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Mr Gardiner took a great interest in Ralph's education. He had lots of tips about the sort of things that a gentleman did or did not do, and about whom a gentleman might play with. Sadly, as a young gentleman, there were a lot of children that Ralph might not play with, such as the son of the concierge, or the boy who sold newspapers, or the cleaner's daughter.

On Saturdays Mr Gardiner led Ralph on long walks through Valencia, through wide cobbled plazas and stands of tall palm trees filled with birds, the strong sun dazzling his eyes. They walked past the cathedral and its bubbling decorations, past the modern apartment blocks and the grand bank building where Mr Gardiner worked, all the while Mr Gardiner imparting information about the buildings, or giving short lectures on the paintings in the museum as they walked through its cool rooms.

Sometimes he recounted stories from his own history, as if Ralph were the one chosen to know his secrets. Sitting in a café in the square while sparrows scavenged cake crumbs from the yellow earth, he told Ralph a long story about his mother, a Jewess who had escaped the Russian pogroms and the soldiers' brutal sticks. Ralph was horrified, his chest filled with indignation. He was thinking about how he would have rescued the old lady when Mr Gardiner dropped some coins on top of the bill and stood up. Ralph jumped as the man took Ralph's shoulder in a hard clinch and stooped down.

‘Thing is, family stories, d'you see? Not the sort of thing we tell every one. Just between us chaps.'

Mr Gardiner put his solid forefinger over his closed lips. The skin at the edges of his nails was raw looking. A manicurist came to the flat once a week to buff and file his nails back into shape; but the following week all her neatening was always undone, the nails uneven and nibbled.

Following a letter from England Mama was suddenly taut and busy and anxious, getting everything ready for a visit from Mr Gardiner's son.

‘You mean the boy in the photo?' said Ralph. ‘The photo on Mr Gardiner's desk in the old house.'

‘Why yes,' she said. ‘What a funny thing to remember, that old photo. Of course, he's older now, quite the young man. So you see, we must do our utmost to put our best foot forward, because, well . . .'

‘Because he's Mr Gardiner's son,' finished Ralph.

Being eighteen, Tom was now old enough to take it upon himself to come out and visit. So in the space of a week Mr Gardiner had hurriedly organised Tom's tickets and travel arrangements with great satisfaction, excitement even.

‘Of course, his mother will quiz him on every little detail here when he returns home,' said Mama, straightening the chenille drapes round the dining room window as Ralph worked through a page of sums at the table.

By the end of the week Mama had taken to weeping hopelessly over the menus and the maid's inability to dust, and by the time Mr Gardiner left to fetch Tom from the station, Mama had taken to her bed with a nervous headache.

She was still indisposed when Mr Gardiner arrived back from the train. He left Tom in the hallway with Ralph and hurried straight
in to see her. Ralph could hear his voice, the high, worried replies from Mama.

Mr Gardiner's boy walked along the dark hallway, peering at the pictures on the walls. He had slicked-down black hair and wide baggy trousers. He took out a cigarette, turned it round and tapped it, then put it away. He gave Ralph a wink. Ralph winked back.

Mr Gardiner came out. Shutting Mama's bedroom door he was a man released, lightened of burdens. He embraced Tom in yet another big hug and Ralph followed them through to the sitting room. The balcony windows had been left open onto the tops of the trees along the avenue and the heady evening song of the birds filled the room. Even when he went over to the drinks table to pour Tom a glass of amontillado, Mr Gardiner's eyes went back to his son, as if making an inventory of all the things that made him proud. He squirted some soda into a glass for Ralph and handed it to him with an absentminded pat on the head.

Mama had organised a special meal for Tom's arrival, but since the headache had toppled her plans as a hostess Mr Gardiner would lead the men out to eat. Ralph went in to say goodbye to Mama and she asked him to fetch her cologne stick from the dressing table. He rubbed the waxy, blue column over her forehead – almost as waxy as the yellowy bones prominent beneath the tight skin – releasing the fresh sting of perfumed alcohol.

‘Thank you, dear. It's so silly of me to be so weak-minded. I shall think good, positive things, and say a few prayers to clear my mind. Then I am sure I will be quite better again,' she whispered.

He left her, feeling guilty, glad to be going out with the men.

They went to a small restaurant that was almost a bar. Tom leaned back in his chair. He gave Ralph the feeling that he found something amusing about him, in a friendly way. He showed Ralph how to flick his lighter into a tiny flame and how to light a cigarette for him.
‘Sorry, old chap, I should have offered you one,' Tom said, holding out the packet, man to man. Ralph shook his head hard, thinking of the trouble Tom would be in if Mama were to find out.

Mr Gardiner ordered a table full of dishes, fishy rings of calamari and all the strange and misshapen fried things that Mama hated, the dark sausage dishes bleeding the fragrant oil that she disliked. The waiter seemed to know Mr Gardiner well, and they talked in mutters about recent disturbances near the cathedral.

Mr Gardiner tucked a white napkin in his collar and gave a thump on the table. ‘Eat up, boys.' He pushed slices of tortilla omelette and grilled sardines onto Tom's plate – and onto Ralph's.

‘So, how's your mother?' he said to Tom.

Tom nodded. ‘Well.'

There was a small silence. Ralph had also put a large napkin round his neck and was dipping fried potatoes into garlic mayonnaise. His eyes went from Tom to Mr Gardiner.

Then Tom broke into a string of funny tales about his sisters and him, and Mr Gardiner leaned forward and took them all in, exhaling huge belly laughs. Ralph listened and thought how it might feel, to be there, in the English garden with Tom, playing cricket and rescuing the dog from the water and annoying the old lady next door.

The night was mild. Music was playing over towards the bullring. They walked down the broad avenue past the tall buildings with their flaking plaster and ornate balconies. A sudden volley of harsh cracks exploded above the rooftops, opening out in red and silver flowers. Fireworks from the film show over in the bullring.

‘How about going to the flicks?' said Mr Gardiner, happy to prolong the evening.

In front of the entrance to the bullring, a lady in a sparkly evening dress and exaggerated make-up was shouting invitations to come in and see the film. She blew a kiss at Mr Gardiner.

Mr Gardiner brought them each a cone of hot, fried
churros
from a street seller. Shedding white icing dust on their chins, they went in through the grand entrance. Ralph thought how anyone watching them would see a boy with his father and his older brother; he felt a wave of borrowed pride, and an odd sort of homesickness, half wishing it might be true.

The sandy bullring was strung round with a line of electric light bulbs. A large white sheet was pegged up on a wire, faint creases rippling the picture. Loudspeakers were blaring triumphant bull-fighting tunes full of horns and accordions. Above the screen hung a round moon as close and as bright as a lamp.

They sat squashed up in the wooden folding chairs, Ralph bellowing with laughter at the Marx brothers. After a while Ralph realised that Mr Gardiner had gone from his end seat. He looked round and saw that familiar shape standing in the dark shadows at the back. He was talking with a man, his head bent as if listening hard.

Later, while the audience was laughing loudly, Ralph jumped, realising that Mr Gardiner was next to him, speaking into his ear.

‘Ferdie, old chap. You can show Tom the way back to the flat when this is over?'

When Ralph next looked round Mr Gardiner was gone.

It was up to Ralph to keep Tom company in the afternoons, when everyone else was busy; something he looked forward to each day. They stayed in the apartment and Consuelo joined them at the dining table to play cards and smoke cigarettes. Or they walked through Valencia, and Tom explained how school wouldn't be so bad next time. ‘Just a question of knowing a thing or two about people. You just need to take your time, watch how the other fellows work. They
have their reasons and their logic for doing stuff, d'you see? And once you understand that you can step round them.'

Ralph nodded, but he was sure he wouldn't ever have to go back to a school like that awful place in the wet English countryside with the boys and their constant small wars. He would stay in Valencia with Mama, with Consuelo's generous stews scented with
pimentón
, and always the bulky but elusive presence of Mr Gardiner.

The night after Tom left Ralph got out the small cigar box with the two letters that his real father had sent from Chile, and his father's gold watch from Flora and Cecily. He put the watch against his ear. The secret clicks and grinds of the mechanism lit up inside his head, keeping their old vigil. He thought of Mr Gardiner's shining happiness when he first hugged Tom at the station, and he wondered what it would be like to have your own father there, not to always have to feel like a guest on best behaviour – that sense of having to earn one's welcome.

He put the letter and the other things away in the box. They slid together with a rattling, empty sound. Just two letters; his own father had sent him just two letters in the years of silence before he died. He switched off his light, but in the dark he felt his cheeks burning; a hot shame through his skin, informing him that he was somehow unworthy: his own father had gone away, only ever sent two letters.

By the Easter of 1936, just after Ralph turned thirteen, Valencia was already so hot and dry that Mama's geraniums in the window boxes were wilting and in danger of dying. From first thing in the morning the windows were left open to the tops of the lime trees, where hundreds of starlings and sparrows shrieked from first light till dusk with a sharp, tumultuous noise. People went about their business in the dusty streets, the farmers herding a few goats across the square,
the old ladies standing in groups and gossiping about the latest news of fighting in the north, worried women hurrying past with baskets, armed soldiers strolling in twos or threes, ready to uphold the young republican government.

In the dining room of the apartment Ralph was sitting at the oak table, his maths books spread out, waiting for the tutor to arrive. As one hand rested on his exercise book he was surprised to feel a vibration in the table that seemed to grow, rising up through the building, travelling in through the open windows, resolving into a gritty, rumbling sound until the whole room shook. He went out onto the balcony. Below, people were appearing on the earth-baked avenue, shielding their eyes, holding cloths or caps or whatever they had run out with. From between the flanks of trees he saw a huge, industrial-looking tank with a long gun barrel rumbling down the street.