The Poet's Wife (20 page)

Life has become unbearable. Sometimes I would like to close my eyes and block out everything going on around me until it is all over. I would like to walk to the town hall and scream through the loudspeakers that send daily pro-fascist broadcasts out across the city that we are all humans and there is no need for any of this. But more than anything, as I sit here in the attic, crying against Eduardo’s chest, I should like to get my family, a few possessions and leave. I want to go somewhere far, far away where we can walk down the street with our heads held high and drink ice-cold
horchata
in a café and express whatever opinion we so desire. And then when this war is over, I should like to return to Carmen de las Estrellas, remove the dustsheets and continue life as normal.

Slowly, I lift my head up and look at Eduardo. His eyes have glazed over and he is very still. He begins to whisper.

‘I was so happy once, wasn’t I? It was beyond my dreams to hope that one day I’d be a father, or have any poetry published.’

I nod, stroking his arm.

‘Eduardo,
cariño
, please could we not go away?’ I repeat, trying hard to keep the desperation from my voice. ‘What do you think?’

Continuing to stare into the distance, he slowly shakes his head. ‘
Lo siento
, I can’t. I simply cannot. Do you not see? It would be like I have failed again, running away and not standing up for myself and my family.’

‘But Eduardo, it has nothing to do with that. What we are talking about is our safety. It—’

‘No,’ he repeats firmly as his eyes meet mine. ‘I have to stay here. I have to do what I believe in.’

I squeeze my eyes shut as I hear the beat of Eduardo’s heart beneath his thin cotton shirt. On every other occasion during our life together I have been successful in convincing my husband to make one decision over another. I never felt that I was manipulating him, but that he welcomed my opinion and somehow waited for it. This time, however, I know that I am powerless to change my husband’s mind. His decision is final.

W
e try
hard to keep our spirits up at New Year, not just for our own sakes, but also for the patients. Some of them simply don’t want to join in with the festivities – they bury their heads in their pillows and turn to face the walls as we weakly toast to the coming year. How can I blame them? I can’t even begin to imagine the brutal memories crowding their heads. One patient, however, is determined to put a brave face on, organising a talent contest for the evening and a football match for New Year’s Day. Henry Stevens is still on crutches but appoints himself as referee and makes sure that every able-bodied person with the slightest inclination towards football joins in. Since our first encounter outside the hospital that snowy December morning, I have spent quite a lot of time talking to Henry. I want to know what it was that made him leave his home in London to travel through France and over the Pyrenees to fight in a war that didn’t directly involve him.

‘But it
does
involve me, it involves all of us,’ Henry says to me as I change the bandage on his injured foot. ‘My government’s turned the situation into a farce by refusing to intervene and supply arms and troops. Even though it’s the democratically elected government for God’s sake! And all the while, Germany and Italy are throwing supplies at the fascists like there’s no tomorrow.’ He winces with pain as I dress his wound.

‘It doesn’t matter how much we beg our government or how many relief organisations are set up back in England, it’s just not enough. Thank God for the Soviet Union.’ He shakes his head angrily. ‘My government’s stand of non-intervention is a farce. Anyone must’ve had their head buried ten feet deep in sand not to have noticed how things have been changing in England over the past few years. Fascism is spreading all across Europe. If we can beat them
here
,
in Spain, then I honestly believe we’ll be in a stronger position for the future.’

As I wind the clean bandage round his foot, I glance up at Henry’s face. It is as serious and earnest as I’ve ever seen it. I am fascinated by him, in a similar way I suppose that I was by Jean-Marie, the young Frenchman. But Henry is the first foreigner I’ve ever had a proper conversation with. There are several things that particularly strike me about him. One is that he is determined to master Spanish. On the first day we met, I noticed that he struggled to form sentences. Although I understood nearly everything he was trying to say, his pronunciation was hard to fathom at times. But over the coming weeks, he improves dramatically. Clearly he isn’t fit enough to return to the field after a grenade exploded not far from him, badly damaging his left heel bone. And so, whilst he convalesces, he spends hours on end reading any Spanish book he can possibly get his hands on and practising with everybody.

‘How did you get to Spain, Henry?’ I ask him one day as we walk round the quad. His injury, I see, is getting better but it is bad enough to prevent him from returning to service, which I know frustrates him.

‘Train, ferry crossing, a few more trains through France…and then we had to walk over the Pyrenees. Now
that
, ’ he says, eyes sparkling, ‘was hard work.’ I look at the enthusiasm on Henry’s face and can’t imagine this man finding anything hard work, somehow.

‘It must have taken days.’

He nods vigorously. ‘Yes, it did. And it was damned cold and we weren’t well prepared for that climb. I had no idea before I reached the Pyrenees just how tall and vast they were; geography never was my strong point. A couple of men even decided at that point to turn back but I knew that I couldn’t get that far just to turn back. So we kept going. And made it, obviously.’ He turns to me and beams and I notice that his eyes are a shade or two darker than the sky.

‘When did you decide you were going to come to Spain?’

‘There was this kid at school, see. His name was Joshua and he was Jewish, nice lad. And sometimes we’d walk home together because he didn’t live far from me. And one time, we were walking home when this boy came out of nowhere and tripped Joshua up. He fell flat on his face and his nose was bleeding terribly. They started yelling racial abuse at him and I remember yelling back at them to get lost or they’d have me to deal with. They just laughed and said I was no better, standing up for a Jewish pig like him.’ Henry frowns and shakes his head, reliving the memory. ‘So perhaps that was the start of it, my sense of injustice. But after that it was hard
not
to get involved.’ He pauses and bends down to massage his heel. ‘You ever heard of the Blackshirts?’

I shake my head.

‘They’re a fascist organisation, led by the politician Mosley in my country. Anyway, this party started getting bigger and bigger and a couple of years back they tried to march through an area in East London which has a lot of Jewish people. They wanted to scare and intimidate them, you know. I’d already joined the Communist Party by then and we’d heard about the planned march so a huge group of us headed down there to stop it.’

‘What did you do?’ I ask, wide-eyed.

‘We set up barricades and they certainly hadn’t expected so many anti-fascist demonstrators because both the police and the Blackshirts were taken by surprise. No matter how hard they tried to get through, we wouldn’t let them. My kid brother Stan threw a bucket of rotten apples at one of the Blackshirts.’ Henry grins. ‘The police couldn’t do anything, there were too many of us. Eventually the march was called off. So it worked, you see. And that, I suppose, is why I’m here: because if enough people come together to protest something they know is wrong, they can create change. Change for the better.’ Henry sits down on a bench and stretches his foot out in front of him. He pulls a packet of tobacco out of his pocket. ‘Smoke?’

I shake my head. ‘
No
,
gracias
.’ I come and sit down beside him. The sun is warm and I close my eyes for a moment, losing myself in its gentle heat. When I open my eyes again, I turn to see that Henry is staring at me, smiling.

‘So where is he now?’ I ask.

‘Who, Mosley?’

‘No,’ I laugh. ‘Your kid brother, Stan.’

The smile fades from his face and he turns from me, placing his cigarette in his mouth and striking a match. He inhales and then replies, without looking at me, ‘He’s dead.’

I don’t say anything for a while. I can tell Henry doesn’t want to talk about it and quietly tell him I’m sorry.

Henry looks down and shrugs. ‘Not your fault. How about you?’ He turns back to me, a pained smile on his face.

‘What about me?’

‘Tell me about your family. Why you’re here nursing.’

I know we’re back on safe ground, and I chat to him about my extended family. Over the coming weeks, as I get to know Henry better, I assume that he might want to share the pain of his loss with me in some way, though I’d never dream of pressing the matter. Yet he only refers to him in passing every so often, calling him ‘Stan, my kid brother’. It’s clear that he’s suffering enormously; that he and Stan were very close and the lack of emotion I read in his eyes is simply a front.

I respect him for the way he copes with it. It seems to me very English. Although it probably isn’t healthy to keep it all inside like that, by then I understand that it takes people different amounts of time and different ways to deal with such immense loss. When I meet Henry Stevens, I quickly learn that he is just as likely to be charismatic and charming as he is thoughtful and withdrawn. To begin with, I find it hard that the man who chats so easily with me one minute can shortly afterwards sit silently by the window, staring out across the hills. But I learn that when he retreats to another world, I should leave him there.

L
ooking for Sara one afternoon
, I find her taking a nap in the dormitory before the next shift begins. As I quietly sit on the bed next to her, I look at my friend long and hard. She isn’t well – that much is clear to anyone. But I know more than most. Sara has been suffering terrible nightmares and I recognise that engulfing dread in her when she is called on to treat a gangrene wound or a case of frostbite.

I’m sure that if anyone who had met the two of us before we’d left Granada would have said with little hesitation that Sara was better suited to nursing. I
certainly
would have said that with my fear of blood. Yet looking at her now as she sleeps, I see the dark shadows under her eyes and her pale skin and I know that there isn’t much more of this she can take.

She was always the centre of attention when we were younger, the boys included. They all jostled around her at the school gates, vying for her attention, and I couldn’t fail to notice the sideways glances my brothers threw in her direction whenever she came to the house. So when Henry Stevens starts to pay me so much attention, I’m sure I read an element of surprise in Sara’s eyes. Yet her good nature doesn’t allow the green-eyed monster to surface for long. Shortly after she first begins noticing it, her envy transforms itself into a mild form of teasing.

One afternoon, we are changing the bed sheets in the ward whilst Henry sits on the other side of the room, smiling as he watches.

‘My, you
do
have an admirer, young lady.’

‘He’s a friend, Sara. Nothing more,’ I whisper as I fling the sheets into a laundry basket.

She grins at me and shrugs. ‘Whatever you say.’

I feel myself blushing and turn my head a little to prove to myself that he isn’t really looking at me. But there he is, his eyes firmly upon me and as he nods his head ever so slightly in my direction, I quickly look away again and continue with my task. I can’t work out how I really feel about Henry. A lot of the time, I convince myself that he is, as I said to Sara, just a friend. But I can’t deny he’s paying me a great deal of attention. Nor can I deny the tinge of disappointment I feel if I ever tell myself that this attention is no greater than he pays to the next girl. I think I know, deep down, that I’m not just ‘any girl’ to him. But I am inexperienced in these matters and have no idea of what I can do other than wait for him to say something. Or even, I think in my bed late at night, kiss me – the thought of which brings me out in such a deep, hot blush that I am relieved it’s pitch black and nobody in the dormitory can see my face. I chide myself for such idiocies, but this gentle flirtation with Henry Stevens does make these days easier to bear and helps take my mind off the nagging concern I feel for my family in occupied Granada.

T
he year drags
on and Henry’s injury continues to improve. He still has to use a walking stick and is level-headed enough to recognise that he’ll be a fairly ineffective soldier in his condition. Instead, he begins to work as an ambulance driver, shuttling wounded soldiers back and forth between the battlefields and hospital. It is absurd really that he is even doing this work, considering how much pain his foot still gives him, but he needs to feel as though he is being useful. That is why, after all, he has come to Spain in the first place and I can understand that.

Not long after he starts this work, the lights of the ambulance break and, as there are no replacements available, Henry and his companion have to drive through the dark hills at night- time in the pitch black. This terrifies me, and I find myself staying awake whenever he goes out at night and loitering in the wards, checking and re-checking on the patients until I know he is safely back. As soon as I see him – the limp, the sand-coloured hair, his blue eyes and ruddy cheeks – the wash of relief that floods through me makes me feel physically sick.

And my dear friend Sara, I knew it was only a matter of time before she would eventually decide she couldn’t remain at the hospital any longer. As she sobs into my neck, she tells me that she feels like a failure; that by leaving she is going back on everything she believes in. I assure her that’s not the case and that she’s risked a great deal by coming here in the first place.

‘Besides,’ I add, ‘think how long you have dedicated yourself to a job as difficult as this.’ My words seem to cheer her a little, but I know that she is almost equally terrified of leaving. There is no knowing what she’ll find in Granada and whether she will have to go back to a state of virtual self-imprisonment in order to survive from one day to the next. Yet leaving is a better prospect than remaining at the hospital with the demons that haunt her dreams at night and the horror she feels each new day at what she might witness. As I wave her goodbye, a part of me wants more than anything to go with her, yet whilst there is still work to be done here, my conscience simply won’t allow it, and she promises to write with news as soon as she is home.

So much is happening here and events are moving rapidly. I know that the Soviet Union, and France and Mexico to a lesser extent, are still supplying the struggling Popular Front with arms and money. Even so, the Republicans are losing the war. I know that. And the truth is that I stay here not only for the work and the strength it gives me. I also stay for Henry. Something is growing between us by the day; feelings that we can’t articulate. But the smiles that linger a fraction of a second longer than normal and the small excuses we find to be in one another’s company speak far more to us than any words could. And as the Republicans lose more and more territory, I always feel his presence, near me. Comforting me somehow.

Then the Republican stronghold of Catalonia is taken. This comes as a hard blow and the chief of staff starts trying to restore contact between Catalonia and the rest of the rapidly diminishing Republican zone, but this is far from simple. The nationalist forces are moving closer and closer to the capital, so in order to keep them as far away as possible, a decision is made. The Republicans will launch an assault over the fast-flowing Ebro River. Strategically, it will be a nightmare. Long before it has even begun, the logistics are being planned down to the tiniest detail. Whilst the troops are being prepared, we brace ourselves for an influx of casualties. The truth is that it isn’t until I become aware of the scale of what is being planned that I acknowledge my feelings for Henry Stevens run far deeper than I’ve ever admitted to myself. I realise with a pang that, even with his injury, there is every possibility that Henry will be leaving for the front.