Secrets of the stones An Entrancing Forest

Per­fect days

Imag­ine the clash: Girona is the an­tithe­sis of sub­ur­ban South Lon­don. The two girls are sen­sa­tion­ally ex­otic in Franco's Spain, in their hooped ear-rings, skin-tight trousers or slit skirts and buck­et­loads of make-up; and Girona is sen­sa­tion­ally ro­man­tic and novel for them. Blithely un­con­scious of the mur­der­ous dic­ta­tor­ship, they lap up local at­ten­tion, free meals and the am­bi­ence of this an­cient city.

The hand­some, calm Josep bap­tises the au­thor Patrice and she falls in love with him, a love that lasts through­out the book, through all his se­cret ac­tiv­i­ties, his af­fairs and am­bi­gu­ity (is he gay? – is he a gigolo?), his un­re­li­a­bil­ity and his un­kept promises. Her ado­les­cent crush be­comes mys­tic pas­sion, when at 30 she leaves her hus­band as soon as Josep reap­pears.

De­spite dis­ap­point­ment and be­trayal, it is with Josep that she feels most alive. With him, she had per­fect days and felt bet­ter than ever be­fore. “He'd laughed away my dark side and filled me with the love I'd never had.”

Al­bany Park con­tains sev­eral sto­ries along­side Patrice and Josep's love. In Franco's Spain, where dis­si­dents van­ish overnight and Cata­lan is spo­ken only in strictest pri­vacy, Patrice un­der­stands noth­ing. She is daz­zled by ado­ra­tion of Josep and “pre-Roman” Girona. She writes: “I'd never seen streets so nar­row, with the build­ings lean­ing across nearly touch­ing the sky. It was like walk­ing through a for­est. I was al­ready en­tranced by the light, it com­pletely changed colours. I loved the smell of woodsmoke, the loud eau-de-Cologne. The al­leys were sym­phonies of smells – hot olive oil, vanilla, leather, drains.”

Fight­ing for sur­vival

Slowly, with as­sured nar­ra­tive con­trol, Chap­lin has Patrice begin to un­der­stand that Girona is not just the mag­i­cal for­est of nar­row streets where Jean Cocteau com­man­deers her into a film. It is, too, the heart of Cata­lan iden­tity and of a tough strug­gle for sur­vival.

The book is also a re­mark­able por­trait of 1950s Britain, where these teenagers leave school, work in dead-end jobs and ride up to Lon­don as often as they can to dance in Cy Lau­rie's Soho jazz club. They are girls rear­ing back from their pre­vi­ously un­ques­tioned fu­tures as wives and moth­ers.

Though it was writ­ten in the 1980s, Al­bany Park is rem­i­nis­cent of other nov­els of the 1950s, where the young yearn to es­cape the dull aus­ter­ity and ma­te­ri­al­ism of Britain post – World War 2. Chap­lin's two girls live for clothes, dance and make-up. They dream of be­com­ing Hol­ly­wood stars.

Patrice is no friv­o­lous flib­ber­ti­gib­bet. Like Cat­alo­nia it­self, she is fight­ing for sur­vival. Her mother is sui­ci­dal. “She was a huge, sick jel­ly­fish dying and I was still joined to her and her dying was poi­son­ing me.” Very young, Pa­tri­cia learns to for­get past hor­rors. You dance. To sur­vive, you dream of es­cape, then run for­ward and catch the dream.

Be­tween Sid­cup and Girona, the teenagers enjoy pi­caresque ad­ven­tures in Paris and on the road. Pen­ni­less, they live off their wits, in­no­cent youth and sheer luck. They beg, con­jure kind­ness from strangers or get ghastly older men (“at least 26!”) to buy them meals, then run out on them af­ter­wards. Patrice works as a show­girl in Pi­galle. She learns how to han­dle “sex ma­ni­acs” who pick them up on the road, all the time keep­ing her vir­gin­ity.

It is also a book that, with­out much ex­plicit po­lit­i­cal ex­pla­na­tion, re­veals the op­pres­sion of Franco's Spain. Through Josep, Patrice meets the poet Sal­vador Es­priu, doggedly de­fend­ing Cata­lan cul­ture, and she glimpses Quico Sabater, the an­ar­chist fight­ing to over­throw the dic­ta­tor­ship. It slowly be­comes clear that, under Josep's ‘cover' as a bo­hemian bon vi­vant poet, he is en­gaged in both the move­ment to de­fend Cata­lan cul­ture and the more dan­ger­ous armed re­sis­tance.

Patrice Chap­lin writes with clar­ity in short­ish, di­rect sen­tences. She uses the slang of the time well, is good at di­a­logue and has a gift for de­scrip­tion. There is art in the nar­ra­tion; for the full na­ture of Patrice's mother's ill­ness is en­tic­ingly with­held till near the end; and the in­trigues of just who Josep is and whether Patrice's teenage in­fat­u­a­tion will last into a ma­turer bond are kept alive through­out.

Al­bany Park is a fresh and fas­ci­nat­ing book. Patrice Chap­lin catches with panache the voice, the feel­ings of a re­bel­lious, en­er­getic ado­les­cent – a free spirit.