tobias Martinez, 8 Maiatza 1971 – 3 Apirila 1987

Harry stared at the dates. Her cousin, Tobias, had died a month before his sixteenth birthday. She’d been barely seven at the time. She shook her head, fingers pressed to her lips, and scanned the older generations of her family that lay here; all long gone, and none of whom she’d ever met. The notion triggered a squeezing sensation in her chest.

Her father’s knowledge of his own ancestors was infuriatingly sketchy. He’d only lived in San Sebastián until he was ten, at which point his mother, Clara, a robust and cheerful Dubliner, had insisted on moving home in order to give her sons an Irish education.

‘At least, that’s the excuse she gave,’ Harry’s father had said, when they’d talked in Dublin a few weeks earlier. ‘If you ask me, she just wanted to escape her Basque mother-in-law.’ He’d winked at her, smiling. ‘My grandmother was a formidable woman. Aginaga, her name was. Cristos and I used to call her Dragonaga. She tried to prevent us from leaving San Sebastián, but my mother got her way in the end.’

Harry found their names on the headstone: Clara Martinez and her husband, Ramiro. Both had died before Harry was born. Far below them, she found Aginaga, who’d died at the age of ninety-four. Harry blinked. If she was reading the names and dates right, the old lady had outlived all five of her offspring. Harry felt an ache of compassion for her formidable great-grandmother. What use was longevity if it meant you saw your children die?

The only other ancestor her father remembered was his own great-grandmother, Irune. ‘She was Dragonaga’s mother-in-law. I was six when she died, and all I remember is feeling very relieved. She was terrifying. Even Dragonaga was afraid of her.’

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