Olura (20 page)

‘That cannot be proved. If you are suggesting that these Frenchmen killed Livetti, what motive do you ascribe to them?’

‘I have told you. To compromise Mr Mgwana.’

‘But a dead man cannot take photographs.’

It was no good saying that a corpse would be more compromising still. At once we came up against the good old argument that no one would risk murder for such a doubtful object.

‘You have stated,’ he went on, ‘that the admiration of Miss Manoli and her Group for Mr Mgwana was quite genuine.’

I repeated that of course it was, and begged him not to bother Scotland Yard which was obviously prejudiced against such damned nuisances, but to ask anyone in the London Embassy who understood
British politics.

‘Would you agree that General Sauche and any organisation of his would be bitterly opposed to the ideals of this Group?’

‘Yes, they would,’ I replied much too eagerly.

‘Then suppose we consider General Sauche, not Mr Mgwana, as Livetti’s objective?’

‘Sauche was no longer there.’

‘No. Because he had news of the plot and left in a hurry.’

This was a nightmare. In my effort to head him off the supposed attempt on Mgwana I had nearly agreed that Mgwana might have been plotting the assassination of General Sauche, presumably with
Olura’s complicity; and I could not help seeing that Sauche was a far more convincing objective.

‘Your Worship is pleased to ask my opinion,’ I said, ‘but in your trade as well as mine an opinion without evidence is worthless. What were Livetti’s movements? Who paid
him to visit Spain? What was he doing here?’

The Police Magistrate was easily frank about that. No mystery at all! Levetti had been shadowing—like Lieutenant Gonzalez—that newsworthy Teutonic princeling whose dubious divorces
from equally newsworthy wives had confused the entries in the studbook. Who had kidnapped whose babies from which was more than I could sort out, though doubtless clear to every female reader of
the popular press, avid for still more photographs of bikinis wet with maternal tears. No wonder Livetti was on the spot! And all this at Zarauz where Sauche had rented a villa and acquired enough
friends for a party!

‘But the general could have known Livetti!’ I exclaimed.

‘He did, and was pleased to be recognised. The camera of even a Livetti is proof that one is not forgotten by the public.’

‘But then that is the end of it!’

‘Is it, Don Felipe? You think so?’ he replied, for the first time using the polite form of address. ‘I suggest to you that if Mr Mgwana wished to rid the French and himself of
General Sauche, he would choose an assassin who was known to the general and had access to him at any time.’

What I could do to retrieve the situation I did. I said that assuming Mgwana had killed Livetti because he knew too much I couldn’t see why he should put the body through Miss
Manoli’s window. As for the complicity of her precious Group, I doubted if they had ever heard of the Alliance des Blancs, or the Alliance of them.

That was not true, since I knew very well that at least Vigny did consider Olura and her influence important. It looked as if he and Sauche had been clever enough to drop a hint to their
protectors in high quarters that it was alarm which made them leave the hotel when they did.

‘I have another suggestion for you,’ said the Police Magistrate. ‘Livetti was Miss Manoli’s lover. He climbed in through the bathroom window and in a fit of jealousy you
killed him.’

By this time I was exasperated. I retorted that if I killed Livetti it was not likely that Mr Mgwana would be my accomplice and swear he had done it himself, and I added that I was perfectly
willing to confess to a crime of passion if that was what he wanted, since it would carry a shorter sentence than whatever the hell I was supposed to have done.

To my utter astonishment he stood up, smiled, shook my hand and told me I would be released that evening on condition I left Spain immediately.

I could only murmur idiotically that I hadn’t had a chance to pay my hotel bill.

‘That will be done for you. And you will be escorted to the North Express tonight.’

He read me a lecture on the disastrous results of impulsive action, saying that I should not allow the Spanish ardour which I had so graciously assimilated to overcome my British phlegm. Since,
however, I had in fact assisted in averting a scandal of unknown proportions, the authorities were not ungrateful. He hoped that my affection and respect for his country would be in no way affected
by this unfortunate incident, and that I would for the time being preserve discretion.

Discreetly, by a plain-clothes agent who looked like a high civil servant’s valet, I was put into a first-class sleeper on the North Express. Discreetly, next morning, August 19th, I got
out at Bayonne. I do not consider my action chivalrous, praiseworthy or even impetuous. It was obviously Olura’s confession which had released me, and the Lord only knew what else she had
said or how deeply she had incriminated herself. In England I could do nothing whatever for her; but on my own familiar ground of Vizcaya I could at least hover between sea and mountain, inhibited
as a guardian angel, yet ready to influence events, possibly able to collect evidence.

I could not know that you had flown out from London to be with her. Even if I had known, it would have made no difference. You were only a name implanted in Olura’s conversation. Her
affection was clear; you as its object were not. Perhaps you should have been. But lovers are impatient when one or the other describes beings essential to a past which is not shared. The present
is so much more important. If we are immortal, how bored we shall all be with each other’s reminiscences for the first few hundred years of eternity!

I changed what remained of my travellers’ cheques and bought pesetas. I had also a reserve of cash which would be enough for weeks of simple living. I had wired for it as soon as Olura
moved to Maya and I saw that of all times in my life this was the one when I should least repent extravagance. Fortunately the money arrived just before our attempted escape and my arrest.

I bought a bottle of black hair dye, a cheap coat, a gaudy pullover and sturdy blue cotton trousers. My outfit was all too new and needed to be walked in and slept in for several days; but then
I should look like any Basque peasant or working man on his way from one village to another. When I had changed, I left my baggage at Bayonne station and went off into my world—for, within
reason, mine it was—with nothing but comb, razor, toothbrush, money and passport.

Language offered no difficulty. I could pass as a Basque, who had taken some trouble with the purity of his speech. Imperfections in my French and Spanish could be explained, when I had to speak
either language, by saying that I had come from the other side of the frontier.

I took a train to St Jean Pied-de-Port, hoping that there I could get a line on how to cross the frontier illegally. I knew that the regular routes were farther east, over the main massif of the
Pyrenees and down into Navarra or Aragon. But since I should have to walk—the Spanish habit of checking travellers’ papers made public transport dangerous—I did not want to hit
Spain at a point so far from Vizcaya.

I sat around in the cheap bistros and cafés, watching and waiting. A start had to be made somewhere, but I was fearful of approaching the wrong man. St Jean was a bad choice, too full of
tourists and cars, too empty of the simple dishonesties. I wanted a village, yet not a village which was so close to the frontier that my presence could arouse suspicion.

I walked out along the road to Lecumberry, attracted by a bridle path shown on my map; but I felt a fool. Where was a Spanish Basque walking to and why? And that I gave the impression of a
Spanish Basque was far too certain. My boina—an old possession—was much more luxuriant than the French béret, and my clothes, as I began to realise, were more like those of a
Vizcayan fisherman on his day off than of the evenly dressed bourgeois on the French side of the frontier.

Giving up that bridle path and all sense of being a competent adventurer, I turned back towards St Jean. Obviously morale had to be restored, so I dropped into a dark roadside café for
half a litre of whatever red poison they sold. Luck at last was with me. Arguing away in a corner—about the iniquity of mixing Algerian wine with good Béarn—were two middle-aged
French Basques speaking Euzkadi. They seemed honest chaps, so I joined them. After confidence had been established, I told my story. I came from Eibar and had lost my passport. My mother was
critically ill and I had to get home without delays and consuls and red tape.

A lot of good that was! One of them offered to drive me straight to the frontier post at Arnéguy where there was a friendly sergeant on the Spanish side who was his brother-in-law. He
might look the other way or he might not. But he would surely allow me to telephone Eibar and prove my identity.

I thanked him warmly. At the same time I may have looked a little hesitant. The other man slapped his kind and guileless companion on the back and winked at me.

‘Don’t you cross here, friend!’ he said.

He was a typical product of the borderlands—thick-set, bluff, a trifle in wine, and with the nose of an Assyrian king. He was not a man to be easily deceived and would have made an
admirable conspirator if only he could have kept his voice lower.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

He explained that over the frontier, in the province of Guipuzcoa, the people were a priest-ridden, Carlist lot of bastards. They would not betray a known and honest smuggler; but any stranger
trying to cross into Spain was liable to be taken for a republican of the reddest, and would get no help at all.

His tone gave me a line on his own politics; and he did not care, in this or any other echoing café of freedom-loving France, who knew them.

‘We’re going to Mauléon,’ he said. ‘You come with us! Friends can’t talk with the frontier on top of them.’

The three of us got into his ancient Citroen. His name was Iragui, and I gathered that he owned a small garage on the outskirts of Mauléon. Zubieta, his older, discreeter and more
trustful friend, grew artichokes.

On our way Iragui cross-questioned me loudly on my politics. I gave him a mixture of three parts Olura well shaken up with one of Paris Red Belt and a dash of Basque separatism. Lord help the
psychology of lovers! There was I, mischievously and deliberately exploiting Olura, and suddenly brought up by a catch in my voice because I had created her too vividly. It passed as the generous
indignation of an emotional socialist.

I was not allowed to see Mauléon at all, for Zubieta insisted on turning off the road to his farm. I am sure that he shrank, for my sake and his own, from entering still another
café with Iragui and listening to him discuss frontiers at the top of his voice. As a
bon père de famille
he was not going to have us disturb his family either. He parked us
on the turf with our backs against a walnut tree and came back from his house with a cheese and a litre of much better red.

A kindly man, he had a natural tendency to believe what he was told. But, once his suspicions were aroused, he was much more subtle in his questioning than the heartier Iragui. He agreed that I
was a Basque from Vizcaya and not on my home ground; yet surely I had cousins, friends, namesakes in the Pyrenean districts who could act as a starting-point for my enquiries? I had lost or found
it inconvenient to show my passport—good! But what other papers had I got? Iragui, too, expected me to have some credentials. He had decided for himself that I was a courier from Spanish
exiles to Spanish republicans.

I felt that Zubieta would be friendly to romance and that Iragui would appreciate sheer, fantastic impudence. So I took a chance and produced my British passport. Even if it was no help, I could
hardly be arrested merely because I spoke Euzkadi and wanted to cross into Spain.

The exclamations! The astonishment! The laughter! I received a double dose of esteem. As Frenchmen, they had a respect for learning which is unknown among the English; as Basques, a respect for
anyone who could master their language, for they all jealously preserve the absurd myth that it is unlearnable. I gave them the simplest possible explanation of my presence: that because of my
left-wing opinions I had been expelled from Spain, could not immediately re-enter it and wanted to see my girl.

They went into a huddle, and Zubieta came up with a promising plan. He delivered vegetables to the hotels of the little frontier town of St Étienne de Baigorry and knew it well. From St
Étienne, where the French post was, a narrow road wound over the Izpeguy Pass and down to the Spanish post at Errazu. Nineteen kilometres of no-man’s land separated the two.

It was not this hopeful gap between officials which appealed to Zubieta, for the country was so broken and difficult that if you left the road you would only be forced back to it. No, it was the
fact that the road was closed for extensive repairs on the Spanish side. So tourists at St Étienne were permitted to drive as far as the top of the Pass and the actual line of the frontier
with few formalities, since it was impossible to go any farther.

That, he thought, might be a useful beginning. But I was bound to run into trouble, dressed as I was. I was plainly no tourist. I was a Spaniard with dubious intentions. Hadn’t I any other
clothes? Yes, I had, but at Bayonne.

Well then, I must return and put them on. I must go as far as I safely could in the character of a respectable professor with a love of the Pyrenees, change back into my present clothes whenever
I had a chance and mingle unobtrusively with the gangs working on the road. At the actual frontier line there was a fixed post or a patrol, but the guards would not be alert since they had nothing
to do day after day but smoke.

My two friends argued it out. Iragui boomed that it was an extravagance and that I hadn’t a chance. Zubieta, as the originator of the scheme, insisted that it was child’s play. I
promised to send them a postcard to say which of them had been right. Both agreed—to salve their consciences—that if I were caught it could only mean a day or two in gaol. I was not so
sure of that. It could well mean gaol until the Livetti case was cleared up. But I liked the plan. It was not too fixed, and lent itself to improvisation.