Olura (27 page)

Drifting slowly up to the house and slopping at intervals as if to enjoy the night scent of flowers, I reached the flagged terrace on the east. To my bitter disappointment there was still no
light to be seen. The french windows were unlocked, so I went in, closing them behind me. Nobody was about. It seemed early for Olura to have gone to bed—and, if she had, at least one window
would be blazing with light.

I explored the passage down the middle of the house from the living-room to the front door. As my only means of illumination was a box of wax matches and I did not dare to switch on the lights,
I could not tell whether you had just left the house for a stroll or were no longer living in it.

I was just about to return to the living-room when a sudden draught blew out my match. Someone had opened the window. Immediately afterwards I saw the beams of two powerful torches playing over
the room. I squashed myself into the corner between the walls of living-room and passage. A second later a beam lit up the whole length of the house.

It was the Pair of the Civil Guard—presumably the same whom I had seen earlier watching the road into the village. I could hear their low-voiced conversation. One of them asked if they
should search the house.

‘Better not,’ the other replied. ‘There is politics in this.’

About the only time in my life that I have thanked God for politics! If they came down the passage I hadn’t a hope.

‘Was he sure?’ the first asked.

‘Quite sure. He said that the poor señorita was in the garden in tears.’

‘She’ll have something to cry for. Headquarters believe she is an English terrorist. You saw her too?’

‘No. But since I knew she and her uncle had not come home …’

‘Good! You take the front, and I’ll stay on the terrace.’

They went out, leaving the french window open. I returned to the living-room, and from the cover of an arm-chair watched the man on the terrace. He shone his torch on the rocks and the water,
and then appeared to be signalling across the sands. Soon afterwards I heard a horse cantering over the beach.

This was hell. Evidently you would both be back at any moment. Ought I to stay or not? So far as I was capable of any constructive thought, I decided that my discovery and arrest—both
pretty certain—might compromise Olura. I blamed myself for impatience. I should have waited until I knew more of her routine and why she was being guarded by horse and foot.

So the only thing to do was to get out and get clear. It was a hard decision to take—the more so, since I doubted if it were possible. With a man at the front door, the garden route was
out. So was a climb down to the cove. If I slipped or dislodged a stone, the two chaps on the sand below would hear me; and if I fell, it would be slap into their hands. The only practicable way
was from the terrace silently down over the rocks into the water of the estuary.

Somehow I had to get rid of the guard outside the window. One obvious trick was to switch off the light over the front door. That ought to bring both of them into the house to investigate.
However, they could then be sure that there was really somebody about, which I wanted to avoid. So fuse the circuit? Difficult without any light to work by, but the wiring of any village of that
age was sure to be rather slap-happy. I was inclined to put my trust in the local electrician and to hope that he had not been an efficient Basque.

First I folded up the red cloak and deposited it among the cushions of the living-room couch. The Pair had only flashed their torches round the room and could not possibly be sure how many
cushions there were. Then I tip-toed down the passage to the front door and had a look at the switch. My luck was in. The screws which held it to the wall were loose. With a handkerchief round my
hand—memories of Mgwana and silk stockings—I wrenched it out from the wall a little and stuck the blade of a knife underneath. Sure enough the insulation had worn off a wire, or a wire
had been pulled partly out of its terminal by the loose switch. There was a satisfying pop, and darkness outside.

The guard at the front door ran round to the terrace to tell his colleague—a silly move of which I took instant advantage, slipping out of the door and shutting it behind me. Then I
crawled round the north side of the house, reckoning that if they ran back to the door that way they would pass me in the pitch darkness without spotting me. But in fact they went straight inside
through the window, politics or not, to catch the unknown who had switched the light off. As soon as I saw those great beacon beams of theirs searching the rooms I went over the wall of the terrace
and down into the estuary.

I had intended to swim upstream and go ashore on one of our hidden beaches. It could not be done. The tide was racing out too strongly. To swim across to the open sands seemed to me to be asking
for trouble. Even at night they showed as a paler expanse against which my figure might be black. If the mounted man or men had good night sight, I could be chased and captured before reaching the
distant cover of the sandhills.

So there was little else for it but to go down on the tide. I didn’t like that either. Flares, as I expected, were on the beach. A head floating down past the boats, the village and the
inn would probably be spotted—and, even if I got past the lot, there was no future but the open Atlantic. An exaggeration, this. I could have worked myself ashore on the right bank well below
the village, and perhaps got away by following the beach towards the Hostal de las Olas. But one is not at one’s best when hanging on to a piece of seaweed, with the current, let alone the
Pair, demanding instant decision.

Downstream I could just make out the bows of the Allarte’s launch. It was anchored only a few yards from Maya beach, but the far side of it must be in darkness. That was what I chose. I
allowed the current to sweep me down on the
María de Urquijo
, and climbed aboard just opposite the engine housing where my silhouette would not stand out against sky or white
sand.

I remember thinking that I could be seen from the bedroom windows of the inn, but no lights were on and it was unlikely that anyone had yet torn himself away from pleasant digestion of the
Sunday night supper and gone up to bed.

The glory hole in the forecastle, packed with bits of net, lobster pots and miscellaneous gear, offered a refuge. It was heated, I should guess, by the decay of small pieces of fish. The smell
was unspeakable, and I was very glad when Allarte and his crew of three came aboard. As soon as the forecastle began to thud into the sea, I knew we were clear of the estuary and came out.

Allarte was far from welcoming. He swore copiously and told me that I had no right, friend though I was, to hide on the
María de Urquijo
.

I apologised for the necessity and asked him why he was fussing, since he knew very well that nobody was looking for me.

‘What I know is that you are wanted for murder,’ he said bluntly, ‘and the whole place is crawling with police. For God’s sake, Ardower! It’s likely the boat will
be searched wherever we put in!’

I asked incredulously if all the excitement which I had noticed around Maya was just for my benefit.

‘Of course! What did you think? They knew you would come.’

It is humiliating to find one’s behaviour predictable. The criminal will visit his girl. Normal police procedure. Picket the house and you have him. It drives home the truth of
Olura’s insistence on the unity of mankind. Dons or juvenile delinquents, the first thing we do after committing murder is to call on our young women.

I could not make out how my return from France was known. Even if Sauche and Vigny had managed to give a hint without compromising themselves, why should police be so sure I was in Spain?

‘What murder?’ I asked Allarte.

‘How do I know? A foreigner, they say. And they have no doubt that it was you. Look, man! We have families! This is a risk we cannot take.’

Allarte throttled down the diesel. He and his crew left me sitting on the break of the forecastle, while they went into a huddle like mutineers deciding what to do with an awkward officer.

At last he called me over.

‘None of us want to take you back to Maya,’ he said. ‘It would be uncivilised behaviour to a friend. But we cannot afford to have trouble with the police. What we will do is to
land you on the Ermita. After all, you could have swum there, though God knows how you would have got ashore.’

‘And you won’t talk?’

‘Not us, by God I Not drunk or sober! I tell you, we have families.’

The Ermita is not quite such a fearsome island as it appears from your terrace. The top, if one could roll it out flat, would cover some four acres. There are patches of turf and heather
wherever there is shelter from the salt spray. On the far side, which only the fishermen ever see, the slope facing the open Atlantic is more gentle and the cliffs much lower. There is a just
possible, indetectable landing-place which can be used on the rare occasions when there is no swell booming in from the Bay of Biscay.

We came up alongside this low rock, with all fenders out, and Allarte told me to jump. He threw after me a loaf of bread and said that he would be back, weather permitting, the following night
with more provisions. He warned me on no account to light a fire or to let myself be seen from boats or on the skyline, and told me that I should find water behind the hermitage which gave the crag
its name.

I climbed up to the hermitage very carefully, for it was no place to be helpless with a broken ankle. I found four thick, loose-stone walls enclosing a small room, and a bit of roof left. It was
horribly cold, and I did not attempt to sleep or to occupy the hut. Too many odd vegetable growths—odd at least in darknesss—poked out from the walls and encumbered the floor. The
enclosure seemed inhabited by a sad spirit of loneliness, which I felt might become visible and unpleasantly conversational at any time. So I sat down on a patch of turf with my hands round my
knees and my dripping clothes spread out alongside me. Nakedness is a glory of love and the sun, even an emblem of virtue in a nudist camp; but civilised man, pitched into night and nature with no
clothes on, feels singularly defenceless.

My spirits rose a small point with the dawn, both taking the devil of a time to develop into any sort of warm lucidity. Then I slept a little, and woke up convinced that gaol had been more
friendly than this freedom. The only comfort was that I felt pretty well. Ever since the police magistrate had turned me loose on the public I had become remarkably tough, even for a much-travelled
and impecunious don.

There was, as Allarte had told me, a rock pool of rain water at the foot of the bare slope behind the ruined hermitage. Whoever the hermit was—I know nothing of him except that he is
supposed to have been a soldier in the Thirty Years War—he had smoothed a primitive catchment area to feed the pool.

After a breakfast of bread and water I explored my refuge. On one side was nothing but the sparkling semi-circle of the Atlantic; on the other, my love and very dubious future. The whole scene
of my happiness was spread out for me as I crouched among the eroded rocks at the top of the island; the Hostal de las Olas, Maya, its inn and its beloved estuary, and your villa where it pleased
me to think that I could see Olura in the red cloak. But the distance was more than two miles, and I insisted that it was probably the massed geraniums in the tubs of the terrace. When I and my
clothes were warm and dry I spent the long hours lying in the sun and reviewing the feverish days since first I met Olura. I marshalled all the facts as if for a thesis. It was then that this
narrative was prepared rather than in the actual writing.

In the evening I saw Allarte’s launch coming round from Lequeitio. He and his crew had certainly dumped me on a spot where they themselves ran no risk of ever being accused of complicity.
As soon as the
María de Urquijo
passed behind the Ermita it was out of sight of Maya and the mainland; a watcher on shore would only see it disappear and reappear two or three
minutes later. Allarte did not even stop. He brought the launch up alongside the land rock and flung ashore a bundle of old ragged net containing more bread, a kilo of cold, grilled sardines and a
leather skin of Rioja.

I ate ravenously and made myself a bed of heather on a patch of sheltered grass. It was one of those soft, clear nights when a man in the open wakes often to full consciousness and then falls
asleep again without intervals of drowsiness. There was no sound but the splash and suck of the sea, no light but the brilliance of stars and the phosphorescence of ripples and bubbles beyond the
streaks of foam. In one long, peaceful interlude of wakefulness I thought I heard Olura call my name. That was not surprising. My thoughts were obsessed by her. During the afternoon I had
childishly lined up two sticks so that in the early darkness I should know which were the lights of the villa.

The beating of the sea itself was high-pitched and feminine, agitated rather than militant. That I should hear a falsetto
Phi-i-ilip
from the sucked pebbles of some deep cleft was not
beyond imagination. I got up and started to prowl restlessly above the water. There could be no doubt that the cry was reality, or at least that I was really hearing it. I make the distinction
because hair was prickling at the back of my neck. In such an emptiness the siren or the wandering spirit do not appear so impossible as when listening to the positive biochemists of my
College.

I threw off my few clothes and dived in. The freshness of the sea dispelled the fear of it. Whatever it was that I had heard and was still hearing, I settled down to swim indefinitely towards
the thin sound. But it was much nearer than I thought, seeming to come from a whale-backed rock, soft with long weed, away to the west of the landing point. The rock was just clear of the falling
tide and I came ashore as gently as on a beach. My mermaid was there, stretching out her arms and calling into the limitless night.