Winter in Madrid (18 page)

The zoo was almost deserted. She took a seat by the sealions’ pit, lit a cigarette and sat watching them. She had heard the animals had suffered terribly during the Siege; many had died of starvation, but there was a new elephant now, donated by the Generalísimo himself. Sandy was a bullfight aficionado but no matter how many times he argued with her about the skill and courage involved, Barbara couldn’t stomach it, the big strong animal tormented and killed, horses gored and dying, kicking in the sand. She had been to the
corrida
twice then refused to go again. Sandy had laughed and told her not to mention it in front of his Spanish friends; they would think her the worst sort of English sentimentalist.

She twisted the handle of her crocodile-skin handbag. Critical thoughts about Sandy kept coming into her head these days. It wasn’t fair; he was the one being placed in danger by her deceit, it could destroy his career if what she was doing came out. She oscillated between guilt over that and anger at the stifled life she led now, the way Sandy always wanted to run everything.

The day after meeting Luis she had gone to the Express office in the Puerta del Sol and asked for Markby. They told her he was away in the north, reporting on the German troops coming over the frontier from France and buying everything up.

She might have to tackle Luis herself. Why had he said he had been in Cuenca through two winters? Was he just deceiving her, and Markby, for money? He had seemed nervous and uneasy throughout their interview, but had been very firm about the money he wanted.

A woman in a fur coat appeared, a little boy of eight marching at her side. He wore the uniform of a little
flecha
, the youngest section of the Falange Youth. Seeing the sealions he left his mother’s side and ran over to the pen, aiming his wooden rifle at them. ‘Bang! Bang!’ he shouted. ‘Die, Reds, die!’ Barbara shuddered. Sandy said the Falange Youth were just Spanish boy scouts, but sometimes she wondered.

Seeing her, the little boy ran over and stretched out his arm in the Fascist salute. ‘Good morning, señora!
¡Viva Franco!
Can I help you at all today?’

Barbara gave a tired smile. ‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’

The child’s mother came over, taking his hand. ‘Come, Manolito, the elephant is this way.’ She shook her head at Barbara. ‘Children are tiring, no?’

Barbara smiled hesitantly.

‘But they are our gift from God.’

‘Come on, Mama, the elephants, the elephants!’

Barbara watched them go. Sandy didn’t want children; she was thirty now and she would probably never have any. Once she had longed to have Bernie’s child. Her mind went back to those other autumn days, with him in Red Madrid. Only four years ago, but it was like another age.

T
HAT FIRST NIGHT
in the bar, Bernie had seemed an extraordinary, exotic creature to her. It wasn’t just his beauty: the incongruity between his public-school accent and his grubby private’s uniform added to her sense of unreality.

‘How did you hurt your arm?’ she asked.

‘Got winged by a sniper in the Casa de Campo. It’s healing well,
just nicked the bone. I’m on sick leave, staying with friends in Carabanchel.’

‘Isn’t that the suburb the Nationalists are shelling? I heard there was fighting there.’

‘Yes. In the part furthest from the city. But the people living further in won’t go.’ He smiled. ‘They’re magnificent, so strong. I met the family when I came over on a visit five years ago. The eldest son’s with the militia in the Casa de Campo. His mother takes hot food out there every day.’

‘You don’t want to go home?’

A hardness came into his face. ‘I’m here till this is finished. Till we’ve made Madrid the grave of fascism.’

‘There seems to be more Russian equipment coming now.’

‘Yes. We’re going to throw Franco back. What about you, what are you doing here?’

‘I’m with the Red Cross. Helping find missing people, arranging exchanges. Children mostly.’

‘They got some Red Cross medical equipment when I was in hospital. God knows they needed it.’ He fixed her with those big olive eyes. ‘But you supply the Fascists too, don’t you?’

‘We have to. We have to be neutral.’

‘Don’t forget which side it was that rose up to destroy an elected government.’

She changed the subject. ‘Where on the arm were you hit?’

‘Above the elbow. They say it’ll soon be good as new. Then I’m going back to the front.’

‘A bit higher and you could’ve got it in the shoulder. That can be nasty.’

‘Are you a medic?’

‘A nurse. Though I haven’t done nursing for years. I’m a bureaucrat now.’ She gave a self-deprecating laugh.

‘Don’t knock it, the world needs organization.’

She laughed again. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that. It doesn’t matter how useful the work you do is, the word bureaucracy always stinks.’

‘How long have you been with the Red Cross?’

‘Four years. I don’t go back to England much now.’

‘Family there?’

‘Yes, but I haven’t seen them for a couple of years. We don’t have much in common. What do you do? Back home?’

‘Well, before I left I was a sculptor’s model.’

She almost spilled her wine. ‘A what?’

‘I modelled for some sculptors in London. Don’t worry, nothing improper. It’s a job.’

She struggled for something to say. ‘That must get awfully cold.’

‘Yes. There’re statues with goose pimples all over London.’

The doors banged open and a large group of boiler-suited militia came in, girls from the Women’s Battalion among them. They crowded round the bar, shouting and jostling. Bernie looked serious.

‘New recruits, off to the front tomorrow. D’you want to go somewhere else? We could go to the Café Gijón. Might see Hemingway.’

‘Isn’t that near the telephone exchange the Nationalists keep trying to shell?’

‘The Gijón’s safe enough, it’s some way away.’

A militiawoman, no more than eighteen, came up and put her arm round Bernie.

‘¡Compadre! ¡Salud!’
She tightened her grip and shouted something at her comrades in Spanish, making them laugh and cheer. Barbara didn’t understand but Bernie reddened.

‘My friend and I have to go,’ he said apologetically. The militiawoman pouted. Bernie took Barbara’s arm with his good hand and steered her through the crowd.

O
UTSIDE IN
the Puerta del Sol he kept hold of her arm. Barbara’s heart beat faster. The setting autumn sun cast a red glow over the posters of Lenin and Stalin. Trams clanked through the square.

‘Did you understand what they were saying?’ Bernie asked.

‘No. My Spanish isn’t up to much.’

‘Probably just as well. The militia are pretty uninhibited.’ He gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘How d’you manage in your work, if you don’t speak the lingo?’

‘Oh, we have interpreters. And my Spanish is coming on. We’re a bit of a Tower of Babel in our office, I’m afraid. French and Swiss mostly. I can speak French.’

They turned into Calle Montero. A crippled beggar in a doorway stretched out a hand. ‘
Por solidaridad
,’ he called. Bernie gave him a ten-centimo coin.

‘For solidarity.’ He smiled grimly. ‘That’s replaced “for the love of God”. When we’ve won this war, there won’t be any more beggars. Or priests.’

As they crossed into Gran Vía there was a deep rumble overhead. People tensed and looked up. Some turned and ran. Barbara looked around nervously.

‘Shouldn’t we find an air-raid shelter?’

‘It’s all right. It’s only a reconnaissance plane. Come on.’

The Café Gijón, haunt of bohemian radicals before the war, was ostentatiously modern, with art deco fittings. The walls were mostly mirrors. The bar was full of officers.

‘No Hemingway,’ she said with a smile.

‘Never mind. What will you have?’

She asked for a white wine and sat at a table while Bernie went to the bar. She moved her seat around, looking for a position where there were no mirrors, but the wretched things were everywhere. She hated catching sight of herself. Bernie came back, holding two glasses on a tray with his good arm.

‘Take this, would you?’

‘Oh, yes, sorry.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’ She fiddled with her glasses. ‘I just don’t like mirrors much.’

‘Why ever not?’

She looked away. ‘I just don’t, that’s all. Are you a Hemingway fan?’

‘Not really. Do you read much?’

‘Yes, I get a lot of time in the evenings. I don’t like Hemingway either. I think he enjoys war. I hate it.’ She looked up, wondering if she had been too vehement, but he smiled encouragingly and offered her a cigarette.

‘It’s been a bad couple of years if you work in the Red Cross,’ she went on. ‘First Abyssinia, now this.’

‘There won’t be an end to war until fascism’s defeated.’

‘Till Madrid’s become its grave?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’ll be a lot of other graves too.’

‘We cannot escape history,’ he quoted.

‘Are you a Communist?’ Barbara asked suddenly.

He smiled, raising his glass. ‘Central London branch.’ His eyes were bright with mischief. ‘Shocked?’

She laughed. ‘After two months here? I’m past being shocked.’

T
WO DAYS LATER
they went for a walk in the Retiro. A banner had been placed over the front gate:
NO PASARAN
. The fighting was growing fiercer, Franco’s troops had broken through to the university in the north of the city but were being held there. More Russian arms were arriving; she had seen a line of tanks driving down Gran Vía, tearing up cobbles, cheered by the people. At night the streets were unlit to hinder night bombers but there were constant white flashes of artillery from the Casa de Campo, endless rumbles and thumps; like thunder, an endless storm.

‘I always hated the idea of war, ever since I was a little girl,’ Barbara told Bernie. ‘I lost an uncle on the Somme.’

‘My father was there too. He’s never been the same since.’

‘When I was little I used to meet people who’d, you know, been through it. They carried on as normal, but you could see they were marked.’

Bernie put his head on one side. ‘That’s a lot of gloomy thinking for a little girl.’

‘Oh, I was always thinking.’ She gave a self-deprecating laugh. ‘I spent a lot of time on my own.’

‘Are you an only child like me?’

‘No, I’ve a sister four years older. She’s married, lives a quiet life in Birmingham.’

‘You’ve still got a trace of the accent.’

‘Oh God, don’t say that.’

‘It’s nice.
Noice
,’ he said, imitating her. ‘My parents are working-class Londoners. It’s hard being the only kid. I had a lot of expectations put on me, ’specially when I got the scholarship to Rookwood.’

‘Nobody ever had any expectations of me.’

He looked at her curiously, then winced suddenly, cradling his wounded arm in the other.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘A bit. D’you mind if we sit down?’

She helped him to a bench. Through the rough material of his greatcoat his body was hard and firm. It excited her.

They lit cigarettes. They were sitting in front of the lake; it had been drained, the water shining in the moonlight at night was a guide for bombers. A faint smell of rot came from the mud left at the bottom. A tree had been felled nearby and some men were cutting it up with axes; the weather was cold now and there was no fuel. Across the lake bed the statue of Alfonso XII still stood in its great marble arch; the snout of a big anti-aircraft gun nearby, thrusting up from the trees, made a weird contrast.

‘If you hate war,’ he said, coming back to their discussion, ‘you must be an anti-fascist.’

‘I hate all this nationalist master-race rubbish. But communism’s crazy too – people don’t want to hold everything in common, it’s not natural. My dad owns a shop. But he’s not rich, and he doesn’t exploit anybody.’

‘My dad runs a shop too, but he doesn’t own it. That makes the difference. The party isn’t against shopkeepers and other small businesses; we recognize there’ll be a long transition to communism. That’s why we stopped what the ultra-revolutionaries were doing here. It’s the big capitalists we oppose, the ones who support fascism. People like Juan March.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Franco’s biggest backer. A crooked businessman from Majorca who’s made millions out of other people’s sweat. Corrupt as hell.’

Barbara stubbed out her cigarette. ‘You can’t say all the bad’s on one side in this war. What about all the people who go missing, get picked up at night by the Seguridad and never get seen again? And don’t say it doesn’t happen. We get frantic women turning up at our offices all the time saying their husbands have disappeared. They can’t get any answer about where they are.’

Bernie’s gaze was even. ‘Innocent people get caught up in war.’

‘Exactly. Thousands and thousands of them.’ Barbara turned her head away. She didn’t want to quarrel with him, it was the last thing she wanted. She felt a warm hand laid on hers.

‘Don’t let’s fight,’ he said.

His touch was like an electric charge but she pulled her hand away and put it in her pocket. She hadn’t expected that; she believed he’d asked her out a second time because he was lonely and didn’t know any other English people. Now she thought, perhaps he wants a woman, an Englishwoman, otherwise why would he look at me? Her heart began to pound.

‘Barbara?’ He leaned across, trying to get her to meet his eyes. Unexpectedly he pulled a face, crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. She laughed and pushed him away.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No – it’s just – don’t take my hand. I’ll be your friend but don’t do that.’

‘All right. I’m sorry.’

‘Perhaps we shouldn’t talk about politics. You think I’m stupid, don’t you?’

He shook his head. ‘No. This is the first proper talk with a girl I’ve had for ages.’

‘You won’t convert me, you know.’

He smiled again, challengingly. ‘Give me time.’

After a while they got up and walked on. He told her about the family he was staying with, the Meras.