The street was deserted, like every single one of these buildings, and she assumed that anyone who had been at home when the bomb landed must be either injured or dead. The last shreds of hope that she had clung to for all those weeks were gradually disappearing. She had wanted so much to find Javier in this city and the irony now was that she hoped he had never reached Bilbao at all. Mercedes felt herself trembling. She was ice-cold, numb with shock.
Her fist closed around the scrap of paper with Javier’s address, moulding it into a hard ball. Later that day she would notice its loss without concern. She was now truly without direction.
The next few hours of Mercedes’ stay in Bilbao were spent in a queue for bread. The length of this straggling line far exceeded any she had seen in Almería or any of the other towns in Republican territory. It snaked down one street and round the corner into another. Mothers with small children tried to deal with the whining of their offspring as best they could, but if they were hungry when they joined the queue, three hours of waiting only worsened the hunger pangs. Patience began to run out, as did the certainty that there would be anything for them at the end.
‘There were nearly a hundred people in front of me yesterday,’ moaned the woman in front of Mercedes, ‘and then the shutters came down. Bang. Nothing.’
‘So what did you do?’ she enquired.
‘What do you think we did?’
The woman’s manner was aggressive and her speech coarse. Mercedes felt obliged to engage in conversation, though she could happily have stood in silence. She was totally preoccupied with thoughts of Javier and merely shrugged in reply.
‘We waited, didn’t we? There was no way we were going to lose our places, so we slept on the pavement.’
The woman was determined to continue, in spite of the fact that Mercedes did nothing to encourage her.
‘And you know what happened then? When we woke up these other people had moved in front of us. Taken our places.’
As she spoke these last words she punched the clenched fist of one hand into the flattened palm of the other. Reliving the moment of finding herself usurped in the queue, she felt her anger returning.
‘So you see, I have to get some of that bread.There’s no choice.’
Mercedes had no doubt that this woman would stop at nothing to feed her family, and her threatening manner suggested that she would resort to violence to do so.
Mercedes was in luck herself that morning. Supplies did not run out before she reached the front of the queue, but she knew nevertheless that the woman resented her because of her admission that she had no dependants. Since strict rationing was not in force, those with children often felt they were inadequately supplied.This woman clearly felt that the world was against her and, worst of all, it was cheating her family. Mercedes could feel the woman’s eyes boring into her as she picked up her loaf from the counter. Such sparks of hostility between people even on the same side was one of the worst aspects of this war.
Despite the feeling of growing desperation there, Mercedes decided not to leave Bilbao immediately. She had done enough travelling and felt there was nowhere else to go. In the days after she had seen the derelict wreck of Javier’s uncle’s home, she allowed herself to hope that he might be elsewhere in the city. It was pointless being in a rush to leave now, and each day she made new enquiries.
One of Mercedes’ immediate needs was for a roof over her head, and she soon found herself in conversation with a mother she met in one of the food queues. María Sánchez was so beset with the grief of losing her husband that she was only too happy to accept the offer of help with her four children in return for accommodation. Mercedes shared a room with the two daughters and soon they were calling her ‘Tía’, Aunt.
Chapter Twenty-eight
THE END OF the Battle of Guadalajara in March had marked a break in Franco’s attempts to take the capital and the turning of his attention to the industrial north: the Basque area was still stubbornly resisting. Meanwhile,Antonio and Francisco were back in Madrid, which, though not the focus of Franco’s campaign, still continued to need defence.
They had weeks of relative inactivity, during which they wrote letters, played cards and occasionally engaged in a skirmish. Francisco, as ever, was desperate to be at the centre of the action again, while Antonio tried to be more patient. He was always hungry, not just for bread but also for news of events in other parts of the country. He devoured the daily papers as soon as they appeared on the newsstands.
At the end of March, they heard of the bombing of the defenceless town of Durango. A church had been targeted during Mass and most of the congregation had been killed, along with some nuns and a priest. Worse still, German fighters had strafed fleeing civilians and about two hundred and fifty people were killed. There was another event, however, the destruction of the ancient Basque town of Guernica, that had greater implications for both Antonio and Mercedes, even though they were separated from each other by hundreds of kilometres, and both far from home.
The late April day when the news was broadcast that Guernica had been reduced to a blackened shell was one of the darkest moments in this conflict. Sitting in Madrid’s spring sunshine, Antonio found his hands shaking so violently that he could hardly hold his newspaper. It was a place neither he nor Francisco had ever been to, but the description of its horrific destruction marked a turning point.
‘Look at these pictures,’ he said. There was a catch in his throat as he passed the paper across to Francisco. ‘Look . . .’
The two men surveyed them with disbelief. Several photographs showed the twisted wreckage of buildings, and human and animal corpses strewn across the street; it had been market day. The most shocking image of all was the body of a lifeless child, a small girl. There was a label around her wrist, like a price tag on a doll. It recorded where she had been found, should her parents ever turn up to find her in the morgue. It was the most appalling image they had seen, either with their own eyes or reproduced in newsprint.
The town had been systematically attacked by wave upon wave of mostly German and some Italian bombers, which over several hours dropped thousands of bombs and machine-gunned civilians as they fled for their lives. An entire community had been wiped out, with whole families perishing in their flaming homes. There were reports of victims staggering through the smoke and dust to try to dig out their friends and relatives, only to be killed as another wave of bombers passed over. More than fifteen hundred people died in that single afternoon.
The massacre of innocents disgusted them more than the death of comrades whose lives had been lost in some kind of equal if unjust combat.
‘If Franco thinks he’ll win by destroying all these towns,’ said Francisco, his hatred all the more intense with every Republican defeat, ‘then he’s wrong. Until he walks into Madrid, he has nothing . . .’
The obliteration of Guernica was keenly felt by Antonio and Francisco, and everyone else who supported the Republic, and reinforced the determination of the militia to stand against Franco.
If the massacre in Guernica strengthened resolve in Madrid, in Bilbao it instilled terror.The effect on the residents of this northern city, and on those who had gone there for refuge, was measured panic. If Franco could wipe out one town in this manner, then he would presumably not hesitate to do the same with another. The thoroughness of the bombing shocked even those who had been exposed to the relentless daily attacks in Bilbao, and in the streets and the queues no one talked of anything else.
‘Did you hear what they did? They waited until it was four o’clock in the afternoon. Everyone was coming out of their houses to go to market, and they chose that moment to drop their bombs.’
‘And they came again and again and again. For three hours . . . until everything was flattened and almost everyone was killed.’
‘They say that there were fifty planes and that the bombs came down like rain.’
‘There’s nothing left of the place . . .’
&
nbsp; ‘We have to try and get the children out,’ said Mercedes, to Señora Sánchez.
‘There isn’t anywhere safe for them to go,’ she responded. ‘If there was, I would have sent them there a long time ago.’
Señora Sánchez had become so resigned to the state of affairs in Bilbao that her imagination could not look beyond the present. Survival, for her, was not a question of planning an escape route but of living day to day and praying for deliverance.
‘I’ve heard there are some boats going, and that they’ll be taking people to safety.’
‘Where will they take them?’
‘Mexico, Russia . . .’
There was a look of sheer horror on Señora Sánchez’s face. She had seen a photograph of children arriving in Moscow by train. It looked so unfamiliar: banners in an alphabet she could not decipher, little communist children meeting them with flowers, the faces of the people waiting for them so different, so foreign . . .
‘How can I even think of letting my children go to any of those places? How could you even suggest it?’
Outrage and fear made tears form in her eyes. She could not even contemplate the distances that they would have to travel and could not picture what was at the end of such a journey. Her instincts told her to keep her children close.
‘It would only be for a while,’ Mercedes assured her. ‘It would keep them out of harm’s way while all this is going on, and they wouldn’t be starving.’
People were now lining up to apply for places on these boats for their children, and the queues were even longer than those for bread. The horrors of Guernica, the bombing of innocent people and the methodical destruction of an entire town had made everyone in Bilbao face the brutal truth: the same could happen to their own city.
Such complete annihilation could be perpetrated by land, sea or air, and there was no safe haven for them - not in Spain at least. Like so many other parents in Bilbao, in the past few days Señora Sánchez had faced the fact that the best thing for her offspring would be for them to leave for a safer place. After all, people were saying that it would only be for three months.
For more than eighteen hours, Mercedes waited with Señora Sánchez and her four children to be seen about their application for evacuation abroad. Everyone was nervous, occasionally glancing up at a bright, empty sky, and wondering how many minutes’ grace they might have between the first glimpse of a bomber and the earthquake rumble of an explosion. They were queuing up for places on the boat that was to go to England, the Habana. Though Señora Sánchez had no image of it in her mind, she knew that Great Britain was much closer than some of the other places on offer and for that reason she would see her children again much sooner.
After all these hours of patience, it was finally María Sánchez’s turn to make the case for her precious sons and daughters.
‘Tell me the ages of your children, please,’ demanded the official.
‘They are three, four, nine and twelve,’ she answered, indicating each one in turn.
The official scrutinised them.
‘And what about you?’ he asked, addressing Mercedes.
‘Oh, I’m not one of her children,’ she replied. ‘I’ve just been helping look after them. My name isn’t on the application.’
The man grunted, marking something on the form in front of him.
‘Your two youngest are below the age requirement,’ he said, addressing Señora Sánchez. ‘We’re only taking them between the ages of five and fifteen. Your older two might qualify but first I need you to answer a few questions.’
After that he barked out a list that demanded instant, truthful answers: father’s occupation, his religion and the party he had belonged to. María answered them truthfully. There seemed no point in lying now. Her husband had been a trade union member and a member of the socialist party.
The official put down his pen and picked up a file that lay on his desk, opened it and ran his finger down a column, counting silently. For a few minutes, he continued to make notes. There had to be an allocation of children from parents of all the various political parties in proportion to the voting patterns in the most recent election. The children were signed up for one of three groups: the Republicans and Socialists, the Communists and Anarchists, and the Nationalists. It seemed that the boat was not quite full, and that there was space for some more from the Socialist party.
‘And you,’ said the official, looking at Mercedes, ‘would you like to join the boat as well?’
Mercedes was completely taken aback. It had not occurred to her that she would be given a place. She was too old to qualify for one of the children’s places and had resigned herself to staying in Bilbao. She had had no ambition to get herself onto one of the boats that took adults to faraway places. In her mind, such journeys would have been an admission to herself that she would never find Javier.
But she had to cling on to the ever-shrinking hope of finding him, given that the other option, to retrace her steps, was now ruled out.
‘We need a certain number of young women to look after the younger ones and there is a space. If you have been taking care of children for a while, you might be just the sort of person we need,’ said the official.
Mercedes could only dimly hear his voice, so filled was her mind with this new dilemma.
‘Mercedes!’ exclaimed María. ‘You must go! What a chance!’
For the first time since she had known her, Mercedes saw the colourless expression of resignation melt away from the woman’s face.
Mercedes felt as though a hand was being held out to her and it would be ungrateful of her not to take it. People were clamouring for spaces on these boats. She told herself she could be back in a few months’ time, reunited with her family. But to abandon the search for Javier was unthinkable.
The two older children, Enrique and Paloma, whose fates had already been decided, stood looking at her, with pleading expressions. They badly wanted her to come with them to this unfamiliar destination and instinctively knew that their mother would be happier if she was on the boat with them. Mercedes looked at their wide, hopeful eyes. Perhaps for the first time she would do something really useful, and take responsibility for someone other than herself.
‘Very well,’ she heard herself say. ‘I’ll go.’
There were a few formalities. Firstly a medical. Mercedes took her two charges to the office of the Asistencia Social and they waited in line until the English doctor was ready to see them. There was not much conversation since neither spoke the other’s language.
Paloma and Enrique were each given a clean bill of health. A hexagonal card with the words ‘Expedición a Inglaterra’ and their own personal number was pinned to their clothing, and they were instructed to wear it at all times.
‘What are you going to take?’ Paloma asked Enrique excitedly, as though they were going on a pleasure trip.
‘Don’t know,’ he said miserably. ‘Chess set? Not sure. Don’t know if there’ll be anybody to play with.’
They were allowed only one small bag each, with a change of clothing and a limited number of possessions, the choice of which would have to be very carefully thought out. For Catholic children a small Bible had to be fitted in too.
‘I’m going to take Rosa,’ said Paloma decisively.
Rosa was her favourite doll and her imaginary friend. If Rosa came on this journey, Paloma knew everything would be fine. Her older brother was not so confident. He was anxious about where they were going but his seniority in the family obliged him to put on a brave front.
Mercedes’ only possessions already fitted into a small bag, so she had no decisions to make. The boat was leaving in two days’ time, and in every one of those forty-eight hours there was always a chance that she might find Javier. In those two last days in Bilbao she scanned every crowd and every queue in case she caught a glimpse of his face.
At six o’clock on the evening of 20 May, thousands of people thronged at the railway station of Portugale
te. Six hundred at a time, the children were taken on special trains to Santurce, Bilbao’s main dock, where the Habana was waiting. Some of the parents had travelled no further than Pamplona in their entire lives, so seeing their children leaving for the unknown was almost unbearable. A few children clung to their mother’s skirts but often the distress was more on the mother’s side than on the child’s. Some children were cheerful, happy and smiling and anticipating seeing their parents again soon; they viewed this as a boat trip with a picnic, a short holiday, an adventure, and for them the atmosphere seemed exciting and festive. President Azaña had even come to wave them off.