TWO BEGINNINGS: 2) LOOKING BACK.-

            5^th April 2007. It is a sunny and chilly morning. The mid morning sun is raising the temperature a little. The streets of Central Madrid begin to warm up to the sound of people and traffic. It is Saturday. The clock in the nearby Puerta del Sol has just struck midday. In the Casino’s magnificent entrance hall the guests start arriving. Some have come from far away places such as England, others are local.  Inside the noise of the street traffic outside is replaced by the sound of the voices of the guests. The initial murmur gathers momentum as the effect of the champagne served by the waiters makes its impact. Slowly the temperature is also rising inside.

As people arrive the hosts welcome them into the party. In the centre of the reception hall, underneath a large candelabra Trinidad makes an effort to recognise who the guests are. Some of the faces have changed much over the years and Trinidad hardly recognises some of them. Appreciating her difficulty her son, who is beside her, announces them in a clear voice.

“And this is your niece Maria from Barcelona, Mother. I know you haven’t seen her for a few years but she still looks as pretty as ever” says Trinidad’s son Paco.

“Your son hasn’t lost his charm, I see. How are you Aunty Trini (as Trinidad is fondly called)? You look so beautiful, what is the secret?” asks Maria.

“Hello, Maria. How nice that you could come. There is no secret, you know, just good fortune. You are not doing badly yourself” says Trinidad.

 In meeting Maria, Trinidad cannot help thinking about when she looked after Maria and her sister Carmen during the Civil War. It was a terrifying time she remembered. The whole family used to come and stay with her to avoid the bombings which went on for months. Maria’s home district was very close to the frontline and they often heard the artillery pounding the battlefield. Just thinking about those days made Trinidad tremble. Funny how some moments of history persist longer than others. Trinidad couldn’t understand how the girls managed to survive the bombings without being killed in one of the many trips that they made to her.

Seeing her niece again resurrected Trinidad’s memory. She instantly saw herself attending Maria’s mother wedding. That was the first time that Trinidad had come to Madrid. She was only fourteen then. She could remember the excitement of riding on the old steam train for the first time and arriving at Delicias Station. She had never seen such a grand iron roof station before. It was awesome, she thought. People in Madrid looked so different from those in her small town of Hervás, in the province of Extremadura. They dressed and spoke very differently too. She could hardly understand what they were saying when she first came. She found later on that Madrid people made fun of her provincial accent. From her early excitement of being in the big city she moved to one of fear and regret.

She could still remember the pain of being separated from her parents at such a young age. Her trip to Madrid to attend her sister’s wedding had been arranged so she could stay and get a job. It had been a trip with no return ticket. She knew that, back in Hervás, her family was poor and her house was small, with no enough room for a large family but she never fully understood what the deal was until it was too late. Her consolation was that her sister Teresa, who was two years older than her, also made the same trip with the same purpose. The two young sisters “supervised” by her older sister Maria spent their rest of their lives in Madrid, only to return to Hervás to visit their parents after the war.

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