Bay of Secrets by Rosanna Ley Page B

‘Mama?’ She reached for her mother’s hand.
    ‘Hush,’ she said. But Julia knew her heart was not in it. She was beaten, defeated by her own life and what it had become.
    ‘You will enter the sisterhood,’ her father said.
    The sisterhood? She was to become a nun? Julia looked wildly from one to the other of them. ‘The sisterhood?’ she echoed.
    Her mother squeezed her hand. ‘You will be safe there, Julia,’ she said. ‘You will not want for food—’
    ‘But … ’ Whatever she had been expecting, it was notthis. Their family was not remotely religious in their beliefs. The sisterhood? It had never even been mentioned as a possibility.
    ‘It has been decided,’ her father said. ‘The Church will provide. It will have to.’
    ‘Papa?’ Julia searched for compassion in his eyes. But she saw only despair. She had always tried to understand him, she had always respected and obeyed him. But this … ?
    ‘It is the right place for you.’
    ‘And Matilde?’ Julia was angry now. She felt it rising up inside her like fire. ‘And Paloma?’
    Her mother put her arms around her. ‘They must make sacrifices too,’ she whispered. ‘We have done our best, my daughter. We can do no more.’
    Sacrifices? Julia broke away from her embrace and ran. She ran out into the street blindly, not knowing where she was going, just needing to get away, to escape. Tears streamed down her face, her hair was in disarray – blowing madly like the leaves in the autumn wind. What sacrifices would her sisters have to make? They were pretty girls. How hard would it be to marry off a pretty girl in the aftermath of the Civil War if you didn’t much care who you married her off to? Not so Julia. She was the plain one, the quiet one, the passive one who could always be told what to do, where to go.
    She thought for one fleeting moment of Mario Vamos, of the look in his black eyes. She had made it easy for her parents to decide. They had all received a good education but Julia had studied the hardest. Her English language was of ahigh standard; her main interest was history. Her sisters would be married off – she knew it. Would that be better or worse than being married off to God?
    At last Julia found herself outside the Ateneo Library. She didn’t feel calm or passive any longer. She felt desperate, wind-blown, hardly able to breathe. She steadied herself and looked up at the grand building. Inside was a web of passage-ways and reading rooms which had somehow survived the Civil War bombings and where Julia still loved to wander and read. Now, she would no longer be able to do such things. She would be a prisoner. She would be estranged from the family she loved. From the world.
    Julia wandered the streets for an hour before she returned home. She walked past the beggars and the tramps and she wept for what had been taken away from them all. It was their individual liberty – but it was their identity too. Their heritage – which was part of their very soul. Even in the Ateneo forbidden works in Catalan had been destroyed. Their press had been banned, and other newspapers were no doubt censored and controlled. To all intents and purposes there was no Catalan. There was no rousing music now being played along the Ramblas. Instead, posters proclaimed, ‘Speak the Language of the Empire’. Now they were Spanish and Spanish alone. He had taken away even their voice.
    Was the convent in Barcelona the right place for Julia? She bowed her head and felt a final solitary tear weave down her face. Her father had said that the Church would provide.And what choice did she have? Their family had no money. Otherwise they would starve.
    She walked back into their house with her head held high. She would be strong. She would not let them see what this had done to her. She would accept her parents’ decision. She was an obedient daughter and she would obey.

CHAPTER 9
    On Friday night Andrés made his way to the Jazz Café. Gone were