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

Chapter Five

THAT MORNING BARBARA had woken as usual when the church clock across the road struck seven. She rose from sleep to the heat of Sandy’s body beside her, her face resting on his shoulder. She stirred and he made a gentle grunting noise, like a child. Then she remembered and guilt stabbed through her. Today she was meeting Markby’s contact; the culmination of all the lies she had told him.

He turned and smiled, eyes heavy with sleep. ‘Morning, sweetie-pie.’

‘Hello, Sandy.’ She brushed a hand gently across his cheek, spiny with stubble.

He sighed. ‘Better get up. I’ve got a meeting at nine.’

‘Have a proper breakfast, Sandy. Get Pilar to make you something.’

He rubbed his eyes. ‘It’s OK, I’ll get a coffee on the way.’ He leaned over, smiling mischievously. ‘I’ll leave you to your English breakfast. You can eat all the cornflakes.’ He kissed her, his moustache tickling her upper lip, then got up and opened the wardrobe next to his bed. As he stood selecting clothes, Barbara watched the play of muscles in his broad chest and flat, ridged stomach. Sandy did no exercise and ate carelessly; it was a mystery how he kept his figure, but he did. He saw her studying him and smiled, that Clark Gable curl of the mouth to one side.

‘Want me to come back to bed?’

‘You’ve got to get off. What is it this morning, the Jews’ committee?’

‘Yes. There’s five new families arrived. With nothing but what they could carry from France.’

‘Be careful, Sandy. Don’t upset the r#233;gime.’

‘Franco doesn’t mean the anti-Jewish propaganda. He has to keep in with Hitler.’

‘I wish you’d let me help. I’ve so much experience dealing with refugees.’

‘It’s diplomatic stuff. Not a job for a woman; you know what the Spaniards are like about that.’

She looked at him seriously; felt guilt again. ‘It’s good work, Sandy. What you’re doing.’

He smiled. ‘Making up for all my sins. I’ll be back late, I’ve a meeting at the Ministry of Mines all afternoon.’ He moved away to his dressing table. At that distance, without her glasses, Sandy’s face began to blur. He laid the suit he had chosen over the back of a chair and padded off to the bathroom. She reached for a cigarette and lay smoking, as he splashed about. Sandy returned, shaved and dressed. He came back to the bed and bent to kiss her, his cheeks smooth now.

‘All right for some,’ he said.

‘It’s you that taught me to be lazy, Sandy.’ Barbara gave a sad half-smile.

‘What are you doing today?’

‘Nothing much. Thought I might go to the Prado later.’ She wondered whether Sandy might notice the slight tremor that came to her voice with the lie, but he only brushed her cheek with his hand before going to the door, his form turning to a blur again.

SHE HAD MET Markby at a dinner they had given three weeks before. Most of the guests were government officials and their wives; when the women left the tables there would be deal-making among the men, perhaps a Falangist song. But there was a journalist as well, Terry Markby, a Daily Express reporter Sandy had met in one of the bars the Falange people frequented. He was a mousy, middle-aged man, his dinner jacket too large for him. He looked ill at ease and Barbara felt sorry for him. She asked what he was working on and he leaned close to her, lowering his voice. He had a heavy Bristol accent.

‘Trying to find out about these concentration camps for Republican prisoners. Beaverbrook wouldn’t have taken stories like that during the Civil War, but it’s different now.’

‘I’ve heard rumours,’ she replied guardedly. ‘But if anything like that was going on I’m sure the Red Cross would have sniffed it out. I used to work for them, you see. In the Civil War.’

‘Did you?’ Markby looked at her with surprise. Barbara knew she had been even more gauche and clumsy than usual that evening, had heard the mistakes in her Spanish. When she went to the kitchen to check on Pilar her glasses had misted up and on coming out she had unthinkingly wiped them on her hem, catching a cross look from Sandy.

‘Yes, I did,’ she replied a little sharply. ‘And if a lot of people were missing they’d know.’

‘Which side of the lines were you on?’

‘Both, at different times.’

‘It was a bloody business.’

‘It was a civil war, Spaniard against Spaniard. You have to understand that to understand the things that happened here.’

The journalist spoke quietly. On his other side In#233;s Vilar Cuesta was leading a loud demand from the ladies for nylon stockings.

‘A lot of people have been arrested since Franco won. Their families assumed they’d been shot, but a lot were taken to the camps. And there were a lot of prisoners taken in the war, people posted missing believed killed. Franco’s using them as forced labour.’

Barbara frowned. She had tried for so long to tell herself that now Franco had won he should be supported in the task of rebuilding Spain. But she found it increasingly hard to shut her eyes to the things that went on; she knew that what the journalist said could have some truth in it.

‘Have you evidence?’ she asked. ‘Who told you?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t say. Can’t reveal my sources.’ He cast a weary eye round the company. ‘Especially not here.’

She hesitated, then lowered her voice to a whisper.

‘I knew someone who was listed missing believed killed. Nineteen thirty-seven, at the Jarama. A British International Brigader.’

‘Republican side?’ Markby raised thin pale eyebrows.

‘I never shared his politics. I’m not political. But he’s dead,’ she added flatly. ‘They just never found his body. The Jarama was terrible, thousands dead. Thousands.’ Even now, after three years, she felt a sinking in her stomach at the thought of it.

Markby put his head on one side, considering. ‘Most foreign prisoners were sent home, I know. But I hear some slipped through the net. If you could give me his name and rank I might be able to find something out. The prisoners of war are kept in a separate camp, out near Cuenca.’

Barbara looked over her guests. The women had rounded on a senior official in the Supply Ministry, insisting he get them nylons. Tonight she was seeing the New Spain at its worst, greedy and corrupt. Sandy, at the head of the table, was smiling at them all, indulgently and sarcastically. That was the confidence public school gave you. It struck her that though he was only thirty-one, in his wing-collared shirt, with his oiled swept-back hair and his moustache, Sandy could have been ten years older. It was a look he cultivated. She turned back to Markby, taking a deep breath.

‘There’s no point. Bernie’s dead.’

‘Yes, if he was at the Jarama it’s very unlikely he’d have survived. Still, you never know. Do no harm to try.’ He smiled at her. He was right, Barbara thought, even the faintest chance.

‘His name was Bernard Piper,’ she said quickly. ‘He was a private. But don’t—’

‘What?’

‘Raise false hopes.’

He studied her, a journalist’s searching look. ‘I wouldn’t want to do that, Mrs Forsyth. It’s only the slimmest chance. But worth a look.’

She nodded. Markby surveyed the company, the dinner jackets and couturier dresses interspersed with military uniforms, then turned that keen evaluating gaze back to Barbara. ‘You’re moving in different circles now.’

‘I was sent to work in the Nationalist zone after Bernie – after he disappeared. I met Sandy there.’

Markby nodded at the company. ‘Your husband’s friends might not like you sniffing after a prisoner of war.’

She hesitated. ‘No.’

Markby smiled reassuringly. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll see if I can find anything out. Entre nous.’

She held his eyes. ‘I doubt you’ll get a story out of this.’

He shrugged. ‘Any chance to help a fellow Englishman.’ He smiled, a sweet, strangely innocent smile, although of course he wasn’t innocent at all. If he did find Bernie, Barbara thought, and the story came out, it would be the end of everything here for her. She was shocked to realize that if only Bernie was alive, she wouldn’t care about the rest.

SHE GOT UP and put on the silk dressing gown Sandy had got her last Christmas. She opened the window; it was another hot day, the garden bright with flowers. Strange to think that in six weeks winter would be here with its mist and frosts.

She stumbled against a chair, swore and took her glasses from the dressing-table drawer. She looked in the mirror. Sandy urged her to do without them whenever she could, memorize the layout of the house properly so she didn’t bump into things. ‘Wouldn’t it be fun, darling,’ he had said. ‘Walking around confidently greeting people and no one knowing you’re a bit short-sighted.’ He had developed a thing about those glasses, he hated her wearing them, but although she had always hated them too she still wore them when she was on her own. She needed them. ‘Bloody idiotic nonsense,’ she muttered as she took out her curlers and ran the comb through her thick auburn hair. It flowed in waves. That stylist was good, her hair never looked unkempt now. She applied her make-up carefully, eyeshadow that highlighted her clear green eyes, powder to emphasize her cheekbones. Sandy had taught her all this. ‘You can decide how you look, you know,’ he had said. ‘Make people see you as you want to be seen. If you want to.’ She had been reluctant to believe him but he had persisted and he was right: for the first time in her life she had begun, very nervously, to question her belief that she was an ugly woman. Even with Bernie she had found it hard to think what he could see in her, despite his endless loving reassurance. Tears came to her eyes. She blinked them quickly away. She needed to be strong today, clear-headed.

She wasn’t meeting Markby’s contact till late afternoon. She would go to the Prado first; she couldn’t bear being cooped up all day in the house, waiting. She put on her best outdoor dress, the white one with the rose pattern. There was a knock at the door and Pilar appeared. The girl had a round surly face and curly black hair struggling to escape from beneath her maid’s cap. Barbara addressed her in Spanish.

‘Pilar, please prepare breakfast. A good one today, toast and orange juice and eggs, please.’

‘There is no juice, se#241;ora, there was none in the shops yesterday.’

‘Never mind. Ask the daily to go out later and try to find some, would you?’

The girl left. Barbara wished she would smile occasionally. But perhaps she had lost people in the Civil War; nearly everyone had. Barbara thought she caught a faint note of contempt sometimes when Pilar called her ‘se#241;ora’, as though she knew she and Sandy weren’t really married. She told herself it was imagination. She had no experience of servants and when she first came to the house had been uneasy around Pilar, nervous and eager to please. Sandy had told her she must be clear and precise in her orders, keep a distance. ‘It’s what they prefer, lovey.’ She remembered Maria Herreira telling her never to trust servants, they were all peasants and half of them had been Reds. Yet Maria was a kind woman who did voluntary work with old people for the church. She lit another cigarette and made her way downstairs to breakfast, to the cornflakes that Sandy was able to get in rationed, half-starved Madrid as though by magic.

WHEN THE Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Barbara had been working at the Red Cross headquarters in Geneva for three years. She worked in the Displaced Persons section, tracing missing members of families in Eastern Europe torn apart by the Great War and still missing. She matched names and records, wrote letters to Interior Ministries from Riga to Budapest. She managed to put enough people in touch with their families to make it worthwhile. Even where their relatives were all dead, at least the families knew for certain.

She had been excited by the job at first, it was a change from nursing in Birmingham. She had got it partly because of her years of work for the British Red Cross. After four years, though, she was bored. She was twenty-six; soon she would be thirty and she began to fear she was fossilizing among the order of her files, the stolid dullness of the Swiss. She went for an interview with a Swiss official in a neat office overlooking the still blue lake.

‘It’s bad in Spain,’ he told her. ‘There’re thousands who’ve found themselves on one side of the lines and their relatives on the other. We’re sending medical supplies and trying to arrange exchanges. But it’s a savage war. The Russians and Germans are getting involved.’ He looked at her over his half-moon glasses with tired eyes. All the hopes of 1919, that the Great War had truly been the war to end war, were disintegrating. First Mussolini in Abyssinia, now this.

‘I’d like to get out in the field, sir,’ Barbara said firmly.

SHE ARRIVED in an unbearably hot Madrid in September 1936. Franco was advancing from the south; the Moroccan colonial army, airlifted across the Straits of Gibraltar by Hitler, was now only seventy miles away. The city was full of refugees, ragged lost-looking families from the pueblos dragging enormous bundles through the streets or crowded together on donkey carts. Now she saw the chaos of war at first hand. She never forgot the old man with shocked eyes who passed her that first day, carrying all he had left: a dirty mattress slung over his shoulder and a canary in a wooden cage. He symbolized all the refugees, the displaced persons, all those caught in the middle of war.

Red militiamen hurtled by in lorries and buses on their way to the front line – ordinary Madrile#241;os, their only uniform the dark blue boiler suits all workers wore and red neckerchiefs. They would wave their ancient-looking weapons as they passed, calling out the Republic’s shout of defiance. ‘#161;No pasar#225;n!’ Barbara, who believed in peace more than anything, wanted to weep for them all. She wanted to weep for herself too at first, because she was frightened: by the chaos, by the stories of nightmare atrocities on both sides, by the Fascist aeroplanes that had begun to appear in the skies, making people pause, look up, sometimes run for the safety of the metro. Once she saw a stick of bombs fall, a pall of smoke rising from the west of the city. The bombing of cities was what Europe had feared for years; now it was happening.

The Red Cross mission was based in a little office in the city centre, an oasis of sanity where half a dozen men and women, mostly Swiss, laboured to distribute medical supplies and arrange exchanges of refugee children. Although she spoke no Spanish, Barbara’s French was good and it was a relief to be able to make herself understood.

‘We need help with the refugee exchanges,’ Director Doumergue told her on her second day. ‘There are hundreds of children separated from their families. There’s a whole group from Burgos who were at a summer camp in the Guadarramas – we want to exchange them for some Madrid children caught in Sevilla.’ The director was another calm, serious Swiss, a young man with a plump, tired face. Barbara knew she’d been flapping, panicking, and that wasn’t like her. Babs we all depend on, they used to call her in Birmingham. She’d have to pull herself together. She brushed a stray tangle of red hair from her brow. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘What do you need me to do?

That afternoon she went to visit the children in the convent where they had been lodged, to take their details. Monique, the office interpreter, came with her. She was a small, pretty woman, wearing a neat dress and freshly ironed blouse. They walked through the Puerta del Sol, past huge posters of President Aza#241;a, Lenin and Stalin. Monique nodded at Stalin’s poster. ‘That’s the way things are going now,’ she said. ‘Only Russia will aid the Republic. God help them.’

The square was full of loudspeakers, a woman’s voice rising and falling, punctuated by tinny squeaks from the speaker. Barbara asked what they were saying.

‘That’s Dolores Ib#225;rruri. La Pasionaria. She’s telling housewives that if the Fascists come they must boil their olive oil and pour it from the balconies onto their heads.’

Barbara shuddered. ‘If only both sides could see everything will be destroyed.’

‘Too late for that,’ Monique answered heavily.

They entered the convent through a stout wooden gate in a high wall designed to shield the sisters from the outside world. It had been thrown open and across the little yard a militiaman kept guard by the door, a rifle slung over his shoulder. The building had been burned out; there was no glass at the windows and black trails of soot rose up the walls. There was a sickly smell of smoke.

Barbara stood in the yard. ‘What’s happened? I thought the children were with the nuns …’

‘The nuns have all fled. And the priests. Those that got away. Most of the convents and churches were burned by the mob in July.’ Monique gave her a searching look. ‘Are you a Catholic?’

‘No, no, I’m nothing really. It’s just a bit of a shock.’

‘It’s not so bad at the back. The nuns ran a hospital, there are beds.’

The entrance hall had been burned and vandalized, sheets of paper torn from breviaries lay about among the broken statues.

‘What must it have been like for those nuns?’ Barbara asked. ‘Shut away in here, then a mob runs in and burns the place down.’

Monique shrugged. ‘The Church supports the Nationalists. And they’ve lived off the backs of the people for centuries. Once it was the same in France.’

Monique led the way down a narrow echoing corridor and opened a door. On the other side was a hospital ward with about twenty beds. The walls were bare, lighter patches in the shape of crosses showing where religious symbols had been removed. About thirty ten-year-olds sat on the beds, dirty and frightened-looking. A tall Frenchwoman in a nurse’s uniform hurried over to them.

‘Ah, Monique, you have come. Is there any news of getting the children home?’

‘Not yet, Anna. We’ll take their details, then go to the ministry. Has the doctor been?’

‘Yes.’ The nurse sighed. ‘They are all well enough. Just frightened. They come from religious homes – they were scared when they saw the convent had been burned.’

Barbara looked over the sad little faces, most of them smeared with the tracks of tears. ‘If any are ill, I’m a nurse—’

‘No,’ said Monique. ‘Anna is here. Getting them transferred back, that’s the best thing we can do for them.’

They spent the next hour taking details; some of the children were terrified, the nurse had to persuade them to talk. At last they were done. Barbara coughed from the smell of smoke.

‘Could they not be taken somewhere else?’ she asked Monique. ‘This smoke, it’s bad for them.’

Monique shook her head. ‘There are thousands of refugees in this city, more every day. We’re lucky some official took time to find anywhere for these children.’

It was a relief to be back outside, even in the boiling sunlight. Monique waved at the militiaman. ‘Salud,’ he called. Monique offered Barbara a cigarette and looked at her keenly.

‘This is what it’s like everywhere,’ she said.

‘I can take it. I was a nurse before I went to Geneva.’ Barbara blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘It’s just – those children, will they ever be the same again, if they get home?’

‘Nobody in Spain will ever be the same again,’ Monique answered, in sudden angry despair.

BY NOVEMBER 1936 Franco had reached the outskirts of Madrid. But his forces were held in the Casa de Campo, the old royal park just west of the city. There were Russian aircraft in the skies now, protecting the city, and fewer bombs fell. Hoardings had been erected to cover the bombed houses, displaying more portraits of Lenin and Stalin. Banners spanned the streets. ‘#161;NO PASARAN!’ The determination to resist was even greater than in the summer and Barbara admired it even as she wondered how it could survive the cold of winter. With only one road to the city still open, supplies were already becoming short. She half hoped Franco would take Madrid so the war could end, though there were terrible stories of Nationalist atrocities. There had been plenty on the Republican side too, but Franco’s sounded even worse, coldly systematic.

After two months she had adjusted, so far as anyone could. She had had successes, had helped get dozens of refugees exchanged; now the Red Cross was trying to negotiate prisoner exchanges between the Republican and Nationalist zones. She was proud of how quickly she was picking up Spanish. But the children were still in the convent – their case had fallen into some bureaucratic abyss. Sister Anna had not been paid for weeks, though she stayed on. At least the children would not run away; they were terrified of the Red hordes beyond the convent walls.

One day Barbara and Monique had spent an afternoon at the Interior Ministry, trying again to get the children exchanged. Each time they saw a different official, and today’s man was even less helpful than the others. He wore the black leather jacket that marked him out as a Communist. It looked odd on him; he was plump and middle-aged and looked like a bank clerk. He smoked cigarettes constantly without offering them any.

‘There is no heating at the convent, Comrade,’ Barbara said. ‘With the cold weather coming the children will become ill.’

The man grunted. He reached forward and took a tattered file from a pile on his desk. He read it, puffing at his cigarette, then looked at the women.

‘These are children of rich Catholic families. If they go back they will be asked about military dispositions here.’

‘They’ve hardly been out of the building. They’re afraid to.’ Barbara was surprised how easily her Spanish came now when she was roused. The official smiled grimly.

‘Yes, because they are frightened of us Reds. I am not happy with sending them back. Security is everything.’ He put the file back on the pile. ‘Everything.’

As they left the ministry, Monique shook her head in despair. ‘Security. Always the excuse for the worst things.’

‘We’ll have to try another tack. Perhaps if Geneva could get on to the minister?’

‘I doubt it.’

Barbara sighed. ‘We have to try. I’ll have to organize some more supplies for them. Oh God, I’m tired. Do you want to come for a drink?’

‘No, I have some washing to do. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Barbara watched Monique walk away. A tide of loneliness washed over her. She was conscious of how separate she was from the closeness, the solidarity of the city’s inhabitants. She decided to go to a bar off the Puerta del Sol where English people sometimes gathered, Red Cross staff and journalists and diplomats.

The bar was almost empty, no one there that she knew. She ordered a glass of wine and went to sit at a corner table. She didn’t like sitting in bars on her own but perhaps someone she knew would come in.

After a while she heard a man’s voice speaking English, with the long lazy vowels of a public-school education. She looked up; she could see his face in the mirror behind the bar. She thought he was the most attractive man she had ever seen.

She watched him covertly. The stranger was standing alone at the bar, talking to the barman in halting Spanish. He wore a cheap shirt and a boiler suit; one arm was in a white sling. He was in his twenties and had broad shoulders and dark blond hair. His face was long and oval, with large eyes and a full, strong mouth. He seemed ill at ease standing there alone. His eyes met Barbara’s in the mirror and she looked away, then jumped as the white-aproned waiter appeared at her elbow, asking if she wanted another vino. He was carrying the bottle and her elbow jogged his, making him drop it. It landed on the table with a crash, wine pumping out over the waiter’s trousers.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry. That was me, I’m sorry.’

The man looked annoyed; it might be the only pair of trousers he had. He began dabbing at them.

‘I’m so sorry. Listen, I’ll pay for them to be cleaned, I—’ Barbara stumbled over her words, forgetting her Spanish. Then she heard that drawling voice at her elbow.

‘Excuse me, are you English? May I help?’

‘Oh no – no, it’s all right.’

The waiter recovered himself. She offered to pay for the spilt bottle as well as his trousers and he went off, mollified, to fetch another glass. Barbara smiled nervously at the Englishman.

‘How stupid of me. I’ve always been so clumsy.’

‘These things happen.’ He held out a hand. He had brown slender fingers, the wrist covered in a fair down that caught the light and shone like gold. She saw his other arm was encased in plaster from above the elbow to the wrist. His large eyes were dark olive, like a Spaniard’s. ‘Bernie Piper,’ he said, studying her curiously. ‘You’re a long way from home.’

‘Barbara Clare. Yes, afraid so. I’m here with the Red Cross.’

‘Mind if I join you? Only I haven’t spoken English to anyone for weeks.’

‘Well, I – no, please do.’

And so it began.

SOMEONE FROM the Madrid office of the Daily Express had telephoned Barbara three days previously and told her there was a man who might be able to help her. His name was Luis and he could meet her in a bar in the old town on Monday afternoon. She had asked to speak to Markby but he was away. As Barbara put the phone down she wondered if it was tapped; Sandy said it wasn’t but she had heard they tapped all the foreigners’ telephones.

After breakfast she went back to her room. Her mirrored bureau was an eighteenth-century antique she and Sandy had picked up in the Rastro market in the spring. It had probably been looted from some wealthy house in Madrid at the start of the Civil War. You saw families there on Sundays, hunting for their stolen heirlooms. They went cheap, it was food and petrol that were valuable now.

The bureau had come with a key and Barbara used it to store personal, precious things. Bernie’s photograph was in there. It had been taken just before he went to the front, in a photographer’s studio with chaises longues and potted palms. He stood in his uniform, arms folded, smiling at the camera.

He had been so beautiful. It was a word people used about women but Bernie had been the beautiful one. She hadn’t looked at the photograph for a long time; seeing it still hurt her, she mourned Bernie as deeply as ever. Guiltily, because Sandy had rescued her and set her on her feet, but what she had with Bernie had been different. She sighed. She mustn’t hope too much, she mustn’t.

It still amazed her that Bernie had been interested in her, she must have looked a fright in that bar, her hair all frizzy and wearing that tatty old jumper. She took off her glasses. She told herself that without them, yes, she could be called quite attractive. She put the glasses on again. As so often, even amid her preoccupation with Bernie, just thinking she was attractive triggered a memory, one of the bad ones. Usually she tried to push them away but she let this one come, even though it left her feeling she was standing on the edge of a precipice. Millie Howard and her gang of eleven-year-olds, forming a circle round her in the quadrangle of the grammar school, chanting. ‘Speccy frizzy-hair, speccy frizzy-hair.’ If she hadn’t had the glasses to mark her out as different, if she hadn’t responded with blushing and tears, would it ever have happened, the tormenting that had gone on for so long? She closed her eyes. Now she saw her older sister, radiant Carol who had inherited their mother’s blonde hair and heart-shaped face, walking through the lounge of the little house in Erdington, off to meet another boy. She swirled past, leaving a rich smell of perfume. ‘Doesn’t she look lovely?’ her mother had asked her father, while Barbara’s heart burned with jealousy and sadness. A little while before she had broken down and told her mother how the girls taunted her at school. ‘Looks aren’t everything, darling,’ her mother had said. ‘You’re much cleverer than Carol.’

She lit a cigarette with a shaking hand. Mum and Dad, Carol and her good-looking accountant husband were under the air-raids now. The Blitz had moved beyond London; in the week-old, censored edition of the Daily Mail she bought at the station, she had read of the first raids on Birmingham. And here she was, sitting in a fine house, still picking at those old wounds while her family were running for the air-raid shelters. It was so petty, she felt ashamed. Sometimes she wondered if there was something wrong with her mind, whether she was a little crazy. She got up and put on her jacket and hat. She would kill some time in the Prado. Then she would see what this man knew. The thought gave her a welcome sense of purpose.

The Prado art gallery was full of blank walls; most of the pictures had been taken down for safe keeping during the Civil War and so far only a few had been returned. It was cold and damp. She had a bad lunch in the little caf#233;, then sat smoking till it was time to leave.

Sandy had noticed something was up with her; yesterday he had asked her if she was all right. She replied she was bored; it was true, now they were established in the house there were long hours when she had nothing to do. He had asked if she would like to do some voluntary work, he might be able to fix something up. She had agreed, to put him off the scent. He had nodded, apparently satisfied, and gone off to his study to do some more work.

Sandy had been working on what he called his ‘Min of Mines project’ for six months now. He was often out late, and often worked at home, worked harder than Barbara had ever seen. Sometimes his eyes gleamed with excitement and he smiled as though he had some wonderful secret. Barbara didn’t like that little secret smile. At other times he seemed preoccupied, worried. He said the project was confidential, he wasn’t allowed to talk about it. Sometimes he made mysterious trips out to the countryside. There was a geologist involved, a man called Otero who had visited the house a couple of times. Barbara didn’t like him either; he gave her the creeps. She worried that they might be involved in something illegal; half of Spain seemed to be working the estraperlo, the black market. Sandy was scarcely more open about the committee to aid Jewish refugees from France he worked for. Barbara wondered if Sandy felt his voluntary work detracted from the picture he liked to paint of himself as a hard, successful businessman, though it was that better side of him, the side that liked to help those in trouble, that had drawn her to him.

At four she left the Prado and headed into the centre. Shops were opening again after the siesta as she walked through the narrow streets, hot and dusty and smelling of dung. Her sensible shoes rang on the cobbles. Turning a corner, she saw an old man in a tattered shirt trying to manoeuvre a cart filled with cans of olive oil up onto the pavement. He held the cart by its shafts, trying to haul it on to the high kerb. Behind him was a newly painted building, a big banner with the yoke and arrows over the door. As Barbara watched, a pair of blue-shirted young men appeared in the doorway. They bowed, apologizing for blocking her way, and asked the old man if they could help. He relinquished the shafts gratefully and they pulled the cart up onto the pavement for him. ‘My donkey is dead,’ he told them. ‘I have no money for another.’

‘Soon everyone in Spain will have a horse. Just give us time, se#241;or.’

‘I had him twenty years. I ate him when he died. Poor Hector, his meat was stringy. Thank you, compadres.’

‘De nada.’ The Falangists clapped the old man on the back and went back inside. Barbara stepped off the pavement to let him pass. She wondered if things really would get better now. She didn’t know; after four years in Spain she still felt like an alien, there was so much she didn’t understand.

She knew there were idealists in the Falange, people who genuinely wanted to improve Spaniards’ lives, but she knew there were many more who had joined to take advantage of the chance of a corrupt profit. She looked again at the yoke and arrows. Like the blue shirts they reminded her the Falange were fascists, blood-brothers to the Nazis. She saw one of the Falangists looking at her from the window and hurried on.

THE BAR WAS a dark, run-down place. The mandatory portrait of Franco, spotted with grease, hung behind the bar, where a couple of young men lounged. A big grey-haired woman in black was washing glasses at the sink. One of the men carried a crutch; he had lost half a leg, the trouser end crudely sewn up. They all looked at Barbara curiously. Usually only whores came into bars alone, not foreign women wearing expensive dresses and little round hats.

A young man sitting at a table at the back raised his hand. As she walked across he rose and bowed, taking her hand in a strong, dry grip.

‘Se#241;ora Forsyth?’

‘Yes.’ She replied in Spanish, trying to keep her voice confident. ‘Are you Luis?’

‘Yes. Please sit. Allow me to get you a coffee.’

She studied him as he went to the bar. He was tall and thin, in his early thirties with black hair and a long sad face. He wore threadbare trousers and an old, stained jacket. His cheeks were stubbly, like those of the other men in the cafe; there was a shortage of razor blades in the city. He walked like a soldier. He came back with two coffees and a plate of tapas. She took a sip and grimaced. He smiled wryly.

‘It is not very good, I am afraid.’

‘It’s all right.’ She looked at the tapas, little brown meatballs with tiny delicate bones sticking out. ‘What are they?’

‘They call it pigeon but I think it is something else. I am not sure what. I would not recommend it.’

She watched as Luis ate, picking the minute bones from his mouth. She had decided not to say anything; leave him to begin. He shifted nervously in his seat, studied her face with large dark eyes.

‘I understand from Mr Markby that you are trying to trace a man who went missing at the Jarama. An Englishman.’ He spoke very quietly.

‘Yes I am, that’s right.’

He nodded. ‘A Communist.’ His eyes still scanned her face. Barbara wondered with a flicker of fear if he was police, if Markby had betrayed her or been betrayed himself. She forced herself to stay calm.

‘My interest is personal, not political. He was – he was my – my boyfriend, before I met my husband. I believed he was dead.’

Luis shifted in his seat again. He coughed. ‘You live in National Spain, I am told you are married to a man with friends in the government. Yet you are looking for a Communist from the war. Forgive me, but this seems strange.’

‘I worked for the Red Cross, we were a neutral organization.’

He gave a quick bitter smile. ‘You were fortunate. No Spaniard has been able to be neutral for a long time.’ He studied her. ‘So, you are not an opponent of the New Spain.’

‘No. General Franco won and that’s that. Britain isn’t at war with Spain.’ Not yet, anyway, she thought.

‘Forgive me.’ Luis spread his hands, suddenly apologetic. ‘Only I have to protect my own position, I have to be careful. Your husband knows nothing of your – search?’

‘No.’

‘Please keep it so, se#241;ora. If your enquiries became known, they could bring trouble.’

‘I know.’ Her heart was starting to thump with excitement. If he had no information he wouldn’t be this wary, this careful. But what did he know? Where had Markby found him?

Luis eyed her intently again. ‘Say you were to find this man, Se#241;ora Forsyth. What would you wish to do?’

‘I’d want to see him repatriated. As he was a prisoner of war he should be returned home. That’s what the Geneva Conventions say.’

He shrugged. ‘That is not how the General#237;simo sees things. He would not like the suggestion that a man who came to our country to make war on Spaniards should simply be sent home. And if it were to be publicly suggested there were still foreign prisoners of war in Spain, such prisoners might disappear. You understand?’

She looked at him, meeting his eyes. Deep-set, unreadable. ‘What do you know?’ she asked.

He leaned forward. A harsh meaty smell came from his mouth. Barbara forced herself not to recoil.

‘My family is from Sevilla,’ he said. ‘When Franco’s rebels took the city my brother and I were conscripted and spent three years fighting the Reds. After the victory, part of the army was disbanded, but some of us had to stay on and Agust#237;n and I were assigned to guard duties at a camp near Cuenca. You know where that is?’

‘Markby mentioned it. Out towards Arag#243;n, isn’t it?’

Luis nodded. ‘That’s right. Where the famous “hanging houses” are.’

‘The what?’

‘There are ancient houses built right on the edge of the gorge that runs beside the city, so that they seem to hang over it. Some find them beautiful.’ He sighed. ‘Cuenca is high on the meseta – you boil in summer and freeze in winter. This is the only time of year it is bearable, frost and snow will come soon. I had two winters up there and, believe me, that was enough.’

‘What is it like? The camp?’

He shifted uneasily again, lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘A labour camp. One of the camps that does not officially exist. This one was for Republican prisoners of war. About eight kilometres from Cuenca, up in the Tierra Muerta. The dead land.’

‘The what?’

‘An area of bare hills below the Valdemeca mountains. That is what it is called.’

‘How many prisoners?’

He shrugged. ‘Five hundred or so.’

‘Foreigners?’

‘A few. Poles, Germans, people whose countries do not want them back.’

She met his gaze firmly. ‘How did Se#241;or Markby find you? When did you tell him this?’

Luis hesitated, scratched his stubbly cheeks. ‘I am sorry, se#241;ora, I cannot tell you. Only that we unemployed veterans have our meeting places, and some people have contacts the government would not like them to have.’

‘With foreign journalists? Selling stories?’

‘I can say no more.’ He looked genuinely sorry, very young again.

She nodded, took a deep breath, felt a catch in her throat. ‘What were conditions like in the camp?’

He shook his head. ‘Not good. Wooden huts surrounded by barbed wire. You have to understand; these people will never be freed. They work the stone quarries and repair the roads. There is not much food. A lot die. The government wants them to die.’

She made herself stay calm. She must treat this as though Luis was a foreign official talking about a refugee camp she needed information on. She produced a pack of cigarettes and offered it to him.

‘English cigarettes?’ Luis lit one and savoured the smoke, closing his eyes. When he looked at her again his face expression was hard, serious.

‘Was your brigadista strong, Se#241;ora Forsyth?’

‘Yes, he was. A strong man.’

‘Only the strong ones survive.’

She felt tears coming, blinked them away. This was the sort of thing he would say if he was deceiving her, trying to appeal to her emotions. Yet his story seemed to have the ring of truth. She fumbled in her handbag and slid Bernie’s photograph across the table. Luis studied it a moment, then shook his head.

‘I do not remember that face, but he would not look like that now. We were not supposed to talk with the prisoners, apart from giving them orders. They thought their ideas might contaminate us.’ He gave her a long stare. ‘But we used to admire them, we soldiers, the way they kept going somehow.’

There was silence for a moment. The smoke from their cigarettes curled up, wreathing round an ancient fan that hung from the ceiling, broken and unmoving.

‘You don’t remember the name Bernie Piper?’

He shook his head, looked again at the photograph. ‘I remember a fair-haired foreigner who was one of the Communists. Most of the English prisoners were returned – your government tried to get them back. But a few who were listed as missing ended up in Cuenca.’ He pushed the picture back across the table. ‘I was given my discharge this spring, but my brother stayed on.’ He looked at her meaningfully. ‘He can get information if I ask. I would need to visit him, letters are censored.’ He paused.

She asked him straight out. ‘How much will it take?’

Luis smiled sadly. ‘You are direct, se#241;ora. I think for three hundred pesetas Agust#237;n could say whether this man was a prisoner at the camp or not.’

Three hundred. Barbara swallowed, but allowed nothing to show on her face. ‘How long would it take? I need to know soon. If Spain comes into the war, I’ll have to leave.’

He nodded, suddenly business-like. ‘Give me a week. I will visit Agust#237;n next weekend. But I will need some money now, an advance.’ She raised her eyebrows and Luis reddened suddenly, looking embarrassed. ‘I have no money for the train.’

‘Oh. I see.’

‘I will need fifty pesetas. No, don’t take your purse out here, give it to me outside.’

Barbara glanced across to the bar. The crippled man and his friend were deep in conversation, the landlady serving a new customer, but she sensed that all of them were aware of her presence. She took a deep breath.

‘If Bernie is there, what then? You couldn’t get him out.’

Luis shrugged. ‘That might be possible. But very difficult.’ He paused. ‘Very expensive.’

So here it was. Barbara stared back at him, realizing he might know nothing, might have told Markby what he wanted to hear and be telling the same to this rich Englishwoman.

‘How much?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘One step at a time, se#241;ora. Let us try and see if it is him first.’

She nodded. ‘It is about money for you, yes? We should know where we are.’

Luis frowned a little. ‘You are not poor,’ he observed.

‘I can get money. Some.’

‘I am poor. Like everyone in Spain now. Do you know how old I was when I was conscripted? Eighteen. I lost my best years.’ He spoke with bitterness, then sighed and looked down at the table for a moment before meeting her gaze again. ‘I have had no work since I left the army in the spring, a bit of labour on the roads that pays nothing. My mother in Sevilla is ill and I can do nothing to help her. If I am to help you, se#241;ora, find information it is dangerous to find, then – ’ He set his lips hard, looked at her defiantly.

‘All right,’ she said quickly, her tone conciliatory. ‘If you can find what Agust#237;n knows, I’ll give you what you ask. I’ll get it somehow.’ She could probably get three hundred easily, but it was better not to let him know that.

Luis nodded. His eyes roved round the bar, through the window to the darkening street. He leaned forward again. ‘I will go to Cuenca this weekend. I will meet you here in a week’s time, at five.’ He got up, bowing slightly to her. Barbara saw his jacket had a big hole at the elbow.

Outside he shook her hand again and she passed him fifty pesetas. Walking away, she fingered Bernie’s photo. But she mustn’t hope for too much, she must be careful. Her mind went round and round. For Bernie to have survived while thousands died and for Markby to have found a clue to him would be a big coincidence. Yet if Markby had ferreted out that all the foreigners went to Cuenca, and then looked for a guard from there … all that would need was money and contacts among the thousands of discharged soldiers in Madrid. She must contact Markby again, question him. And if Luis said Bernie was alive, she could go and make a stink at the embassy. Or could she? They said the embassy was desperate to keep Franco out of the war. She remembered what Luis had said about prisoners disappearing if there were unwelcome enquiries.

She crossed the Plaza Mayor, walking quickly to reach the Centro before dark. Then she stopped dead. The Civil War had ended in April 1939. If Luis had left the army this spring, 1940, he could not possibly have passed two winters in the camp.