Winter in Madrid (16 page)

‘Yes. I was watching the fireworks. One of them pissed himself.’

‘Serve the little bastard right. Are you all right now?’

‘Yes, I’m fine. Just needed a minute to pull myself together.’ Harry stood up. He looked at his morning suit, from which specks of flour still drifted to the floor. ‘I ought to change.’

Tolhurst opened the cupboard and took out a crumpled dark suit and trilby hat. Harry changed into it. The suit was baggy and smelt of old sweat.

‘I keep meaning to take it home and press it,’ Tolhurst said apologetically.

‘It’s fine. Thanks. I think I’ll go home unless they want me for something else. I’ve no work left downstairs.’

Tolhurst nodded. ‘All right. By the way, there’s a drinks party for some of the younger embassy staff next week. At the Ritz. It’s a Nazi haunt these days; we’re showing the flag. Why don’t you come?’

‘Thanks. I’d like to. Thanks, Tolhurst.’

‘Oh, call me Tolly. Everyone does.’

‘Then call me Harry.’

‘OK. Anyway, listen, if you’re going home don’t take the metro, there’s a power cut again.’

‘All right. The walk’ll do me good.’

‘I’ll arrange for your jacket to be cleaned.’

‘Thanks again, er, Tolly.’

Harry left Tolhurst to his work. Outside it was still dry but a cold
sharp wind had started to blow from the mountains. He put on the trilby, shuddering a little at the cloying damp of old Brylcreem. He walked to the city centre. In the Puerta del Sol a group of gipsy beggars sat huddled together in a doorway. ‘Alms,’ they called after him. ‘Alms. In the name of God.’ There had always been beggars in Spain but now they were everywhere. If you met their eyes they would get up and follow; you developed the trick of seeing them only with your peripheral vision. They had talked about peripheral vision during Harry’s training: use it to find out whether you’re being followed, it’s amazing how much you can train yourself to see without eye movement so people don’t know you’ve seen them.

In Calle Toledo one of the restaurants had put out its rubbish for collection. The bins had been tipped over on the street, spilling out across the pavement. A family were hunting among the rubbish for food. There was an old woman, a younger one who looked like she was her daughter, and two pot-bellied children. The young woman might have been pretty once but her black hair was greasy and dishevelled and she had the red patches of consumption in her pale cheeks. A little girl picked out a piece of orange peel and rammed it to her mouth, sucking desperately. The old woman grabbed a chicken bone and pocketed it. Passers-by turned to avoid them; across the road, a couple of
civiles
stood watching from a shop doorway. A priest in a neat black suit walked swiftly by, averting his gaze.

The young woman was bending over, poking among the slops, when a sudden gust of wind caught her thin black dress, blowing it over her head. She cried out and stood up, arms clawing at it. She had no underclothes and her thin body was suddenly exposed, startlingly pale with prominent ribs and sagging breasts. The old woman ran over and tried to disentangle the dress.

The
civiles
sprang to life. They darted across the road, grabbing at the woman. One jerked at the dress, there was a ripping tear but it dropped again, covering her. She put her arms across her breasts, shivering violently.

‘What are you doing?’ one of the guards shouted in her face. ‘Whore!’ He was a tall middle-aged man with a black moustache. His expression was furious, outraged.

‘It was an accident.’ The old woman wrung her hands together. ‘You saw it, the wind, please, it was an accident.’

‘You should not allow such accidents!’ he yelled in her face. ‘A priest went by not two minutes ago.’ He yanked at the young woman’s arm. ‘You are under arrest for offending public morals!’

She buried her head in her hands and wept, her cries turning to coughs. The older woman stood beseechingly in front of the
civil
, hands still clasped together as though in prayer. ‘My daughter,’ she pleaded. ‘My daughter!’

The younger
civil
looked uncomfortable but the older one was still furious. He pushed the old woman away. ‘The rest of you, away from there! Those bins are private property! Why don’t you find work?
¡Vete!
’

The old woman gathered the children and stood trembling as her daughter was led away, sagging between the
civiles
. Sickened, Harry watched as they took her down the street, between the high stone buildings of a modern European city.

Then he saw the man. A short, thin man with black hair, in a dark jacket and white collarless shirt, who ducked into a shop doorway as he caught Harry’s eye. Harry turned and walked on, pretending he hadn’t seen him.

Ahead a white-helmeted, white-clad traffic policeman stood in the middle of the road; pedestrians were supposed to wait until signalled to cross but many darted over when his head was turned, risking the traffic and the two-peseta fine. Harry stopped and looked right and left. The man was close, ten paces behind. He had a square pale face, surprisingly delicate-looking features. As he saw Harry looking in his direction he floundered for a moment then walked quickly past him, head bowed.

Harry ran across the road, between a donkey cart and an ancient Ford. Whoever the man was, he wasn’t very good at this. He felt a cold whisper of uneasiness, but reminded himself he had been warned to expect someone to tail him, that it happened to all the embassy people. He was junior staff so perhaps the spy was junior too.

He didn’t look round again until he reached the doorway of the flats, though it was an effort. He felt angry now as much as scared.
When he turned at last his follower had disappeared. He climbed the stairs and unlocked the door, then jumped violently as a voice called from within.

‘Harry, is that you?’

Tolhurst was sitting on the settee in the
salón
. ‘Sorry to barge in, old chap, did I startle you? Only I’ve got a message from Hillgarth, he wanted you to have it at once. It came right after you left so I drove over.’

‘All right.’ Harry crossed to the window and looked down at the street. ‘God, I don’t believe it, he’s there. I’m being tailed, come and look.’

‘OK. Don’t twitch the curtain, old man.’ Tolhurst joined him and they stood looking down at the young man. He was walking up and down the road, looking at the house numbers, scratching his head. Tolhurst laughed.

‘Some of these people are just hopeless.’

‘A spy for a spy,’ Harry said quietly.

‘It’s the way it works.’ Tolhurst looked at him seriously. ‘Listen, there’s been a change of plan. Captain Hillgarth wants you to move on Forsyth now, call in at the Café Rocinante tomorrow afternoon and see if you can make contact. Come for a briefing at the embassy at nine tomorrow.’ Tolhurst looked at him keenly. ‘OK?’

Harry took a deep breath. ‘Yes.’ He smiled wryly. ‘It’s what I came for, isn’t it.’

‘OK.’ Tolhurst jerked his head towards the window. ‘Make sure you lose chummy.’

‘Why the change of plan?’

‘Hitler’s visiting France, big meeting with Pétain. There’s word he’s coming on here afterwards. This is all very hush hush, by the way.’

Harry looked at him seriously. ‘So Franco could be about to enter the war.’

Tolhurst nodded. ‘Moving in that direction, at least. We need to know as much as we can, about everything.’

‘Yes.’ Harry nodded grimly. ‘I can see.’

‘I’d better get back, tell Hillgarth I’ve caught you.’ He glanced round the bare walls. ‘You ought to cover up those blank spaces.
We’ve loads of pictures at the embassy if you want some.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Let’s be optimistic, and assume we’re not all going to be kicked out, or worse.’

After Tolhurst left, Harry returned to the window. It was raining again, little spots tapping the glass. The man had disappeared; probably he was hanging around somewhere waiting for him to emerge. He thought about the poor woman who had been arrested. Where would they put her? In some stinking cell probably. The incident seemed to crystallize everything he had seen these last few days. Harry realized he wasn’t neutral any more; he hated what Franco was doing here.

His mind went back to Sandy and tomorrow’s meeting. He thought of German tanks rolling south over the Pyrenees, war in Spain again. He wondered how the embassy had got that information. Perhaps it was something to do with what Hillgarth and Maestre had been talking about. Juan March, the crooked millionaire, had financed Franco during the Civil War but he could still be pro-English, like Maestre. He wondered what the Knights of St George were, some sort of code. Hoare had told him to put it out of his mind but why had he and Hillgarth been so obviously worried that he knew? He shrugged. Well, he had better start preparing himself mentally for his task, prepare to meet Sandy, Sandy who was making a profit out of the Spanish Hell.

What would he be like now? He thought back to the year at Rookwood when he had shared a study with Sandy, that strange year.

T
HE INCIDENT WITH
the spider in Taylor’s study had been the start of a difficult time. Things felt unsettled, uncomfortable. Bernie had been moved to a different study, but he remained friendly with Harry. Bernie and Sandy loathed each other. It wasn’t anything particular; it was visceral, instinctive. The school was full of feuds and rivalries between boys, but this was more unsettling because it was expressed not in rows and fights but cold glances and sarcastic comments. Yet Sandy and Bernie were in some ways alike. They shared a contempt for Rookwood, its beliefs and the system, which Harry found painful.

Bernie kept his socialism mainly to himself because he knew most
of the boys would have found his ideas not just distasteful but incomprehensible. He carried on doing well in class; he was clever, as scholarship boys had to be to get to Rookwood at all. He played rugger aggressively, making the junior team. But occasionally his feelings about Rookwood showed through and he would talk about it to Harry with cold, hard disdain.

‘They’re preparing us to be part of the ruling class,’ he said to Harry one afternoon. It was wet and they were all in Harry’s study, Harry and Bernie at the table, Sandy sitting reading by the fire. ‘To rule the workers here and the natives in the colonies.’

‘Well, someone’s got to rule them,’ Harry replied. ‘I’ve thought of applying to the Colonial Office myself when I leave. My cousin might be able to help.’

‘Oh God!’ Bernie laughed harshly.

‘Being a district commissioner’s bloody hard work. My uncle’s got a friend who was in Uganda for years, only white man for miles. He came back with malaria. Some of them die out there.’

‘And others make a packet,’ Bernie replied contemptuously. ‘You should listen to yourself, Harry. “My cousin might be able to help. My uncle’s friend.” None of the people I know at home have cousins or uncles to help them rule huge chunks of Africa.’

‘And the socialists can run things better, can they? Those idiots MacDonald and Snowden?’

‘They’ve sold out. They’re weak. We need a stronger type of socialism, like they’ve got in Russia.’

Sandy looked up then and laughed. ‘D’you think Russia’s any better than here? It’s probably like this place, only worse.’

Harry frowned. ‘How can Rookwood be like Russia?’

Sandy shrugged. ‘A system built on bloody lies. They say they’re educating you, but they’re trying to drill you full of things they want you to know, just like the Russians with all their propaganda. They tell us when to go to bed, when to get up, how to talk, how to think. People like you don’t mind, Harry, but Piper and me are different.’ He looked at Bernie, his brown eyes alive with malicious humour.

‘You do talk a lot of shit, Forsyth,’ Bernie replied. ‘You think sneaking out late to go drinking with Piers Knight and his mates is being different. I want freedom for my
class
. And our day’s coming.’

‘And I suppose I’ll be on the way to the guillotine.’

‘Maybe you will.’

S
ANDY HAD FALLEN IN
with a crowd of fourth- and fifth-formers who went to the local town to drink and, they said, meet girls. Bernie said they were all wastrels and Harry agreed although, after Taylor’s attempts to recruit him as a spy, he could see things a little from Sandy’s side: the black sheep, the boy who had to be kept an eye on; it wasn’t a status he envied. Sandy did as little work as possible; his attitude to the masters and his schoolwork one of barely veiled contempt.

That term, Harry took to going for walks on his own. It cleared his head to go ranging for miles over chalky Sussex woodlands. One damp November afternoon he turned a corner and was astonished to see Sandy Forsyth crouched on his haunches in the lane, turning a dark round stone over and over in his hands. He looked up.

‘Hello, Brett.’

‘What’re you doing? You’ve got chalk all over your blazer.’

‘Never mind that. Look here.’ He stood up and passed Harry the stone. At first it looked like a dark flinty rock but then he saw it was full of concentric circles, spiralling inwards.

‘What is it?’

Sandy smiled, not cynically as usual but broadly, a happy smile. ‘It’s an ammonite. A fossilized sea creature. Once all this was a sea and it was full of these, swimming about. When it died it sank to the bottom and over years its shell turned to rock. You can’t imagine how many years. Millions.’

‘I didn’t know fossils were like this. I thought they were big, dinosaurs.’

‘Oh, there were dinosaurs here too. The first dinosaur fossils were found near here a century ago, by a man called Mantell.’ Sandy’s smile turned sardonic. ‘Wasn’t popular in some circles. Fossils were a challenge to the Church’s idea the earth was only a few thousand years old. My dad still thinks God put the fossils in himself, to test men’s faith. He’s a very
traditional
Anglican.’

Harry had never seen Forsyth like this before. His face was alive with excited interest, his uniform streaked with chalk and his thick
black hair, normally neatly combed, stood up in little tufts. He smiled. ‘I often come out fossil hunting. This is a good one. I don’t tell people – they’d think I was a swot.’