The Guardian of Secrets: And Her Deathly Pact (66 page)

Pedro’s first thought was that the idea was ridiculous. He wouldn’t do it—of course he wouldn’t—but he wondered what would happen if he said that.

“And if I don’t do as you ask?” Pedro said.

A condescending smirk settled on Joseph’s face. “Have you not been listening, boy? I know where your mother is, so if I were you, I’d nod my head just about now and tell me you’re agreed to the terms.”

“I don’t take kindly to threats, Dobbs, especially when it comes to my family.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck whether you like or dislike threats,” Joseph flung back. “Anyway, this is not a threat. It’s a promise. I told you, my friend Roddy has his orders from me, and he owes me his life! He knows where your mother lives, knows the street, the house number, and like I said, if I don’t get back to him either in writing or in person within six months to cancel that order, he will do it. Roddy can be a bad bastard when he wants to be. I wouldn’t like to be on the wrong side of him so don’t fuck with me, Peter. Don’t threaten me and don’t try to pull one over on me. I’m a very lucky man, always have been, and I always win.”

Pedro felt physically sick. He had to think about this with a cool head and hold himself together. Dobbs might be bluffing, but what if he wasn’t? He’d killed before.

“We’re in a war zone, in case you haven’t noticed. It could take weeks, months even, for a letter to get through, and what if I get killed? What then?”

“Make sure you don’t. Your family’s lives depend on you staying alive and getting me that money.”

“And what am I supposed to tell my mother? She’s not stupid. She’ll want to know why I want money for this, this Harry Miller.”

“Don’t worry about that. She was probably the most stupid woman I’ve ever been with. I doubt if anything has changed.” Joseph laughed.

Pedro lost his strength to fight. He was exhausted, scared, and in the midst of a war that had ripped his insides out. He stared stupidly at Joseph’s victorious smirk and was unable to comprehend the situation he found himself in.

“What if you get killed?” he asked Joseph.

“Peter, I better not get so much as a flesh wound or a sniffling nose, for your sake as well as mine. You need to look after your old man now, make sure nothing untoward happens to me, because if I don’t get back to Roddy, you know what will happen.”

Peter was defeated. The war had just taken a turn for the worse, if that was even possible:

“How did you find me?”

“I told you, Peter. I’m a very lucky man. I take gambles, and I usually win.”

Pedro watched the sun come up and swore under his breath. He hadn’t slept a wink, his body ached, and he had never been so frightened. He finished off the water in the flask and began tying his boots, only stopping when he couldn’t control his trembling fingers. He stopped everything, sat with his back against the dirt wall on the cold, damp ground, and closed his eyes. He had to think. He couldn’t march and fight the enemy with Joseph Dobbs and his family on his mind. He at least had to come up with some kind of plan before the orders to move out came through.

Joseph Dobbs had blown him up into tiny pieces; the enemy could not have done a better job! He didn’t care if he died this day, that was the least of his worries, but the thought of Joseph Dobbs getting his hands on his family was something he didn’t dare think about. Had his mother, his great aunt, and his father lied to him all these years? If so, why? He had seen his mother’s reaction through the years. Every time he’d asked about Joseph Dobbs, she had been open and precise with the information. She had even read excerpts aloud from her journals about the pain and then finally the relief on hearing about his execution. So if his mother didn’t know he was still alive, who did? And was Joseph Dobbs lying about the man Roderick? he wondered. It was possible that the man didn’t even exist, but what if he did?

Pedro heard the call to arms and finished tying his boots. The dilemma that faced him was twofold now: His mother not knowing that Joseph Dobbs was alive was probably a good thing. But if he knew anything about Joseph Dobbs, it was that he would not hesitate to execute his threat to kill his family. The other problem was that even if he wrote the letter, there was no guarantee that his family would remain safe. He swore again. The supply trucks were starting their engines. He was moving out, and Joseph Dobbs was going with him. There was fighting to do and not much time to think about anything else. Fighting and surviving were all he could think about now. He picked up his rifle. Maybe Dobbs would do him the ultimate service and get his head blown off by Franco’s men. Then he remembered that if he did, his family might also be killed.

Through the truck’s window, Joseph watched Pedro climb out of the hole. He smiled. The boy was thinking about him, and he would still be thinking about him when this day was over. The plan had been brilliant, and like a true poker player, he’d managed to bluff to perfection. He hadn’t thought about Roddy for a while now, but the thieving bastard had come in useful one last time all the same. He had bought him some insurance and some time, and he had become an unwitting player in the biggest game of his life as well. At first, he had wanted to kill all the Merrill brats, but now he just wanted to get out of Spain; on this occasion, money would be more satisfying than murder!

He watched the trucks filled with men and supplies leave the ground where he’d slept for what seemed like years, and then he closed his eyes. The driver next to him never spoke, and he didn’t want to listen to what the Spaniard was saying anyway. He’d had his fill of Spain, of the fighting, and of the men that went with it. He was scared of dying and scared the brandy would run out and give him the stomach cramps that made him want to shoot himself, but they were marching like ants again, fighting again, and some poor sods would die again. He would get the money and get out of the war, and then he would take himself off to London to kill Celia Merrill.

Chapter 71

O
n the other side of the bridge that separated the opposing armies, Miguel watched the grey light of dawn wash over the blackened fields of the Jarama valley. It never ceased to amaze him that even in the ugliness of war, the sunrise could still find his heart and fill it with its beauty. The sky miraculously transported him to Valencia and the mountains of La Glorieta, where there were no burnt-out trees and smoke-filled air in the sky’s rainbow of colours. There was no Mónica, cold and unrepentant, or blood-red grass where men died in agony, with faces black and grey with layers of unwashed mud. La Glorieta, that untouched piece of heaven on earth that war and death could not reach, would always be there. The morning sky and stunning sunsets were what his sister María described as her rainbow world. They were all ghosts in that rainbow now, for they had become mere shadows of their former selves, changed forever and dead to innocence.

He thought about Mónica now with nothing more than distaste and bitterness that didn’t stem from her indiscretion but from his own growing self-disgust. He had allowed her to mould him, dictate to him, and to make him fall in love with her, knowing that her political leanings went far beyond his own. He had not communicated with his own family because they were not like him; she had told him that. They were probably waiting out the war in comfort somewhere and allowing him to fight for La Glorieta without even a thought for his safety. She’d told him that too, and he had agreed. Recently, he’d questioned his actions on the night he found Mónica naked in bed with the man she’d called Juan. He still wondered why he hadn’t shot them both, something that he would have done at the beginning of the war. Conflict was everywhere, and he would not have been a suspect. A republican scavenger would have been blamed for the death of two well-known Phalanx members. He could have beaten the man Juan to a pulp. He could have thrown them both into the street. No one would have blamed him for doing what was, after all, a husband’s right to defend his honour. So why hadn’t he done any of those things?

Chapter 72

T
he International Brigade unit set up camp on the outskirts of a small village taken earlier that month by the nationalists. It wasn’t strategically important, but the objective was now to try to retake it and use it as a forward base. They had taken quite a beating in the spring of 1937, due to Franco’s colonial army, backed up by Germans and Italians, coming at them from all fronts, but the brigades were still determined, and their morale was still high.

Pedro spied Joseph Dobbs approaching his position and steadied himself for the onslaught of threats and insults to which he was becoming strangely accustomed. He was tired, more tired than he’d ever felt during any previous campaigns, but Joseph Dobbs had made sure that he didn’t sleep, pee, or breathe without him watching. The envelope sat in Pedro’s hand, written in a hurry but full in detail. He lay down his rifle, blanket, and belt bag containing maps, soap, and cigarettes and proceeded to take off his boots. He watched the flowing clear water rippling in the narrow river in front of him and promised himself a swim as soon as his business with Joseph Dobbs was completed.

“So here you are,” Joseph Dobbs said from behind him at that moment. “I wondered where you’d got to.”

“That surprises me. You haven’t let me out of your sight for a minute in the last four days; you must be slipping,” Pedro said with a casual distaste in his voice.

“You got the letter ready? You’d better have; I’ve given you nearly a week, and it’s not a fucking sermon I’m asking for, now is it!”

Pedro held the envelope in his hand and waved it in Joseph’s face. “Ready and waiting for you.”

Joseph licked his lips, stretched out his hand, and gestured with his fingers. “Give it here. Let me read it before you seal it.”

Pedro handed it to him and then waited in silence for the nod of approval. When Joseph had read it twice and was satisfied, he handed it back to Pedro and asked, “Why two envelopes?”

“To reinforce the letter. It’s probably going to change hands a few times and get dirty, maybe even ripped, so I thought that if the outer envelope gets torn, the one inside with the letter in it will be saved. I’ll only use one if you want. Makes no difference to me.”

Joseph shrugged and then watched Pedro slip the envelope inside a slightly bigger one. “Not as stupid as you look, are you?” he said.

With effort, Pedro produced a false smile. “I look like you, remember.”

“That’s the only thing you’ve got going for you. Right, give it here.”

“Just one more thing,” Pedro said as an afterthought. “I’ve got another letter in my belt bag. Seeing as how you’re in a good mood, give it to the convoy that’s leaving tonight, along with the one for my mother. Jim McGrath gave it to me just before he died, asked me to have it sent for him.”

“I’m not a fucking postman,” Joseph spat, all hint of a smile gone.

“Yes, I know that, but you work with supply, and you’re the only person I know that can get letters past the communists without them seeing. So will you do it?”

Why not? Joseph thought. He’d won anyway.

“Get it but hurry up. I’ve not got all fucking day to run your errands.”

Chapter 73

A
t the beginning of July, temperatures soared, and an unbearable oppressive heat filled the air. María and Lucia followed a brigade of Russian fighters in convoys to their new field hospital just outside the town of El Escorial, leaving the Jarama valley’s killing fields with mountains of unburied soldiers from both sides. The town of El Escorial was famous for numerous reasons; its history played an important role in many Spanish classical novels, and most notably, it was where King Philip II of Spain had died. Here, they were told, was where they would remain for as long as it took to push the nationalists back.

The buildings that they were to inhabit were part of an old school, and the small wooden huts surrounding the main hall were to be used as sleeping quarters for the medical staff. They were quite luxurious and spacious compared to Jarama, with proper windows and a roof that kept out the rain and unbearable heat.

During her first couple of days there, María found herself working alongside a Scotsman called Jack McFadden. He was from Glasgow and had recently arrived with a batch of medical aid workers out of London. The first thing María noticed about Jack was his size. He was very tall, with wide shoulders, and although a somewhat portly man, he carried his weight around with the ease of an athlete. He was also the strongest man she had ever met, with muscles that bulged and tore at the seams of his shirt, on arms as wide as tree trunks. He could lift almost anything in sight, was quick on his feet, and always ready to help when others had exhausted themselves to the point of unconsciousness. He wasn’t handsome, but his freckled pale skin and thatch of bright red hair, which he covered with a colourful bandana, gave him an unusual and interesting persona that didn’t go unnoticed. He told María that he was a father of three, a boy and two girls, who were so much like their mother that it scared him to death. According to him, his wife was pretty enough but dull—up at seven o’clock every morning and in bed for the night immediately after the children went to sleep, with nothing much in between. He was in his early thirties but felt as though he were knocking at the door of middle age.

“Boredom is making me old before my time. I need this adventure,” he’d told her, truthfully.

María respected his honesty when he’d pointed out that he was there not because he believed in the republican cause, compelling him to leave his family, but that his motives were to be able witness the war and return home with new stories and accounts of his experiences in it. She didn’t take offence at his motives for being in the thick of a foreign war, and she in turn told him that whatever his motives were, the Spanish people were grateful for his help.

Jack thanked her and then spoke almost as though it were to himself, a verbalised thought. “I am a professor at Glasgow University, and I talk endlessly about the history of the world. Now I have the chance to see history unfold before my very eyes, and that is a wondrous thing.”

He astounded her with the depth of his knowledge about the town and told her that he knew everything about everything from the past, not because he was a teacher but because the past fascinated him.

“If we don’t know who we were or where we came from, how do we know who we are, what we will become, and where we will go to?”

He made her laugh with his quick wit, but she also admired him because of the way he brought his stories to life with his lilting Scottish accent and animated facial expressions. She never tired of listening to grand, exaggerated accounts of some of the most famous and notorious personalities in history, and she began, unconsciously at first, to look forward to their time together.

For weeks, they worked long and hard through dark nights and bleak sunrises. Jack doubled up as an orderly and ambulance driver, and María attended to the injured in the triage room, prioritising the injured into severe and not severe. María could do nothing for the dead who lay under bloodied covers in orderly rows outside on the grassy verge, she told herself; that was Jack’s job. She saw very little of Lucia, who now spent most of her time in the makeshift operating theatres and wards that were no more than rough tents with dirt flooring. Sometimes the women did get the chance to chat or drink coffee together, but those times were rare, and as the weeks passed into months, Jack McFadden became María’s closest friend and confidante.

María told Jack about her parents, whom she hadn’t written to for over two weeks. She also told him about Marta’s death and her two brothers who were both fighting, omitting Miguel’s shameful involvement with the enemy, and took great delight in describing La Glorieta in detail.

It was late at night when the orderlies brought in a truckload of injured. María sifted through them, attending only to those who had a chance of survival. It was the only way they could deal with the vast number of casualties. The doctors, who also stressed that they wanted to save lives, told her many times not to waste time on those who could not be saved.

Amongst the rows of the injured waiting to be seen, she came across an Englishman whispering ‘Mum’ repeatedly.

She could see from her first quick glance that the young man wasn’t going to make it, and she almost passed him by, but something in his eyes compelled her to stop and return to his side. She knelt beside him on the ground and held his hand. A bullet had pierced his lungs, and he blew tiny bubbles of blood and saliva that trickled out of his mouth and streamed across his cheek. María asked him his name, and he smiled, his eyes bright with pain.

“Peter,” he told her. “My name is Peter Butcher.”

María gripped his hand tighter and then loosened it. She was afraid to ask the question, but if she didn’t, she would never know for sure. She leaned closer, wiping his bloodied mouth as she did so, and whispered softly in his ear.

“Do you know Merrill Farm, in Kent?”

“Yes.”

“Your grandfather… is he Tom Butcher?”

“Yes, he is,” he told her, coughing up more blood. “Merrill Farm is my home.”

“Peter, I know of your family. I’ll get word to them, I promise.”

“Thank you…” He smiled again, drawing his last breath.

María looked at the peacefulness of his face. He was only a young boy, too young to die so far from home, too young to die at all.

She worked with Peter Butcher on her mind the whole time. She couldn’t get his sweet young face out of her thoughts, and it was making her irritable and unable to concentrate. She would have to tell her mother, and she in turn would have the difficult and sad task of informing Peter’s parents. She would make sure that she wrote the letter when she finished her shift, no matter what time it ended.

When her shift finally ended, she was true to her word, quickly writing the letter to her mother before settling down on top of the thin straw mattress, sighing luxuriously and blotting everything else out but her need to sleep. The bell rang just as she dozed amongst the noisy thoroughfare. She hated that sound, she thought, grumbling like an old washerwoman, as it signalled the imminent arrival of more dead, dying, and wounded.

Inside her head, she screamed. She had worked for almost two days, with only short breaks that had totalled no more than six hours. She tried to remain calm, as they’d been sworn to do by all the doctors she’d ever met, but she was sure she couldn’t bring herself to look at any more dead and bloodied men or listen to their dying prayers.

She pulled her aching body out of the bed. She would have to go back to triage just in case they needed extra nurses; they usually did. She bit her lip and suddenly thought about Carlos. She would pay any price just to have him hold her, take her away from this hell, and love her until she slept peacefully in his arms, but it had been almost a year since she’d seen him. She also thought about England and the green peaceful fields her mother had so often described, almost wishing now that she’d gone with her. She wanted to be anywhere but here. She’d done enough, she thought, pulling on her dirty blouse and knowing that she would go back in regardless.

She saw Jack McFadden walking sure-footedly and cradling a wounded man in his arms. When he saw her, he seemed to know what she was thinking.

“Lass, meet me outside as soon as you finish here.”

“María, get some sleep,” the doctor told her from the other side of the room. “You’re no good to us looking like a dead cat. Go on. We can manage without you for a few hours.”

Jack leaned against a parked ambulance, and her tears fell almost as soon as he came into view. She couldn’t help herself, couldn’t stay strong any longer. She wanted and needed to cry. How else could she let go of all the horror surrounding her? She smiled through her tears and allowed him to take her in his arms.

“Jack, I’m so tired,” she sobbed. “I don’t think I can do this anymore. I just want my mother.” She sobbed even louder. “It’s my birthday tomorrow, I’ll be twenty three and I feel like an old woman.”

“Come on, María. Come for a wee walk and clear your head before you try to sleep again. I know it’s hard but don’t cry, lassie. You’ll bung up your pretty wee nose. And we don’t want to looking all red and puffy for your birthday, do we? “

María smiled for the first time. Just listening to his voice made her feel better. “Oh, Jack, I saw someone tonight from my mother’s home town, a young boy. He died.”

“I’m sorry. What can I say to make you feel better?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing to say. God, I’m so tired of all of this, all this death. She sobbed again. “I think I’ll go lie down. I’m too exhausted to walk another step.”

“Come on now, a busy mind never sleeps well. Walk with me a bit; it’ll do you good. I’ll tell you one of my stories.”

She smiled. Jack was right. She couldn’t sleep now even if she tried.

They walked for a while, keeping close to the tents, and then sat in silence in a deep ditch of dried-out mud that was hard and cracked like veins. María cried and threw herself into Jack’s tree-trunk arms. Jack put his hands on her shoulders and gently massaged the back of her neck. She moaned softly. She needed that so much. It felt so good. She closed her eyes and imagined that Carlos, not Jack, was the one with his hands on her body, giving her all the delicious sensations now coursing through her. It was Carlos’s touch, soothing and gentle, on her skin. It was Carlos’s fingers brushing lightly through her hair, taking out the jagged pins and letting it flow freely down her back. It was Carlos kissing her hard on the mouth, probing her lips with his tongue, and it was Carlos whispering, “I love you, María.”

She knew she should stop Jack, but instead she allowed him to continue searching her body’s secrets. His hands cupped her breasts, and his mouth followed, nibbling her erect nipples. He then lifted her skirt and began stroking her inner thighs, and she felt herself drift away into another world, where only pleasure and love existed. Jack soon slipped inside her, and she moaned with pleasure and then moved with him in rhythmic silence. Carlos and the war were forgotten; only Jack and her pleasure existed…

Afterwards, when Jack left her at the door of her hut, the thought struck her that instead of feeling guilty about what she’d just done, she actually felt liberated and even grateful to have found a moment of sheer bliss in the hellish world she was living in. She was not a loose woman or a republican whore, something her brother Miguel would have called her. It had been a beautiful, pleasurable experience that had reminded her that life was still worth fighting for, and that love could not be broken just because of one inexplicable lapse of sanity. She loved Carlos more than ever now. She even forgave him for leaving her again and for disappearing into the abyss of hatred that had consumed her country. He was probably thinking about her, wanting her, just as much as she did him. She felt his closeness and his love. He was inside her heart and filling it. Jack had made her understand everything.

Her friendship with the Scotsman continued. She knew that they had crossed a line, and was determined that it would not happen again. The following night, they spoke about what had happened, and Jack made it clear that for him it hadn’t just been about a sexual encounter with a beautiful woman. It had come about because he’d fallen hopelessly in love with her. He had wanted her for so long that he’d thought of nothing else. But he knew, accepted even, that her heart belonged to some faceless Spaniard who could not even be bothered to write to her.

Three days later, after particularly fierce fighting, María noted that Jack hadn’t returned from the front. It wasn’t too unusual for the ambulances to be out for hours on end, but it was strange that he’d been gone almost twelve hours with no word from him. After her shift ended, she fought her way through the traffic build-up on a sheltered part of the highway. She asked the others if they’d seen the red-haired Scotsman, but all she received were muted answers and shocked faces of men who had seen too much and couldn’t take anything else in.

“Jack… Jack McFadden!” she shouted beside each ambulance: “Jack McFadden!” she kept shouting all the way to the front of the line.

“Jack McFadden’s dead,” she heard a man say from within the shadows of the trees.

“He’s dead?” she asked him, praying that she’d heard wrong. “Jack McFadden, the Scotsman? Are you sure?”

The man came out of the shadows. He was limping badly, had a cut above an eye, and his face was as black as the night.

“Yes, I’m sorry, love,” he told her. “He was caught in crossfire carrying a wounded man. He almost made it to our lines, but they got him in the back of the head. Killed him and the injured man outright.”

María stumbled through her tears, not knowing where she was going, not really caring. He was dead. Her friend Jack… Sweet, kind, funny Jack was gone!

Later, just before dawn, she found his body amongst a row of dead outside the main medical facility. His red hair, stained darker with blood, shone through the clear sheeting that covered him. He was instantly recognisable. She sat down beside his corpse and saw his brightly coloured scarf lying bloodied across his chest. She pulled the sheeting to uncover him to his waist. She kissed his bloodied forehead and then lifted the scarf. He would want her to have it, and she wanted to keep it as a reminder of her faithful, devoted friend.