Winter in Madrid (44 page)

He opened the other letter; the address was written in a small, neat hand he didn’t recognize. It was from Sofia, and enclosed a bill for treatment and drugs from a doctor in the town centre, along with a letter in Spanish.

Harry felt disappointed by the letter’s formal tone, the hint of dismissal. He turned it over in his hands a couple of times, then sat down and wrote a reply.

He suggested they meet in two days’ time, at a cafe he knew near the Puerta del Sol, at six o’clock because he knew she began work early.

Harry sealed the letter. He would post it when he went out.
The receipt was an excuse, as she would realize. Well, either she would reply or she would not. He turned to the telephone table and dialled the embassy. He asked reception to tell Mr Tolhurst that he wished to come in to discuss the planned press release on the fruit imports. It was the code they had agreed for when he had news about Sandy. He had thought these codes were silly and melodramatic at first but realized they were necessary as the phones were tapped.

The receptionist came back and said Mr Tolhurst was available if he would like to call in now. He wasn’t surprised: Tolly seemed to spend many of his evenings at the embassy. Harry fetched his coat and went out again.

Tolhurst was delighted when Harry told him what had happened. He said he would tell Hillgarth; he was in a meeting but he would want to know about this. He returned to his little office a few minutes later, beaming excitedly.

‘The captain’s really pleased,’ he said. ‘If there is a lot of gold my guess is the captain will go straight to Churchill and he’ll order the blockade strengthened; let in fewer supplies to make up for any they can pay for with gold.’ He rubbed his hands.

‘What will Sir Sam say to that?’

‘It’s what the captain thinks that counts with Churchill.’ Tolhurst’s face flushed with pleasure as he rolled off the Prime Minister’s name.

‘They’ll ask why the blockade’s being tightened.’

‘We’ll probably tell them. Show them they can’t keep anything from us. And one in the eye for the Falange faction. You said we should have a firmer policy, Harry. We might be going to get it.’

Harry nodded thoughtfully. ‘That’ll leave Sandy in the soup. I suppose he could end up in real trouble.’ He realized he had been so focused on his mission, he had hardly thought about what might happen to Sandy. He felt a twinge of guilt.

Tolhurst winked. ‘Not necessarily. The captain’s got something up his sleeve there too.’

‘What?’ Harry thought a moment. ‘You’re not going to try and recruit him?’

Tolhurst shook his head. ‘Can’t say, not yet.’ He smiled, a self-important
smile that irritated Harry. ‘By the way, that other business, the Knights of St George, you haven’t told anyone else?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Important you don’t.’

‘I know.’

N
EXT MORNING
Harry accompanied one of the embassy secretaries to another interpreting session with Maestre, more certificates to be gone through. The young Falange interpreter was there again and they repeated the game of pretending Maestre spoke no English. The Spanish general’s manner towards Harry was distinctly cool and he realized Hillgarth had been right; his failure to contact Milagros again had been taken as a slight. But he wouldn’t pretend there might be something between him and the girl just to keep the spies happy. He was glad it was Friday, the end of the week. When he came home there was a reply from Sofia on the mat, just a couple of lines agreeing to meet him the next evening. He was surprised by the degree to which his heart soared.

The cafe was a small place, bright and modern. But for Franco’s picture on the wall behind the counter it could have been anywhere in Europe. He was a little early but Sofia was there already, sitting at the back of the cafe nursing a cup of coffee. She wore the same long black coat she had had on the day he took Enrique back to the flat, a little threadbare he could see under the lights. Her elfin face, without make-up, was pale. She looked much younger, vulnerable. She looked up with a smile as he approached.

‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting,’ he said.

‘I was early. You are on time.’ There was something different in her smile. It was open and friendly but there was something knowing in it too.

‘Let me get you a fresh coffee.’

He fetched the drinks.

‘Enrique is much better,’ she said as he sat down. ‘He is going out to look for work next week.’

He smiled wryly. ‘Different work.’

‘Oh yes. Labouring if he can get it.’

‘Did the – the ministry pay him while he was sick?’

Her smile became cynical for a moment. ‘No.’

‘I’ve got the receipt.’ Harry had visited the surgery and paid the doctor’s bill, as he said he would.

‘Thank you.’ Sofia folded it carefully and put it in her pocket.

‘If he has any more problems, I’d be happy to help.’

‘He will be all right now.’

‘Good.’

‘As I said in my letter, you saved his life. We will always be grateful.’

‘That’s all right.’ Harry smiled, then dried up suddenly, he couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘Has he been –’ Sofia raised her eyebrows a little – ‘replaced?’

‘No, thank goodness. I’m being left alone. I’m not at all important, you know. Just a translator.’

She lit a cigarette, then leaned back, studying him. Her expression was enquiring but not hostile or suspicious. She was far more relaxed away from the flat.

‘Will you be going home to England?’ she asked. ‘For Christmas?’

‘Christmas.’ He laughed. ‘I hadn’t thought about it.’

‘It is only six weeks away. You make a lot of the celebration in England, I believe.’

‘Yes. But I doubt I’ll be going home. They need everyone at the embassy. You know, the way things are. Diplomatically.’ He wondered how she knew about the English Christmas. That boy from Leeds she had met in the Civil War, perhaps. He wondered again if he had been her lover. How old was she? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?

‘So you will not be able to spend it with your parents.’

‘My parents are dead.’

‘That is sad.’

‘My father died in the First War. My mother died in the influenza epidemic just after.’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Spain did not fight in the First War, though we suffered in the epidemic afterwards. It is sad to lose both parents.’

‘I have aunts and an uncle, a cousin. He keeps me in touch with what’s happening at home.’

‘The air raids?’

‘Yes. They’re bad, but not quite as bad as the propaganda makes
out here.’ He saw her look quickly around at those words, and cursed himself for forgetting they were in a country full of spies, where you had to take care what you said. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

She gave that sardonic smile again. It was strangely attractive. ‘There is no one in earshot. I deliberately chose a seat at the back of the restaurant.’

‘I see.’

‘And do you have anyone else back home?’ she asked. ‘A wife, perhaps?’

He was taken aback by her directness. ‘No. Nobody. Nobody at all.’

‘Forgive my question. It must seem bold. You will be thinking, it is not the sort of question Spanish women ask.’

‘I don’t mind directness,’ he said. He looked into her large brown eyes. ‘It makes a change from the embassy. I went to a party given by a government minister a couple of weeks ago, for his daughter’s eighteenth. The formality was stifling. Poor girl,’ he added.

Sofia blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘I come from a different tradition.’

‘Do you?’

‘The Republican tradition. My father and his family before him were Republicans. Rich foreigners think of Spain in terms of ancient churches and bullfights and women in lacy mantillas, but there is a whole different tradition here. In my family we believed women should be equal. I was brought up to believe I was as good as any man. By my mother, at least – my father had old-fashioned notions. But he had the grace to be ashamed of them sometimes.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He worked in a warehouse. He worked long hours for little money, like me.’

‘I think the family I met when I was here in 1931 were a part of that tradition as well. I didn’t see it in those terms, though.’ He thought of Barbara’s story, Carmela and her donkey.

‘You were fond of them,’ Sofia said.

‘Yes, they were good people.’ He smiled. ‘Your family, were they Socialists too?’

She shook her head. ‘We had Socialist friends, and Anarchists, and Left Republicans. But not everyone joined a party. The parties
talked of Communist and Anarchist utopias but all most people want is peace, bread on the table, self-respect. Is it not so?’

‘Yes.’

She leaned forward, an intent look in her eyes. ‘You don’t know what it was like for people like us when the Republic came, what it meant. All of a sudden we
mattered
. I got a place in medical school. I had to work as well in a bar, but everyone was so hopeful, change was coming at last, the chance of a decent life.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘I am sorry, Señor Brett, my tongue runs away with me. I do not often get the chance to talk about those times.’

‘Don’t be sorry. It helps me understand.’

‘Understand what?’

‘Spain.’ He hesitated. ‘You.’

She dropped her eyes to the table, reached for her cigarettes and lit another. When she looked up there was uncertainty in her eyes.

‘Perhaps you may have to leave Spain sooner than you planned. If Franco joins the war.’

‘We’re hoping he won’t.’

‘Everyone says England will give Franco anything he wants to stay out of this war. And what happens to us then?’

Harry sighed. ‘I suppose my masters would say we have to do what we do to keep Spain out of the war, but – we haven’t much to be proud of, I know.’

Unexpectedly Sofia smiled. ‘Oh, I am sorry, you look so sad. You have done so much to help us and I argue with you, I am sorry.’

‘Don’t be. Look, can I get you another coffee?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I am afraid I have to get back. Mother and Paco are expecting me. I have to buy some food. Try to find some olive oil.’

Harry hesitated. But he had seen an advertisement in the evening paper and had decided he would ask her, unless this evening went badly. ‘Do you like the theatre?’ he asked, suddenly, clumsily, so that Sofia looked at him in puzzlement for a moment. ‘I’m sorry,’ he continued hastily. ‘Only
Macbeth
is on at the Zara theatre tomorrow night. I wondered if you’d like to go. I’d like to see it in Spanish.’

She hesitated, looking at him with those large brown eyes. ‘Thank you,
señor
, but I think perhaps not.’

‘That’s a shame,’ Harry said. ‘I just meant – I’d like us to be friends. I haven’t any Spanish friends.’

She smiled, but shook her head. ‘Señor, it has been good to talk to you, but we live in very different worlds.’

‘Are we so different? Am I too bourgeois?’

‘They will all be dressed up in their best for the Zara. I have no clothes like theirs.’ She sighed, looked at him again. ‘I would not have let that bother me a few years ago.’

Harry smiled. ‘Well, then.’

‘I have one dress that would do.’

‘Please come.’

She smiled back. ‘Very well, Señor Brett.’ She blushed. ‘But as friends, yes?’

I
T HAD RAINED A LOT
during the last week, a cold rain that sometimes turned to sleet. On the path to the quarry the prisoners squelched through clinging red mud; each day the snowline on the distant mountains descended a little lower.

That morning it was raw and damp. The work detail stood in lines by the quarry, stamping their feet to keep warm as a pair of army sappers carefully placed sticks of dynamite in a long crack running the length of a twenty-foot rockface. Sergeant Molina, back from leave, stood talking to the driver of the army truck that had brought the explosives up from Cuenca.

Bernie thought about Agustín. A few days before he had gone on leave. He left during morning roll-call; Bernie saw him walking across the yard, kitbag over his shoulder. Agustín met his eye for a second before quickly turning his head away. The gate was opened and he disappeared up the road to Cuenca.

‘That is a big charge,’ Pablo muttered. Bernie’s fellow-Communist was on the quarry detail with him now. He was an ex-miner from Asturias and knew about explosives. ‘We should stand further back, there will be splinters flying all over the place.’

‘They should have got you to set the charges,
amigo
.’

‘They’d be afraid I’d set them under their truck, like we did in Oviedo in ’36.’

‘If we could get our hands on it, eh, Vicente?’

‘Yes.’ The lawyer sat slumped beside them on a rock. He had been helping Molina with paperwork that morning – the sergeant, a plump lazy man promoted beyond his abilities, could barely write and the lawyer was a godsend – but he had been sent to wait with the others while the charges were set. Vicente sat with his head in his hands. His nasal condition was worse; the discharge had stopped but now the
poison seemed to be trapped inside his sinuses. He couldn’t breathe through his nose and to sniff or swallow was painful.

‘Stand back! Further away!’ Molina called. The detail shuffled backwards as the sappers ran back to the truck; Molina and the driver joined them behind it.

There was a dull explosion and Bernie flinched but no chips of stone flew out. Instead the whole rock face collapsed, crumbling like a sandcastle hit by a wave. A cloud of dust fanned outwards, making them cough. A herd of the little deer that inhabited the Tierra Muerta ran down the hillside, bounding and leaping in terror.