The Catalans. Patrick O’Brian

obvious and romantic, perhaps, but superb in its kind, composed on the very grandest scale, and instantly, overwhelmingly effective.

      The long curve went on: the Canigou moved imperceptibly into the middle of the window, and now by leaning against the glass and peering forward he could see the long curtain of the Pyrenees, dark, with the sun behind them. That was the limit of the plain, the wall of dark mountains that ran headlong to the sea, and that was his own piece of the world, there where the sea and the mountains joined.

      It was very near now. On the skyline he could see the towers, high up, remote against the sky, the ancient solitary towers against the Algerine rovers, the Moors who had sacked the coast for so many hundred years; they stood one behind the other, far spaced, to carry the alarm like beacons: they were his final landmarks. The train bore away and away to the left, running directly now for the edge of the sea, for there was no way through the mountains, and even at the very rim of the land it was tunnel and cutting, cutting and tunnel all the way, to get along at all.

      The round towers, remote and deserted on the high bare peaks, had always been the symbols of homecoming for him, for he had been able to see them from his bedroom window as a boy, and for ever after, when he came back from school or from the university or (as he did now) from foreign parts, it always appeared to him that this was the last of the last steps, for looking up to those far towers his line of sight could be reflected down, through his own window, back into his bedroom.

      They had crossed the river, and the richest of the plain was left behind: there were trees and rectangles of market-garden still, but they were islands in the blue-green sea of vines. An ocean of vines, that would make your heart ache to think of the picking of all the grapes. He got up, worked through the legs and the crossing lines of talk and stood in the corridor to watch for the first arrival of the sea on the other side.

      Already the plain was finished. They were running through the first hills, the hills that started with such abrupt determination, instantly changing the very nature of the countryside. Now the sandy cuttings were crowned with agaves, some with their flower-spikes thrust twenty feet above, and the sides of the railway were covered with prickly pear, starting out of an acid, bitter-looking soil. And here the round sides of the hills were cut and cut with terraces, terraces everywhere, and on the terraces vineyards, olives, vineyards, cork oaks, pines and more vineyards, vineyards on slopes where a man could hardly stand to work them. Then suddenly there it was, the sea blue and faintly lapping in a little deep-cut bay. A tunnel cut off all light, and he stood in the eddying smoke, suspended: through the tunnel, and there it was again; the same bay, one would have said – it had the same reddish cliffs dropping down to the bright shingle and the waveless sea; but it was not the same, for here on the right was a grove of cork oaks with crimson trunks. Tunnel again, and the bay repeated. Here the difference was a boat drawn up, a bright blue boat with the strange crucifix of a lateen mast and yard.

      They passed by Collioure, with its ghastly new hotels and its seething mass of tourists: it had been such a charming little town, he thought sadly, as he peered round the bulk of the latest hotel at the tiny beach where men and women lay tight-packed on the dirty stones and overlapping into the water where a thousand stewed together in the tideless wash. Sad, sad: he thanked God that Saint-Féliu had no clock tower to be painted, no beach for bathing, no drains, no hotel, and hardly a bath at all in the whole town. And no Beaux-Arts to protect it, he added, catching the trite cynicism of the people in his compartment. Collioure, Port-Vendres, Banyuls, Puig del Mas. Now the line was a little farther from the sea, and higher up. The road ran with it, and there was a green bus, racing along to keep up with the train, passengers waving madly, and a faint shrieking audible above the thunder of the rails. At the turn he would catch a glimpse of Saint-Féliu: he opened the window and leaned out, screwing his eyes tight against the wind: there, exactly where his mind had placed it, there it was, a tight, rose-pink swarm of roofs, packed tight within the round gray walls, pressed in by the hills, a full, broad crescent that rose in steep tiers from the pure curve of the bay; and between the seaward wall and the sea, the arc of fishing boats drawn up.

      He had just that moment to receive it all, and then the wall of the cutting whipped between. Here was old Bisau’s orange grove; green bronze the oranges. Next would come the brake of tall bamboos, and then the tunnel. He was back in the carriage, standing at his seat to lower his baggage. The train screamed for the tunnel, roared in, and the light was gone. He stood there, swaying in the darkness. When the light came back he would be home.

       CHAPTER TWO

      When Madeleine was a little girl she was a plain creature, and timid. Her form was the undistinguished, pudgy, shapeless form of most children; there was no feminine delicacy in her face – or very little – and if her hair had been cut short she might have passed for a plain little boy.

      Nobody considered her a good-looking child; and even her mother and her aunts, when they had finished scrubbing and frizzing and ornamenting her for her first Communion, could say no more than that the little Baixas girl (a downright ugly one) did not look half so attractive. Madeleine felt the lack of conviction in their voices, and she agreed with them entirely; but for her part she did not mind at all. Indeed, she laughed heartily when her father said what a good thing it was that she had a veil; for in her own family, in the dark room behind the cave-like shop, or in the clear, white, dustless mercery next door, she was a cheerful soul, happy to find humor in the thinnest joke, and brimming over with that élan which caused her to talk, chant, and spin about for the greater part of the day. It was only when she was out of her home that shyness came down over her: then she would blush if a stranger spoke to her, and in an unfamiliar house she had no voice at all.

      She was plain and timid, then, and even in her own opinion devoid of charm or importance; but this did not prevent her from pursuing Francisco Cortade, her school-fellow. She pursued him openly, without disguise, and he accepted her attentions, if not with pleasure, at least without repulsion.

      She thought he was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen; and without exaggeration he was a lovely little boy – huge eyes, a great deal of black and curling hair, and an absurd complexion. She brought him presents from the shop, rousquilles – the little round dry white-iced cakes the Catalans eat on holidays – twigs of raw licorice from the mountains, nuts, anything that could be concealed under her pinafore; and if she could not bring him anything from the shop she would give him the croissant or the fougasse that she was supposed to eat at eleven. It was a disinterested passion, for although he would take her offerings civilly enough, he would hardly ever let her play with him – he was too old, far too old, he said – and if he ever let her walk with him from school he would desert her instantly for a troop of boys. He treated her very badly, but it seemed just to her, and she was grateful for his kindness in always taking what she brought.

      Then occasionally he would be very kind: on Thursdays or in the holidays she would sometimes find him by the boat his father fished in, the red and yellow Amphitrite; and then, if he were alone, he would let her come aboard and be the crew or the enemy, or whatever fitted in.

      It was some time after her first Communion that the first hint of modesty showed itself in Madeleine. Up until that time she would reply ‘He has just run away,’ or ‘He is down by the sea’ to the question ‘Where is your sweetheart?’ – a question that the people of the street would ask her once or twice a day. Now she would frown heavily and deny him, or she would say that she did not know where he was, and did not care: and now she stopped bringing him rousquilles, and in doing so she saved her conscience many a reproach and her heart many a wild fluttering. It was not that she stole the rousquilles or the licorice, but she took them without explicit leave: she had always felt that there was a great difference, but still she always chose the time when there was nobody in the shop, and more than once, caught standing on a chair beneath the rousquilles’ shelf, or spoken to when the offering was half hidden in her pinafore, she had gone pale with horror, or scarlet red; and afterward it needed a fair amount of argument to convince herself that she had done no wrong. But now this almost daily trial was done, and now at eleven o’clock she ate her roll or cake, and she ate it skipping or howling with the other little girls.

      At