THE ENGLISH WITNESS by John C. Bailey Read Free Book Online

something quite
novel: a sense of shared excitement and mutual belonging that for a few days transcended
all the cliques and personal rivalries we’d brought with us from home.
    We’d known that our teachers would be
priests, and we had a good idea of what to expect. Thus we were somewhat taken
aback when we met our course tutor. Tall, lean and muscular despite his age,
his clerical garb immaculate in its blackness and his iron-grey hair cropped
close to the scalp, Father Ignacio cut a scary figure. The clerical dog-collar
only seemed to emphasise the aura of quiet danger that surrounded him. It was
easier to imagine him as the Grand Inquisitor turning the screws on a screaming
heretic, or as a modern-day Van Helsing purging an infested crypt with a
glowing crucifix clenched in his fist, than presiding at the altar or the
confessional.
    Officially we were enrolled on a Spanish
studies course, but the priest had an agenda of his own. He clearly intended that
none of us should go home without a grasp of what he called the particularity of
the Basque people. And while there’s no denying that the Basques are racially
and culturally distinct from the rest of Europe, to Ignacio it meant more than
that. He saw them as occupying a special moral high ground, owing to the
incredible age of their culture and the persecution they’ve suffered over the…
    JACK
    Jack hesitated in mid-sentence as Miguel put down the pencil with which
he had been scribbling occasional notes in a spiral-bound pad. The Englishman had been in
some kind of comfort zone with this part of his story, and was clearly
irritated by the interruption. The little red light on the voice recorder continued
to blink.
    “So, this priest,” began the detective. He
glanced down for a moment at his notes. “This Father Ignacio. Would you describe
him as an ardent Basque nationalist?”
    Jack paused before answering, taking in the
drab, institutional décor of the modest compound to which he been brought. He
thought back to what he remembered of an immensely complex man, full of
contradictions. But the answer to detective’s question was sufficiently clear-cut.
“Yes, very much so,” he responded at length. “Being a priest, we were surprised
how reluctant he seemed to condemn the militants. He never openly supported
violence, but he tended to make excuses for it. As I said a moment ago, he was
one scary individual.”
    “Well that doesn’t endear him to any of us
here,” remarked Miguel sourly. “Julio is the only one of us with so much as a zurito of Basque blood in his veins, and even he dismisses them as a bunch of raving fanatics.
Isn’t that right, Alonso?”
    Alonso looked across at Jack with the hint
of a sneer on his lips. “Yes, for all his lanky build, Julio’s got a touch of Basque
in his genes. But he doesn’t speak their  abomination of a language, and it’s
not something he talks about. If people know about it, they’re going to assume he’s
got mixed loyalties, and you can’t survive in the police with that sort of
baggage.
    “General Franco bribed thousands of people
from all over Spain to move up here. He gave them all the top jobs in industry
and the public services. The Basques themselves didn’t get a look-in. My
grandfather relocated here, so I’ve got deeper roots in the region than Miguel,
but the ethnic Basques don’t trust us and we don’t trust them.”
    “They’re Europe’s Red Indians,” responded
Jack, rather defensively. “Direct descendants of Cro-Magnon stock. They speak the
world’s most ancient living language. And until Franco banned their government
and their language and their traditional music, they were an independent
people. Can you blame them for being angry?”
    “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” cut in
Miguel. “It’s hardly surprising you feel sympathetic, Jack. But do you feel the
same about the IRA?”
    “Different situation entirely,” responded Jack
curtly. “If Harold Wilson had