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All too soon he was back in the school dining hall, stranded in a sea of boys. Thinking he had made a friend he spilled out stories of Valencia to a boy with an eager face and a thin smile. He explained how Papa and Mama had got divorced. How Mama was getting married again.

After that, ‘Colchester's a bastard, a runty bastard,' followed him round the building. They made a big thing of how no one could sit near him because of the bad, bastardy smell. Something in Matron's manner hardened, as if she were slightly repelled by him.

In the music room he found a baby grand piano, black and shiny as a car, almost in tune. He picked out some of the jollier songs that had played on the wind-up gramophone on the rug in a long summer of picnics with Mama. An hour passed, maybe two, lost in a cloud of homesickness.

The door opened and a prefect came in.

‘Whole building's been searched for you. You've missed prep and the head wants to see you, and make it sharp.'

Ralph hurried along the upper hallway. He guessed this was the sort of mistake you could get in trouble for. He looked down and saw a small figure in a cloche hat standing alone in the middle of the tiled floor. Wished it were Mama come to get him. Then he stopped, blinked hard.

Mama was standing down there in the darkening hallway. She saw him, held out her arms.

Mama had got the letter he sent from the aunts' house, a letter with no censorship from Matron. It had made her decide that enough was enough. She would take the very next flight and bring him home.

Ralph waited outside the headmaster's study while Mama's voice, high and indignant, carried through the door's wooden panelling. She came out with her chin raised, the headmaster following, looking rather as though someone had given him an awful lot of lines.

‘I can assure you that no one has ever complained before. Not a word. Most parents consider such experiences character building. We raise the sons of gentlemen.'

Mama pulled the hems of her gloves straight. ‘If that is your idea of a gentleman, then this is not the place for my child, thank you.'

Mama said she was going to see to Ralph's education now. Hire tutors. On the train he sat very close, his head bouncing comfortably against
the wool of her coat, the familiar smell of lavender and something sharper and anxious.

‘Are we going to see the aunts now?' he asked.

‘We're going somewhere much nicer,' she said brightly. ‘We're going home see Mr Gardiner in Valencia. Do you remember my letter, how Mama said she was married again, to dear Mr Gardiner? We'll be a family now. A papa for you, darling.'

‘But not my real one.'

‘No. Not your real one.' A sad smile on her lips.

‘What about Mr Gardiner's children, the boy in the picture? Will he be coming too?'

‘No, dearest. They will stay in England with their mama.'

Ralph stayed quiet, thinking, swaying to the clacking rhythm of the train.

‘I know, darling. It's hard to understand. I can't always understand how things turn out. But we have to do the best we can. And dear Mr Gardiner really thinks the world of you. Look. He sent this.'

She opened her bag and fetched out a tissue parcel. Inside he found a hard black model of a bull covered in sleek black hair, with a set of red darts stuck in its flank. He pulled one out and then stuck it back in a new place.

‘Sweetie, you know, we don't go on to new friends in Valencia about Mama and Mr Gardiner being divorced before. People might feel uncomfortable, don't you see, if we were to keep talking about it? All Mr Gardiner's friends at the bank, and our new friends in Valencia, they don't really want to think about all that.'

She put her finger on her lips, her eyes expecting an answer. Something important.

Ralph put a finger over his own lips. Nodded.

‘I knew I could depend on my boy.'

And he settled back against her side, just the two of them in the
train compartment, the smell of damp upholstery, the winter rain on the black train windows, he and Mama sailing through the dark together. He rocked with the train till he fell asleep and dreamed about his own father; he was dressed as a knight, descended from the kings of England, building bridges across Chile in his silver armour. Ralph was there by his side and his father put his hand on his shoulder and said how he simply couldn't manage without Ralph. He saw that now.

CHAPTER 4

Valencia, 1932–1936

They arrived back in Valencia late the following evening. Not to the old house, but to an apartment in a narrow street. Doors led off a long, gloomy corridor, the walls patterned in browns and greens with dark wood veneer up to waist height. At the end of the passageway Mama opened a door into his new room, his books and model airplanes neatly arranged on shelves. Ralph felt so weary that he wanted to lie down on his bed, but Mr Gardiner was waiting, supper was ready.

The dining room seemed too crammed full with dark furniture. Mr Gardiner was reading in the circle of light from a lamp, but he got up and shook Ralph's hand. Two firm shakes, Mr Gardiner crushing his hand. Ralph felt shy and uncomfortable. Before he had been the housekeeper's son, secure in his place in the world. But now? Mama had turned into Mr Gardiner's wife, but that didn't make him Mr Gardiner's son. He felt a fierce burn of loyalty to his own papa.

Mr Gardiner sat down at the head of the table. Ralph slid into his seat.

‘Good train journey?'

Ralph nodded hard, relieved that they had skipped straight to the homeward part and missed out school. Throughout supper Mr Gardiner was at his most jovial, full of hearty stories. But Ralph didn't want to find Mr Gardiner's jokes funny; he was keeping his heart safe and honourable for his real father.

Mr Gardiner's bald patch and his round glasses glinted in the electric light each time he bent forward to his soup spoon. Ralph studied the solid man at the head of the table as if for the first time. Mr Gardiner didn't sit straight to the table; his legs were crossed, the chair pushed out to one side to make room for his large shoe to tap up and down in the air, a gap of skin and sock garter showing.

They finished the soup that had been served in huge, flat bowls and sat in a lull of silence. Mr Gardiner chewed at the edge of a fingernail, those long, narrow eyes quietly spying around the room. The door banged open and a girl he hadn't seen before appeared.

‘You want the meat now, missis?'

‘Oh yes, we're quite finished. And it's “Mrs Gardiner” not “missis”, Consuelo. Please try and remember.'

Consuelo was dressed in an orange crepe dress that stretched over her rounded chest, a white apron tied round her waist.

Ralph could feel Mama not saying things as Consuelo leaned across him to gather up the plates. Consuelo's skin was the colour of an apricot. He found himself wondering if her arms might feel soft like a fruit if he were to press the downy skin. He caught a burst of warm odour, ripe and salty as she stretched over him to grab the empty breadbasket. The scent stayed in the air when she left the room.

‘I really must mention washing to her,' Mama murmured.

Mama lifted the lid from the tureen. Mr Gardiner leaned forward towards the thick aroma of chorizo sausage with paprika and beans. Mama ladled it out onto soup plates.

Ralph was not hungry, but the familiar smell of spiced meat and roasted tomatoes seemed to sum up all that he had missed over the past few months, and he felt his throat tighten. He made himself eat, to make sure he did not begin to cry. There was a clatter of knives and forks, the occasional question from Mama, but tiredness had begun to creep up through Ralph's body.

After a dessert of figs and cheese Mr Gardiner got up.

‘You're going out?' said Mama lightly.

‘Sorry, sweetest. Very boring. Have to see someone at the club.'

‘Well then, if you must.'

He made Ralph jump when he passed by and pressed a big flat hand on his shoulder, a gesture that was comforting, but weighted with the man's strength.

Mama ran a bath for Ralph, and afterwards, while he was buttoning up his pyjamas, she came in and asked him if he would perhaps like to change his name to Ralph Gardiner now.

‘It's your choice, darling one,' Mama said, her face red and moist from the steamy bathroom. His pyjamas felt too damp and clammy. She helped him button them up.

He was horrified by her suggestion: he was a Colchester, related to all the old-fashioned people in the photos in Flora and Cecily's house. His father was descended from one of the kings of England. He was of the same blood as his father.

He shook his head, his eyes wide.

She did not say anything more about it, but he could feel that it was one of those things – like not making a success of school and having to come home – where his mother would not force him, and she would take his side, but still . . . He could feel the disappointment in the humid bathroom, the sense that he had somehow failed.

‘Well, at least you might like to stop calling him Mr Gardiner now. He thought perhaps you could call him Uncle Max.'

‘If he'd like me to.'

‘He would, darling. Very much.'

Ralph fell asleep in the high bed with its hard mattress and thick linen sheets. He dreamed tense, inescapable dreams, a volley of bangs
going round and round his head, desk lids slamming down, a class of jeering boys clapping. He woke up gasping, and realised that the bangs and explosions were carrying on.

Someone was sitting on the bed, weighing it down on one side. He saw the bulky shape of Mr Gardiner, a shine of lamplight from the hallway on his smooth head.

‘OK there, old thing? You were shouting a bit.'

‘But that noise? What is it?'

‘It's only fireworks. They show films at the bullring each night and the rockets are the manager's publicity stunt. It's a rum do but I'm afraid you'll have to get used to the din each night at eleven.'

‘I'm sorry. Did I wake you up, Mr Gardiner?'

Mr Gardiner wasn't cross. He stayed and chatted to Ralph, told him funny stories about the films at the bullring until Ralph could feel his heart settling back to a normal thump again. He realised that he hadn't woken Mr Gardiner up, he'd only just got home; there was a smell of cigars and night air on his suit, a faint whiff of brandy on his breath. Ralph wondered where he had been.

Mr Gardiner stood up.

‘You'll be all right now, old thing?'

‘Thank you, Mr Gardiner. I mean, thank you, Uncle. Uncle Max.'

Mr Gardiner hesitated, seemed to be about to say something, then he closed the door.

Mr Gardiner was quiet and elegantly polite, but he filled the new apartment with his stocky bulk, his sweet tobacco smoke, with his coats and trilby hats and boxes of shoes, with his rigid meal times and his headaches and the knowledge that the poor dear man had to give all his money to his first wife and her children. Ralph and Mama would need to live very frugally and eke out the small money left.

Mama had a smile all the time now. She was getting thinner and taking up less and less space, and her eyes were big black shadows full of patient worry. She wore plain, dark blue dresses with white collars and went to the church each morning for Mass and was always looking on the bright side. She hired private tutors from the ramshackle edges of the British expatriate community to come in and teach Ralph. Mr Gardiner had a piano winched in through the dining room window so that Ralph could continue his music lessons.