Winter in Madrid (15 page)

‘Good man.’ Hillgarth’s tone lightened. ‘You should go to that party. Relax a bit. Chance to meet some
señoritas
. God knows there’s little enough social life in Madrid. The Maestres are a good family. Connected to the Astors.’

‘Thank you, sir, I might.’ Harry wondered what the party would be like.

The chauffeur was waiting in the car, reading a week-old
Daily Mail
. As they got in, Harry glanced at the cover. The German raids were moving out of London now, Birmingham had been badly hit. Barbara’s home city. Harry remembered the woman he had seen a few nights ago. It couldn’t possibly have been her. She must be back home now; he hoped she was safe.

‘Maestre’s daughter’s quite attractive,’ Hillgarth continued as they drove back to the embassy. ‘Real little Spanish pomegranate— Jesus Christ!’ They both fell back against their seats as the car braked sharply. They were turning into Calle Fernando del Santo, where the
embassy was. The normally quiet street was filled with people, a roaring, shouting mob. The driver was startled out of his calm.

‘What the hell?’

They were Falangists, young men mostly in bright blue shirts and red berets. There were about a hundred of them. They stood facing the embassy, shouting, their arms stretched out in the Fascist salute. They waved banners reading,
‘¡Gibraltar español!’
The usual
civiles
in front of the embassy were absent.

‘¡Abajo Inglaterra!’
the crowd yelled.
‘¡Viva Hitler, viva Mussolini, viva Franco!’

‘Oh, God,’ Hillgarth said wearily. ‘Not another demonstration.’

Someone in the crowd pointed at the car and the nearest Falangists turned and yelled their slogans at them, shouting, faces distorted, arms stretching in and out like metronomes. A stone bounced off the bonnet.

‘Drive on, Potter,’ Hillgarth said steadily.

‘Are you sure, sir? They look nasty.’

‘It’s all show. Get on, man.’

The chauffeur proceeded at a snail’s pace, forcing a passage between the demonstrators and the embassy wall. Half of them were teenagers, their Falange Youth uniform a copy of the Hitler Youth with blue shirts instead of brown, the girls in wide skirts and the boys in shorts. One boy had a drum and began banging it dramatically. It seemed to inflame the crowd and some of the boys reached out and began rocking the big car. Others followed and Harry and Hillgarth bounced around inside as the car inched slowly on. Harry felt disgust; they were scarcely more than children.

‘Give them a hoot,’ Hillgarth said. The horn sounded and an older Falangist elbowed his way out of the crowd, motioning the youngsters away from the car.

‘See,’ Hillgarth said, ‘they were just getting carried away.’

A tall, broadly built youth of around seventeen, worked up into a paroxysm of rage, pushed through the crowd and walked alongside the car, screaming insults in English through the window. ‘Death to King George! Death to the fat Jew pig Churchill!’ Hillgarth laughed, but Harry flinched away, the ridiculousness of the catcalls somehow making them even nastier.

‘Where are the
civiles
?’ he asked.

‘Tipped the wink to go for a walk, I’d guess. These are Serrano Suñer’s people. OK, Potter, pull up opposite the door. When we get out, Brett, chin up. Ignore them.’

Harry followed Hillgarth out on to the pavement. The shrieking was louder and he felt exposed and suddenly afraid. His heart began to pound. The Falangists shouted at them from the other side of the car, the enraged youth still howling in English. ‘Sink the English ships! Kill the Bolshevist Jews!’ Another stone sailed across the road and cracked the glass in the embassy door. Harry flinched and had to fight the urge to crouch down.

Hillgarth grasped the handle. ‘Hell, it’s locked.’ He rattled it. A figure moved in the shadowy interior and Tolhurst appeared, running in a crouch to the door. He fumbled with the catch.

‘Come on, Tolly!’ Hillgarth shouted. ‘Stand up for Christ’s sake, they’re only a bunch of hooligans!’

Then the chauffeur shouted, ‘Look out!’ and Harry caught a glimpse of something hurtling through the air. He felt a hard blow on his neck and staggered. He and Hillgarth threw up their arms as something white swirled round their heads, half choking them. There was a joyous yell from the crowd. For a second Harry saw red sand flying.

The door opened and Hillgarth ducked inside. Tolhurst reached out and grabbed Harry’s arm, pulling him inside with surprising strength. He locked the door again and turned to them, mouth open. Harry ran his hands over his neck and shoulders but there were no wounds, no redness, only white powder. He leaned against a desk, taking deep whooping breaths. Hillgarth sniffed his sleeve and laughed.

‘Flour! It’s bloody flour!’

‘Cheeky bastards,’ Tolhurst said.

‘Does Sam know about all this?’ Hillgarth’s face was alive with excitement.

‘He’s phoning the Interior Ministry now, sir. Are you both all right?’

‘Yes. Come on, Brett, we need to clean up.’ Chuckling again, Hillgarth made for an inner door. Outside the mob was laughing at
what they had done, though the demented youth still raved on. Tolhurst looked at Harry. ‘You all right?’

He was still trembling. ‘Yes – yes, sorry.’

Tolhurst took his arm. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to my room, I’ve a clothes brush there.’

Harry allowed himself to be led away.

T
OLHURST
’
S OFFICE
was even smaller than Harry’s. He produced a clothes brush from his desk.

‘I’ve a spare suit here. It’ll be a bit wide for you but it should do.’

‘Thanks.’ Harry brushed off the worst of the flour. He felt much better, calm again, even though he could still hear the shouting from outside. Tolhurst looked out of the window.

‘The police’ll come along and clear them in a minute. Serrano Suñer’s made his point. And Sir Sam’s chewed his ear over the phone.’

‘The demonstration didn’t send him into a funk?’

Tolhurst shook his head. ‘No, he’s on form today, no sign of the pink rat. You never know how he’s going to react.’

‘I had a touch of the pink rat myself when that flour landed,’ Harry said self-consciously. ‘I didn’t know what it was. I was back at Dunkirk for a moment. I’m sorry, it must have seemed like I was yellow.’

Tolhurst looked uncomfortable. ‘No. Not at all. I know about shell shock, my father had it in the last lot.’ He hesitated. ‘They wouldn’t let embassy staff join up last year, you know. I was quite relieved, I’m afraid.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘I’m not one of the world’s heroes. Happier behind a desk, if truth be told. Don’t know how I’d have coped with what you went through.’

‘You don’t know what you can do till you get out there.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Captain Hillgarth seems pretty fearless.’

‘Yes. I think he enjoys danger. You have to admire that sort of courage, don’t you?’

‘That was a minor panic I had then, compared to what I was like a couple of months ago.’

Tolhurst nodded. ‘Good. That’s good.’ He turned back to the window. ‘Come and look at them. They’ve no bread yet they can
throw flour. Bet it came from the Auxilio Social stores, the Falange are responsible for feeding the poor.’

Harry joined him, looking at the unruly sea of blue.

‘Lucky
no hay
potatoes then, eh?’

‘D’you know, we sent some of the bread they get on the ration to London for analysis. The boffins said it wasn’t fit for human consumption; the flour was adulterated with bloody sawdust. Yet they can afford to throw good white flour at us.’

‘The Falangist bigwigs won’t have to eat the sawdust.’

‘Too bloody right they won’t.’

‘They were shouting anti-Jewish slogans. I didn’t think the Falange went in for that.’

‘They do now. Same as Mussolini, to please the Nazis.’

‘Bastards,’ Harry said with sudden fierceness. ‘After Dunkirk I sometimes used to wonder, what’s the point of going on, fighting, but then you see things like this. Fascism. Turning teenaged thugs on to innocent people. Then it’s bombing civilians, machine-gunning retreating soldiers. Christ, I hate them.’

Tolhurst nodded. ‘Yes. But we have to deal with them here. Unfortunately.’ He pointed a finger. ‘Look at that idiot.’

The boy who had yelled in English had taken hold of a ‘Gibraltar español’ banner and was marching up and down in front of the embassy with a military swagger, the crowd cheering him on. Harry wondered where he had learned English. He was a tall, well-set-up lad, probably from a middle-class home.

The door opened and the ambassador’s wiry form darted in. He looked furious.

‘You all right, Brett?’

‘Yes, sir, thank you. It was only flour.’

‘I won’t have my staff attacked!’ Hoare’s thin voice was shaking with anger.

‘I’m all right, sir, honestly.’

‘Yes, yes, yes, but it’s the principle.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I think Stokes is looking for you, Tolhurst.’ He nodded at the door.

‘Yes, sir.’ Tolhurst melted away. The ambassador glanced out of the window, snorted, then turned back to Harry. His pale eyes were calculating.

‘Hillgarth told me about your meeting this morning. Maestre’s a blabbermouth. The things he mentioned, Juan March and the Knights of St George; you’re not to discuss them with anyone. There are lots of angles to what we’re doing here. Need-to-know basis, do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir. I told the captain I’d say nothing.’

‘Good man. Glad you’re all right.’ Hoare clapped Harry on the shoulder, then looked with distaste at the flour on his hand. He turned to the door. ‘Tell Tolhurst to get that cleaned up.’

L
EFT ALONE
, Harry sat down. He felt terribly weary and there was a humming in his ears, a pressure. It took him back again to Dunkirk, after the shell landed next to him. He had tried to sit up. He was covered with sand that was wet and warm. He couldn’t think properly, bring his thoughts together. Then a touch on his shoulder, and he opened his eyes. A small, wiry corporal was leaning over him.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ Harry could hardly hear the man, there was something wrong with his ears. He sat up. His uniform was covered in bloody sand and there were lumps of red scattered around. Tomlinson, he realized.

He let the corporal drag him down to the beach, into the sea. The water was chilly and he began trembling from head to foot, he couldn’t move. ‘Tomlinson,’ he said. He could hardly hear his own voice. ‘Such little pieces.’

The corporal grasped his shoulders, turned him round, looked into his eyes. ‘Come on, sir, come on, into the boat.’

The corporal led him deeper into the water. Other men in khaki were splashing all around. Then Harry was looking up at the brown wooden hull of the boat. It seemed so high. Two men reached down and took his arms. He felt himself being lifted into the air again, then passed out.

H
E BECAME
aware that voices were still calling outside. He got up and went back to the window. The youth was standing to attention now, banner at his side, yelling up at the embassy. Harry caught the words. ‘Death to the enemies of Spain! Death to the English! Death to the Jews!’

The boy stopped in mid-flow. His mouth dropped open and his face reddened. Harry saw a tiny black circle appear at the crotch of his grey shorts. It grew larger and larger, then something ran glistening down his thigh. He had worked himself into such a state he had wet himself. The boy stood rigid, his face blank with horror. Someone called,
‘¡Lucas! ¡Lucas, continúa!’
but he dared not move, he was the one trapped by the crowd now. Harry looked down. ‘Serve you right, you little bastard,’ he said aloud.

T
HE
F
ALANGISTS DISPERSED
shortly afterwards. The boy who had wet himself had to turn round eventually, slinking back to his comrades. They stared at his soaked shorts then quickly looked away again. The fire had gone out of them, anyway, they were getting tired; they put away their drums and banners and marched off. Harry turned away, shaking his head. He sat at Tolhurst’s desk, grateful for the quiet. Tolhurst had been decent. He had been surprised by the strength of his grip when he pulled him inside; there must be some muscle under that fat.

He looked round the office. A battered desk, an ancient filing cabinet and a cupboard. Dust in the corners. The King’s portrait on the wall but no personal photographs. He thought of his own parents’ picture, which stood in the flat now. Did Tolhurst have parents living, he wondered, or had they been scythed down too in the Great War? He closed his eyes and for a moment saw the beach again, thrusting it away with his mind. He had done well today; not long ago an incident like that would have had him crouching in terror under a table, another pink rat.

He remembered his time in hospital in Dover, the disillusion and despair. He was partly deaf, the nurses had to shout to make him hear. A doctor came and gave him tests. He seemed pleased with him. He leaned in close to the bed.

‘Your hearing should come back, there’s no real damage to the eardrums. You’ve got to rest, you understand, lie here and rest.’

‘I’ve no choice,’ Harry shouted, then remembered it was he, not the doctor, who was deaf, and lowered his voice. ‘If I get out of bed I start shaking.’

‘It’s shock. That’ll get better too.’

And so it had, with the determination that took him out of bed,
then out of the ward, then into the grounds. But neither his recovery nor the Air Force’s victory in the Battle of Britain could heal his sense of angry shame at the retreat from France. For the first time Harry had found himself questioning the things he had been taught at Rookwood, that the rules there were good and right, England a country destined to lead the world. It was the Fascists who were winning now, everywhere. He had always hated them, as he had always hated the cheats and bullies at school. That gave him something to hold on to. If they invaded he would fight if he could, even for this broken, fractured England. It was for that he had answered the spies’ unwelcome call, come here to Spain. He jumped as the door opened and Tolhurst reappeared, a pile of papers under his arm. ‘Still here, Brett?’