Diary of a Victorian Colonial and other Tales - new book on Gibraltar reviewed by N. P.

Gibraltarian author M. G. Sanchez's latest book is now on sale in local bookshops. Entitled Diary of a Victorian Colonial and other Tales, it is a collection of three long stories dealing with the themes of exile and self-transfiguration within a Gibraltar context. The first and longest of the stories is - just like the title of the book - entitled 'Diary of a Victorian Colonial' and is set in Gibraltar in 1888. The story features the character of Charles Bestman, an Anglo-Gibraltarian returning home after twenty-five years of exile in the British mainland. Why has Bestman returned to the Rock after so many years away and what is the 'infamous criminal stain' embedded in his past? The answers to these and other questions are woven into a very moving and believable story-line which involves murder, madness, parental neglect and forced imprisonment and reaches its climax in a disturbing and somewhat disquieting conclusion. In my humble opinion the best thing about the book is the beautifully atmospheric recreation of what life must have been like in fin-de-siecle Gibraltar. The hurly-burly of the Main Street taverns, the shadowy solitude of the upper town alleyways, the crazy shenanigans going on in the red-light area of 'la calle peligro': Sanchez covers all of these with so much assurance that several times during the book I almost forgot that it was a book of fiction. In fact, the vision of Victorian life he presents in A Diary of a Victorian Colonial is so complete and all-encompassing that one can almost read the book as a guidebook to late-Victorian Gibraltar. Certainly, during the course of its pages, we come to learn a lot about life in the garrison. For example, we learn what the average Gibraltarian would have done in 1888 had they been looking for employment. How they would have gone about getting admitted to the Old Colonial Hospital. How they would have supplemented their income by means of thrift and petty smuggling. Equally importantly, we get a number of magnificently drawn portraits in the book of some of the most iconic scenes to be seen back then: the 'cigarreras' rolling their cigars in the tobacco factories of Irish Town, the boatmen ferrying their passengers from the steamers to dry land, the 'carboneros' roughing it out at the Coaling station, the British soldiery drinking at the taverns. A favourite passage of mine is when the Anglican Bestman decides to visit the Cathedral of Saint Mary the Crowned:

I went to the Catholic Cathedral today and sat in its interior for a while. I am not sure why I did this, seeing that I am a born and bred Anglican and should naturally abhor the profusion of statues and rich gildings which adorn its every corner. I suppose that I felt a gnawing desire to see the church where my Irish mother used to regularly swallow her anti-Scorpion misgivings to worship alongside her southern Catholic brethren. To my surprise, the interior of the building was extremely quiet and peaceful, the whole of the nave enveloped in an incense-scented haze which seemed a million miles removed from Main Street and its assemblage of fast-shuffling pedestrians. For the next couple of hours I sat on one of the wooden benches near the entrance, watching the endless procession of worshippers come in from the street outside to pay their Catholic respects. It is a most curious thing to behold. First, they sprinkle themselves with holy water and then they proceed to their preferred piece of statuary, where, dropping to their knees and closing their eyes, they mumble soft words of prayer and adulation:

Alma de Cristo, santificame. Cuerpo de Cristo, salvame. Sangre de Cristo,embriagame. Agua del costado de Cristo, lavame. Pasion de Cristo, confortame. !Oh, buen Jesus!, oyeme.

Again and again I heard the same prayer. Although part of me felt slightly repelled by these idolatrous murmurings, another part of me, deeper within, wished that I, too, had the capacity to derive such spiritual nourishment from my material surroundings. At around three o'clock a young priest came out of the vestry and began to guide the small crowd of worshippers in what appeared to be a rosary recitation. The service was very long and repetitive (consisting, principally, of lengthy priestly prayers followed by 'amens' and 'salve reginas' on the part of the congregation) - yet, paradoxically, seemed to have a soothing and almost salutary effect on the nerves, the likes of which I found most enjoyable. Halfway through the ritual, a drunken redcoat stumbled through the doors and made his way down the main aisle to the altar. The priest, a gaunt-faced young man with a juvenile moustache across his upper lip and the tortured look of a Zurbaran penitent, seemed most unnerved by this development. He coughed and scratched his head and then spent the next few minutes nervously glancing between the missal lying on the lectern and the soldier who tottered idiotically near the altar railings. Finally, the clergyman could not stand it any longer: he walked over to the young redcoat and, in accented but perfectly understandable English tones, told him that this was not the most appropriate way to conduct himself in the House of God and that he should either sit down with all the other worshippers or make his way out of the building. The soldier, who looked like he could not have been older than eighteen or nineteen, stared at him for some moments without saying a word. Then he raised his hand to his forehead in a military-type salute and said, 'Aye-aye, Mr. Spanish Priestman, sir.' Subsequently, he turned around and staggered out of the building, much to the relief of the moustachioed young priest and the worshippers in general.

M. G. Sanchez's Diary of a Victorian Colonial and other Tales is available from all good Gibraltar bookshops and each hardback copy is priced at £12.50.

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