"Winter in Madrid" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sansom C. J.)

Chapter Eight

THE SAME AFTERNOON Barbara went for a long walk. She felt restless and worried, as she had since her meeting with Luis. The weather was fine after the rain but still cool and for the first time since the spring she wore her coat.

She went to the Retiro park; it had been refurbished since the end of the Civil War, new trees planted to replace those cut down for fuel during the Siege. Once again it was a meeting place for the respectable women of Madrid.

Now it was getting colder only the hardier or lonelier women gathered on the benches to gossip. Barbara recognized the wife of one of Sandy’s friends and nodded to her, but walked on to the zoo at the rear of the park; she wanted to be on her own.

The zoo was almost deserted. She took a seat by the sealions’ pit, lit a cigarette and sat watching them. She had heard the animals had suffered terribly during the Siege; many had died of starvation, but there was a new elephant now, donated by the General#237;simo himself. Sandy was a bullfight aficionado but no matter how many times he argued with her about the skill and courage involved, Barbara couldn’t stomach it, the big strong animal tormented and killed, horses gored and dying, kicking in the sand. She had been to the corrida twice then refused to go again. Sandy had laughed and told her not to mention it in front of his Spanish friends; they would think her the worst sort of English sentimentalist.

She twisted the handle of her crocodile-skin handbag. Critical thoughts about Sandy kept coming into her head these days. It wasn’t fair; he was the one being placed in danger by her deceit, it could destroy his career if what she was doing came out. She oscillated between guilt over that and anger at the stifled life she led now, the way Sandy always wanted to run everything.

The day after meeting Luis she had gone to the Express office in the Puerta del Sol and asked for Markby. They told her he was away in the north, reporting on the German troops coming over the frontier from France and buying everything up.

She might have to tackle Luis herself. Why had he said he had been in Cuenca through two winters? Was he just deceiving her, and Markby, for money? He had seemed nervous and uneasy throughout their interview, but had been very firm about the money he wanted.

A woman in a fur coat appeared, a little boy of eight marching at her side. He wore the uniform of a little flecha, the youngest section of the Falange Youth. Seeing the sealions he left his mother’s side and ran over to the pen, aiming his wooden rifle at them. ‘Bang! Bang!’ he shouted. ‘Die, Reds, die!’ Barbara shuddered. Sandy said the Falange Youth were just Spanish boy scouts, but sometimes she wondered.

Seeing her, the little boy ran over and stretched out his arm in the Fascist salute. ‘Good morning, se#241;ora! #161;Viva Franco! Can I help you at all today?’

Barbara gave a tired smile. ‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’

The child’s mother came over, taking his hand. ‘Come, Manolito, the elephant is this way.’ She shook her head at Barbara. ‘Children are tiring, no?’

Barbara smiled hesitantly.

‘But they are our gift from God.’

‘Come on, Mama, the elephants, the elephants!’

Barbara watched them go. Sandy didn’t want children; she was thirty now and she would probably never have any. Once she had longed to have Bernie’s child. Her mind went back to those other autumn days, with him in Red Madrid. Only four years ago, but it was like another age.

THAT FIRST NIGHT in the bar, Bernie had seemed an extraordinary, exotic creature to her. It wasn’t just his beauty: the incongruity between his public-school accent and his grubby private’s uniform added to her sense of unreality.

‘How did you hurt your arm?’ she asked.

‘Got winged by a sniper in the Casa de Campo. It’s healing well, just nicked the bone. I’m on sick leave, staying with friends in Carabanchel.’

‘Isn’t that the suburb the Nationalists are shelling? I heard there was fighting there.’

‘Yes. In the part furthest from the city. But the people living further in won’t go.’ He smiled. ‘They’re magnificent, so strong. I met the family when I came over on a visit five years ago. The eldest son’s with the militia in the Casa de Campo. His mother takes hot food out there every day.’

‘You don’t want to go home?’

A hardness came into his face. ‘I’m here till this is finished. Till we’ve made Madrid the grave of fascism.’

‘There seems to be more Russian equipment coming now.’

‘Yes. We’re going to throw Franco back. What about you, what are you doing here?’

‘I’m with the Red Cross. Helping find missing people, arranging exchanges. Children mostly.’

‘They got some Red Cross medical equipment when I was in hospital. God knows they needed it.’ He fixed her with those big olive eyes. ‘But you supply the Fascists too, don’t you?’

‘We have to. We have to be neutral.’

‘Don’t forget which side it was that rose up to destroy an elected government.’

She changed the subject. ‘Where on the arm were you hit?’

‘Above the elbow. They say it’ll soon be good as new. Then I’m going back to the front.’

‘A bit higher and you could’ve got it in the shoulder. That can be nasty.’

‘Are you a medic?’

‘A nurse. Though I haven’t done nursing for years. I’m a bureaucrat now.’ She gave a self-deprecating laugh.

‘Don’t knock it, the world needs organization.’

She laughed again. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that. It doesn’t matter how useful the work you do is, the word bureaucracy always stinks.’

‘How long have you been with the Red Cross?’

‘Four years. I don’t go back to England much now.’

‘Family there?’

‘Yes, but I haven’t seen them for a couple of years. We don’t have much in common. What do you do? Back home?’

‘Well, before I left I was a sculptor’s model.’

She almost spilled her wine. ‘A what?’

‘I modelled for some sculptors in London. Don’t worry, nothing improper. It’s a job.’

She struggled for something to say. ‘That must get awfully cold.’

‘Yes. There’re statues with goose pimples all over London.’

The doors banged open and a large group of boiler-suited militia came in, girls from the Women’s Battalion among them. They crowded round the bar, shouting and jostling. Bernie looked serious.

‘New recruits, off to the front tomorrow. D’you want to go somewhere else? We could go to the Caf#233; Gij#243;n. Might see Hemingway.’

‘Isn’t that near the telephone exchange the Nationalists keep trying to shell?’

‘The Gij#243;n’s safe enough, it’s some way away.’

A militiawoman, no more than eighteen, came up and put her arm round Bernie.

‘#161;Compadre! #161;Salud!’ She tightened her grip and shouted something at her comrades in Spanish, making them laugh and cheer. Barbara didn’t understand but Bernie reddened.

‘My friend and I have to go,’ he said apologetically. The militiawoman pouted. Bernie took Barbara’s arm with his good hand and steered her through the crowd.

OUTSIDE IN the Puerta del Sol he kept hold of her arm. Barbara’s heart beat faster. The setting autumn sun cast a red glow over the posters of Lenin and Stalin. Trams clanked through the square.

‘Did you understand what they were saying?’ Bernie asked.

‘No. My Spanish isn’t up to much.’

‘Probably just as well. The militia are pretty uninhibited.’ He gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘How d’you manage in your work, if you don’t speak the lingo?’

‘Oh, we have interpreters. And my Spanish is coming on. We’re a bit of a Tower of Babel in our office, I’m afraid. French and Swiss mostly. I can speak French.’

They turned into Calle Montero. A crippled beggar in a doorway stretched out a hand. ‘Por solidaridad,’ he called. Bernie gave him a ten-centimo coin.

‘For solidarity.’ He smiled grimly. ‘That’s replaced “for the love of God”. When we’ve won this war, there won’t be any more beggars. Or priests.’

As they crossed into Gran V#237;a there was a deep rumble overhead. People tensed and looked up. Some turned and ran. Barbara looked around nervously.

‘Shouldn’t we find an air-raid shelter?’

‘It’s all right. It’s only a reconnaissance plane. Come on.’

The Caf#233; Gij#243;n, haunt of bohemian radicals before the war, was ostentatiously modern, with art deco fittings. The walls were mostly mirrors. The bar was full of officers.

‘No Hemingway,’ she said with a smile.

‘Never mind. What will you have?’

She asked for a white wine and sat at a table while Bernie went to the bar. She moved her seat around, looking for a position where there were no mirrors, but the wretched things were everywhere. She hated catching sight of herself. Bernie came back, holding two glasses on a tray with his good arm.

‘Take this, would you?’

‘Oh, yes, sorry.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’ She fiddled with her glasses. ‘I just don’t like mirrors much.’

‘Why ever not?’

She looked away. ‘I just don’t, that’s all. Are you a Hemingway fan?’

‘Not really. Do you read much?’

‘Yes, I get a lot of time in the evenings. I don’t like Hemingway either. I think he enjoys war. I hate it.’ She looked up, wondering if she had been too vehement, but he smiled encouragingly and offered her a cigarette.

‘It’s been a bad couple of years if you work in the Red Cross,’ she went on. ‘First Abyssinia, now this.’

‘There won’t be an end to war until fascism’s defeated.’

‘Till Madrid’s become its grave?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’ll be a lot of other graves too.’

‘We cannot escape history,’ he quoted.

‘Are you a Communist?’ Barbara asked suddenly.

He smiled, raising his glass. ‘Central London branch.’ His eyes were bright with mischief. ‘Shocked?’

She laughed. ‘After two months here? I’m past being shocked.’

TWO DAYS LATER they went for a walk in the Retiro. A banner had been placed over the front gate: NO PASARAN. The fighting was growing fiercer, Franco’s troops had broken through to the university in the north of the city but were being held there. More Russian arms were arriving; she had seen a line of tanks driving down Gran V#237;a, tearing up cobbles, cheered by the people. At night the streets were unlit to hinder night bombers but there were constant white flashes of artillery from the Casa de Campo, endless rumbles and thumps; like thunder, an endless storm.

‘I always hated the idea of war, ever since I was a little girl,’ Barbara told Bernie. ‘I lost an uncle on the Somme.’

‘My father was there too. He’s never been the same since.’

‘When I was little I used to meet people who’d, you know, been through it. They carried on as normal, but you could see they were marked.’

Bernie put his head on one side. ‘That’s a lot of gloomy thinking for a little girl.’

‘Oh, I was always thinking.’ She gave a self-deprecating laugh. ‘I spent a lot of time on my own.’

‘Are you an only child like me?’

‘No, I’ve a sister four years older. She’s married, lives a quiet life in Birmingham.’

‘You’ve still got a trace of the accent.’

‘Oh God, don’t say that.’

‘It’s nice. Noice,’ he said, imitating her. ‘My parents are working-class Londoners. It’s hard being the only kid. I had a lot of expectations put on me, ’specially when I got the scholarship to Rookwood.’

‘Nobody ever had any expectations of me.’

He looked at her curiously, then winced suddenly, cradling his wounded arm in the other.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘A bit. D’you mind if we sit down?’

She helped him to a bench. Through the rough material of his greatcoat his body was hard and firm. It excited her.

They lit cigarettes. They were sitting in front of the lake; it had been drained, the water shining in the moonlight at night was a guide for bombers. A faint smell of rot came from the mud left at the bottom. A tree had been felled nearby and some men were cutting it up with axes; the weather was cold now and there was no fuel. Across the lake bed the statue of Alfonso XII still stood in its great marble arch; the snout of a big anti-aircraft gun nearby, thrusting up from the trees, made a weird contrast.

‘If you hate war,’ he said, coming back to their discussion, ‘you must be an anti-fascist.’

‘I hate all this nationalist master-race rubbish. But communism’s crazy too – people don’t want to hold everything in common, it’s not natural. My dad owns a shop. But he’s not rich, and he doesn’t exploit anybody.’

‘My dad runs a shop too, but he doesn’t own it. That makes the difference. The party isn’t against shopkeepers and other small businesses; we recognize there’ll be a long transition to communism. That’s why we stopped what the ultra-revolutionaries were doing here. It’s the big capitalists we oppose, the ones who support fascism. People like Juan March.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Franco’s biggest backer. A crooked businessman from Majorca who’s made millions out of other people’s sweat. Corrupt as hell.’

Barbara stubbed out her cigarette. ‘You can’t say all the bad’s on one side in this war. What about all the people who go missing, get picked up at night by the Seguridad and never get seen again? And don’t say it doesn’t happen. We get frantic women turning up at our offices all the time saying their husbands have disappeared. They can’t get any answer about where they are.’

Bernie’s gaze was even. ‘Innocent people get caught up in war.’

‘Exactly. Thousands and thousands of them.’ Barbara turned her head away. She didn’t want to quarrel with him, it was the last thing she wanted. She felt a warm hand laid on hers.

‘Don’t let’s fight,’ he said.

His touch was like an electric charge but she pulled her hand away and put it in her pocket. She hadn’t expected that; she believed he’d asked her out a second time because he was lonely and didn’t know any other English people. Now she thought, perhaps he wants a woman, an Englishwoman, otherwise why would he look at me? Her heart began to pound.

‘Barbara?’ He leaned across, trying to get her to meet his eyes. Unexpectedly he pulled a face, crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. She laughed and pushed him away.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No – it’s just – don’t take my hand. I’ll be your friend but don’t do that.’

‘All right. I’m sorry.’

‘Perhaps we shouldn’t talk about politics. You think I’m stupid, don’t you?’

He shook his head. ‘No. This is the first proper talk with a girl I’ve had for ages.’

‘You won’t convert me, you know.’

He smiled again, challengingly. ‘Give me time.’

After a while they got up and walked on. He told her about the family he was staying with, the Meras.

‘Pedro, the father, he’s a foreman on a building site. Earns ten pesetas a day. They’ve got three kids and live in a two-bedroom flat. But the welcome they gave my friend Harry and I when we came here in ’31, we’d never seen anything like it. In#233;s, Se#241;ora Mera, she looked after me when I came out of hospital, wouldn’t hear of me going anywhere else. She’s indomitable, one of those tiny Spanish women made of fire.’ He looked at her with those huge eyes. ‘I could take you to meet them if you like.’ He smiled. ‘They’d be interested to meet you.’

‘Do you know, I’ve never met an ordinary Spanish family.’ She sighed. ‘The way people look at me in the street sometimes, I think there’s something disapproving. I don’t know what. Maybe I’m getting paranoid.’

‘You’re too well dressed.’

She looked down at her old coat in disbelief. ‘Me?’

‘Yes. That’s a good heavy coat, with a brooch.’

‘This old thing. It’s just coloured glass. I picked it up in Geneva.’

‘Even so, anything like that’s seen as ostentation. The people here are going through hell. Solidarity’s everything now, it has to be.’

Barbara took off her brooch. ‘There, is that better?’

He smiled. ‘That’s fine. One of the people.’

‘Of course you’ll always get the best, being in uniform.’

‘I’m a soldier.’ He looked offended. ‘I wear the uniform to show solidarity.’

‘I’m sorry.’ She cursed herself for putting her foot in it again. Why on earth did he bother with her? ‘Tell me about your public school.’

Bernie shrugged. ‘Rookwood’s what made me a communist. I fell for it all at first. Sons of the empire, cricket a game for gentlemen, the dear old school song. But I soon saw through it.’

‘Were you unhappy there?’

‘I learned to hide what I felt about it. That’s one thing they teach you. When I left and came back to London it was like a – a liberation.’

‘You haven’t any London accent left.’

‘No, that’s one thing Rookwood took away for good. If I try to speak cockney now, it just sounds stupid.’

‘You must have had friends, though?’ She couldn’t imagine him not having friends.

‘There was Harry, who came here with me five years ago. He was all right. His heart’s in the right place. We’ve lost touch now,’ he added sadly. ‘Moved into different worlds.’ He stopped and leaned against a tree. ‘So many good people like Harry fall for bourgeois ideology.’

‘I suppose I’m bourgeois, in your eyes.’

‘You’re something different.’ He winked.

NOVEMBER TURNED to December and sharp cold rains drove down from the Guadarramas. The Fascists were held in the Casa de Campo. They tried to break through from the north but were held there as well. The shelling went on but the desperate crisis was over. There were Russian fighters in the sky now, fast snub-nosed monoplanes, and if German raiders came over they were chased away. Sometimes there were dogfights over the city. People said the Russians had taken over everything and were running the Republic from behind the scenes. The government officials were even unfriendlier now and sometimes they had a frightened air. The children in the orphanage were moved overnight to a state camp somewhere outside Madrid; the Red Cross weren’t consulted.

Bernie kept seeking Barbara out. She spent half her evenings with him in the Gij#243;n or one of the bars in the Centro. At weekends they would walk through the safe eastern part of the city and sometimes out to the countryside beyond. They shared an ironic sense of humour and laughed as they talked about books and politics and their childhoods, lonely in their different ways.

‘My dad’s shop’s one of five the owner has,’ Bernie told her one day. They were sitting on a field wall just outside town, enjoying the sun on a rare warm day. Clouds chased each other, their shadows skimming over the brown fields. It was hard to believe the front line was only a few miles away. ‘Mr Willis lives in a big house in Richmond, pays my dad a pittance. He knows Dad would never get another job, the war affected him; my mum does most of the work with a girl assistant.’

‘I suppose I was well off in comparison. My dad has a bike repair shop in Erdington. It’s always done well.’ She felt the sadness that always came on her when she spoke of her childhood; she almost never talked of it but found herself telling Bernie. ‘After my sister was born he hoped for a boy to take over the shop one day, but he got me. Then my mother couldn’t have any more.’ She lit a cigarette.

‘Are you close to your sister? I often wished I had one.’

‘No.’ Barbara turned her face away. ‘Carol’s very beautiful. She’s always loved showing herself off. Especially to me.’ She glanced at Bernie; he smiled encouragingly. ‘I had the brains though, I was the bright one, the one who got into the grammar school.’ She bit her lip at the memories those words brought back. She glanced at him again. Oh hell, she thought, in for a penny. Though it wrenched her heart she told him how she had been bullied from the day she went to the grammar school until she left at fourteen.

‘They called me speccy and frizzy-hair on my first day and I burst into tears. That’s where it all started, I can see that now. I suppose it marked me down as someone who could be tormented, made to cry. Then everywhere I went I had girls calling out about my hair, my glasses.’ She gave a long shuddering sigh. ‘Girls can be very cruel.’

She felt dreadful now, she wished she hadn’t blurted all this out, it had been a stupid thing to do. Bernie lifted his hand as though to take hers, then let it fall again. ‘It was the same at Rookwood. If you had something a bit different about you and wouldn’t fight back, you got picked on. They started on me when I came because of my accent, called me a pleb. I thumped a few of them and that put paid to that. Funny, I thought it was just public schools where those things happened.’ He shook his head. ‘Girls too, eh?’

‘Yes. I wish I’d hit them, but I was too well brought up.’ She threw away her cigarette. ‘All that bloody misery, just because I’ve got glasses and look a bit odd.’ She stood up abruptly and walked a few paces away, gazing at the town, a distant smudge. On the far side of it she could see tiny flashes, like pinpoints, where the Fascists were shelling.

Bernie came over and stood beside her. He gave her another cigarette.

‘You don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘Look odd. Don’t be silly. And I like those glasses.’

She felt angry as she always did when people paid her compliments. Just trying to make her feel better about how she was. She shrugged. ‘Well, I got away,’ she said. ‘They wanted me to stay in that hell hole, go on to university, but I wouldn’t. I left when I was fourteen. Worked as a typist till I was old enough to start nursing.’

He was silent a moment. Barbara wished he would stop looking at her. ‘How did you get involved with the Red Cross?’ he asked.

‘The school used to have people to give talks on Wednesday afternoons. This woman came and told us about the work the Red Cross did, trying to help refugees in Europe. Miss Forbes.’ She smiled. ‘She was stout and middle-aged and had grey hair spilling out from under this silly flowery hat but she seemed so kind, she tried so hard to get across how important the work was. I joined them as a junior volunteer at first. I’d just about lost faith in the human race by then; they gave it back to me. Some.’ She felt tears pricking at her eyes and moved back towards the wall.

‘And you ended up in Geneva?’

‘Yes. I needed to get away from home too.’ She blew out a long cloud of smoke and looked at him. ‘What did your parents think about you volunteering for the International Brigades?’

‘Just another disappointment. Like my leaving university.’ He shrugged. ‘I feel guilty sometimes, about leaving them.’

To work for the party, Barbara thought. And be a sculptor’s model. She imagined him without clothes for a second, and dropped her eyes.

‘They didn’t want me to come here of course,’ he said, ‘they didn’t understand.’ Bernie gave her that hard direct look again. ‘But I had to come out here. When I saw the newsreels, the refugee columns. We have to destroy fascism, we have to.’

HE TOOK HER to see the Mera family, but the visit was not a success: Barbara didn’t understand the family’s accents, and though they were kind to her she felt uneasy in the crowded muddle of their flat. They greeted Bernie as a hero and she gathered he had done something brave in the Casa de Campo. He shared a room in the tenement flat with one of the sons, a thin boy of fifteen with the pale hollow face of a consumptive. On the way home Barbara said it could be dangerous for Bernie to share a room with him. He replied with one of his occasional bursts of anger.

‘I’m not going to treat Francisco like a leper. With good food and the right medicine you can cure TB.’

‘I know.’ She felt ashamed of herself.

‘The Spanish working class is the best in the world. They know what it’s like to fight oppression and they’re not afraid to. They practise real solidarity with each other and they’re internationalists, they believe in socialism and they work for it. They’re not greedy materialists like most British trade unionists. They’re the best of Spain.’

‘I’m sorry. I just – oh, I couldn’t understand what they said, and – oh, I’m being bourgeois, aren’t I?’ She looked at him nervously but his anger had evaporated.

‘At least you’re starting to see it. It’s more than most people can.’

Barbara could have understood if Bernie had just wanted her as a friend. But he was always trying to take her hand in his and twice he had tried to kiss her. Why, she asked, why did he want her when he could have had anybody? She could only think it was because she was English, that despite all his internationalism he wanted an Englishwoman. She dreaded that his telling her earlier there was nothing wrong with her appearance had been a ploy to get her into bed. She knew men weren’t fussy; she had been caught that way once and that was the worst memory, one that filled her mind with shame. Her longings and confusion ate her up.

Bernie’s arm was healing, out of plaster though still in a sling. He reported to military headquarters every week. When he was fit, he said, they were going to transfer him to a new training camp for English volunteers in the south. She dreaded the day.

‘I offered to help with new fighters who’ve come across from England,’ he told her. ‘But they say that’s all taken care of.’ He frowned. ‘I think they’re worried my damned public-school accent might put off the working-class boys who are coming over.’

‘Poor Bernie,’ she said. ‘Caught between two classes.’

‘I’ve never been caught,’ he said bitterly. ‘I know where my class loyalties are.’

ONE SATURDAY early in December they went for a walk to the northern suburbs. The district was full of the houses of the rich, big villas set in their own gardens. It was very cold; there had been a light dusting of snow the night before. Most of it had melted, leaving the air chill and damp, but there were still white patches on the broad roofs of the houses.

Many of the suburb’s inhabitants had fled to the Nationalist zone or been imprisoned and some of the houses were shut up. Others had been occupied by squatters, the gardens left to run wild or planted with vegetables; chickens and pigs roamed in some of them. The mess offended Barbara’s sense of tidiness but she was beginning now to see things with Bernie’s eyes: these people needed homes and food.

They paused before the gates of a big house where washing hung from the windows. A girl of fifteen or so was milking a cow tied to a tree in the middle of a lawn speckled with cowpats. When the girl saw Bernie’s military greatcoat, she looked up and gave the clenched-fist salute.

‘They’ll have had their houses shot up by Franco’s artillery, or been bombed out,’ Bernie said.

‘I wonder where the original owners went.’

‘They’ve gone, that’s what matters.’

A sound made them look up at the sky. A big German bomber was ploughing along, accompanied by a couple of small fighters. Three red-nosed Russian planes circled them, the manoeuvres leaving trails of white vapour stretching across the blue sky. Barbara craned her neck to look. The display seemed beautiful until you realized what was happening up there.

A church stood at the end of the street, a heavy nineteenth-century Gothic building. The doors were open and a banner hung outside. Establo de la revoluci#243;n. Revolution stables.

‘Come on,’ Bernie said. ‘Let’s take a look.’

The interior had been wrecked, most of the pews removed and the stained-glass windows broken. Statues had been pulled from their niches and flung to the floor; bales of straw were stacked in a corner. The back of the church had been railed off and a flock of sheep penned in. They were closely packed together and as Bernie and Barbara approached they shuffled away in fear, bleating and jostling, their eyes with the strange sideways-pointing pupils wide. Bernie made soothing noises, trying to calm them.

Barbara approached the heap of broken statues. A plaster head of the Virgin, eyes full of painted tears, looked up reproachfully from the floor, reminding her of the convent where the children had been billeted. She felt Bernie at her elbow.

‘Tears of the Virgin,’ she said with an awkward laugh.

‘The Church has always supported the oppressors. They call Franco’s rebellion a crusade, bless the fascist soldiers. You can’t blame the people for being angry.’

‘I’ve never understood religion, all that dogma. But it’s sad.’

She felt his good arm circle her body and pull her round. She was so surprised she had no time to react as he leant forward. She felt the warmth of his cheek and then a hot moistness as he kissed her. She pulled away, staggering back.

‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’

He stood looking shamefaced, a lick of blond hair falling across his brow.

‘You wanted it,’ he said. ‘I know you did. Barbara, I’ll be at this training camp in a few weeks. I might never see you again.’

‘So what d’you want, a bit of sex with an Englishwoman? Well not with me!’ Her voice rose, ringing around the church. The sheep, frightened, bleated plaintively.

He stepped towards her, shouting back now. ‘You know it’s not like that! You know how I feel, you must, are you blind?’

‘Blind with my stupid glasses, is that it?’

‘Can’t you see I love you!’ he shouted.

‘Liar!’

She ran out of the church and down the path. As she went through the gate she skidded on a patch of wet snow and collapsed sobbing against the stone wall. She heard Bernie come up behind her. He laid a hand on her shoulder.

‘Why should I be a liar? Why? I do love you. You feel the same, I’ve seen it, why won’t you believe me?’

She turned to face him. ‘Because I’m ugly and clumsy and … No!’ She buried her face in her hands, sobbing wildly. A small boy walking by, barefoot and carrying a piglet, stopped and stared at them.

‘Why do you hate yourself so?’ Bernie asked gently.

She wanted to scream. She wiped her eyes, pushed him away, and began walking down the street. Then the little boy shouted, ‘Look! Look!’ Barbara turned; he had put the squealing piglet under one arm and was pointing excitedly upwards with the other. High in the sky one of the German fighters had been hit and was plunging to earth. There was a loud crump from some way off and the boy cheered. After a quick upward glance, Bernie hurried towards her.

‘Barbara, wait.’ He stepped in front of her. ‘Please, listen. Never mind sex, I don’t care about that, but I love you, I do love you.’

She shook her head.

‘Tell me you don’t feel the same and I’ll walk away now.’

Into Barbara’s head had come a picture of a dozen little girls, calling after her in the playground. ‘Speccy four-eyes, frizzy carrot hair!’

‘I’m sorry, it’s no use, I can’t – no.’

‘You don’t understand, you don’t see …’

Barbara turned to face him and her heart lurched at the pain and sadness in his face. Then she jumped, hearing a screaming noise from above. She looked up. The second German fighter had been hit and was falling towards them. Already it was terrifyingly close, flames pouring from its side in a long red-yellow trail. It fell like a stone; she saw the propellers, still turning, shiny as insects’ wings. Bernie was staring upward too. Barbara pushed him away and as he staggered back the air was filled with a giant roar and she saw the high wall of the house they were passing leap outwards at her. Something hit her head with a terrible smashing pain.

She was only unconscious for a moment. When she came round she was aware of the pain in her head, she tried frantically to remember what had happened, where she was. She opened her eyes and saw Bernie leaning over her, dimly because her glasses were gone. There were bricks and dust all around. He was leaning over her and he was crying, she had never seen a man cry. ‘Barbara, Barbara, are you all right, oh God, I thought you were dead. I love you, I love you!’

She let him lift her up. She buried her face in his chest and started weeping; they were both sitting crying in the street. She heard footsteps, people crowding round from the houses.

‘Are you safe?’ someone called. ‘My God, look!’

‘I’m all right,’ Barbara said. ‘My glasses, where are my glasses?’

‘They’re here,’ Bernie said softly. He handed them to her and she put them on. She saw the garden wall had fallen down, only just missing them, showering the road with bricks. One of them must have hit her. Flames and black smoke poured from every window of the villa, and the tail of the plane was sticking out of the collapsed roof. Barbara saw a black swastika; it had been painted over in yellow but it showed through. She lifted her hand to her head. It came away covered with blood. An old black-shawled woman put her arm round her. ‘It is only a cut, se#241;orita. Ay, that was a miracle.’

Barbara reached a hand out to Bernie. He was nursing his injured arm, his face pale. Both their coats were white with dust.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked him.

‘The blast knocked me over. I hurt the arm a bit. But, oh God, I thought you were dead. I love you, please believe me, you have to believe me now!’ He began crying again.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.’

They hugged each other. The little crowd of Spaniards, refugees who perhaps three months ago had never left their pueblos, stood beside them, looking at the wreckage of the aeroplane sticking out of the burning villa.

SITTING ON THE BENCH watching the sealions, Barbara remembered the warmth of Bernie’s grasp again. His injured arm, how it must have hurt him to hold her. She looked at her watch, the tiny Dior watch Sandy had given her. She had resolved nothing in her mind, just gone all emotional about the past. It was time to go home, Sandy would be waiting.

He was back by the time she returned, his car in the drive. She took off her coat. Pilar trotted up from the basement and stood quietly in the hall, hands folded in front of her as she always did when Barbara came in.

‘I don’t need anything, Pilar. Thanks.’

‘Muy bien, se#241;ora.’ The girl curtsied and went back downstairs to the kitchen. Barbara kicked off her shoes; her feet were sore after walking all afternoon.

She went up to Sandy’s study. He often worked for hours up there, studying paperwork and making telephone calls. The room was at the back of the house, with a small window that caught little light. He had filled it with ornaments and works of art he had picked up. An Expressionist painting of a distorted figure leading a donkey through a fantastic desert landscape dominated the room, lit by a wall-lamp.

He was sitting at his desk now, surrounded by a mass of papers, running a pencil down the margin of a column of figures. He hadn’t heard her and his face wore the look it sometimes had when he thought no one could see: intense, calculating, somehow predatory. In his free hand he held a cigarette, a long trail of ash threatening to fall from the end.

She studied him with a newly critical gaze. His hair was still slicked back with Brylcreem, so thickly you could see the lines of the comb running through. The Brylcreemed hair, like the little straight moustache, was the fashion in Falange circles. He saw her and smiled.

‘Hello, darling. Good day?’

‘All right. I went to the Retiro this afternoon. It’s starting to get cold.’

‘You’ve got your glasses on.’

‘Oh, Sandy, I can’t go out in the street without them. I’d get run over. I have to wear them, it’s just silly not to.’

He stared at her for a moment then smiled again. ‘Oh well. The wind’s got into your cheeks. Roses.’

‘What about you? Working hard?’

‘Just some more figures for my Min of Mines project.’ He moved the papers away, out of her line of vision, then took her hand. ‘I’ve got some good news. You know you were talking about voluntary work. I spoke to a man at the Jews’ Committee today, whose sister’s big in Auxilio Social. They’re looking for nurses. How d’you fancy working with children?’

‘I don’t know. It’d be – something to do.’ Something to take her mind off Bernie, the camp in Cuenca, Luis.

‘The woman we need to speak to’s a marquesa.’ Sandy raised his eyebrows. He pretended to despise the snobbish worship of the aristocracy upper-class Spaniards engaged in as much as the English, but she knew he enjoyed mixing with them. ‘Alicia, Marquesa de Segovia. She’s going to be at this concert at the Opera House on Saturday; I’ve got tickets for us.’ He smiled and pulled out a couple of gold-embossed cards.

Guilt filled her. ‘Oh, Sandy, you always think of me.’

‘I don’t know what this new guitar concerto thing will be like, but there’s some Beethoven too.’

‘Oh, thanks, Sandy.’ His generosity made her feel ashamed. She felt tears coming and got up hastily. ‘I’d better get Pilar started on dinner.’

‘All right, lovey. I need another hour on this.’

She went down to the kitchen, slipping on her shoes on the way. It wouldn’t do to let Pilar see her walking barefoot.

In the kitchen the paint was an ugly mustard colour, not white like the rest of the house. The maid sat at a table beside the immense old kitchen range. She was looking at a photograph. As she shoved it down the front of her dress and stood up, Barbara caught a glimpse of a young man in Republican uniform. It was dangerous to carry that photograph; if she was asked for her papers and a civil found it, questions would be asked. Barbara pretended she hadn’t seen it.

‘Pilar, could you start the dinner? Pollo al ajillo tonight, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, madam.’

‘Have you everything you need?’

‘Yes, madam, thank you.’ There was a coldness in the girl’s eyes. Barbara wanted to explain, tell her she knew what it was like, she had lost someone too. But that was impossible. She nodded and went upstairs to dress for dinner.