‘No.’
They crossed a couple of wooden planks laid over a trench. There were old rotten boots in the bottom, and a pile of rusty sardine tins labelled in Russian. On the lip of the trench a notice board displayed an arrow pointing in each direction. ‘Nosotros’ and ‘Ellos’. Us and them. In the distance the two women walked slowly on, still clinging to each other.
‘And then you met Sandy?’ Harry interrupted her thoughts.
‘Yes.’ She looked at him seriously. ‘He rescued me, you know.’
‘He told me he was out there doing tours of the battlefields.’
‘Yes. I was very lonely in Burgos. Then I met him at a party and he sort of – took me up. Supported me through everything.’
‘Quite a coincidence, meeting another Rookwood man.’
‘Yes. Though all the English people in Nationalist Spain met at one time or another. There weren’t many of us.’ She smiled. ‘Sandy said it was fate.’
‘He used to believe in fate. He told me he didn’t any more.’
‘I think he does, though he doesn’t want to. He’s a complex man.’
‘Yes. He is.’ They had come to another trench. ‘Watch these duckboards. Give me your arm.’
He took her hand and guided her over. Again, the ‘us’ and ‘them’ signs pointing in different directions.
‘He’s been very good to me,’ Barbara said. ‘Sandy.’
‘Sorry.’ Harry turned to her. ‘I didn’t hear. I’m still a bit deaf on that side.’ His expression was momentarily lost, confused.
‘I said Sandy’s been good to me. He’s persuaded me to do this voluntary work, he knew I needed something new.’ She wondered bitterly, is it guilt that makes me defend him like this?
‘Good.’ Harry’s tone was careful, neutral. Barbara thought with sudden surprise, he doesn’t like Sandy. Then why had he made friends with him again?
‘He’s trying to help some of the Jews who fled from France.’
‘Yes. He mentioned that.’
‘When the Germans invaded a lot of them fled down here with nothing but what they could carry. They try to get to Portugal and then on to America. They’re terrified of the Nazis. There’s a committee that tries to help them and Sandy’s on it.’
‘There was a Falange demonstration at the embassy recently, yelling anti-semitic slogans at the tops of their voices.’
‘The regime have to toe the Nazi line, but they let Sandy’s committee carry on so long as they’re discreet.’
Over in the distance the two women had stopped. One was crying, the other held her close. Barbara looked at Harry again. ‘Sandy and I aren’t really married, did he tell you that?’
He hesitated. ‘Yes.’
She reddened. ‘Perhaps you think we’re awful. But we – we weren’t ready for that step.’
‘I understand,’ he said awkwardly. ‘These aren’t normal times.’
‘Are you still with that girl, what was her name?’
‘Laura. No, that ended ages ago. I’m single at the moment.’ Harry looked at the Royal Palace in the distance. ‘Do you think you’ll stay in Spain?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what the future will bring.’
He turned to her. ‘I hate it,’ he said with sudden passion. ‘I hate what Franco’s done. I used to have this idea of Spain, the romanticism of its winding streets and decayed buildings. I don’t know why, perhaps because when I came here in ’31 there was a spirit of hope, even among people with nothing, like the Mera family. Do you remember them?’
‘Yes. But Harry, those dreams, socialism, it’s all over—’
‘I went to the square where they lived last week, it had been bombed or shelled. Their flat was gone. There was a man – ’ he paused, then went on, his eyes bright with anger – ‘a man who was attacked by some dogs that had gone wild. I helped him, took him home. He lives in a tiny damp flat with his mother, she’s had a stroke but I don’t think she gets any care, and a little boy who went half mad when his parents were taken away, and his sister, this bright intelligent girl who was a medical student but works in a dairy now.’ He took a deep breath. ‘There’s the New Spain.’
She sighed. ‘I know, you’re right. I feel guilty at how we live, among all that. I don’t tell Sandy but I do.’
He nodded. He seemed calmer again, the anger gone. Barbara studied his face. She sensed there was more to his anger and disillusion than meeting a poor family, but she didn’t understand what.
He smiled suddenly. ‘Sorry to go on like that. Ignore me, I’m just tired.’
‘No. You’re right to remind me.’ She smiled. ‘Doesn’t look like you’re still neutral, though.’
He laughed bitterly. ‘No. Maybe not. Things change.’
They had arrived at the Manzanares, the little river that ran through the west of the city. Ahead was a bridge, then stairs leading up to the palace gardens.
‘We can get back to the palace from here,’ Barbara said.
‘Yes. I’d better get back to the embassy.’
‘Are you sure you’re all right, Harry?’ she asked suddenly. ‘You seem – I don’t know – preoccupied.’
‘I’m fine. It’s just, you know, Hendaye and everything. Everyone’s jumpy at the embassy.’ He smiled. ‘We must have dinner again. You could come round to my flat. I’ll give Sandy a ring.’
Chapter Nineteen
SANDY WAS HOME when Barbara returned to the house. He was in the salón, reading the paper and smoking one of the big cigars that filled the room with thick, heavy smoke.
‘Just got back?’ he asked.
‘Yes. We went for a walk in the Casa de Campo.’
‘What did you want to go there for? It’s still full of unexploded bombs.’
‘It’s safe now. Harry wanted to go.’
‘How was he?’
‘A bit down. I think Dunkirk affected him more than he lets on.’
Sandy smiled through the haze of smoke. ‘He needs to find himself a girl.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘What d’you want to do on Thursday? A dinner?’
‘What?’ She looked at him, puzzled.
‘It’s the third anniversary of the day we met. You hadn’t forgotten?’ He looked hurt.
‘No – no, of course not. Let’s have dinner somewhere, that would be good.’ She smiled. ‘Sandy, I’m a bit tired, I think I’ll go and lie down for a bit before dinner.’
‘Yes, all right.’ She could tell he was annoyed that she had forgotten the anniversary. It had completely slipped her mind.
When she went out Pilar was coming up the corridor. She looked at Barbara with those dark expressionless eyes. ‘Shall I make up the fire, señora? Only it is getting a little cold.’
‘See what Mr Forsyth thinks, Pilar. He’s in the lounge.’
‘Very well, señora.’ The girl raised her eyebrows a little; household matters were the mistress’s province. Barbara couldn’t be bothered. A heavy tiredness had descended on her on the way home from the meeting with Harry, she had to lie down. She went up and stretched out on the bed. She closed her eyes but her mind was whirling with images: Harry’s visit to Madrid after Bernie disappeared, the end of hope that Bernie was still alive, then Burgos, Burgos where she had met Sandy.
SHE HAD ARRIVED in the Nationalist capital in May 1937, as summer began, bright blue sunshine falling on brown ancient buildings. Crossing the lines was impossible; she had had to travel all the way from Madrid to France, then back again across the frontier with Nationalist Spain. On the way she had read a speech by Dr Marti, the venerable Red Cross statesman, to delegates in Spain. Do not choose sides, he had said, take only a clinical point of view of how best to help. That was what she must continue to do, she told herself. Travelling to Franco’s Spain wasn’t a betrayal of Bernie; she was going there to do her job, as she had in the Republican zone.
They put Barbara to work in the section that tried to send messages between family members le
ft on different sides of the lines by the war. A lot of it was familiar administrative work, light compared to dealing with the prisoners and children. She knew from their solicitous manner that her colleagues knew about Bernie. She found herself resenting being treated with gentle sympathy, she who had always been in charge, the organizer. She developed a sharp, brittle manner with them.
She never spoke about Bernie to them, and she would not have dared to mention him to the Spaniards she met, officials and the middle-class matrons and retired colonels of the Spanish Red Cross. They were always civil, with an exaggerated politeness that made her nostalgic for the informality of the Republican zone, but at the meetings and receptions she had to go to they sometimes showed an anger and contempt for what she was doing. ‘I do not agree with exchanging captured soldiers,’ one old soldier from the Spanish Red Cross told her one day. ‘Children, yes, messages between separated families, yes, but to exchange a Spanish gentleman for Red dog – never!’ He concluded with such fierceness that a spray of spittle hit her chin. She turned away, went to the toilet, and vomited.
As the summer went on she found herself getting more depressed, more withdrawn from the people around her, as though surrounded by a thin grey fog. Summer changed to autumn and cold winds began blowing through the narrow, gloomy streets where people sat hunched in cafes and trucks of grim-looking soldiers passed through endlessly. She put everything into her work, into doing something, achieving something positive, creeping back exhausted to her little flat in the evenings.
For a few weeks in October she shared the flat with Cordelia, a volunteer nurse from England who had come to Burgos on leave. She was an aristocratic English girl who’d been a novice nun but found she didn’t have a vocation.
‘So I came out here to try and do some good,’ she said, a serious look on her kind ugly face.
‘I suppose I did too,’ Barbara replied.
‘For all the people who have been persecuted for their religious beliefs.’
Barbara remembered the church she and Bernie had visited the day the plane fell, that had been converted into a stable. The frightened sheep in the corner. ‘People are being persecuted for all types of belief. In both zones.’
‘You were in the Red zone, weren’t you? What was it like?’
‘Surprisingly like here in a lot of ways.’ She looked Cordelia in the eye. ‘I had a boyfriend there. An English International Brigader, he was killed at the Jarama.’
Barbara had been trying to shock Cordelia, but she only nodded, looking sad. ‘I’ll pray for him, light a candle.’
‘Don’t,’ Barbara said. ‘Bernie would have hated that.’ She paused. ‘I haven’t spoken his name aloud for months. Pray if you like, that can’t do any harm, but don’t light a candle.’
‘You were fond of him.’
Barbara didn’t reply.
‘You should try to get out a little,’ Cordelia said. ‘You spend too much time here.’
‘I’m too tired.’
‘There’s a fundraising dinner at the church I go to—’
Barbara shook her head. ‘I’m not going to turn to religion, Cordelia.’
‘I didn’t mean that. Just that you shouldn’t dwell on the past.’
‘I don’t dwell on it. I try not to think about him, though the feelings are always there, squashed down. The – ’ she looked into Cordelia’s face, then shouted – ‘the bloody anger! That he could go and leave me like that, go and get himself bloody killed, the bastard!’ She began crying, her body shaking with howls and sobs. ‘There, I’ve shocked you,’ she said through her tears. ‘I wanted to shock you.’ She laughed, it sounded hysterical. She felt a tentative hand on her shoulder.
‘Let it out,’ she heard Cordelia say. ‘You have to get it out somehow. I know. I’ve got a brother, he went to the bad, I loved him very much and I was angry with him, too, inside, furious. Don’t bury yourself in it, don’t.’
BARBARA LET Cordelia take her out sometimes, though she drew the line at church functions. Sometimes she felt awkward and clumsy and couldn’t be bothered to talk, but occasionally she met someone who was kind or interesting to talk to and the grey fog would lift a little. On the last day of October, just before Cordelia’s leave ended, they went to a party given by an official from Texas Oil, the company whose support kept Franco in fuel. She didn’t enjoy it; it was a glitzy reception in the best hotel in Burgos, loud Americans standing around, happy in the deference the Spanish guests showed them. She thought of what Bernie would have said, the international capitalist conspiracy in its peacock feathers or something like that. Cordelia was talking to a Spanish priest. Barbara stood on her own, smoking and sipping bad wine, and watched her. She would be going soon, her leave over. Barbara had grown fond of her despite the fact they had nothing in common apart from a sense that they were not cut out to be ordinary wives and mothers. Looking at her she knew she would miss her, miss her undemanding kindness. She felt suddenly dowdy among all the richly dressed women and decided to slip away. She turned to go, and saw a man was standing beside her. She hadn’t seen him approach. He smiled, showing large white teeth.
‘Was that English I heard you and your friend talking earlier?’
Barbara smiled uncertainly. ‘Yes.’ She introduced herself. She thought there was something a little flashy about the man, although he had a nice smile. He told her his name was Sandy Forsyth and he was a guide for English tourists looking at the battlefields. His upper-class drawl reminded her of Bernie.
‘It’s all very propagandist,’ he said. ‘I show them the battlefields and go into the military stuff, but slip in lots about Red atrocities. It’s usually old buffers with military interests. They’re amazingly ignorant. One asked if it was true the Basques all had six fingers.’
Barbara laughed. Encouraged, he told her about a busload of elderly English tourists stuck by the side of the road when the bus broke down, too inhibited to relieve their bursting bladders in the bushes and standing by the bus in agonies. She laughed again; it was months since anyone had made her laugh. He smiled.
‘I knew somehow that I could tell you that story and you wouldn’t be shocked, though it’s not really for mixed company.’
‘I’m a nurse. I’ve been in Spain over a year, on both sides of the lines. Nothing shocks me now.’
Sandy nodded, interested. He offered her a cigarette and they stood surveying the company for a moment.
‘Well,’ Sandy asked. ‘What do you think of the New Spain and its friends?’
‘I suppose it seems very orderly after Madrid. But it’s got a hard military feel. A hard place.’ She looked at Cordelia, still deep in conversation with the priest. ‘Maybe the Church will be a moderating influence.’
Sandy blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘Don’t you believe it. The Church knows what side its bread’s buttered on; it’ll let the regime do what it likes. They’re going to win, you know, they’ve got the troops and the money. They know it, you can see it in their faces. It’s just a matter of time.’
‘You think so?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Are you a Catholic?’
He laughed. ‘Heavens, no.’
‘My friend over there is. Yes, you’re right, they’re going to win.’ She sighed.
‘Better than the alternative.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘I might stay on when it’s over. I’m tired of England.’
‘No family ties?’
‘No. You?’
‘None to speak of.’
‘Fancy coming out for a drink one evening? I’m between jobs. I’m looking into getting some other work but it’s a bit lonesome here.’
She looked at him in surprise, she hadn’t expected that.
‘No strings,’ Sandy added. ‘Just for a drink. Bring your friend Cordelia if you like.’
‘Yes, all right,’ she said. ‘Why not?’ Though she knew, somehow, that Cordelia wouldn’t approve of Sandy.
WHEN THE EVENING came s
he didn’t want to go. Cordelia couldn’t come, she had another church function to attend, and Barbara felt tired and depressed after work. But she had agreed to go so she did.
They met in a dark, quiet little bar near the cathedral. Sandy asked what sort of a day she had had at work. The question irritated her slightly; he had asked it as though she worked in an office or a shop.
‘A bit grim, actually. They’ve moved me on to trying to get some children evacuated across the lines. Most of them are orphans. That’s always ghastly.’ She turned away, tears pricking unexpectedly at her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a long day and this new work brings back – bad memories.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked, with gentle curiosity.
She decided to tell him. Cordelia was right, it was no use just bottling it all up. ‘When I was working in Madrid there was this man – an Englishman in the International Brigades, actually. We were together over last winter. Then he went to the Jarama. Missing believed killed.’
Sandy nodded. ‘I’m very sorry.’
‘It’s only been nine months, it’s hard to get over.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a common enough story in Spain these days, I know.’
He offered her a cigarette, lit it for her. ‘One of the volunteers?’
‘Yes, Bernie was a Communist. Though he wasn’t working class, not really; he’d got a scholarship to a public school, he spoke like you. I found out later the party thought he might be ideologically suspect because of his complicated class origins. Not enough of a man of steel.’
She looked at Sandy and was surprised to see that he had leaned back in his seat and was looking at her with an intent, frowning stare.
‘Which public school did he go to?’ he asked quietly.
‘A place called Rookwood, in Sussex.’
‘His last name wasn’t Piper, by any chance?’
‘Yes.’ It was her turn to be shocked. ‘Yes, that’s right. Did you—’
‘I was at Rookwood for a while. I knew Piper. Not very well, but I knew him. I don’t suppose he ever mentioned me?’ Sandy laughed, a strange forced bark. ‘The bad hat of the form.’