Later that week, that was exactly what they would begin to do.
Some of the children found the walled area where a few vegetables were still growing. In the past they had been cultivated in industrial quantities, but now only a few onions and potatoes grew. One of the girls went into the greenhouse and found some strawberries growing in a trough. She could not resist eating one and was in a state of anxiety for the rest of the day over whether Lady Greenham had counted them and would notice the missing fruit.
Other children had discovered a disused tennis court and, in a nearby pavilion, the old, rolled-up net. Carmen, with some of the older boys, was now attempting to erect it. The lines were still just about visible, and once they had rooted out some old rackets, all with a string or two broken, a few had begun to pat a ball back and forth across the net. It had been many, many months since they had had fun like this.
At lunchtime Sir John came to find them. He could hear their laughter and found a group of the children trying to keep a ball in play.
‘What’s this?’ asked Carmen, holding out a giant wooden hammer for him to identify. ‘There are several of them in a box.’
‘Ah,’ he said smiling. ‘That’s a croquet mallet.’
‘A croquet mallet . . .’ repeated Carmen, none the wiser.
‘Shall I show you how to play after lunch?’
‘It’s a game, then?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘and we used to play it on that lawn.’ He pointed to a huge flat sweep of grass that was now covered in patches of moss. ‘It’s a bit bumpy now, but no reason why we shouldn’t have a go.’
After a lunch of potato soup, some bread and a lump of cheese that the children thought rubbery but quite enjoyed, they were back in the garden. There was a croquet lesson. Sir John had set up the hoops and now taught a group of them the strange and quirky rules of the game. Even the boys were dismissive of the option to drive another player off the lawn, and adopted a more gentle strategy. They had witnessed enough aggression in their short lives.
The delightful romance of all the garden’s different spaces captivated everyone, and on this perfect English summer’s afternoon, they all temporarily forgot about the past and enjoyed the present. There was the freedom to run around and the opportunity to sit quietly too. A few of the younger ones had found a bench in the sunshine and started to draw.
Carmen had kept in touch with some of the other teachers, and conditions in some of their colonies made her appreciate more than ever their good fortune in being at Winton Hall. At one place, the children found themselves being used as free labour in a laundry, and at some of the Catholic-run homes, the nuns did not hesitate to punish misdemeanours with beatings.
Those who were in Salvation Army camps seemed to have most complaints:‘The stern faces of women in bonnets who make us sing English hymns only remind me of why we had to leave Spain,’ wrote Carmen’s friend. ‘People in uniform forcing us to conform to their religion! Doesn’t that sound familiar?’
It seemed to Mercedes that though their actions were often well meant, some of those who ran the colonies failed to appreciate what these children had suffered.
Chapter Thirty-six
ONE WARM SUMMER’S day passed after another and the mood at Winton Hall was generally one of content. Many of the children had recently received letters from their families in Bilbao. Enrique and Paloma were among the lucky ones and now knew that their mother and little brother and sister were all safe.
In the mornings, the children had a few hours of lessons but afternoons were for recreation. One day a group of them were trying to recall the words of their favourite songs and the steps of some traditional Basque dances. It mattered so much to them that they should not forget the good things about home. Over the coming days they rehearsed until they were word- and step-perfect. They would perform them to Sir John and Lady Greenham and Mrs Williams, if they were interested.
That night after supper, they put on a performance. Even Lady Greenham managed to applaud. Sir John’s enthusiasm bubbled out of him.
‘That was marvellous,’ he said to Carmen. ‘Really marvellous.’
‘Thank you,’ she said beaming.
‘And I’ve got an idea! I think you should put on a show in the village!’
‘Oh, surely not,’ Carmen replied. ‘I think the children would be much too shy.’
‘Shy?’ exclaimed Sir John. ‘They seem anything but shy!’
‘Well, I’ll talk to them about it later,’ said Carmen, not wanting to dismiss his idea. ‘Do you think that people would pay?’
Over the past few weeks she had become aware that money for their keep was in extremely short supply. Although the Basque Children’s Committee waged an enthusiastic campaign for donations, the British public were not always prepared to dig deeply into their pockets for children whom they regarded as communists. In every colony the exiles were coming up with ways of earning money.
Sir John was right. That night the children all voted unanimously to perform for the public if it could be arranged.
‘But it’s only three dances and five songs,’ one of the older girls put forward. ‘Do you think that’s enough if we’re charging for tickets?’
There was a general murmur of agreement that this might not be enough. Mercedes did not hesitate to put forward another idea.
‘I could dance,’ she said. ‘They might not have seen flamenco before either.’
‘It would certainly make a more varied programme,’ agreed Carmen, who knew of Mercedes’ past. ‘But who is going to accompany you?’
‘Well, there isn’t a guitarist here,’ Mercedes said, trying to make light of it, ‘but I could teach you some clapping rhythms.’
Several hands shot up in the half-light. There was certainly no shortage of enthusiasm.
‘And I have these,’ came a voice from the bed at the far end of the room. It was Pilar. They all turned round when they heard the purring sound of castanets. It was like the sound of a cicada, and on this hot night, they almost imagined they were at home. Pilar had been playing with the castanets since she was three or four, and the fourteen year old now had extraordinary mastery over them.
‘Perfect,’ said Mercedes. ‘We have our performance.’
The dancing troupe grew now to twenty, and everyone rehearsed frantically for three days. The ones who were not dancing made posters and Sir John had them put up in the village.
To Lady Greenham’s chagrin, Mercedes practised in the hallway, where the flooring was solid enough to take the force of her steps.The girls sat on the stairs to watch her and peeped through the banister. They had never seen anyone quite like her and were completely mesmerised, clapping and stamping their feet with appreciation whenever she rested.
Pilar sat at the back of the hall. She quietly tapped the beat with her hands first of all, working out the rhythms and then, inaudibly to anyone but herself, she worked out the patterns for the castanets. Only when she was completely sure of them did she move forward and begin to play for Mercedes. She exploited every complex variation of castanet sound, making them trill and sing and snap and clack.
‘That’s wonderful, Pilar,’ said Mercedes. She had never heard castanets played more eloquently.
On the night of the performance, every seat in the village hall was filled. Some had come out of pure curiosity to see these ‘small, dark little people’ as they were described by the Basque Children’s Committee. For them it was rather like going to the zoo. Others came simply out of boredom. There was little other entertainment in an English village.
The Basque dances charmed the audience. Mrs Williams had managed to find them suitable material, and the girls had made their own costumes: red skirts, green waistcoats, black aprons and simple white blouses. They danced with vigour and enthusiasm. Everyone clapped and called for an encore.
The songs enchanted the audience too. Sweet voices in perfect unison sang out ‘Anda diciendo tu madre’ and even the most hard-hearted
people in the audience melted. Mercedes, standing in the wings, felt a lump rise to her throat as she heard them sing that last word, ‘madre’. They were so far away from their mothers and most of them had been so extraordinarily brave.
Mercedes was the last item on the programme. The contrast between her and the innocent naïvety of the Basque dances could not have been greater. It was nothing like those mechanical performances she had given on the journey towards Bilbao. Here into this hall, with its leaking roof and an audience of stony-faced Englishmen and -women, she brought all of her pain and longing. She was wearing the red polka-dotted dress that she had been given all those months ago by the bar owner. She had put on plenty of weight since then and it was now perfectly moulded around her re-emerging curves.
If the audience had evaporated into the air on this warm night, it would not have mattered to her.Tonight, she danced for herself. Some of them understood it and were drawn in. They eagerly followed every expressive movement with their eyes and appreciated the emotion she was laying bare.When the castanets crackled in the air and matched the rhythm of her feet, they found the hairs on their necks standing on end.
Others found her performance baffling. It was strange, incomprehensible and alien. It made them feel distinctly uncomfortable. At the end of the performance, there was a moment of silence. None of them had ever seen anything like it. Some then clapped politely. Others burst into rapturous applause. Several people rose to their feet. Mercedes had divided them.
The reputation of the Basque singing and dancing, and the flamenco soon spread. It was even reported in the local paper. Letters came from other villages and towns in the south of England asking the refugees to perform, and all invitations were accepted as the payments contributed to their upkeep. Once a week they packed their costumes and travelled to another destination. The contrast between the innocence of the traditional Basque dances and the flamboyant style of flamenco was unique wherever they took it. Not a day passed when Mercedes did not think of Javier, and when she danced it was as though she revived him freshly in her mind and conjured him up again. She needed to keep in practice for when they met again, she told herself.
A few months of relative happiness went by and the only person who did not seem to be enjoying the holiday camp atmosphere of Winton Hall was Lady Greenham.
‘Why does she look like she’s sucking a lemon?’ Mercedes commented to Carmen one evening.
‘I don’t think she’s that keen on having us here,’ answered Carmen, stating the obvious.
‘So why did she invite us?’
‘I don’t think she did. It was all Sir John’s doing,’ replied Carmen. ‘But actually I think she’s just one of those people.You know - never really happy.’
Lady Greenham’s lips were even more pursed than usual when she strode into the dining room at breakfast time. Sir John was sitting having a cup of tea at one end of the table. He enjoyed the formless hum of a language he could not understand.
‘Look!’ said his wife, slamming down a copy of the Daily Mail on the table in front of him. ‘Look!’
All the girls had stopped talking. They were alarmed by her apparent anger.
‘BASQUE CHILDREN ATTACK POLICE’ shouted the headline.
Her husband turned the newspaper over so that no one else could read it. ‘That may be the case, which I doubt, but it hasn’t happened here, has it? And you should never believe what you read in that newspaper.’
‘But they’re clearly not to be trusted!’ Lady Greenham said in a loud whisper.
‘I think we should go outside to discuss this,’ Sir John hissed angrily.
They both left the room and the sound of raised voices could clearly be heard. Some of the children listened at the door, though they understood almost nothing. Carmen pushed them out of the way to hear.
Sir John admitted that he had heard of minor incidents in the villages close to some of the colonies - scrumping of apples, for example, and the occasional scuffle with local boys, and perhaps a broken window or two - but he was absolutely certain that nothing of the sort could happen at Winton Hall.
Lady Greenham’s ambiguity about their presence had always been obvious but now Carmen saw the whole picture.This frosty Englishwoman was happy to do good works for charity as long as it did not intrude too much on her life. Her husband’s ‘project’ had taken it over completely, and she would never feel comfortable with these outsiders. They were foreign and therefore, in her eyes, potentially feral.
Carmen said nothing to the girls, but confided to Mercedes.
‘I don’t think we should do anything about it,’ said Mercedes.
‘We must simply prove her wrong,’ agreed Carmen. ‘The children’s behaviour must be exemplary.’
For the next few months, this was how it was. They gave Lady Greenham no cause for complaint.
From November 1937, parents began to write to the Committee. They wanted their children home. Bilbao was no longer being either blockaded or bombarded. In April 1938, Señora Sánchez, whose apartment block had been struck during an air raid, had found new accommodation. She was now ready to reunite her family, and Enrique and Paloma packed their things to return.
Mercedes travelled with the children by train to Dover, from where they were to catch a boat to France before making the onward journey down through Spain. As she sat in the railway carriage with the oranges and golds of the autumnal landscape floating past, she studied her two charges. In the past year, Paloma had remained a little girl. Her doll, Rosa, sat on her lap, just as she had done on the train journey from Santurce to the dock the previous May. By contrast, Enrique had changed substantially. He still had the same worried look, but he had turned into a young man. She allowed herself to imagine the reunion with their mother and felt a stabbing at her heart.
‘I’m not sure about going back,’ Enrique said to Mercedes when he saw that his little sister had dropped off with the motion of the train. ‘Some of the boys are refusing to go.They don’t believe it’s safe.’
‘But your mother has written to you. She wouldn’t be suggesting it if she thought it might be dangerous, would she?’ Mercedes said to reassure him.
‘Supposing it’s not her suggesting it, though? Supposing she was forced to write the letter?’
‘That’s very suspicious of you,’ Mercedes said. ‘I’m sure the Committee wouldn’t be letting you go if they thought there was any chance of that.’
It had not occurred to Mercedes that there was anything untoward about these letters that regularly arrived to summon children home. It seemed the most natural thing that they should be going back to Spain, and it was what had always been planned. Many parents would rather have their children standing beside them raising the fascist salute than thousands of kilometres away in a foreign land. The rumblings of war were now happening across the whole of northern Europe, so ‘home’ had to be the safest place for anyone.
Mercedes hugged the two children close before handing them over to the person who was chaperoning a whole group back to Spain. Enrique held back his tears, but neither Mercedes nor Paloma could manage to restrain theirs and their farewells were tearful. Promises to meet again were heartfelt.
As she watched the boat leave, Mercedes fought against her desire to return to Spain. With no idea where Javier could be, and real fear of what might happen to her if she returned to Granada, she knew she was better off staying in England. She still had plenty to occupy her here with the children who had not received summonses from their parents. Some of her charges knew these would never come, if both their parents had been killed. Mercedes took the train back to Haywards Heath and returned to Winton Hall, where some new children were due to arrive from another colony, which had been shut down. The initial ninety colonies were gradually reduced in number as more evacuees returned home.
A diminishing group of them continued to put on their dance performances but there was anticipation at every venue now as their reputation grew and the attitudes of l
ocal people towards them softened. Occasionally another flamenco dancer would join Mercedes, and two brothers from another colony in Sussex, who were accomplished guitarists, sometimes came too.
When Madrid fell in the spring of 1939, Franco wanted every evacuee and exile still in England to return. Many were warned against it. Destitution, persecution and arrest were all distinct possibilities.
Mercedes realised she now must take a risk. She wrote a short, careful letter to her mother to tell her where she was, hoping for a response that would give her guidance on what she should do.
In Granada, Pablo and Concha wept with joy when they received the letter and knew that their daughter was alive and safe.