A Handful of Honey Read online

  It did not seem wise to bring this up just at the moment, though. I tried explaining, instead, that my list didn’t actually say, ‘No Salazar’. It was just some thoughts for a letter to my mother.

  Aha! said he. My mother was a political activist, then?

  What? My mother? This was getting seriously weird. Certainly not, I said.

  Who, then, my interrogator asked after a long pause, were my friends in Portugal?

  Well, I answered, almost entirely truthfully, I only knew people’s Christian names. Portuguese surnames were beyond me.

  But no, said he, smiling the genial smile. He did not mean individuals, necessarily: we could talk about that later, perhaps. He did not think it had been my own idea to come to Portugal. Was he right? I was very young: how had I come to have such extreme opinions at my age? Perhaps I had political friends back in England? Portuguese émigrés, maybe? Communist friends? Socialist friends? African friends, even, hmmm? Clearly someone had been leading me astray . . . Who had suggested I come and sow discontent in the Sesimbra countryside? Who had I given my passport to? Or sold it to, perhaps?

  Extreme opinions? Africans? Communists? Politics? The man certainly was mad. I had arrived in Portugal by chance, wandering the highways of Europe, imagining myself to be some kind of a cross between Bob Dylan and Jack Kerouac – or was it Laurie Lee? – and hitching lifts from long-distance lorry-drivers.

  Sowing discontent in the Sesimbra countryside, though . . . I had certainly tried my hand at that. But not at anyone else’s instigation. I had done my best to make kind, patient Carmen, the human washing machine, angry with her lot. Carmen came round twice a week to do Eugenia’s laundry – by hand, with a scrubbing brush, in a concrete vat in the yard – while I practised my beginner’s Portuguese on her: slowly and painfully extracting the story of her life with the help of a dictionary. Painfully, because she couldn’t help at all with the spelling of words I needed to look up – she’d never been to school, ever, and she still couldn’t read or write at thirty-five. She’d started washing clothes for a living at nine years old. Nine years old? What was the matter with this country? Wasn’t there a law against that? Eugenia told me to calm down: it was perfectly normal. Lots of simple country folk actually didn’t want to go to school. What good would reading and writing do them? They would rather get on and earn some money . . .

  And Carmen just tutted disbelievingly when I spoke of the free schooling and doctoring, and the prevalence of washing machines, where I came from. I’d never get away with that sort of thing here, she told me. Not in Portugal! And anyway, she needed the work.

  I must have been more successful at sowing discontent than I imagined, though. Carmen had obviously bothered to pass these conversations on to someone, hadn’t she? Or the PIDE would never have got to hear of them. Unless, of course, she just passed them on to the PIDE directly?

  No, that way madness lies . . .

  I was relieved to find, at the end of our interview, that my interrogator hadn’t accused me of anything at all, far less of smuggling draft-evaders out of the country. Imagine my surprise when I was now led off, not homewards, but to be shoved into a cell and locked up. At dawn the next morning the door swung open at last – to allow some roaring madwoman to hurl a two-pound loaf at my solar plexus. I nabbed the next caller, a woman with a zinc bucket of an unappetizing brown liquid, but she had no idea why I was in here, or how long for. She was just doing her job. Did I want coffee or not?

  Six days on, I had made no headway. Was I being held here under suspicion of helping Olavo and João? Of having African friends? Of selling my passport? I was never to find out. Suddenly, well before lunch-bucket time, two jailers appeared at my cell door, and the pace of life shifted from snail to overdrive. Within the hour, I would be out of here: and moreover, by the time night fell, I would – by a strange coincidence – even have some African friends. Several of them. A connection that would one day lead to my spending several months on that continent. Prescient interrogator.

  I was marched away at the double now, back down to the khaki office, where a middle-aged man and a young woman sat waiting outside the door. Inside, next to the interrogator with the smile, stood a grey beanpole of a man clutching a swatch of papers, who stepped forward, reached out a hand to shake mine and addressed me in my own language. He was from the British Embassy. The Portuguese authorities had declared me persona non grata. I must be got out of here as quickly as possible. He had brought all the necessary documentation with him. Here, he said, detaching a thick envelope from the pile, is your train ticket to London, the price of which you will have to repay before you are issued another passport. And a temporary travel document to take its place. He was sorry that, since speed was of the essence, he had used the photo provided by the prison authorities. And he was authorized to advance me a small sum of money for the journey – perhaps twenty pounds would do? Because you’ll be back in Britain within forty-eight hours, of course, he added, comfortingly.

  I didn’t find it any sort of comfort at all. Britain? What was I going to do in Britain? I didn’t even have a town there that I would call home: our family had never stayed anywhere for more than a few years. In fact, they were in the middle of moving from Edinburgh to the Welsh borders as I left.

  But this is my home, here, in Portugal, I said. I don’t want to go to Britain. I want to go back to my friends, to Sesimbra. I’m supposed to be starting work next week! What are they saying I’ve done? They haven’t accused me of anything!

  Her Majesty’s representative looked pityingly at me. They hadn’t informed him of the details, but they didn’t need to, he said. They were deporting me as an Undesirable Alien, with immediate effect. The two people on the bench outside the door were PIDE agents: they were waiting to escort me out of the country. Now.

  Now? What, without my going home at all? But what about my stuff? I asked, clutching at straws. My clothes and everything? Can’t I go back to Sesimbra to get them? And say goodbye, at least?

  Out of the question, alas. The PIDE had already seen to that: my bag was waiting upstairs.

  Now, to make matters worse, the Embassy man wanted to get in touch with my parents. It was an official requirement, I was legally a minor. If I would just give him their name and address . . . ? I certainly would not. Yet another disgrace: deported penniless from Portugal, to throw myself on their mercy? I don’t think so. I’d rather stay in here and rot, I said.

  Highly exasperated, he asked whether I realized, young lady, that this place, Caxias, was one of the most notorious political prisons in the country? And that he was doing his best to get me out of it?

  I didn’t, as it happened. As far as I knew, political prisons were something that went on behind the Iron Curtain, in films, certainly not in countries that were close allies of my own. And I was in one? I stood and thought some uncomfortable thoughts about this. Stuck in that cell, I’d several times heard screaming and wailing from down below and congratulated myself on being made of sterner stuff than my fellow inmates. I might be young, but I could certainly handle a bit of solitary confinement without going to pieces like these emotional Latins . . .

  I saw now that I was a stupid, smug idiot.

  Still, this seemed a pretty conclusive reason why the Embassy man was going to have to get me out, parents’ address or no. I sat on in mulish silence. It worked. All most irregular, complained my saviour, but, oh, very well . . .

  And so, within the hour, I was sitting shell-shocked on a Spain-bound train, with my own personal PIDE escort. Two whole secret police agents to make sure I left their country: that’s how dangerous I was. I pulled out my envelope, read the details on the ticket. Change at Ciudad Real for Paris. At Paris for Calais. Then the cold grey Channel, the ferry, and one last train to cold grey London. I had no friends or family there, nowhere to stay, and twenty pounds to last till I found some way of earning more. And a gigantic debt to pay back for this ticket I didn’t want, before I could get a pr
oper passport again. There was nothing but a yawning black hole where once my future had been. Even being locked in that cell was better than this horrible travesty of freedom.

  We racketed on along the tracks, blur of green countryside, glimpses of whitewashed farmhouses, windows outlined in lapis lazuli blue – just like my own home back in Sesimbra. No. Not my home any more. Don’t think about that. Some of the more tumbledown houses had blue-paint handprints round the windows and doors too, a ring of blue hands right round every opening. Not kids messing about with dad’s bucket of blue wash, as I’d assumed when I first met them, but the Muslim Hand of Fatima, protecting the house from evil. Octavio told me that. Memories of Islam, he said, lingering on in countryside superstition, centuries after the religion had vanished from his land. I was missing him badly, I wanted my friends and my life back. Please let me wake up and find this was all a bad dream. For a happy moment, I imagined turning around as soon as my escort left me at the Spanish border and sneaking back into Portugal. Luckily, I’d had a bit of practice at that. But no, stupid idea. I’d never be able to leave the house, would I? I’d have to stay indoors, in hiding, for the rest of my life. Nothing for it but to ride out this miserable journey into the unknown.

  I unfolded the travel document with the black-and-white convict photo, tired eyes staring bleakly out over my stencilled prison number. The PIDE-man, spotting this last vestige of control over my own destiny, stood up and took envelope, ticket and passport from my hands. The woman – girl, really, she couldn’t be more than a few years older than me – sat at my side. She could speak French, while her fish-eyed colleague couldn’t, and, bizarrely, she seemed to be trying to make friends with me. She was Maria do Céu, she told me – Mary of Heaven, or maybe it should translate Mary of the Sky – but I must call her Céu for short. Lovely name. Still I resolved not to call her anything at all. Why on earth would I want to make friends with a PIDE-person? How long will it be, I asked her coldly, till I’m allowed back into the country?

  A minimum of three years, she said. Then you could maybe ask for permission to return.

  Three years! An eternity. I would be old by then. Nearly twenty.

  Still, why don’t we keep in touch? said my new friend Céu brightly. If I let her know when I was thinking of coming back, she might be able to help. She hoped I realized that she didn’t actually want to do this job. But there were so few openings here for graduates . . .

  I was saved from answering by a portly ticket collector who now stumped into our compartment and checked our tickets, frowning. Which two passengers were getting out at the border? This was a through train, an express, he said: anyone not crossing the Spanish border had to pay a supplement.

  Fish-eye slipped his hand into his breast pocket and flashed his official ID card in proper scary-PIDE style, gesturing to Mary of the Sky to do the same, evidently expecting that to be the end of the matter. The ticket collector, with much thoughtful nodding and lip-pursing, inspected the documents, compared the photos carefully with the originals seated before him, and eventually handed the cards back, apparently satisfied as to the identities of my escort. Yes indeed, he said. PIDE. Makes no difference, though, he added comfortably. You’ll have to pay up, just like everybody else. More than my job’s worth to allow people to travel on this train without paying the supplement. Rules and regulations: you’ll know all about that, in your line of business. That’ll be thirty escudos, thank you.

  Delicious moment. The discomfited PIDE-man had no choice but sheepishly to pull out his wallet and pay. Just like everybody else. The ticket man gave me a sly glance and a hint of a wink as he exited in triumph. Stunning. This was the first time I’d ever seen anyone act as if it were remotely possible to stand up to the PIDE. I was nearly as shocked as my escort.

  I had witnessed an early tremor in the earthquake soon to come. It would not be long till half the Portuguese nation would take to the streets in anger: and the Salazar regime would collapse under its own weight at last, along with its secret police and its bloody colonial wars.

  On a deserted Spanish platform in a silent dusty station somewhere south of Madrid I waited, small and lonely, for the Paris train. The duffel bag containing all my worldly goods lay at my feet. So low was my morale that, in spite of the two-hour wait, I hadn’t even opened it to dig out a less offensive garment than the vile skirt. Why bother? The skirt was just part and parcel of the general vileness that was life.

  When at last, with a long squeal of brakes, the trans-Europe train drew up alongside my platform, it did not suit my mood at all. It was horribly loud and lively, bursting at the seams, every compartment packed with repellently cheerful-looking travellers. It must have begun its journey somewhere down near the Straits of Gibraltar, I deduced from the exotic outfits all around me: a distinctly African train, full of migrant workers from the ex-French colonies returning to their Paris jobs after the summer break – Tunisians, Algerians, Moroccans, Senegalese. I shoved my way gloomily along the crowded corridor, looking for a seat. Eventually, five or six carriages on, I elbowed my way into a compartment that looked marginally less overcrowded than the rest. Its occupants, five boys not much older than me, courteously shifted their lunch, their bedding and quantities of luggage to disinter a vacant corner seat, into which I collapsed, a walking casualty.

  My hosts, after checking me out for a moment, leapt straight into rescue mode. Give her more space, Rashid! Karim, roll up that blanket . . . make her a cushion! Does she speak French? Is she hungry? Get the olives back out! The bread, too . . .

  No, no thank you, I said, I’m not hungry, I’m fine . . .

  But they were right, I realized as soon as the food was set out in front of me. I was not fine – and I was starving hungry. Soon I was wolfing down the last of my fellow passengers’ olives, fragrant with garlic and coriander: paradise after all those days on bread and water. Water-with-a-hint-of-fishbone, that is. Now I followed up with several particularly tasty chick-pea-and-onion patties made for the journey by the boys’ Aunt Rashida back home in Algeria – the best cook in the family. Soon I was checking out Aunt Rashida’s toothsome chilli-braised chicken too, and her voluptuous soft spicy pitta-bread, and washing it all down with swigs of Hassan’s mother’s cold sweet lemon-mint tea from a recycled mineral-water bottle. Dessert next: a pile of tiny crunchy doughnut-things filled with dates and covered in sesame seeds. Delicious. Made by Cousin Aisha, apparently. Hard to keep up the gloom when your fellow travellers are so high-spirited, and your belly is full of tasty titbits, with plenty more waiting on your lap.

  The boys were riding high: a new life awaiting them in France, and well into their second day of train travel. They were cousins and brothers, they had crossed the Mediterranean this morning from their North African home, this was their first ever trip abroad. Yesterday they’d seen the city of Algiers for the first time, their own capital city. Grandiose! And tomorrow, Paris! The Eiffel Tower! The river Seine! The Champs-Elysées! They had jobs waiting for them there, too, grown men’s work starting next week, wages beyond the wildest dreams of their home town, all sorted by their kindly Uncle Kebir, who was a brilliant mason. And a place to stay as well. Mohammed, the youngest, was going to be a mason just like his uncle: it would be a great opportunity for him. The rest of them were just going to do some labouring for the year, save up to get themselves started back home.

  I was envious. Why didn’t I have a kindly uncle waiting in London to save me? The boys were appalled to hear that I was heading for a notional home town where I knew nobody at all. No family? No friends? Nowhere to stay? Nothing? Why didn’t I just stay in Paris with them, then? Uncle Kebir, who could do anything, would surely find me a job; they would be happy to share him with me. They would simply adopt me as a sister, et voilà! Sorted!

  I wished I could, I said. But I had no choice in the matter.

  My new-found brothers shook their heads over my miserable one-week travel document. But why on earth did it have that convic
t photo on it?

  They enjoyed the story of my imprisonment a lot. Of course the PIDE knew all about my draft-evaders, they told me. It was a classic technique, not telling prisoners what they’ve been arrested for. Designed to disorientate you, so you’ll end up volunteering to confess to anything, just to get the uncertainty over. They should know: all five of them had grown up listening to such tales, in the bad old days of their country’s eight-year-long war to get rid of the French. But now look, said my benefactors, how well Africa had repaid my good deed! I had got myself a bargain, as Europeans so often did where their continent was concerned. For two colonial soldiers fewer, I had five ministering North African angels, come to my aid with food and blankets.

  The boys were pleasantly surprised to hear that France, these days, had become a safe haven for young Portuguese who didn’t want to fight in colonial wars. Very good news, said Hassan. The French must truly have had a change of heart, then.

  Had they? I’d never even heard of this Algerian war. But then, I didn’t seem to have heard of anything much. I wasn’t even sure where Algeria was.

  Had I never noticed the stretch of Mediterranean coastline between Morocco and Tunisia? Well, that was Algeria, said Sayid, and it was huge, the tenth-largest country in the whole world – it stretched all the way down across the Sahara to Black Africa, to border with Mali. And the French had clung on to it like grim death for years, long after they’d given up Morocco and Tunisia: they’d even tried, for almost a century, to claim that it was part of France.

  They didn’t want to lose the oilfields, said Karim.

  Or the cornfields, said Mohammed. And the vineyards.

  So they tested a couple of atom bombs down in our desert, in revenge, said Hassan. But they still lost.

  Now, as we rattled on through the midday heat in the desert-dry centre of Spain, I was treated to an intensive course in colonialism in general and the Algerians’ war to get out from under the thumb of the French in particular, and had many scenes from the Battle of Algiers acted out for me, the weaponry represented by two Evian water bottles, half a baguette and a rolled-up train brochure: while in place of French Secret Service torture equipment we had the brass-and-cord luggage rack, from which Mohammed suspended himself in various impossibly painful-looking postures.